2. In this section, you will find the titles of the
most important novels written during the
Victorian period, together with a brief
overview of each of them.
If you are looking for a deeper analysis, you
should also visit the Victorian Web.

3. Young Jane Eyre was orphaned and sent to live
with her uncle, who dies shortly after her arrival.
Her step-aunt despises her and sends her to
Lowood School so that she can become a
governess.
Jane completes her education there and obtains a
position as governess at a house called Thornfield.
Jane’s student is Adele Varens, a petulant but
loving ward of the master of the house, Edward
Rochester (and possibly his illegitimate child).
After a series of adventures and having run away,
Jane returns to Thornfield and eventually marries
Rochester.

4. Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day,
drowsily reading over her sister’s shoulder, when
she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat
running by her. The White Rabbit pulls out a pocket
watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a
rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit down
the hole and comes upon an unknown place,
Wonderland.
Alice shrinks and then grows, and then meets
various characters, such as the White Rabbit, the
Caterpillar, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the
Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts.
After being almost beheaded by the Queen, Alice
wakes up and realizes that everything was a dream.

5. The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates
most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a
foreign assignment from a Belgian trading
company as a river-boat captain in Africa. Heart of
Darkness exposes the dark side of European
colonization while exploring the three levels of
darkness that the
protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of
the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the
Europeans' cruel treatment of the African
natives, and the unfathomable darkness within
every human being for committing heinous acts of
evil.

6. The novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie, a
brother and sister growing up at Dorlcote Mill on
the River Floss, probably in the 1820s after the
Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of
1832.
The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years, from
Tom’s and Maggie’s childhood up until their deaths
in a flood on the Floss.

7. The plot opens with John Durbeyfield, Tess’ lazy and poor father, who suddenly realices of
his heritage and relation to a family named D’Urbevilles. As a result, John and his wife send
their daughter to ask for financial help from the D’Urbevilles family. There she meets Alec,
her supposed cousin, who, some time later, seduces her. Tess gives birth to a child.
She then meets and falls in love with Angel Clare, an
apprentice at a farm, who is extremely conventional
about morality. He is attracted to Tess but she hides
her past to him for fear of being considered
unworthy of him.
They eventually get married but, during the
honeymoon, Tess confesses everything to her
husband. She is then deserted by her husband who
goes to Brazil, and is obliged to live with Alec for
economic reasons. After Angel’s return, she murders
Alec but is finally sentenced to death by justice.

8. On Christmas Eve, around 1812,Pip, an orphan of about seven, encounters an
escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting his mother's, father's and
siblings' graves. The convict scares Pip into stealing food for him, and a file to
grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister
and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers
recapture two convicts engaged in a fight and return them to the prison ship.
Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster, who wears an old
wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis
House, asks Pip's Uncle Pumblechook to find a boy to
play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to
visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in
love.
As a young apprentice at Joe Gargery's forge, Pip is
approached by a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, who tells him he
is to receive a large sum of money from an
anonymous benefactor and must leave for London
immediately where he is to become a gentleman.
Pip finally discovers that the benefactor is Magwitch,
the convict he had met years before.

9. Dr Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovers a
way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, Mr Hyde.
The transformation is incomplete, however, in that it creates a second, evil identity,
but does not make the first identity purely good.
After committing several and brutal crimes
while transformed into Mr Hyde, Dr Jekyll
decides to cease becoming Hyde. He tries to
stop the transformations but they occur even
without drinking the potion, and, assuming
that he will soon become Hyde permanently,
decides to kill himself.

10. The novel begins on a beautiful summer day with Lord Henry Wotton, a strongly-
opinionated man, observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of
a handsome young man named Dorian Gray, who is Basil's ultimate muse. After
hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think beauty is the only worthwhile
aspect of life. He wishes that the portrait Basil painted would grow old in his place.
Dorian discovers that the portrait changes as years pass by
and following his more and more evil nature. He finally
decides to destroy this last vestige of his conscience, and,
in a rage, picks up a knife and plunges it into the painting.
The portrait reverts to its original form and Dorian dies,
gaining his true aspect: aged, withered and horrible.