Victorian Disharmonies

This thought-provoking book delineates how fiction developed from Dickens's intensely Christological worldview to Gissing's self-deceptive and pessimistic humanism, from Collins's and Gaskell's patholo-gized womanhood to Hardy's intellectual wasteland where there is no room for redemption and moral rebirth. Victorian Disharmonies provides a fresh account of crucial fictional texts of the age, while its lively presentation of the literary scene will prove stimulating to readers interested in the history of Victorianism as a paradigmatic phenomenon of British culture. --Book Jacket.