Victorian Age (1837-1901)

• 1837-1860: Industrial Revolution

• 1860-1901: Colonial Expansion
The Victorian age took its name from Queen Victoria. She was a symbol for the country, a perfect
Constitutional Monarch. Britain avoided revolutions and supported many causes of independence abroad.
It was involved in the Opium War against China: England gained access to five Chinese harbours and got
control on Hong Kong. In addition, England wanted to reduce the power of Russia in the Crimean War. The
Victorian era was the age of a great scientific progress, stability and important social reforms but at the
same time was characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest.
Reforms
• 1832: the first reform act (the vote was given to the large industrial towns)
• 1833: the factory act (children couldn’t work more than 48 hours a week)
• 1834: the poor law amendment act (in the workhouses the poor received board and education in return
for work).
• 1846: abolition of corn laws (as a consequence of the Irish famine).
• 1847: ten hours’ act (it limited working hours to ten)
Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901) was the longest in the history of England. The merits of this positive
period belonged to the Queen, who, in marked contrast with the other European monarchs, reigned
constitutionally. She was a mediator between the two parties (Liberals and Conservatives) and never
overruled Parliament. The Government had to face two major problems such as a strong campaign for
liberal trade that led to the abolition of the Corn Laws and the Chartist: a working-class movement who
called for social reforms and the extension of the right to vote.
Values
The Victorians were great moralisers. They promoted a code of values based on personal duty, hard work,
optimism, respectability, conformity to social standards and charity. These values were of equal
application to all the classes of society, but were given their essential Victorian form by the upper or
middle classes. The idea of respectability distinguished the middle from the lower class. Respectability was
a mixture of morality, hypocrisy and conformity to social standards. It meant:
• The possession of good manners;
• The ownership of a comfortable house with servants and a carriage;
• Regular attendance at church;
• Charitable activity:
• Philanthropy, which was a wide phenomenon that absorbed the energies of thousands of Victorians.
Bourgeois ideals also dominated Victorian family life:
• The family was a patriarchal unit;
• The man represented the authority;
• The women had the key role regarding the education of children and the managing of the house.
The category of “fallen women”, adulteresses or unmarried mothers or prostitutes, was condemned and
marginalized. Sexuality was generally repressed and prudery in its most extreme manifestations led to the
denunciation of nudity in art and the rejection of words with sexual connotation from everyday
vocabulary.
VICTORIAN COMPROMISE: prosperity and progress coexisted with poverty, ugliness and injustice. Ethical
conformism was opposed to corruption, philanthropy was in contrast with capitalistic greediness, private
life was opposed to public behaviour.
Patriotism
Civil pride and national fervour were frequent among the British. Patriotism was deeply influenced by ideas
of racial superiority. The British had the certainty that the races of the world were divided by physical and
intellectual differences, that some were destined to be led by others. The concept of “the white man’s
burden” was exalted by the colonial writers, like Kipling, and the expansion of the empire was regarded as
a mission.
EVANGELICALISM
The religious movement known as Evangelism, inspired by Wesley the founder of Methodism, exerted an
important influence on Victorian code of values. The Evangelicals indeed believed in:
• Obedience to a strict code of morality;
• Dedication to humanitarian causes and social reform.
• Literal truth of the Bible
Utilitarianism
The 19th-century social thinking was influenced also by the philosophical movement of utilitarianism,
based on Bentham’s principles. According to this movement an action is morally right if it brings to
happiness and wrong if it produces the opposite Utilitarianism contributed to the Victorian conviction that
any problem could be overcome through reason. The key-words of this philosophy were: usefulness,
happiness and avoidance of pain.
Empiricism
Utilitarian indifference to human and cultural values was attacked by many intellectuals including Charles
Dickens and John Stuart Mill, a major figure of empiricism. He thought:
• Legislation could help men develop their natural talents and personalities;
• Progress came from mental energy and therefore he accorded great importance to education and art.
• Happiness is a state of the mind and spirit, it doesn’t coincide with material and selfish pleasure.
He promoted a series of reforms: popular education, trade union organization, emancipation of women,
the development of cooperatives, etc.
Darwinism
The scientific discovery began to overturn the belief in a stable universe. There was a new view of the
universe, perceived as an incessantly changing being. Charles Darwin in his famous work “On the origin of
species” argued that man is the result of a process of evolution and that in the fight for life only the
strongest species survived. Darwin’s theory discarded the version of creation given by the Bible.
The great exhibition
The great exhibition of 1851, held in Crystal Palace in London, celebrated British advances in science,
technology and the Empire. In the meantime, workers had begun to come together in Trade Unions. After
strong opposition from the Government, the Trade Unions were legalized in 1882 and in 1906 the Labour
Party was born.
The urban habitat
The poor lived in slums appalling quarters characterized by squalor, disease and crime. The conditions of
life were very bad: there was a high death rate and terrible working conditions. The atmosphere was
polluted and that caused a disastrous effect especially on children’s health. The Government promoted a
campaign against national ill health through:
- cleaning up of the towns;
- foundation of professional organizations to control medical education and research;
- building of modern hospitals.
A lot of services, such as water, gas, lighting, parks, stadiums, were introduced. Even new Victorian
institutions like prisons, police stations, boarding schools, town halls were built.
The building of the London’s Underground in 1860 and the more efficient railways transformed people’s
lives. People could live in the suburbs instead of the crowded areas and could travel for work and leisure.
The Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police, known as “bobbies” from the name of
their founder.
The British empire
The British Empire extended its power all over the world: into Asia (Ceylon, India), Africa (Egypt, Kenya,
Sudan, Rhodesia), Central America and Oceania. Most British citizens were extremely proud of their
empire and regarded colonial expansion as a mission. This attitude came to be known as “jingoism”
(sciovinismo).
The American civil war
In America, the political situation was tense because of the growing split between the North and the South.
While the North was industrialized and the population was especially white (the immigrants from Europe
settled in the North), the economy of the South was based on the vast plantations of tobaccos and cotton,
and on the slavery North was abolitionists and gave pressure on Southern states to abolish slavery. The
civil war lasted four years (from 1861 to 1865) and ended with the abolition of slavery. However, the
abolition of slavery did not grant the blacks equality and economic security. The blacks were free but
penniless, they were discriminated in schools, hospitals and transport were frightened and persecuted by
the racists (Ku Klux Klan). During the war many possession disappeared, especially, in the South, but in the
North big fortunes were made and financial empire was created by men who rose from nothing:
Rockefeller and embodied the American dream: the myth of the self-made man.
Other important events were: the discovery of gold in California, the relevant technological developments
and the railroad that joined Atlantic to the Pacific. The America become the richest and most modern
country in the world.
The Victorian novel
During the Victorian Age the novel became the most popular form of literature and the main way of
entertainment as it was read aloud and in community within the families. Novels were first published in
instalments in the pages of periodicals. The novelists described society as they saw it in their works. They
thus denounced the evils of their society, without a radical criticism. A great number of novels were
written by women but some of them used a male pseudonym because it wasn’t easy for a woman to
publish her writings. The women’s novel was a realistic exploration of the daily lives and values of women
within the family and the community. most readers were women because they had more time than men to
spend at home.
Main writers of
- the Early Victorian novel:
Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Type of novel: Social and Humanitarian novel, “Oliver Twist” (1838); “Hard
Times” (1854)
- the Mid- Victorian novel
Emily Bronte (1818-1848). Type of novel: Novel of formation, “Bildungsroman Wuthering Heights” (1847)
- the Late Victorian novel:
• Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Type of novel: Realistic novel, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” (1891)
• Robert Stevenson (1850-1894). Type of novel: Gothic traditions novel, “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde” (1886)
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Type of novel: Aesthetic movement novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1891)
• Lewis Carrol (1832-1898). Type of novel: Nonsensical novel, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865)
• Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). Type of novel: Exotic novel / Colonial Novel, “The Jungle Book” (1894)
The most common features:
• There is a narrator that comment and erect a rigid barrier between right and wrong;
• A frequent setting was the city, symbol of industrial civilization and in the same time expression of
anonymous lives;
• The plot was long and complicated;
• The analysis of the characters’ inner lives;
• In the final chapter the events are explained and justified.
Charles Dickens
Among Charles Dickens’ works we can find “Oliver Twist” (1837-1839), “A Christmas Carol” (1843) and
“Hard Times” (1854). His aim was to arouse the reader’s interest by exaggerating his characters’ habits.
Protagonists or good-characters are always belonging to the working class, are outcasts or poor people.
Furthermore, in his works children are wise as opposed to worthless parents and other grown-up people,
showing the reverse of the natural order things; children are put forward as models of the way people
ought to behave to one another. Dicken’s task was to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems
without offending the middle-class readers. He is also considered the greatest novelist in the English
language because of his graphic and powerful descriptions of life and character ever attempted by a
novelist.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist first appeared in instalments in 1837 and was later published as a book. The novel fictionalises
the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens suffered as a child. The name “Twist”, though it is given to
the protagonist by accident, represent the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience. Oliver
Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he was born in a workhouse in a small town near London in the
early 1800s. His mother died almost immediately after his birth and his was brought up in a workhouse in
an inhuman way. The boy commits the umperdonable offence of asking for more food when he is close to
starving, so the parish official offers five pouns to anyone willing to take Oliver on as an apprentice. He is
later sold to an undertaker, but the cruelty and unhappiness he experiences with his new master make him
run away to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of young pickpockets, trained by Fagin, who
runs a school for would-be thieves. Unfortunately, Oliver is not a successful student: he is caught on his
first attempt at theft. Mr Brownlow, the victim, is striken ragged and unhealthy appearance of Oliver and
rather than condemning him with theft he takes him home and takes care of him. Oliver is eventually
kidnapped by Fagin’s gang and forced to commit burglary; doing the job he is shot and wounded. Oliver is
adopted by Mr Brownlow and at last receives kindness and affection. Investigations are made about who
Oliver is and it is discovered that he has noble origins. In the end the gang of pickpockets and Oliver’s half-
brother, who paid the thieves in order to ruin Oliver and have their father’s property all for himself, are
arrested.
T.1: Oliver wants some more
This is an abstract from the second chapter. The event is set in a workhouse, tradition of which is that
every boy receives just one bowl of soup a day and that children had two ounces and a piece of bread
besides only on occasions of great public rejoicing. Dickens uses a rhetorical and ironical language. The
introduction describes the condition of Oliver and his friends, obliged to suffer from starving for three
months. The second part has a very detailed description about the moment of the dinner, when Oliver
goes to the fat, healthy and pale master to ask for more soup. For this reason, five pounds were offered to
any man or woman who wanted Oliver as their apprentice.
Hard Times
Dickens’ main aim in Hard Times is to show the danger of object lesson because in this case the form
acquired more importance than the subject matter leading to lessons in which children were turned into
machines and were dehumanised: vocabulary and content were not suitable for children’s experience.
Along with Tom and Louisa, the reader follows the sorties of other two characters: Sissy Jupes and Bitzer.
Sissy Jupes is the daughter of a circus performer while Bitzer is an emotionless pale boy who grows up
absorbed by Mr. Gradgrind’s rule. Sissy Jupes becomes the subversive element in the protagonists’ life as
Mr. Gradgrind discovers her father abandoned her thus he adopts her.
The doctrine of Utilitarianism comes forward through the actions of Mr. Gradgrind (school headmaster and
teacher) and his follower Josiah Bounderby (the factory owner): as the former educates the children of his
family and his school through facts, the latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that
are easily exploited for his own self-interest. The headmaster believes human nature can be measure,
quantified and governed by reason.
This novel used its characters and stories to denounce the gap between the rich and the poor and to
criticise the materialism and narrow-mindedness of Utilitarianism, which was the basic Victorian attitude
to economics. In this world, imagination had no place to occur and to be expressed.
T.2: Mr Gradgrind
- The text is divided in three main parts: the first is characterised by a first-person narration, where the
headmaster explains his philosophy of Facts; the second contains a physical description of the plain and
bleak schoolroom and of the squared, limited and inflexible teacher; the third describes the attitude of Mr.
Gradgrind as seen by the others, namely too rigid and scary.
- Thomas Gradgrind is mechanised, inflexible, monotone and narrow-minded. He evinces the spirit of the
Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a number of
scientific principles.
T.3: Coketown
- Coketown was a town of red bricks that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it. It
was a town of machinery and tall chimneys. It had a river that became purple with ill-smelling dye. The
steam-engines worked monotonously up and down and people were endlessly monotone and repetitive.
Clericals transformed chapels in warehouses. The mentality was strongly linked to a materialistic and
rational vision of the world.
- In this town, there is a school called M’Choakumchild, which is a sarcastic and satirical word given that is
does not allow students to improve their imagination and stimulate thinking, but instead it fills them with
rationality and does not accept creativity but only conformism.
- The narrator is obtrusive as in lines 63-64 he enters in the text.
- “Like painted face of a savage” (line 6 - simile); “Serpents of smoke” (line 7 - metaphor); “Like a head of
an elephant” (lines 10-11 - simile). They all come from the natural world and evoke the connotation of
fear, alienation and monotony.
T.4: The definition of a Horse
- The extract opens with the proper name of a teacher that will be repeated many times in the text.
- Through certain stylist choices and narrative strategy Dickens conveys the idea of a repressive and
claustrophobic system of education. Terms to describe the teacher and the schoolroom refer to geometry
and mathematics, implicitly criticising Victorian society based on facts and statistics only.
- The narrator is a third person omniscient and intrusive; he involves the reader by calling him “Sir”.
- The concept of the rigidity and materiality of Victorian society is reinforced by how the teacher calls the
children (“little pitchers”): it is immediately clear that Mr. Gradgrind does not consider children as living
being but associates them to objects to set up and machines. Children are thus deprived of their childhood.
- The narrator highlights the difference between the informal language used by Sissy Jupes and the one
adopted by Mr. Gradgrind. Dickens’ criticism is obvious in the exchange between the headmaster and the
two students Sissy Jupes and Bitzer over the proper definition of a horse. Bitzer, who has learned the
definition by heart, classifies it as a “Quadruped” and “Graminivorous”, whereas Sissy, the horsebreaker’s
daughter, is speechless, “no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals”.
- Dickens’ uses the grotesque to describe Bitzer as a ghost, pale and without personality, while he
describes Sissy as a girl with brown hair and eyes, lively.

Thomas Hardy
• The Victorian Age was dominated by values such as church, family, home and sanctity childhood. Middle-
class women (the angel in the home) were expected to conform to submissive and pious domestic life.
The category of ‘fallen women’ was condemned by a moralistic establishment. The term fallen woman was
used to describe a woman who was pregnant without a husband and this category also included pregnant
prostitutes; they fell from the grace of God. In the Britain of 19th-century the meaning came to be closely
associated with the loss or surrender of a woman's chastity. Its use was an expression of the belief that, in
order to be socially and morally acceptable, a woman's sexuality and experience should be entirely
restricted to marriage, and that she should also be under the supervision and care of an authoritative man.
• In Hardy’s work “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, a poor country woman undergoes a series of heart breaking
situations, but cannot change or prevent them because of her fixed destiny. Hardy’s vision of the world is a
naturalistic one: each human being is forced by his birth condition to live his whole life in a certain social
position. Despite his efforts to escape from his destiny, he has already a written direction. Thomas Hardy
worked out the idea of a kind and predestination, according to which all men fulfil their destiny without
finding any help either in society, which oppresses and destroys them, or in love, which often leads to
unhappiness.
• The evolutionary theory increased Hardy’s compassion for suffering people and for all living creatures.
Hardy was also deeply struck by the new scientific and geological discoveries which, against all traditional
beliefs, proved that the world had existed longer than man. This led not only him but many other people to
refuse Christian doctrine and the Bible and to work out a pessimistic theory, according to which man is an
insignificant insect in a universe quite indifferent from him. Far from being the beloved son of a
providential Father-God, man is only a puppet in the hands of an inscrutable malicious force (“Immanent
Will”), which blindly rules universe and human destiny. According to Hardy, man is therefore the powerless
victim of an obscure fate.
Tess of the D’Ubervilles
• The Maiden (1-11)
The novel is set in a poor rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of
the 1870s. Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants; however, John is
given the impression by Parson Tringham that he may have noble blood, since "Durbeyfield" is a corruption
of "D'Urberville", the surname of a noble Norman family, then extinct.
Tess's father gets too drunk to drive to market a night, so Tess undertakes the journey herself. However,
she falls asleep at the reins, and the family's only horse encounters a speeding wagon and is fatally
wounded. The blood spreads over her white dress, a symbol of forthcoming events. Tess feels so guilty
over the horse's death that she agrees, against her better judgment, to visit Mrs. D'Urberville, a rich widow
who lives in the nearby town of Trantridge, and "claim kin". She is unaware that Mrs d'Urberville's husband
Simon Stoke adopted the surname even though he was unrelated to the real D'Urbervilles. Tess does not
manage to meet Mrs D'Urberville, but has the chance to meet Alec, who takes a fancy to Tess and assures
her a position as poultry keeper on the estate. Tess dislikes Alec but endures his persistent unwanted
attention to earn enough to replace her family's horse. One night, both her and Alec go to some
celebration of a nearby town. Coming back to Trantridge some co-workers of Tess’ are insulting her so she
accepts Alec’s offer to ride her home. Alec gets intentionally lost, then they stop so he can understand
where they are; in the meantime Tess falls asleep and Alec takes advantage of her.
• Maiden No More (12–15)
Tess goes home to her father's cottage, where she keeps almost entirely to her room. The following
summer, she gives birth to a sickly boy, who lives only a few weeks. On his last night alive, Tess baptises
him herself, after her father locks the doors to keep the parson away. The child is given the name 'Sorrow'
and Tess buries him in non-consecrated ground, next to outlaws and criminals; she makes a homemade
cross, and lays flowers on his grave in an empty marmalade jar.
• The Rally (16–24)
More than two years after the Trantridge debacle, Tess, now twenty, has found employment outside the
village, where her past is not known. She works for Mr. and Mrs. Crick as a milkmaid at Talbothays Dairy.
There, she befriends three of her fellow milkmaids, Izz, Retty, and Marian, and meets Angel Clare, who is
an apprentice farmer come to Talbothays to learn dairy management. Although the other milkmaids are in
love with him, Angel singles out Tess, and the two fall in love.
• The Consequence (25–34)
Angel asks Tess to marry him. This puts Tess in a painful dilemma: Angel obviously thinks her a virgin and
she shrinks from confessing her past. Such is her love for him that she finally agrees to the marriage.
As the marriage approaches, Tess grows increasingly troubled. Tess, deciding to tell Angel the truth, writes
a letter describing her dealings with D'Urberville and slips it under his door. When Angel greets her with
the usual affection the next morning, she thinks he has forgiven her; later she discovers the letter went
under his carpet and realises that he has not seen it; she then destroys it. The wedding goes smoothly,
apart from the bad omen of a cock crowing in the afternoon. Tess and Angel spend their wedding night at
an old D'Urberville family mansion, where Angel presents his bride with diamonds that belonged to his
godmother. When he confesses that he once had a brief affair with an older woman in London, Tess is
moved to tell Angel about Alec, thinking he would understand and forgive.
• The Woman Pays (35–44)
Angel is appalled by the revelation, and makes it clear that Tess is reduced in his eyes. He spends the
wedding night on a sofa. After a few awkward days, a devastated Tess suggests they separate, saying that
she will return to her parents. Angel gives her some money and promises to try to reconcile himself to her
past, but warns her not to try to join him until he sends for her.
One day, Tess overhears a wandering preacher and is shocked to discover that it is Alec D'Urberville, who
has been converted to Methodism under the Reverend James Clare's influence.
• The Convert (45–52)
Alec and Tess are each shaken by their encounter, and Alec begs Tess never to tempt him again but he
later asks Tess to marry him. She tells him she is already married.
He tells her he is no longer a preacher and wants her to be with him. When he insults Angel, she slaps him,
drawing blood. Tess then learns from her sister, Liza-Lu, that her father, John, is ill and that her mother is
dying. Tess rushes home to look after them. Her mother soon recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies.
The family is evicted from their home and Alec tells Tess that her husband is never coming back and offers
to house the Durbeyfields on his estate.
In the meantime, Angel has been very ill in Brazil and begins to repent his treatment of Tess.
• Fulfilment (53–59)
Upon his return to his family home, Angel finds Tess living in an expensive boarding house under the name
"Mrs. D'Urberville". When he asks for her, she appears in startlingly elegant attire and stands aloof. He
tenderly asks her for forgiveness, but Tess, in anguish, tells him he has come too late; thinking he would
never return, she yielded at last to Alec d'Urberville's persuasion and has become his mistress. She gently
asks Angel to leave and never come back. He departs, and Tess returns to her bedroom, where she falls to
her knees and begins a lamentation. She blames Alec for causing her to lose Angel's love a second time, by
lying when he said that Angel would never return to her.
Alec is found stabbed to death in his bed. Angel, totally disheartened, has left Sandbourne; Tess hurries
after him and tells him that she has killed Alec, saying that she hopes she has won his forgiveness by
murdering the man who ruined both their lives. Angel doesn't believe her at first, but grants his
forgiveness and tells her that he loves her. Rather than head for the coast, they walk inland, vaguely
planning to hide somewhere until the search for Tess is ended and they can escape abroad from a port.
They find an empty mansion and stay there for five days in blissful happiness, until their presence is
discovered one day by the cleaning woman. They continue walking and, in the middle of the night, stumble
upon Stonehenge, where Tess lies down to rest on an ancient altar. Before she falls asleep, she asks Angel
to look after her younger sister, Liza-Lu, saying that she hopes Angel will marry her after Tess’ death. At
dawn, Angel notices police have surrounded them. He finally realises that Tess really has committed
murder and asks the men in a whisper to let her awaken naturally before they arrest her. When she opens
her eyes and sees the police, she tells Angel she is "almost glad" because "now I shall not live for you to
despise me". Her parting words are, "I am ready." Tess is escorted to Wintoncester (Winchester) prison.
The novel closes with Angel and Liza-Lu watching from a nearby hill as the black flag marking Tess's
execution is raised over the prison. Angel and Liza-Lu then join hands and go on their way. Raymond
Williams in The English Novel by Dickens to Lawrence questions the identification of Tess with a peasantry
destroyed by industrialization. Williams sees Tess not as a peasant, but an educated member of the rural
working class, who suffers a tragedy through being thwarted, in her aspirations to socially rise and her
desire for a good life (which includes love and sex), not by industrialism, but by the landed bourgeoisie
(Alec), liberal idealism (Angel) and Christian moralism in her family's village.
Alec D’Urbervilles is the «nouveau riche» of Victorian society, while Tess represents the innocence which is
destroyed by that world.
Hardy and Verga
In English Literature, the spread of scientific discoveries, particularly Darwin’s ideas, and the pessimism
created by the experience of modern life in an urban and mechanical age helped to develop a new
consciousness that is represented by the growth of the Naturalist or Realistic Novel.
• English Literature was influenced by Zola (France) and Ibsen (Russia), but it also created a new,
independent style. The naturalist novel was shorter than Victorian one, and it spread on the market very
soon: the writers wanted to describe reality objectively, even in its ordinary and unpleasant aspects.
• According to naturalistic writers, individuals have no free will, they are totally influenced by environment
and heredity, so they are passive characters of their own destiny. Moreover, according to Darwin’s ideas,
man must fight every day in the jungle of modern life, where he continually risks being beaten by hypocrisy
and selfishness.
• One of the most important exponents of British Naturalism was Thomas Hardy: he applied scientific
determinism to the novel. He was a pessimistic writer and, as the other Naturalists, saw man as a victim of
fate and social laws. He wrote about country people living in Wessex, an imaginary southern region of
England, and gave us a realistic picture of life in Dorsetshire (where Hardy himself had lived) as it was
before the industrialization.
In all of Hardy’s work, men and women are overcome by tragic circumstances which destroy their hopes
and sentiments; Hardy regards man as a misfit on earth, but he is going to be forgotten by his creator. To
Hardy, there’s no hope for a better society and happiness does not exist.
• For this reason, Verga, in Italian literature, and Hardy, in the English one, have the same point of view
about human life and modern society. According to Verga’s ideal of Oyster, the family is the only defence
from a cruel world. You cannot be safe if you change your origins. Verga is also very pessimistic about the
possibility of a change in the social condition of poor people.
Both Hardy and Verga have a negative conception about human life: Verga is probably influenced by Italian
historical events, while on the hand Hardy is influenced by scientific discoveries. Hardy was therefore less
pessimistic than Verga: he believed in altruism, cooperation and kindness.