Class in Turn-of-the-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells (The Nineteenth Century Series) - Hardcover

DeVine, Christine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754651509 ISBN 13: 9780754651505

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005

Synopsis

This book argues that, due to political and ideological shifts in the last decades of the nineteenth century - a time when the class system in England was in a state of flux - a new depiction of social class was possible in the English novel. Late-century writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question the middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades. By disrupting traditional novelistic conventions, these writers reveal the ideology of the historical moment in which those conventions obtained, thereby questioning the 'naturalness' of class assumed by earlier, middle-class Victorian writers. The book contextualizes novels by these writers within their historical moment with reference to relevant maps, journalism, artwork or photography, and specific historical events. It illuminates the relationship between fiction and history in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction, and especially the relationship between changing depictions of class and the development of realism. Examining the nineteenth-century English novel through the lens of social class allows the twenty-first century critic and student not only to understand the issues at stake in much Victorian fiction, but also to recognize powerful present-day vestiges of this social class system.

About this title

About the Author

Christine DeVine is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA. Her publications include an edition of George Gissing's Abridgement of Forster's Life of Dickens (2005), and articles on Gissing, Henry James and George Eliot. She is currently working on a book-length project that focuses on the nineteenth-century English view of America through the eyes of Victorian travelers to the United States.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0754651509
• ISBN 13: 9780754651505
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160