The Victorian Realist Project

[At the moment, I imagining this going in the "Current Scholarship" section of the prospectus.]

Critical debates in studies in Victorian literature have been, for several decades now, advocating for an expansion of the canon to include genres previously segregated from the classic realist novel. The high brow/low brow divide has already been questioned and to a certain extent broken, as evidenced by the critical trends in considering popular fiction in order to construct a more nuanced conception of the Victorian novel as a genre. This dissertation does not set out to simply reiterate that cry of outrage on behalf of the until recently less regarded popular novel, but rather hopes to use that as a starting point in continuing to examine how these popular genres, now that they've been invited to the table, add to critical conversations on the novel, genre, narration, realism, and representation.

Realism is at the heart of this ever-dissolving divide, and will inform all readings of Victorian novels performed here. Scholars in Victorian fiction have often taken cues from Victorians themselves, who also in their own historical moment had debates about the hierarchy of literary genres.

During the Victorian period realism and sensationalism were at times cast as a binary – some writers, such as Margaret Oliphant, would scorn sensation novels for their morally questionable plots, calling them “improper novels” and allying them with Romantic texts, and these criticisms helped to define realism against sensationalism and other non-realist genres. This is not, however, a productive way to categorize Victorian literature. As Thomas Hardy wrote in his literary notebooks, “The division of novels into sensational & anti-sen[sational] [is] a mistake – wh. Arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic & sen[sational]. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree.” In the spirit of Hardy’s words, one should, instead of organizing Victorian literature by genre - which would imply a placement of certain works in realism and other works in sensationalism, and never the twain shall meet - use genre to place Victorian literature in the context of the ongoing intellectual and aesthetic project writers engaged in during the period, one that was constantly in flux.

George Levine is the major critic who argues in The Realistic Imagination that Victorians themselves were much more sophisticated than critics often give them credit for today. He says, “We need to shift the balance in our appraisal of realism. It was not a solidly self-satisfied vision based in a misguided objectivity and faith in representation, but a highly self-conscious attempt to explore or create a new reality.”

Other major critics to talk about:

Caroline Levine - The Serious Pleasures of Suspense
Srdjan Smajic - “supernatural realism”

Victorian critics: John Ruskin and Walter Pater