Heart of darkness by J. Conrad

Historical background

Towards the end of the 18th. century imperialism was at its zenith in the UK. However it had differing interpretations. It was associated with the economic interests of businessmen looking for markets, and nationalism represented by the crown. Nonethless, in the middle years of the century colonies had begun to be regarded as burdens and there was a preference for trade. An informal empire had been created that was as much dependent on Britain as the formal empire. 

The Empire was held together through British power, particularly naval power. Colonies that were dominated by people of British descent, such as Canada or New Zealand and the states of Australia, had been given substantial powers of self-government since the middle of the century. Yet India, “the jewel in crown,” was held not by consent but by conquest. A viceroy was appointed and control tightened through the construction of a network of railways. Attempts were made to justify British rule in terms of the benefits of law and order for India. However Kipling viewed it as “The white man’s burden,” a worrisome responsibility.

Literary background 

Heart of Darkness was published in the late Victorian era and opened up a different view to Victorian values, foreshadowing Modernism.

Victorian writers explored the workings of society at large: Thackeray had described the upper class, Dickens had focused on the underclass and their exploitation. Eliot had centred attention on the rising middle class. Hardy's niche was the rural class. Modernist writers, on the contrary, examined the individual psyche. Conrad’s first person narrative in Heart of Darkness prefigured later modernists’ interest in the representation of consciousness.

Conrad's experiments with a first person narrator such as Marlow, foreshadowed what is known as the “stream-of-consciousness” technique. This stylistic approach evokes the complexity of the individual mind by presenting a character’s thoughts, perceptions, and reactions as a continuous flow. In the postwar period, the stream-of-consciousness technique became a trademark of numerous Modernist novelists, most famously Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust.

Conventional Victorian novels used dependable narrators that the reader could trust. In his novel Conrad distances the reader from Marlow’s first-person account by introducing it as a flashback embedded within another narrative. This distances readers from the narrator and provokes scepticism. Conrad’s use of narrative form to inspire doubt in his readers represented a break from conventional Victorian novels which portrayed a changing but stable, secure society.

Discussion

Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness is ostensibly about a trip along the river Congo, but gradually reveals a voyage into much darker human truths.

From the outset the reader is warned that Marlow, the narrator of the story, is an untrustworthy spinner of yarns, some as unenlightening as "moonshine". He is said to describe the surface, not the kernel. Marlow had worked for a colonial trading company, yet he now decries colonialism as brutal exploitation. He is on a quest to find Kurtz, whom we hear described as a genius trader, a musician and a loving partner, but finds a self-centred madman acting as a white deity. The search to find Kurtz powers the narrative, however he is finally revealed as a despotic antihero, an Ahab or Heathcliff. This enigmatic narrative from an unreliable storyteller throws a darkness over the tale. It is Conrad's way of provoking doubt in the reader who is now forced to look beyond the story to a deeper meaning.

Other characters in the novel are equally ambiguous, such as the company manager whose smile is inscrutable, the bricklayer with no bricks or the Russian harlequin, a close friend of Kurtz, yet fearful of him. Both of Kurtz's women friends are wildly different: one a negro sorceress, the other a naive English woman. These contrasts induce further uncertainty in the reader's mind.

Nature itself is a reflection of the darkness in the hearts of both colonisers and their colony. The Thames estuary fogs up the same as the Congo river; the London twilight is just as dark as the African night. The Essex marshland also recalls the African bush. Civilisation and savagery are equally unenlightened, despite the former's supposed superiority.

Conrad's novel is prescient in its foreshadowing of Modernist themes which are critical of Victorian values. The obvious chaos and inefficiency in the colonisers' efforts in Africa contrast with Victorian beliefs in social order and rationality. The upstream Congo river is primal and the downstream runs to civilisation; the Thames estuary is the opposite, where dark civilisation sits upstream in London and the mouth leads to adventure and the unknown. Through uncertainty and disorientation the author leads his Victorian readership to doubt their own long-held mindsets and the present-day reader to recognise the banality of evil.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges,  June, 2025)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Historical Context

The Victorian era (1837-1901) was characterised by industrial expansion, cultural flourishing, and the expansion of the British Empire. At the time Wilde was writing his novel in 1891 the Education Act made elementary education free, a significant step towards increasing literacy.

The old landed aristocracy was slowly being ousted from power by the industrial middle class. However, there remained an upper-middle-class of titled people. They populate the salons in The Picture of Dorian Gray. These people possess their titles, their homes and their money through inheritance. The men usually inherited a seat in the House of Lords, giving them the opportunity to vote on political matters and so maintain a certain power. They also owned a town house in London as well as their countryside estate, as did Dorian Gray.

Literary background

Romantics embraced nature as an alternative to industry early in the 19th. century; in the middle of the century, the Aesthetic movement succeeded Romanticism. Adepts believed in the motto popularised by French poet Théophile Gautier: "Art for art's sake." Victorian society was practical and valued art that carried a useful social cause or a moral message. However, for the Aesthetics, beauty was enough in itself. Wilde was influenced by this movement through the art critic Walter Pater, who helped shape the movement in Britain. 

Wilde incorporated the Aesthetics' philosophy of beauty in The Picture of Dorian Gray, while also criticising it in the same work. Lord Henry Wotton represents aesthetic philosophy in the novel and he encourages Dorian to adopt it as a lifestyle. However, Wilde also shows how Dorian ruins many others' lives by living out this philosophy.

Just as Romanticism at the beginning of the century opposed industrialisation, the Gothic literature revival in the 1880s exposed the dark side of the romantic movement. Where romanticism saw the good in emotion, Gothic literature showed the dangers of excess passion and irrationality. 

Gothic literature was a mature tradition by the time Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he was one of a number of authors in the period, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who adapted Gothic techniques for philosophical and critical ends. Wilde's novel applies several Gothic clichés, like the doubled self, forbidden knowledge, intense passions, and life-threatening hidden secrets. The author was inspired by the themes of Faust and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and there are allusions to these texts in the plot of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Discussion

One of the eye-catching gothic themes which Oscar Wilde applied in The Picture of Dorian Gray was the doubled self. The novel alludes to Goethe's Faust and Stevenson´s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which probably inspired the plot.

The theme of duality is embodied in the characters as class divisions. Dorian´s girlfriends, Hetty and Sibyl, are both from an inferior class, while those he frequents in the salons, such as Lord Fermor and Lord Henry, are aristocrats. Wilde also uses class divisions to underline the cynicism of the upper classes as represented by Henry, a declared hedonist whose livelihood depends on inheritance, compared to the girls who were romantic idealists, but had to work for their living.

The author employs binary comparisons of location to criticise Victorian society. Dorian has a country house and a town house. He uses the latter to attend dinners, the opera and plays; the former is where he gets up to activities frowned upon by formal society. The protagonist also uses the sleazier neighbourhoods in London to indulge his need for intoxication, all the while living in the upmarket part of town attended to by a French butler. The dual life he leads is underlined by the author in the juxtaposition of two chapters where we see Dorian emerge from the wharf, a haunt of drunken sailors and prostitutes, to join an aristocratic salon full of witty conversation. This double life is a direct comment on the prevailing social falsehood of the time. As Dorian himself explains to Basil, they live in “the native land of the hypocrite”.

The central duality in the novel is the portrait, Dorian´s double. Victorian society valued art that taught a useful moral message. Wilde, however, adhered to the Aesthetic movement whose adepts believed in "Art for art's sake." This implied that beauty was enough in itself and that art need carry no moral lesson. However, the author reverses Aesthetic values since he chooses to depict the increasing immorality of Dorian's behaviour through a work of art. Victorian respectability demanded outward appearance over inner reality, but Wilde gave the lie to this deception by depicting the opposite: a painting faithfully portraying the physical appearance of Dorian's inner sinfulness. His mirror reflection is that of narcissistic beauty; the canvas displays the ugly image of his soul. Wilde uses this double view of Dorian to subtly criticise the duplicity of Victorian society and possibly also to portray the limitations of his own aesthetic values since, in the end, art delivered a moral lesson.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, May 2025)

Jekyll and Hyde by Stevenson

Historical background 

Victorian ethics, which were contradictory to the point of hypocrisy, featured a code of repressive sexual morality, leading to double standards. Society believed it had a duty to improve the lot of the poor and sinful. However, the professional police force was a Victorian innovation and the workhouses and debtors' prisons were also well-known institutions, while prostitution was rife.

A decade and a half before Stevenson published his horror story, Darwin had produced The Descent of Man. The idea that humans were the descendants of apes made an impact on a traditional society whose biblical story said that Adam and Eve had been created as different from and superior to other animals. Readers saw these animal traits in Hyde's troglodytic nature.

Literary background 

The horror story has its roots in the Gothic novel dating back to before the Romantic period when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and continued into the late 19th. century through Bram Stoker's Dracula, E.A. Poe's short stories. Dostoyevsky’s novels The Double (1846) and Crime and Punishment (1866) also dealt with the doppelganger theme. In Jekyll and Hyde Stevenson used the gothic theme to build suspense and mystery in his novel.

Walter Scott's recurrent theme of a divided Scotland led to a fictional tradition which includes Stevenson, Neil Munro, Crockett, Buchan, Violet Jacob, and Naomi Mitchison. In Stevenson's novel this national theme of conflict was represented in an individual, the divided self as the Scottish psychiatrist, Laing, called it.

Stevenson had written the play Deacon Brodie, or the Double Life about an Edinburgh cabinetmaker and locksmith who, by night, used his lock-picking skills to rob the homes of the rich. The author's parents owned a cabinet built by Brodie whose tale was told in the house. This may have inspired the Jekyll and Hyde story.

Discussion

The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde reads like a detective novel where all the main characters are focused on discovering the dual personalities of the doctor and his doppelganger. Stevenson presents us with a believable amateur detective in Mr. Utterson, an unimaginative lawyer who rejects gossip. The readers' guide in the story is the paradigm of an elderly Victorian gentleman, the opposite of a telltale.

The story of a divided self in Jekyll and Hyde mirrors the larger Victorian society and its ethics, which were contradictory to the point of hypocrisy and featured a code of repressive sexual morality, inevitably leading to double standards. Outward respectability was key to maintaining this Victorian duplicity and Dr. Jekyll and his close friends Utterson and Lanyon were paragons of the socially respectable. The difference between the doctor and his alter ego was immediately visible in their contrasting physical appearance, one described as handsome and affectionate; the other as small and deformed. Jekyll was a respected doctor; Hyde a wanted murderer.

Darwin had produced The Descent of Man fifteen years before Stevenson published his horror story. The idea that humans were the descendants of apes shocked a traditional society that believed that humans had been created as superior to other animals. Encouraged by the narrator, readers saw brutish traits in Hyde's troglodytic nature. Stevenson's 1886 tale of terror also has its literary roots in the Gothic novel, dating back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and continuing through Bram Stoker's Dracula. In Jekyll and Hyde Stevenson uses this gothic theme to build suspense and mystery in his novel.

There may also be a traditional Scottish theme to the Edinburgh writer's interest in dual personalities. Walter Scott's recurrent theme of a divided Scotland led to a fictional tradition which includes Buchan and Stevenson. In the latter's novel this national theme of conflict is represented in an individual, The Divided Self as the Scottish psychiatrist Laing called it. Stevenson had also written the play Deacon Brodie or the Double Life about an Edinburgh cabinetmaker who, by night, used his lock-picking skills to rob safes. The author's parents owned a Brodie cabinet and his tale was probably told in the house. This is another likely inspiration for the double life of Jekyll and Hyde.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Apr. 2025)

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

 

Historical context

Victorian society at end of the 19th century in the UK continued the painful social changes involved in the gradual transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. It organised itself around gender and class:

The rising middle class in the form of bankers, businessmen and entrepreneurs brought new money to power the factories.  They increasing displaced the old land aristocracies which fell into a lower social class: the D'Urbervilles had become the Durbeyfields. Tess's father's fantasy of restored aristocratic lineage was that, an illusion. This portrayal was not well received by Hardy's conservative Victorian society.

Gender was based on biology. Its ideology was founded on the premise of separate spheres which divided men and women into dual entities, the more negative attributes being feminine: strong/weak, sex/reproduction, independent/dependent, public/private.

Literary context

Novels in the Victorian age tended towards a realistic depiction of contemporary social life. Thackeray described the upper-class through Becky Sharp, the social climber. Dickens focused on the under class and their exploitation. Eliot centred attention on the rising middle class. Hardy's fictional niche was the rural class. Each writer reflected on the practical problems of their chosen social environment and also offered criticism of its organisation.

Morality was another common theme in Victorian literature. It shone a light on the double standards of the day where ethical behaviour was coded, but the higher the class the more skeptically it was adhered to. The banker in Middlemarch, the mill owner in Hard Times, Ms. Sharp in Vanity Fair and the false D'Urberville in Hardy's novel were all disdainful of the accepted moral code.

Discussion

The subtitle of the novel in this month's Sitges bookclub reads: A Pure Woman. Quite on the contrary, this tale of Tess can be interpreted as the story of a fall from innocence. It is narrated through Tess's constant feeling of guilt for her rape and the birth of a baby she named Sorrow. The religious theme of blame also touches the other main characters in the book: Angel, who blames himself for deserting Tess, and Alec, who converts to Methodism to repent for the rape.

Another fall theme in the book is the loss of aristocratic lineage: the D'Urbervilles became the Durbeyfields, a descent from nobility to peasantry. Hardy gives the lie to Victorian pretensions to grandeur by exposing Alec as a fake D'Urberville and characterising Tess's peasant father as a quixotic "Sir John D'Urberville" who lives in a parallel reality.

Though the novel centres on Tess it joins other classic stories of the era by offering a realistic depiction of contemporary life. Hardy's fictional choice was the rural class, dedicated to agriculture in a country that was rapidly industrialising. His nostalgic realism captures the fading world of farming and its workers.

Nature plays a background role in Hardy's book. Many chapters set the scene through a description of the season or the weather. In this fashion the narrator primes the reader about the sentiments of the characters, which he then develops. These descriptions of nature envelop the story in a context where the rhythms of life were dictated by the seasons. This regularity was already being broken by the demanding "red tyrant", a primitive thresher that sets the pace for the farm workers. Industrialisation was changing natural time into tyrannical machine time.

Superstition pervades the tale. When no rational explanation is available, fabled interpretations take over. Tess is forced by Alec to swear on a stone that marks the spot where a man had been executed for selling his soul to the devil, a foreshadowing of Tess's condemnation. Supernatural explanations also take a sinister turn and become fate. Her destiny comes in the chapter, "Fulfilment", where the novel concludes by drawing a parallel between Tess's execution and the deterministic finale of a Greek play. However, Tess's execution is not portrayed as a dramatic climax, but more as the passing of a milkmaid. Her lifestory was an prosaic affair, and her death forms part of the "sport" of the gods. Life "went on".

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Mar.2025)

Middlemarch by George Eliot

 

Historical background 

When Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life was published in 1891, the U.K. was in a rapid process of industrialisation. The economy base was changing from agriculture and cottage industries to urban factory manufacture. The landowners who had held all the wealth were gradually being replaced by bankers like Bulstrode and manufacturers like Mr. Vincy, whose wealth took the form of money, not land. For the next generation it became important to have a profession in order to maintain a status in this fluctuating society, especially if they had no inheritance like Lydgate, Ladislaw and Fred Vincy, since their capital was their brains.

The 1830 July revolution in France and the overthrow of the king, Charles X, influenced risings in Belgium, Poland, Italy and Germany. The effect in the U.K. was the Reform Act of 1832. Middlemarch takes place between 1829 and 1832, during the struggle for political reform, which ended in the passage of the First Reform Bill in June 1832. Just as the middle class became economically powerful its interest in political power grew. Landowners had dominated Parliament through the system of 'rotten boroughs' whereby parliamentary seats were bought and sold among wealthy aristocrats. The cities were controlled by the middle class, but they were very much unrepresented in this arrangement. They launched a campaign to change the electoral system. The Reform Bill passed in the Commons, by one vote, yet the Lords threw the bill out. The Middlemarch narrative ends here, but a few weeks later the Bill passed, narrowly avoiding a rebellion.

Literary background 

Middlemarch forms part of the mid-19th. century movement of realism. Balzac in France had previously written a history of his countrymen in La Comédie Humaine. Dumas, fils, had published his romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias in 1848. Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) is considered a criticism of romanticism in favour of realism, as it plots the tragic results in the life of the romantic protagonist.

Episodios nacionales by Pérez Galdós were a series of historical novels outlining the major events in Spanish history. The first novel, Trafalgar (1873), was based on eyewitness accounts of the battle, such as the cabin boy's, the main character of the novel, who had been on board the Santísima Trinidad ship at Trafalgar. Leopoldo Alas (Clarin) published socially critical pamphlets known as paliques (“chitchat”), and his masterpiece, La Regenta (1884–85), is often compared to Madame Bovary for its criticism of social mores in Oviedo.

In the U.S., realist writers included Samuel Clemens (the pen name of Mark Twain), who authored the picaresque novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and displayed realism in its colloquial American speech. US realist fiction includes Stephen Crane's battlefield novel, The Red Badge of Courage, set in the Civil War, which was published in 1895.

Mind map of characters in Middlemarch:

Discussion

In the February Sitges bookclub session we discussed Middlemarch by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. 

The period covered by the novel is a flashback to the years between 1829 and 1832. It is one of accelerated political and economic change. The U.K. was in a rapid process of industrialisation and the new middle class pushed for political change in the Reform Bill of 1832. The economy base was changing from agriculture and cottage industries to urban factory manufacture. The landowners who held all the wealth were gradually replaced by bankers like Bulstrode and manufacturers like Mr. Vincy. Their wealth took the form of money, not land. For the next generation it also became important to have a profession in order to maintain a status in this fluctuating society, especially if they had no inheritance like Lydgate, Ladislaw and Fred Vincy. Their capital was their brains.

The title refers to a fictitious small town and the subtitle clears up any doubts: A Study of Provincial Life. Unlike novels of the previous century whose main character was an individual, like Crusoe or Tom Jones, Eliot chose to focus on the web of relationships which bound her individuals. Other contemporary writers also chose society as their topic, not individuals, like Dickens, who portrayed the life of the social underdogs, or Thackeray, whose characters were of aristocratic families, or social climbers. However, Eliot centred her descriptions on another class, the bourgeoisie: bankers, manufacturers and landowners. It's not an epic story of someone like Teresa de Avila, whom Eliot refers to in her Preface, but of those remembered in the last lines of the book: "who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." It's an account of the rise of the Victorian middle class.

Eliot weaves her narrative of relationships around two main characters, Dorothea and Ladislaw, whose parallel stories help to clear a path through the intricate maze of connections among the characters. Similarly to Thackeray, the authoress identifies them in families that are then intertwined. The different relationships are built up through bourgeois interests: love, money and trade. Each family has a representative of one of the themes, which are replicated in each household. Love is often unrequited, money has to be earned and trade is sometimes unsuccessful. This is not the painless story of Victorian progress, but an empathetic view of vicissitudes in a changing society. Virginia Woolf notably described Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.". It is indeed fictional realism, penned both with sympathy and incisiveness.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Feb.2025)

Hard Times by Dickens

Philosophical background

Hard Times is a criticism of Jeremy Bentham's ethical philosophy, Utilitarianism, which proposed that an action is right if it ensures the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. The State decides what is welfare for the majority and individuals are not included in this rule-based calculation and they must look after their own self-interest. Dickens' novel is a criticism of the greed of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.

The novel is a critique of the utilitarian philosophy that prioritized facts, efficiency and self-interest over creativity and sociability. For the author, the application of this philosophy to Gradgrind's children dehumanised them.

The economic principles of Adam Smith, foundations of our present neo-liberal economy which proposes that the market should be left to regulate itself, are also apparent in the novel. Dickens appears to take a pre-marxist stand by satirising Bounderby, the false self-made man, and by portraying the class divisions between the factory owners and the workers.

Historical background 

Dickens used the Industrial Revolution as a backdrop to Oliver Twist (1838) and Hard Times (1854). He favours the underdogs such as Stephen Blackpool and shows how they were exploited by a new mercantile class for their own profit. He presents Coketown as a Hell for the 'hands' who worked in its factories and compares it with the natural surroundings where society's leaders, the Bounderbys and Gradgrinds, live. The characters are also seen travelling to and fro through a desolate landscape in the iconic industrial machine: the steam engine.

Literary background.                              

Dickens formed part of the European Realist literary tradition which was critical of contemporary moral and social values. This tradition is exemplified in Spain by Leopold Alas' La Regenta, in France by Flaubert's Madame Bovary, in Russia by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina where individuals seek their own self-interest, transgressing ethics.

The Realist literary tradition was a reaction against the previous Romantic era which had favoured imagination. In the characters he paints Dickens seems partly to hearken back to that emphasis on fancy and artistry in his criticism of a utilitarian hyperrational insistence on facts and calculations and the egoism of self-interest.

Discussion

The December Bookclub in Sitges library discussed Charles Dickens' Hard Times (1854). It denounces the greed in Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy by showing its dehumanising effects on the children of the main character, Mr. Gradgrind. The author also strikes a modern note by criticising the  neoliberal economy of the time through satirising Bounderby, the fake self-made man.

Dickens used the Industrial Revolution as a backdrop to Hard Times. He favours the underdogs, represented by the misjudged worker Stephen Blackpool, and shows how they were exploited by a new mercantile class for their own profit. He presents Coketown as a Hell for the 'hands' who toiled in its factories and describes the iconic industrial machine, the steam engine, rumbling to and fro through a desolate landscape.

Dickens formed part of the European Realist literary tradition, which was critical of the period's moral and social values. This tradition is exemplified in Spain by Leopold Alas' La Regenta, in France by Flaubert's Madame Bovary, in Russia by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, where individuals seek their own self-interest, transgressing social conventions. The Realist tradition was a reaction against the previous Romantic era, which had favoured imagination. Dickens creates characters that seem partly to hearken back to that emphasis on fancy and artistry and denounces the utilitarian, hyperrational insistence on facts and calculations and the egoism of self-interest.

The book is structured in three parts: Sowing, Reaping, Garnering, in a nod to the agricultural tradition then being replaced by industry. It is also a reference to the moral lesson in Galatians 6: "A man reaps what he sows.", because the novel is a form of crusade against the evils of industrialisation and its ideologies. 

Dickens uses a binary technique to get his message over. The core theme is reason versus feelings. Fact and fancy are opposed in the novel, as are technology and nature, calculation and imagination. The characters are all placed into one or the other category, except Louisa, who has been educated by her ultra-rational father, Mr. Gradgrind, yet is aware of her emotional emptiness. In fact, the whole social narrative is built, not around plot, but through the characters. This is a format used by many writers in the nineteenth century where individuals such as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Raskolnikov, Emma Bovary, or Anna Karenina were used to portray social themes. Unlike other Dickens' novels, some characters in this book actually evolve, particularly in the Gradgrind family. The father is a strict utilitarian at the outset but finally understands the error of his ways through his daughter's misplaced search for love and his son turning into a bank robber. Both Gradgrind children realise their transgressions and repent, which finally turns their father's bad sowing into a hopeful harvest.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Nov.2024)

Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray

  

Historical background

In Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) penned a critical review of contemporary Victorian England, focused on the new class of leisured gentry who emerged thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the Empire. The author uncovers the Victorian façade of morality which masked a society of acquisition and pretence at home and abroad.

The international backdrop to the book is succinctly summarised in the Battle of Waterloo which is experienced by most characters as an opportunity to dine and dance in Brussels. However, brief descriptions of their fear of defeat and the bloodiness of the conflict also pinpoint their superficiality.

Literary context 

Industrialisation and urbanisation precipitated social changes in the UK. Dickens criticised them from the underdogs' viewpoint; Thackeray recorded them through the particularly British upper-class system. Both authors were part of the Realist movement, a European literary trend which endeavoured to portray contemporary society candidly. Writers such as Balzac in his novel sequence La Comédie humaine, Pérez Galdós' historical Episodios Nacionales, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Tolstoy's War and Peace were engaged in exploring social issues and presented characters drawn from real life.

Discussion

'Vanity Fair' draws on some of the established ways of narrating a novel. The author varies the narrator's voice using letters to allow several characters to speak, as Richardson and several European authors did. The protagonist of the story follows the traditional picaresque style in the main character, the social climber Becky Sharp, who certainly lives up to her surname. As with Dickens' novels, Vanity Fair was published in monthly installments, so cliffhangers abound at the end of each episode to encourage readers to read on next month.

However, Thackeray also shows a determined innovation in his presentation of the novel. He opens the story with a preface addressed to the reader, advising that his characters are puppets in the hands of a stage manager. Here he discards the pretence of many of his predecessors that his narrative is based on facts or documents. In a further difference with the traditional novel format he invites the reader not to focus on the plot, but on his critical portrayal of contemporary high society, and so the narrator often interrupts the storyline to comment on the characters he is puppeteering.

The book's subtitle underlines the fact that it is a "novel without a hero". This sets it apart from many 18th. century novels whose main character was their hero, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver or Tom Jones. On the contrary, the protagonists in this narrative are a whole host of characters caught up in the superficial social whirlwind of Vanity Fair. More than a tale, it is social commentary, driven by a description of relationships rather than by plot. In some chapters it is plain gossip, focusing on people, not ideas. This makes it a romp of a read.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Oct.2024)

The Scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Outline

Historical context

In the 19th. century the U.S. was marked by westward expansion, increasing national consciousness, political organisation and regional competition. The Monroe Doctrine brought many of these different strands together in 1823. It stated that the western hemisphere was no longer open to European colonisation, under threat of aggressive reaction by the U.S. This was a political response to the cultural search for identity coursing through the country and culminating in civil war in the middle of the century. The Scarlet Letter can be seen as part of the historical search for personal and national identity.

Hawthorne set the scenario of his novel in the Puritanical era of 17th. century Boston. It can be argued that this harks back to a family identity interest, since his great grandfather, John, was a prominent judge in the infamous Salem witch trial of the 1600s. This part of Puritan history is the backdrop to the social mores depicted in The Scarlet Letter.

Literary context

Hawthorne subtitled his book A Romance, a reference to the European tradition of fantastical stories of knights. The “historical romance” was a subgenre that fictionalized historical events. The first modern historical romance was Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, published in 1814, the first of a series. Scott’s historical romances were popular in the United States and provided early authors there with a model for writing about their own country. They used their narratives to develop a sense of national identity and pride, and to help readers understand their own history. 

In The Custom House preface to his book Hawthorne clarifies that it is not a novel, but a Romance, which takes readers to a different place and time where facts and fiction mix. The Scarlet Letter is clearly a fictional history aiming to inform on the past cultural identity of the country and so help present-day readers understand where they come from. 

Hawthorne's book is influenced by Transcendentalism, a radical, optimistic expression of Romanticism, which emerged to combat the dehumanising effects of industrialism. It was also a reaction against the established religious practice, based on harsh Calvinism, by preaching a more expressive, personal and humanistic form of religion.

Hawthorne's Romanticism took a more pessimistic view of human fallibility and proclivity for sin. Both the Romantic and Transcendental movements were a reaction against convention and formal classicism, placing emphasis on inspiration, emotion and subjectivity. For instance, the narrator in The Scarlet Letter is quick to support the main character's independent beliefs against those in authority, who are criticised and condemned. 

Discussion 

The historical background to The Scarlet Letter is a search for personal and national identity by the author. Nineteenth century USA was marked by westward expansion, increasing national consciousness, political organisation and regional competition. This led to a cultural search for identity, culminating in civil war in the middle of the century. Hawthorne also had a family interest in his book, since his great grandfather had been a prominent judge in the infamous Salem witch trials of the 1600s. This part of Puritan history is the backdrop to the social mores depicted in The Scarlet Letter.

The author subtitled his book A Romance, a reference to the European tradition of fantastical stories of knights. The “historical romance” was a subgenre that fictionalised historical events and the first modern historical romance was Walter Scott’s Waverley. Scott’s historical romances provided early authors in the US with examples for writing about their own country. Hawthorne used this narrative model to develop a sense of national identity in his countrymen.

The novel follows a double structure with the first chapter as an autobiographical introduction together with a fictional reference for the main plot to follow: the supposed finding of a manuscript telling the story of the scarlet letter, a narrative pretence also used in El Quijote. The binary construction of the novel continues in the moral opposition of good and evil seen in the characters of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, who also represent two opposed ways of thinking: religious emotionalism and scientific analysis. The reverend Dimmesdale himself plays a double role, a social one as revered minister and a personal one as participant in the sin of adultery. Hawthorn also constructs the whole novel by offsetting the historical events, seen through the Puritans' behaviour, versus the narrator's Romance vision of the story.                         

The main character is Hester Pryrne, who is shunned and shamed by the Puritan community for adultery by having to wear the large red letter A on her clothes. However, the narrator describes her in a favourable light as a martyr for the cause of freedom, since her ostracism liberated her from the small-minded rules of her Puritan society. She returns insults with charitable works, appearing as morally better than her oppressors. Her daughter Pearl is also presented as a bright and positive child by the narrator, yet considered elfish by the Puritan neighbours.

The theme of social criticism lays bare the crude patriarchal theocracy of the first US colony, governed by a strict Puritan code, but which allowed bond servants as slaves. The narrator thus draws a distinction between outward appearances and inward morality, suggesting that the society's ethics were in fact hypocritical. The eagle, as a symbol of the independent U.S., is described, not in tender terms, but as apt to claw at her nestlings. The identity Hawthorne draws for his countrymen and women is double-edged: raw, yet hopeful.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges, Sept.2024)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

 

Discussion

Social background

Wuthering Heights (1847) was published a decade into the Victorian Age when the UK was changing from a mainly agrarian society into an industrial economy. Millions moved into the factory cities to find work. Meanwhile Emily Brontë (1818–1848) grew up in the final days of rural Yorkshire.

Victorian society was conservative and the Brontë sisters published under male pseudonyms due to the Victorian public's patriarchal belief that women were primarily moral influences and homekeepers. The novel also received negative criticism for its supposed immorality. When Charlotte revealed Emily's identity after her death critics were surprised that the novel could have been written by an inexperienced woman in rural surroundings and indeed that the violence and passion of the novel were conceived by a female. There was even a failed attempt to prove that Emily's brother, Branwell, had composed the novel.

Respectable Victorian society was linked to landlordship. Both the Lintons and Earnshaws were landed gentry. Catherine tells Nelly that she couldn't marry Heathcliff since both would be beggars, but she married Linton to help Heathcliff. Property passed from father to son or nearest male relative. On Edgar's death Thrushcross Grange passes to Cathy's husband, Linton and then to his father Heathcliff.

The stormy climate and expanse of the Yorkshire moors is present in the novel of all three Brontë authoresses. It is particularly used by Emily as a background for her novel. The local folklore about ghosts and fairies is also incorporated into her writing. These may have inspired the episodes of Lockwood's spectral dream at the beginning of the novel and his later nightmare about the 490 part sermon.

Illness and death due to the adverse climate were an accepted part of life and Emily's older sisters died young of tuberculosis. Edgar and Linton also die of wasting diseases in her fiction.

The Brontë's father was a clergyman and religion has influenced the novel. Joseph is a hellfire and brimstone character, probably based on an ecclesiastical instructor. These educators appear frequently in the novel as teachers to the young characters like Cathy and Linton. 

Literary tradition

Wuthering Heights is not in the sedate tradition of Victorian literature and belongs more to that of the gothic novel. (Mary Shelley had published Frankenstein (1818) and Valperga (1823) during Emily's childhood.)

At the time of writing the novel of the Romantic movement, inspired by the French Revolution of 1789, with its themes of nature, the individual, irrationality, freedom and mysticism were in vogue in European literature. Walter Scott's Rob Roy (1817), also set in the wild border country with characters from landed gentry, has parallels with Emily Brontë's romance. Both female main characters, Cathy and Diana, are also equally out of place among their coarse families. 

Byron's sexually attractive, passionate, proud and malevolent heroes were taken up by Charlotte Bronte and closely resemble the portrait of Heathcliff described by Emily. 

Religion in Wuthering Heights also extends to a primal experience of the spiritual which was important to the Romantic movement. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned demonic figure, though his ill-treatment at the hands of Hindley and rejection by the Lintons are reminders of how Frankenstein's monster became evil through social repudiation.

Frankenstein by Mary Shellley

Discussion

Social and economic background

The French Revolution in 1789 was a reference point for the Romantic movement. It marked the shift of economic power from the aristocracy to the middle classes, provoked by the rise in industrialism. Advances in technology also alarmed the working classes who saw their jobs in jeopardy, replaced by machines. With the rise of Napoleon war broke out between the UK and France, ending in 1815. However the economic and social problems of the country were not addressed due to a laissez-faire government policy which favoured deregulation and did not attempt to solve the economic shift from an agricultural to an industrial society. This led to poor wages and conditions for the working class who were forbidden by law to unionise. Eventually the workers turned to violence to protest and the Luddite movement was born.

Literary thinkers, like Shelley's father, grasped the opportunity to argue for a more equal distribution of property. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), demanding equality between the sexes.

As well as technological advances scientific ideas also matured and one of the most significant was Erasmus Darwin’s thinking on biological evolution, which prefigured his grandson Charles' later research. Mary Shelley joined discussions in Byron's house on Erasmus' notions. She was also influenced by Crosse's galvanism, the study of electrical experiments.

The Gothic Novel

By the second half of the eighteenth century Walpole's gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) had appeared. It deviated from the traditional novelistic theme of fictional realism, pretending to describe the world as it exists. The gothic novel ignored the contemporary Augustan Age neoclassical culture of rationalism and gentility and its rejection of enthusiasm and superstition. 

Yet, the gothic novel was widely read at the time, possibly as a reaction against the culture of restraint and the Protestant ethic. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1811) carried over the gothic tradition into the next century as the novel of experimental science.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Discussion

Historical context

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Augustan Age continued its advances in capitalism and industrialism, legitimised by the economic theories of Adam Smith. This boom would also help lead to the rise of the Empire in the same century.

Literary context

The end of the eighteenth century was characterised by a growth in literacy promoted by charity schools, increased opportunities for women and the tradition of circulating libraries. This period also saw a questioning of the Enlightenement movement by gothic novelists and some poets. This led to the triumph of individualism and the Romantic movement.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) harked back to the Age which has already passed. Her novels are the final ones of the Enlightenment and her characters are the landed gentry whose desire was for stability in an era of change. They are portrayed as only interested in issues that concern themselves: social position managed through marriage and inheritance. 

Along with Walter Scott (1771-1832), Austen is an historic anomaly. She summarises the concerns of the Augustan Age, while Scott is spokesman for the new Romantic era. Both chose to exclude the Industrial Revolution, the wars waged in their own times and the social revolution in which the middle class replaced the gentry. Their narratives can be seen as an assertion of traditional values in a turbulent time. 

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

Discussion

Historical Background

When The Vicar of Wakefield was published in 1766 the British Empire was in expansion and the Industrial Revolution had begun. However, despite the rising economic activity in British cities, rural areas like that of Goldsmith's childhood remained untouched, as is reflected in his prose and poetry.

The 18th. century applied the tools of the scientific revolution, empirical observation and research, to law, religion, economics and politics. This replaced the traditional faith in divine revelation as the source of knowledge.

Revolutionary ideas opposing the Absolute Monarchy and replacing it with accountability, were led by Locke in the UK the previous century and Rousseau in the 18th. They argued that authority came from the people, not from God. French soldiers returning home from the US war of independence (1775-1783), where they had supported the colonies against the British, brought republican values. Inspired in the Enlightenment these ignited France and led to the revolution of 1789 that abolished the absolute monarchy. 

In economics Adam Smith complained about mercantilism, the prevailing model of economic isolation, instead of trade. He proposed the novel theories of supply and demand, laissez-faire capitalism and minimum market regulation. The aim was that countries produce what they manufactured well and import what they did not. These ideas set a basis for neoliberalism in modern economic thinking.

In art there was a reaction to the previously Baroque and Rococo extravagances. The neoclassical movement looked to the Greco-Roman artistic ideals. This return to simplicity and harmony fitted well with the 18th. century philosophical vision based on rationality. The novel format arose, too, in this century with its insistence on fictional realism, consistent with contemporary scientific objectivity.

The Enlightenment debate also attempted to overcome traditional thinking by integrating the physical and the metaphysical. These were expressed in philosophical terms by British empiricism and French metaphysicians.

Literary background

The Vicar of Wakefield is a prime example of the sentimental novel, a late 18th-century genre, that traced the emotional responses of characters and readers to their situations.

It was a reaction to the previous century's rationalism, in line with novels like Ricardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768), and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). This tradition laid the way for later Gothic and Romantic novels.

The Vicar of Wakefield is similar to Tristram Shandy in its satire of the clichés of the sentimental novel which mixed tearful scenes and morality and where a pure heart is portrayed in characters' feelings about the beauties of nature and empathy with the sorrows of others. Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) would later develop this satire with its sharp criticism of sentimentalism.

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne

Discussion

 

1. Literary background

Narrative presentation:

In Don Quixote (1605 & 1615) the knight lives out his own fiction by re-enacting fictions of chivalric romances. Following Cervantes' lead, Tristram, another fictional character, writes his own fictional autobiography in Tristram Shandy (1759-1767). Both books are metafictions: fictions about fiction. This is Sterne's 18th. century comment on reality, which is not something solid, but a construct of perceptions, narratives, fictions. The lesson for readers is that this applies, not only to Tristram's thoughts, but to their own thinking.

Applying the novel's traditional approach of characters over plot Richardson presented his narrative in realistic fashion by showing the momentary thoughts, feelings and gestures of his characters, who are more important than the plot. 

Fielding's realism, on the other hand, followed the aristotelian design of plot over characters by focusing on the verisimilitude of his storyline and relying for credibility on probability.

Sterne found a way of bringing together both plot and characters by presenting Tristram as biographer of his autobiography, thus joining his character's perception from inside and outside.

However, what sets Sterne's narrative apart is that it parodies the new approach of the novel: formal realism. Tristram Shandy is a novel satirising the novel's pretended realism, just as Cervantes satired Don Quixote's knightly identity as a fantasy.

The hero

Tristram is the focus of Sterne's ironical characterisation. Trist(ram) is his name and defines his sad character. His novelistic identity is fused with his naming, yet his personal identity is a puzzle. 

Time

The passing of time in the novel depends, not on the clock, but on the narrator's stream-of-consciousness. This links Sterne's novel to Richardson's timing, which was expressed in the present tense in his characters' epistles. However, Tristram is also recounting his personal 'life and opinions' which allows him to adapt to a longer timeline, similar to Defoe's autobiography in Robinson Crusoe. Sterne also emulates Fielding's chronology, correlating his fiction with such family dates as those of Uncle Toby's battles in Flanders. Nevertheless, Tristram Shandy goes even further and presents a correspondence between literature and reality by offering the reader an hour's reading matter for every hour in his fictional life. This, of course, reduces the fictional realism of the novel to an absurdity since Tristram will employ more than an hour to pen an hour of his experiences: the more he writes the more the reader's time recedes.

Narration

Fielding organised his narrative sequences into scenes which counterpoint each other ironically. This occasionally appears overmanipulative on the author's part. Sterne, on the contrary, can manipulate all he wants without losing authenticity because his narrator is inside his own head and so unconcerned with external chronology. A chaotic narration is accepted by the reader since it is the reflection of the narrator's mental disorder.

Thematics

Richardson's Clarissa has ideal goodness as a central theme. Sterne presents Uncle Toby in the same manner, as the embodiment of goodness. Fielding, of course, criticised Richardson's ideal as Shamela and Sterne, too, introduces an opposite to goodness: the villainous Widow Wadman.

Characterisation

Tristram Shandy owes much to Don Quixote's main characters who are dualistic representations of realism in Sancho and idealism in Don Quixote himself. Tristram's story also incarnates ideas and sensory input, but in one person. Sterne, following Cervantes, suggests that truth is neither completely external, as science would have it, nor only introspective, as humanism perceives it, but that reality is a collection of different narratives.

Richardson was distinguished from Fielding by their differing emphasis on the individual and the social. This double realism in the novel is later exemplified in French literature by Balzac's sociological emphasis on the exterior and Proust's psychological analysis Yet both are considered realists. Sterne synthesises both approaches since he explores both the inner and outer worlds from inside Tristram's head. 

2. Philosophical background

The dualistic approaches to knowledge go back to the realism and idealism of platonic ideals and aristotelian pragmatism.

However, the Enlightenment emphasised this distinction further in Descartes' dualistic vision of inner and outer: "I think therefore I am." The philosophical problem led, logically, to the question of how the inner I could know the exterior world.

Novelists, however, though recognising the differences between interior and exterior have chosen to accept both as 'real' and focus on the problematic relationships between them. Defoe's memoir style is especially suited to displaying the tensions between inner and outer worlds. He uses the Cartesian individualistic view to define both the internal and external worlds more clearly. Later Proust also presented both the Third Republic and his personal introspective analysis.

Locke defined identity through memory of the past, which enables a continuity of self-awareness. Hume continued this theme when he analysed the development of personal identity as causation, the perception of previous cause and later effect which are not related in reality, only through perception. Sterne's Shandy is conscious of his own personality through the comparison of past and present experiences, but in the end is unsure of who he is. 

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Discussion

Literary context

Henry Fielding's (1707-1754) picaresque narrative Tom Jones (1749) draws on the Spanish tradition of Don Quixote (1605). Cervantes invented a manuscript to lend realism to his story and, in the second part of Book 1, he documents Quixote's adventures as a journal, a procedure followed in Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. Both of these narratives are also travel stories, as is Tom Jones. (Jones also has a Sancho Panza sidekick in Mr. Patridge.) Cervantes structured Book 1 as a 'history' with the author following the antics of his leading characters. This is how Fielding also presents what he calls his history. 

Cervantes' narrative points also towards the modern novel through its subplots, low and high styles and self-commentary. However, Don Quixote went deeper than Tom Jones since the author himself became a character in Book 2. This allowed Cervantes to write a fiction about fiction, a satire on realism. Nonetheless, because of its chosen theme Cervantes' masterpiece remains unrealistic and credibility will be the mark of the new art form of the novel. Quixote's distorted perception of reality lies in his belief that romance novels are real and Cervantes is satirising these chivalric tales. The English author, on the other hand, uses the romance theme of true love to power his narrative.

Some Enlightenment French novels also adopted themes from Spanish literature which appear in Tom Jones, too: satire, a panorama of social milieux and coming-of-age stories such as Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain-René Lesage (1715).

Fielding had been a playwright and was steeped in classical literature. The characters in Tom Jones are presented in the Greco-Roman dramatic tradition, many dominated by humours, such as lechery, avarice or superstition. Fielding was famous for the formula that the novel was ‘the comic epic in prose’. However, the epic as a classical genre was oral and poetic. It dealt with historical or legendary deeds and people working as a collectivity. The novel is none of these things but deals with individuals and their personal stories. Tom Jones is epic in the sense that it presents a panorama of society, unlike Richardson his contemporary who portrayed a small social group. Nevertheless, the novel does introduce characteristics of the epic plot by using mock heroic battles in a comic context and includes many quotes from classical writers.

Fielding's deep classical background led him to maintain that the contemporary literary taste was anarchic. He affirmed that no critic should be officially recognised unless he had understood Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, in their original. Aristotle prioriterised plot over character but Defoe and Richardson inverted this, making plot dependent on characters. Fielding reverts to an aristotelian priority of plot. He does this through theatrical portrayal in Tom Jones, treating the plot as a history and his characters as actors. Unlike Defoe, Swift and Richardson before him, who carefully constructed a credible story through a first person narrator, Fielding sets himself up as the chorus in a Greek comedy. He is an omniscient narrator who addresses readers constantly, guiding them through the interpretation of his own fiction.

In the neoclassical tradition epic action featured two elements: verisimilitude and the marvellous which are very difficult to integrate. Fielding thought that the novelist should remain within the limits of probability. He emphasised verisimilitude as a reference against the contemporary romance and epic novels, yet avoiding the commonplace as represented in the home section of newspapers, as he explains in Book VIII, chapter 1.

Among Fielding’s contemporaries were writers who contributed to the newly emerging genre of the novel, including Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. The circumstantial manner in which Defoe’s and Richardson’s novels imitate reality was essential to the new, empirical approach to the world, invoked by scientists of the Royal Society whose approach to truth was through the amassing, weighing, and measuring of particulars. This approach is particularly apparent in Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. However, it was Richardson's bestselling novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), narrated as a series of letters, that prompted Fielding to turn from playwright to novelist. The same novel later inspired Rousseau to write Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), also an epistolary novel depicting romantic love.

Pamela was the story of a young woman who became a great lady and found true happiness by defending her chastity. Fielding admired the novel's success but disapproved of its moralising. He wrote an anonymous parody called Shamela in 1741. The next year the author penned his first novel, Joseph Andrews, which began as another spoof of Pamela, but then found its own narrative voice. 

Fielding, while embracing the empirical approach to some extent, in other respects differed from the style of Defoe and Richardson. As a classicist Fielding remained loyal to the tradition of Plato and Aristotle who taught that reality transcends the singularities of daily life. This highest reality is found in the essential forms of things and in generalized representative types; the artist must show the general through particulars, the universal through the accidental. Thus, Fielding’s characters, though they have a life and integrity of their own, can also be read as symbols of a reality larger than themselves, and his novels can be seen as broad depictions of society and even of human nature.

Political background

Tom Jones (1749) was written following the Stuart attempt to reclaim the British throne in 1745. Mr. Patridge is a Jacobite, a supporter of the deposed Catholic king James II and his claim as the legitimate heir to the throne. There was support for the Jacobite cause of a Stuart Catholic monarchy from 1688 until 1745, when the last battle was won by Protestants. The Test Act 1673 was passed to ensure that non-Protestants could hold no State power. It stated that anyone filling any office, civil, military or religious, must take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and subscribe to a declaration against transubstantiation. (The first Catholic Prime Minister since Thomas More (executed in 1535) was Boris Johnson.)

The Whigs were members of a political group representing some powerful aristocratic families and the financial interests of the middle classes. They monopolized parliamentary politics for most of the century. Whig policies were strongly anti-Catholic, anti-Jacobite, and anti-French.

The Tories were a political group that supporting the hereditary right of the deposed Stuart king James II, in spite of his Roman Catholic faith. They were mainly High-Church Anglicans, the aristocracy, and the squirearchy (country gentry) such as Western. Although they held little parliamentary power after the Hanoverians ascended the throne in 1714, they were dominant in local politics.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

 

Discussion

Literary background

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Irish clergyman. He visited England briefly and joined The Scriblerus Club along with Alexander Pope. Their aim was to write satires on modern knowledge. This was the Age of the Enlightenement in Europe when reason was king and traditional knowledge through faith and revelation was considered secondary. Swift was a Anglican cleric and satirised the widespread intellectual belief in reason.

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a satire on the contemporary travel narratives which was a popular literary genre. Using the traditional picaresque structure they were presented as diaries and first-hand accounts of exploration, similar to Robinson Crusoe. Both novels use the technique of fictional realism where the narrator pretends to tell a true tale, although it is a fiction. Defoe had used this novel technique to tell his moral and economic tale of a self-made man in the guise of a shipwrecked sailor. Swift uses his four shipwreck tales to satirise his contemporary society. Readers were eager to learn about far-off lands, such as those explored by Cook. Swift ridicules these often exaggerated adventures by inventing the outrageous trips of Gulliver to entertain gullible readers and as a cover for his sharp social criticism. (His satire of contemporary adventure voyages is parallel to Cervantes' picaresque parody of chivalric novels in Don Quixote and the 19th. century mocking of romantic heroines by the realist novelist, Flaubert, in Madame Bovary.)

The adventures of Gulliver include political satire. In 1714 the liberal Whig party took over power from the conservative Tories. As a Tory, Swift satirised the opposition between the two parties, particularly in the Lilliput episode.

The satire also covers human nature and its pettiness. The Lilliputians are not only petty politicians, but small-minded human beings with their trivial morality. The second voyage to a land of giants includes satirical passages on English law and political system under the guise of comparison with Brobdingnag.

As a clergyman Swift is critical of the contemporary Enlightenment ideology which attempted to rationalise all aspects of life. Locke promoted theories of natural religion and Descartes based his thinking on doubt instead of on faith. A cult arose, which included Diderot and Voltaire, calling themselves Deists. They believed that people could observe the universe and understand it through reason which included religion, but excluded biblical revelation. However, Swift did not agree with the Enlightenment concept that science and reasoning could replace religion. He argued that the Age of Science needed limits, not devotion. The impractical scientists of Laputa and the reasonable, but impersonal, Houyhnhnms, were satires on scientific beliefs.

The French picaresque satire Candide (1759) is also based on travel and it parodies contemporary adventure stories. Voltaire satirises most of society in the novel, particularly Enlightenment optimism, as did Swift.

In Italy the satirical style was exemplified by Zaccaria Seriman's Viaggi di Enrico Wanton (1749–64). It tells the story of an imaginary voyage similar to those of Swift and Voltaire.