Aims

This module examines how characters mature and develop (or fail to do so) in the Victorian novel. As we will see, the way an individual is represented as growing up reflects deeply held beliefs about the value of societal progress and reform. Through a detailed analysis of Victorian novels, we will reflect upon how the human lifespan changes in response to the burgeoning modernity of the nineteenth century. We will explore how the novel form contributes to the construction of subjectivities across the life course and consider a broad range of questions, including the following: How did social expectations about gender and sexuality change with age? How did industrialisation create and shut down opportunities for young and elderly workers? What role did race and empire play in the perception of ageing? How was the concept of the life course informed by the partitioning of the novel into a beginning, middle, and end?

Outline Of Syllabus

The first half of the module will focus on how the Victorian era’s most powerful plots—such as the bildungsroman or the marriage plot—privilege certain life stages over others. The second half of the module will examine the Victorian life course through a series of critical contexts. Texts may include the following: Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Thomas Hardy’s The Well-Beloved, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and/or collected stories by Rabindranath Tagore.

Keywords: the Victorian novel; social class, gender, and the life course; liberalism and Empire; narrative form and plot; nineteenth-century medical discourse; aesthetics.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures provide the initial grounding which outlines the key contexts for the module and directs the students towards their independent study. Seminar time consolidates students' learning from their lectures and independent reading. This consolidation is supported by student-led group activities which act as preparation for the seminar.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The first assignment asks students to choose a scene from a novel to close read as a way of constructing an argument about one of the module's themes. This assignment will teach students the importance of carefully choosing evidence, crafting a strong argument, and attending to the nuances of language and structure.

To prepare for the final essay, students will complete a formative assessment including an essay plan and bibliography.

The final assessment tests students on their written argumentation, their successful acquisition of the module's key knowledge outcomes, and their understanding of the historical and social contexts of Victorian literary production. This assessment will ask students to research primary sources as a way of contextualizing their argument.