Woman Novelists of the Victorian Era: CHARLOTTE BRONTE, EMILY BRONTE, MRS. GASKELL, GEORGE ELIOT

Introduction 

The Victorian era is known for the galaxy of female novelists. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, EMILY BRONTE, Mrs. Gaskell and GEORGE ELIOT are in prime focus.  They also include Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Maroh, Mrs. Bray, Mrs. Henry, Charlotte younger, Miss Oliphant, and still more. However, the four most important women novelists, who yet are quite important, are Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and George Eliot. Of the four, the two first named were sisters, and their methods and achievement as novelists met at many places. But each of the remaining two priced her own line and made herself known in the field of English novel in her own way. 

CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 – 55)

The three Bronte sister – Anne, charlotte, and Emily – collectively known often as the “ Stormy sisterhood”, who took the England of their time by storm, were in actual life shy and isolated girls with rather uneventful lives. All of them died young and died of Tuberculosis. Hugh Walden to assert: “The Bronte belongs to that class of writers whom, it is impossible to understand except through the medium of biography.” Thus, Samuel Chew observe “The three Bronte sister have been overlaid with so much biography, criticism, and conjecture that is reading about than there is danger best their own books be left unread.”

Charlotte wrote four novels - ‘The professor’, ‘Vilette’, ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Shirley’. The first two novels were based on her personal experiences at a Brussels boarding house where she most probably fell in love with the Belgian scholar Hager who perfectly answered her conception of a dashing hero of the Byronic type. The heroine of her third novel is a governess, just like her sister Anne. Her tempestuous love affair with Rochester – a combination of wonderful nobility and meanness is the staple of this novel. 

Charlotte Bronte in her novel revolted against the traditions of Jane Austen, Dickens, and Thackeray. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair she praised in glowing terms, but she herself never attempted anything of the kind. Her novels are novel of manners but of passions and the naked soul. Her characters – mostly the effusion of her own soul – are elemental figures aching in the back drop of elemental nature.

According to Compton Rickett, three characteristics “detach themselves from the writing of charlotte Bronte”. They are the note of intimacy; the note of passion and the note of revolt. The note of intimacy is caused by the markedly autobiographic slant of her novels. The note of passion is struck by lonely sensitive woman on behalf of woman. Her point of view is the point of view of a woman. As regard the note of revolt, we must emphasize that she was a rebel by nature and a puritan by training. She could not reconcile these two elements. Though she did not fully or even appreciably, revolt against social conventions, she at least revolted against the conventions of the novel.

EMILY BRONTE (1818 – 48)

Emily was a poet as well as novelist, and her only novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a poem as well as a novel. “There is no other book”, says Longinus “which contains so many of the hassled, tumultuous, and rebellious elements of romanticism. She is fiercer than over charlotte, but her fierceness is strangely accompanied by numeric strokes of intuitive illumination.

Wuthering Heights is a story of primal passions enacted amongst elemental environment. Walter Allen observes: “The central fact about Emily Bronte is that she is a mystic.” Her mysticism lies not only in her handily of the voice of the dead Catherine cabling Heathcliff to her, but also in her use of symbols. In many of her poems, too Emily tries to give expression of her mystical experience.

MRS. GASKELL (1810 – 65)

Mrs. Gaskell had nothing of this passion and frustration of the Bronte sister. She was wife of a quite Unitarian clergyman in Manchester – one of the bugging centres of English industry. She was mother of seven children. 

What distinguishes the novels of Mrs. Gaskell is her deep social consciousness combined with a compassionate observation of the life around her? Her novels divide themselves into two well defined categorizes. First, we have novel like ‘Mary Barton’ and ‘North and south’ which deal with the social and industrial problem arising out of the masters workmen struggles which were a features of the industrial age which had then just got under way. Being herself a resident of Manchester, Mrs. Gaskell was a witness to the blessings of the Industrial Revolution. Secondly we have novel like ‘Granford’, ‘Ruth’, ‘Wives and Daughters’ and ‘Sylvia’s Lovers’ which eschew all industrial problems and are concerned with rural life and manners which she knew so well, thanks to her long stay at Knutsford with her aunt, before she settled at Manchester with her husband. Of all the novels of this category the best known is ‘ Cranford’ which is a disguised name for her own Knutsford. Cranford is a classic of its own kind. It portrays a world in habited by woman alone. These women belong to middle – class families. 

GEORGE ELIOT (1819 – 80)

With George Eliot we come to the most philosophy of all the major Victorian novelists, both female and male philosophy is both her strength and weakness as a novelists. It keeps her from falling into bathos or triviality, but at the same time gives her art an ultra serious and reflective quality which makes it “heavy reading”. Even her human – the faculty in which she doubtlessly is quite seen – has about it the quality of ponderous reflectivity. George Eliot’s important novel are the following:- ‘The Mill on the Floss’, ‘Adam Bede’, ‘Felix Holt’, ‘Daniel Deronda’ and ‘Middlemarch’. All of them are marked by extreme seriousness of purpose and execution. As Samuel Chew observes, “in George Eliot hands the novel was not primarily for entertainment but for the serious discussion of moral issues”. She is indeed, too didactic and make every incident a text moralistic expatiation. In her novels we invariably meet with the clash of circumstances with human will. She indeed, believed that circumstances influenced character, but she did not show circumstance entirely determining character. A man called upon to choose between two women or a woman to choose between two men is the common motif of the novels.

Another important feature of her novels is their very deep concern with human psychology. Her novels are all novels of character. “She”, says Compton – Rickett “was the first novelist foray the stress wholly upon character rather than incident; to make her stories spiritual rather than physical dramas. In her characterization she displays both subtlety and rarity. Her studies of the inner man, but more particularly the inner woman, are marvelous.

George Eliot excels at portraying the tragedy of unfulfilled female longing. She identified herself with her chief female characters unfold their inner feelings with masterly strollers. Compton – Rickett points out: ““Maggie’s cry was for fuller life, Ramola’s for ampler knowledge, Darothea’s for larger opportunity, for doing good.”. She stands at the gateway between the old novel and the new, a massive caryatid heavy of countenance uneasy of attitude, but noble, monumental, profoundly impressive”. 

Conclusion 

During the Victorian Era, the novel progressively took over as the primary literary genre. Giving up romanticism for literary realism and the precise observation of social dynamics and individual issues were pretty regular companions of this evolution. No doubt, the above listed Victorian novelists paved that maturity.

Ardhendu De

Ref: 

1. A Critical History of English Literature, IV Vol, 2nd ed. Ronald, New York,

1970: Daiches, David.

2. History of English Literature, Cambridge University press, London, 1968: Legouis

and Cazamian.

3. An Outline of History of English Literature, G. Bell and sons, London, 1930:

Hudson, W.H.

4. ALBERT. (n.d.). History of English Literature.

5. A History of English Literature by Compton-Rickett, Arthur, 1869-1937