Characteristics of Victorian Novel

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Characteristics of Victorian Novel By the middle of the nineteenth century, the novel as a species of literature had thrust itself into the first rank. The phenomenal progress of the novel took place because it was the pleasantest form of literary entertainment chosen by the rising middle class and also because of the different education acts and opening of libraries, press and publishing houses which led to an unprecedented growth in the numbers of reading public and demand for books to which the novelists of the age responded with a will. The need for structural unity is felt in most of the novels of the Victorian Age where the flow of the story was interrupted with episodic digressions and tedious moralizing and the incidents clustering around the figure of a hero were bound loosely. The Victorian novelists may not have been great at construction of strong plots, but this age produced the finest story tellers. They narrated the story in the most charming manner which made the Victorian novels immediately interesting. Realism was the prototypical trait of Victorian novelists who drew themes for their novels not from the Middle Ages or the world of Romance but from the life which unfolded in front of their eyes. Victorian novels cast their nets wide and were the panoramas of whole societies in which different kinds of people belonging to different classes gave a true representation of the Victorian Age. Victorian novels are marked by lively and witty characterization. These novels reveal myriads of people who take a special place in our memory as crowds of breathing, laughing, crying, living people, each complete with their own set of individual traits. Victorian novels were the most successful vehicle for the ideals and problems of the Victorian Age and they were seldom without a moral or a spiritual purpose. The Victorian novels brought to the fore

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