Session 7: Victorian Literature II / British Modernism

the 1860s

▪ the decade of ‘sensationalism’

− sensation novel, sensation drama

sensation

▪ element of shock, breaking taboos on sexuality and violence

▪ strong impression/feeling

▪ physical element

typical characteristics of the sensation novel

secret hidden in a respectable family (→ similarity with the growing genre of detective fiction)

female characters gravely transgressing against the accepted feminine role (e.g. murder, bigamy), often under a surface image of perfect conformity

▪ complex plot twists as secret is gradually revealed

▪ order is restored in the end by removal of the offender (often combined with insanity)

▪ re-affirmation of the middle-class family and the masculine order

Cultural Context of the Sensation Novel

▪ read by both the working and the middle classes (and therefore often perceived as a threat to society)

▪ connection with railway travel and a sense of changing times

▪ reflects general suspicion that appearances may not be as reliable as presupposed

▪ more specifically: mirrors social fears that women may no longer be contained by the role of the ‘angel in the house

The Fin de Siècle

→ intensification of 1860s anxieties about ‘new’ times and the threat they constitute to the Victorian value system

→ ‘sensational’ elements have definitely arrived in the ‘literary’ novel

Dracula as a fin de siècle-Novel: highly complex narrative structure

mixture of different text types (letters, diaries, etc.) and a multiplicity of different first-person narrators, often limited in outlook and/or knowledge

− sometimes use of new technology in the recording process (e.g. phonograph, telegraph, typewriter)

− striving for authenticity as each narrator narrates from first hand experience (intensification cf. Wuthering Heights)

▪ again, combined with neo-Gothic elements

(supernatural forces with new meanings),

especially the figure of the vampire

− image already present in Wuthering Heights re.

Heathcliff

Victorian Literature and Social Anxieties

▪ literary works tests limits of social conventions more and more directly from the 1860s onwards

▪ important role of neo-Gothic elements in this development

▪ literature as ‘safe space’ for confronting dominant anxieties of the time /

novelistic forms become popular which allow readers to enjoy such effects

→ Victorian literature in Britain is usually ‘realistic’ on a deeper, more subliminal level

Modernism in Britain

▪ most representative genre: short story

Relevant characteristics

▪ focus on an isolated event/scene (‘medias in res’

beginning and open ending)

▪ aim of recording a momentary strong impression (Poe’s ‘unity of effect’)

▪ foregrounding questions of perception and its literary realization

James Joyce, Dubliners

▪ attempt at recording different but finally similar

scenes of Dublin life

▪ stories complement each other but do not add up

to a coherent whole

▪ very negative image of Dublin and its effect on its inhabitants: stasis, (mental) paralysis

narrative technique in Dubliners

most important literary innovation concerns narrative technique:

▪ increasing focus on individual perception

▪ reader shares protagonist’s thoughts and feelings directly

▪ stream of consciousness / interior monologue

→ traces of the ‘free indirect discourse’ that will become very typical of Joyce

− can be seen as intensification of Victorian striving for authenticity

▪ often moment of ‘epiphany’ (character's sudden insight into his/her situation), but no change in behaviour

Virginia Woolf: Kew Gardens (1919)

▪ recording of successive but unconnected impressions, often apparently neutral, as if recorded by a technical device

▪ but: includes the thoughts of those who pass by in Kew Gardens (i.e.

boundaries between different forms of perception become blurred)

→ succession of highly subjective perspectives, mixture of different narrative techniques to convey this

Woolf ’s characteristic use of the short story format:

▪ very detailed descriptions

▪ focus on seemingly unimportant details

▪ a total denial of narrative continuity, no plot progression

→ extreme intensification of the classical short story’s focus on one

important event in the protagonist’s life

focus in “Kew Gardens”

▪ very detailed descriptions

▪ focus on seemingly unimportant details

▪ a total denial of narrative continuity, no plot progression

→ extreme intensification of the classical short story’s focus on one important event in the protagonist’s life

Key Characteristics of (British) Modernism

▪ fragmentation / discontinuity

▪ foregrounding subjective perception

▪ disillusionment / (sense of) isolation

▪ formal innovation / turning away from literary tradition(s)

▪ transcending established genre / media boundaries