Class in Turn-of-the-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy, and Wells

This book argues that political and ideological shifts in the late nineteenth century made a new depiction of social class possible in the English novel. Writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades. By disrupting novelistic conventions, these writers reveal the ideology of the historical moment in which those conventions obtained, thereby questioning the "naturalness" of class assumed by earlier...
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This book argues that political and ideological shifts in the late nineteenth century made a new depiction of social class possible in the English novel. Writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades. By disrupting novelistic conventions, these writers reveal the ideology of the historical moment in which those conventions obtained, thereby questioning the "naturalness" of class assumed by earlier middle-class Victorian writers. The book contextualizes novels by these writers within their historical moment with reference to relevant maps, journalism, artwork or photography, and specific historical events. Examining the nineteenth-century English novel through the lens of social class allows the twenty-first century critic and student not only to understand the issues at stake in much Victorian fiction, but also to recognize powerful present-day vestiges of this social class system.