19th Century Novels and Physics

The purpose of this research is to examine parallels between the approach and attitude found in nineteenth-century physics and that found in nineteenth-century novels. The plan of the research will be to set forth examples from novels of the period that demonstrate an objective, highly structured approach to narrative as illustrative of an objective moral universe.

As the English novel moved from the romantic period and toward the modern period, there was a discernible shift in the methods of expression of feeling. Emotion for its own sake gave way to stories in which psychology of being expressed with reference to other elements of existence. Life was becoming more complex, textured, but above all it was thinkable, and literature became a mode of reflection and observation. The world, especially the contemporary society, was that which was observed. The literary world of the early and late Victorians was the world as they understood it to be and not as one might have wished in fantasy that it was.

This is a world in which Thackeray can present his novel without a hero, or Vanity Fair. In Becky Sharp in particular and in the cast of characters surrounding her more generally, Thackeray draws a portrait of a morally unattractive yet easily identifiable "type" existing in fashionable society. Thackeray develops the manipulative persona of Becky Sharp, but he also carefully prepares the way for her one selfless act--giving up Colonel Dobbin and bringing him and her frie

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ts were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear (Dickens, Oliver Twist 16). Tillyard asserts that Oliver Twist was an effective piece because it became "the rallying point for generous indignation at a social evil and ended by being part of Victorian mythology, a strong practical corroboration of the anger that had caused its advancement to mythical eminence" (Tillyard 18). None of the mythical attributes of this literature, however, would have been possible had Dickens not found a voice of contemporary realism. It was the practical corroboration that gave the myth its strength. Dickens brought into fiction scenes from real life that mainstream Victorian society knew were true, and he superimposed an emotional and moral content that required readers to acknowledge that truth openly. Yet Dickens was not merely a Victorian reformer, for the facts of his career suggest that he was among the privileged of the Victorian environment. Leavis comments that Dickens "believed that there was a respectable content in the idea of gentleman . . . For Dickens class distinctions were valued since ideally they represented an aspiration towards distinction and fineness (Leavis 298). The aspirations form the moral content of Dickens's work, whi

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