Industrialization in Victorian Literature
Okay, so "industrialization" might sound more like economic development than literary history. But Victorians were seeing major changes—from manufacturing booms to the first railways to widespread urbanization. And it's hard to escape this stuff if you read many 19th-century novels or poems. In fact, a whole genre developed around it: the industrial or social novel (sometimes it's called "the condition of England" novel).
Most novels revolve around some sort of problem—whom to marry, what career to choose, whether to go to that party or not. But industrial novels really up the ante on conflict. Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South sets up the problem right in the title: the south is the cultured life of London, and the north is the up-and-coming industrial town. Guess what happens when a nice southern girl confronts the bleak life in the north? Riotous good times, of course. (Or just riots.) Luckily, even when the "industrial" part of the industrial novel gets a bit bleak, there's usually a good romance that can get us through.
Chew on This:
Dickens's Hard Times is about the grittier side of factory life, workers' rights, and… the circus. If you're a character in an industrial novel, what's your work-to-play ratio?
Even in the most pastoral of small English towns, the problem of workers and living conditions crops up. Want to see for yourself? Revisit Dorothea's pet project in Middlemarch.