Dr. J. K. Mishra, Assistant Professor & Head, Dept. Of English, L.N.T. College, B. R. A.

Bihar University Muzaffarpur, Bihar

NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN NOVELISTS

Nineteenth-century Britain—a world of progress and reform, discovery and innovation,

industrialization and social upheaval—witnessed intense debate about the position of women in
society. It was this century of change that heard controversies about a wife’s right to own property,
staged arguments about a mother’s right to custody of her children and ownership of her body, and
saw the birth of the movement for women’s suffrage. This was also the era of the professional
women writers, a time in which women demanded a place alongside men in the world of letters to
contribute to cultural discourse, to make their opinions heard, and to tell their own stories. The era
had a range of outstanding women novelists which included some famous names like Jane Austen,
George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Gaskell,
Margaret Oliphant, Eliza Lynn Linton, Harriet Martineau, Mary Kingsley, Annie Besant etc.

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of
romantic fiction are critically acclaimed and very popular and influential. Austen’s works critique
the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-
century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on
marriage to secure social standing and economic security, and are often considered feminist. Her
work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the
publication in 1869 of her nephew’s A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public,
and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. Her
novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814),
Emma (1815) Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous), and Persuasion (1818, posthumous).

George Eliot: Mary Anne Evans (1819–1880) known by her pen name George Eliot, was an
English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She
authored seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas
Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in
provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight. George Eliot was really
a woman who chose a male pen name for herself. Still today this is a common tactic used by female
authors to avoid discrimination. Her stories reflected the reality of life in rural England, depicting
the effects urbanization on small towns, or of the difficulties of local political disputes. In
“Middlemarch” she tells the stories of many different characters who live in the same small town.
Each of their individual tales tell us something different about human nature, and about rural life.
It’s been called the greatest novel of all time.

Bronte Sisters: The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village
of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of
Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–
1849), are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they
originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Their stories immediately attracted attention for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane
Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature. The three
sisters and their brother, Branwell (1817–1848), were very close and during childhood developed
their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play set in an intricate imaginary world, and
then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set therein.
Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë produced notable works of the period, although these were not
immediately appreciated by Victorian critics. Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily's only work, is an
example of Gothic Romanticism from a woman's point of view, which examines class, myth, and
gender. Jane Eyre (1847), by her sister Charlotte, is another major nineteenth century novel that has
gothic themes. Anne's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), written in realistic rather
than romantic style, is mainly considered to be the first sustained feminist novel.
 Dr. J. K. Mishra, Assistant Professor & Head, Dept. Of English, L.N.T. College, B. R. A. Bihar University Muzaffarpur, Bihar

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic,
devotional, and children’s poems. She is best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love
poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. Her poem Love
Came Down at Christmas has also been widely used for a carol. Her most famous collection,
Goblin Market and Other Poems, appeared in 1862, when she was 31. It received widespread
critical praise, establishing her as the main female poet of the time. Hopkins, Swinburne, and
Tennyson praised her work, and with the death of poet Elizabeth Browning in 1861 Rossetti was
considered her natural successor. The title poem is one of Rossetti’s best known works. Although it
is literally about two sisters’ misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a
variety of ways: seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation; a commentary on Victorian
gender roles and female agency; and a work about erotic desire and social redemption.

Elizabeth Gaskell :Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810–1865) often referred to as Mrs Gaskell,
was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of
the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social
historians as well as lovers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848.
Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Brontë. In this
biography, she only wrote the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë’s life, the rest she left out,
deciding that certain, more salacious aspects of her life were better kept hidden. Some of Gaskell's
best known novels are Cranford (1851–53), North and South (1854–55), and Wives and
Daughters (1865).

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist,
biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern
Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and
philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. One summer, while sitting around a log fire at Lord Byron’s
villa with friends and reading German ghost stories, Byron suggested they each write their own
supernatural tale. Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary Godwin conceived the idea for
Frankenstein: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put
together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some
powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be;
for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous
mechanism of the Creator of the world.” She began writing what she assumed would be a short
story. With Percy Shelley’s encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel,
Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer
in Switzerland as the moment “when I first stepped out from childhood into life”. Frankenstein is
considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction, and science fiction author Brian
Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in
previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central
character “makes a deliberate decision” and “turns to modern experiments in the laboratory” to
achieve fantastic results. The story is partially based on Giovanni Aldini’s electrical experiments on
dead and (sometimes) living animals and was also a warning against the expansion of modern
humans in the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in its subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. It has had a
considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror
stories and films. Frankenstein is actually the name of the scientist and not the monster in the novel.
Shelley’s works are widely available in English.

The nineteenth century was an era of reform. It was during the Victorian period that Britain made
significant steps toward expanding its citizens’ rights. But despite a series of reform bills, women
were continually excluded from these social liberties. They could not hold political office, nor
could they vote. Inspite of all these adverse conditions the women novelists of 19th Centrury
England could produce such marvelous novels that they are still unsurpassed and excellent.
(2016)