The Nineteenth-Century English Novel : Family Ideology and Narrative Form

The novel is the literary form that most extensively informs us of nineteenth-century English culture: not its realities but the ideologies that shaped social beliefs. Fiction not only reflects ideologies; it participates in their formation and modification. But ideologies shift rapidly ?- more than actualities of personal or social life, making the form of the novel shift accordingly. Consideration of four pairs of English novels, each of which extensively treats the most critical issue of the period ?- the survival of the family ?- shows how changes in ideology prompted fundamental revisions of fictional techniques and structures. Through analysis of eight English novels of the Nineteenth century, this work explores the ways in which the novel contributes to the formation of ideology regarding the family, and, conversely, the ways in which changing attitudes toward the family shape and reshape the novel.