Download Victorian Disharmonies PDF
Victorian Disharmonies PDF By:Francesco Marroni Published on 2010 by University of Delaware Press This study presents a new approach to the canon of nineteenth-century English fiction by defining the ideological framework within which some of the most controversial novelists of the Victorian period inscribed their imaginative responses to a changing society and its social unrest. The book posits a radical re-visioning of such authors as Dickens, Collins, Gaskell, Gissing, and Hardy by adopting the notion of disharmony as a common thematic thread of their fictional production. While the establishment invoked moral order and social harmony, their novels and short stories configured a world beset by conflicting drives and ethical aporias. What is represented in novels like A Tale of Two Cities, The Whirlpool, and Jude the Obscure is not only a society often on the verge of collapse, but also exemplary stories in which identities are disintegrated and individual destinies are caught up in ...