A Feast Of Violence:A Stylistic Analysis On Violence In Victorian Novels

The Victorian period was the peak of Industrial Revolution and the British Empire.Rapid expansion of printing industry provided novels the best way of transmission,among which Wuthering Heights by Emily Bront(?),A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy became representative novels in the early,middle and end of Victorian period respectively.Violence is one of the common features of the three Victorian novels as well as one of the main themes of Victorian period.A stylistic analysis on violence in these three novels may inspect not only the common features of violence in Victorian period from a macro perspective,but also the different stylistic features of violence in novels at different phrases of Victorian period from a micro perspective,so as to reveal the dark and hypocritical Victorian Britain under its superficial prosperity.Combining historical background,this thesis firstly explores how Wuthering Heights presents violence stylistically from the aspects of phonetics,lexis,syntax,cohesion and rhetorical devices.Secondly,stylistic presentations of violence in A Tales of Two Cities are analyzed from the aspects of lexis,rhetorical devices and the symbolic meanings of “red”,“footstep” and “knitting”.Lastly,this thesis tries to investigate the covert or overt violence in Jude the Obscure in terms of phonetics,lexis and syntax.The analyses show that different stylistic techniques are adopted in these novels to present social violence in different stages of Victorian period.Bront(?) employs a large number of dynamic verbs or rhetorical devices at all stylistic levels in Wuthering Heights to create a Gothic sense of tension,by which she reveals that the middle class in Britain was transforming itself into a new exploiter in the early Victorian period through Heathcliff’s revenging story.Dickens uses numerous negative verbs and adjectives,rhetorical devices and symbolism to satirize the violent revolution,warning the British rulers of the deepening social contradictions under the superficial prosperity of Victorian Britain and the hair-trigger violent revolution in the mid-Victorian period.Hardy adopts a large quantity of static verbs,abstract nouns,and negative syntactic structure in Jude the Obscure to present the people’s passive helplessness towards social violence.By showing the clashes between human nature and the society,Hardy also criticizes the rigid dogma,crushed belief and collapse of humanity in the late Victorian period.Analyzing the linguistic presentations of violence stylistically will help readers better appreciate the connotation and thematic significance of violence in these three novels so as to be more aware that behind the glorious prosperity of the Victorian period,the violent “monster” is howling.