Notes about The Victorian Age (4/5/12)

During the first half of the 19ieth century, novels were the expression of the expectations brought up by the Industrial Revolution, but gradually people realized that it had not improved society, producing wealth without well-being.
The Victorian novel dealth with the problems caused by the Industrial Revolution (exploiting of workmen, women, children...), mixing them with fiction elements, like the love story (for example the factory owner and a female worker's falling in love) with an happy ending. In order to keep reader's attention alert, novelists published their novels in instalments and also exploiting technical choices (structure, narrator...).
So, even if the novel was not considered "great" art, there was a publishing spread, due to the increase of the reading public, mainly composed of the lower middle class (education had become obligatory). Many people was able to read and to know what was happening in their society, making their opinion.
One of the most important themes of the Victorian novel was the relationship between the factory owner and his workmen. Another important theme was class, because it expressed the conflicts between two different parts of society and of work world. People was interested into these themes because they identified with characters' lives.
Victorian writers used in their novels two important narrative techniques: pathos (reader's identification with the situation) and grotesque (the use of an exaggerated language).

Industrial Revolution had modified the whole country. Mechanical inventions and enclosures were introduced in the countryside and many labourers were compelled to move to towns to find a work. But cities were not prepared to receive so many people: as a consequence a lot of people had been living in poverty.
In factories the owner was the only one who had a strong power of bargaining: he could assume many workmen and pay them a low wage and they also exploited children. When there was a fluctuation of the market (factories are subjected to a low of demand and offer) the factory owner could fire his workmen in every moment. People who were not able to pay debts were imprisoned and the high and middle class lived in the fear of an economic fallen.
In Victorian society there was the idea that society founded on family. The father was the centre of the family, that was considered as a little church (from the Puritanism trend).