The Victorian novel reflects social changes, such as the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns. The most characteristic theme in Victorian fiction is class. The problem was generally centred to the relationship between and individual and a group of society as a whole. Between the 1830 and 1855 social history became a vital part of the novel functioning both as witness and commentary. The reason for this are not only to be found in the juxtaposition of classes and the contrast between the rich and the poor. The spread of publishing is also responsible. This reading public was predominantly middle class and lower middle class.

-Realism (pathos): it derived form the 18^th century narratives of Richardson, De Foe and Fielding; it kept its precarious equilibrium between pathos and the grotesque. For the pathos are often used the children. (the rookeries, the workhouses, the landscape of hunger)

-Grotesque: it describe the underworld to the society. In doing so the novel gave the middle classes both an alibi and a way of exorcising all the ghosts of the middle classes's bad conscience.

The Victorian novel is generally set in the city, the expression of industrial civilization. In the Victorian novel a myriad f characters and caricatures gives shape to the anonymous masses, making them know and recognizable.