| This thesis investigates certain problematic appeals to the Bildungsroman or "Progress" in Victorian fiction. The "Progress" generally celebrates the growth of a hero or heroine, but in the novels isolated by this study--Villette, Bleak House, and Daniel Deronda--this model of growth is implicitly discounted or contradicted. In these works, the novelists struggle with and against this model of life because of its implicit assertion of coherence and fullness. The result of this struggle is the novel's deformation, a rupture or breaking of form that enacts the novelists' discontent with the limits imposed by the Bildungsroman, or betrays their inability to reconcile this convention with their acute sense of what must generally be called "reality," and variously includes such things as the classes of social dominance, the relations between men and women and between reader and author in publishing, the material process of writing, and the psychology of memory. This deformation is not regarded as an esthetic failure, but rather as a means of richness and invention. It allows the novelists to both imagine and to challenge the transcendence of a literary model like the Bildungsroman.; In addition to these Victorian novels, the first chapter of the thesis considers as a precursor form Emma, which similarly uses form to challenge implicitly an overly idealized model of a life. In Austen's case, this model is Richardson's, represented by Pamela, and adopted in part by Austen herself in Mansfield Park. The first chapter compares Emma and Mansfield Park in order to introduce the concern of the thesis with the implicit action of form against a literary model or convention. The following chapters also frequently compare the featured novel with another novel, which exhibits more coherent form and handles the Bildungsroman with greater conviction. Thus, the chapter on Villette also treats Jane Eyre, and that on Daniel Deronda examines Silas Marner. |
