THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

1^st paragraph: Introduces the topic and tells the reader about the transformations caused by the Industrial Revolution.

2^nd paragraph: Focuses on the novels' role during the Victorian Age: thanks to an important generation of writers, novels became opinion-formers.

3^rd paragraph: Highlights the main ingredients of the Victorian novel, such as industry, agriculture, health, prison conditions and criminality.

4^rd paragraph:  Deals with the most characteristic theme of the novel: class. The importance given to such theme was due to the Victorians' Puritan vision of the world . The Manichaeistic way to see the world, based on the continuous struggle between opposites(good-evil) also was responsible, indeed human beings were afraid to lose balance and to lose their status.

5^th paragraph: Has the function to explain why social history became a vital part of the novel. That was due to the spread of publishing, of both literature and information among the middle class and, in particular among lower-middle class. In order to refer to middle class the novel must had been written with a low-formal language and must had dealt with common themes among the middle class, such as family life.

6^th paragraph: Provides the main characteristics of the Victorian novel. The novel's realism kept its equilibrium between two juxtaposed dimensions, pathos and the grotesque , which implied exaggeration of tones.

7^th paragraph: Focuses on the way novelists built their characters in order to provide the sense of pathos which is so typical of the Victorian fiction.

8^th paragraph: Tells the reader the reason why the narration of children's difficult living conditions is so common in the Victorian novel: children were used to provide the sense of pathos.

9^th paragraph: Gave emphasis at utilitarianism, a human-centric economical analysis.

10^th  paragraph: Caricatures were made in order to raise emotions: horror, disgust, laughter.

11^th paragraph: Informs the reader that novelists' aim was to provoke a reader's reaction: pathos provided a partial identification with the pathetic subject, while the grotesque implies the reader's refusal to identify himself with the grotesque subject.

12 ^th paragraph:  Focuses on the novel's setting: the Victorian novel is usually set in the city, the expression of industrial civilization.

13^th paragraph: Highlights that literature had become an object of mass consumption.

14^th  paragraph: Has the function to conclude the text. In particular, the conclusion refers to Dickens, who represents a valid example of the "Victorian mood"