{"title":"Narrative Guilt and the Victorian Novel","authors":"Will Glovinsky","doi":"10.2979/victorianstudies.64.3.02","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay considers the phenomenon of Victorian narrators who express compunction or uneasy conscience about the ways in which they portray characters. In novels by Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, the narrative guilt accompanying the treatment of antagonists reflects the period's contradictory cultural priorities of sociological analysis and melodramatic aesthetics. Where the emerging field of sociology viewed crime as socially contingent—therefore encouraging a systemic account of responsibility—melodramatic aesthetics required villains who could concentrate social responsibility in a single malign figure. The fusing of these political and aesthetic impulses in Victorian realism resulted in a narrative structure both highly dependent on individual culprits and highly ambivalent about scapegoating. This essay proposes that the narrative guilt arising from this impasse, and efforts to redress it through reparative sympathy, contribute to the distinctive affective texture of Victorian realism.","PeriodicalId":45845,"journal":{"name":"VICTORIAN STUDIES","volume":"64 1","pages":"401 - 424"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"VICTORIAN STUDIES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.64.3.02","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This essay considers the phenomenon of Victorian narrators who express compunction or uneasy conscience about the ways in which they portray characters. In novels by Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, the narrative guilt accompanying the treatment of antagonists reflects the period's contradictory cultural priorities of sociological analysis and melodramatic aesthetics. Where the emerging field of sociology viewed crime as socially contingent—therefore encouraging a systemic account of responsibility—melodramatic aesthetics required villains who could concentrate social responsibility in a single malign figure. The fusing of these political and aesthetic impulses in Victorian realism resulted in a narrative structure both highly dependent on individual culprits and highly ambivalent about scapegoating. This essay proposes that the narrative guilt arising from this impasse, and efforts to redress it through reparative sympathy, contribute to the distinctive affective texture of Victorian realism.
期刊介绍:
For more than 50 years, Victorian Studies has been devoted to the study of British culture of the Victorian age. It regularly includes interdisciplinary articles on comparative literature, social and political history, and the histories of education, philosophy, fine arts, economics, law and science, as well as review essays, and an extensive book review section. An annual cumulative and fully searchable bibliography of noteworthy publications that have a bearing on the Victorian period is available electronically and is included in the cost of a subscription. Victorian Studies Online Bibliography