The sense of history in neo-Victorian fiction: An analysis of Ever After by Graham Swift, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

Date

2023-9

Author

Küçük, Hale

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Neo-Victorian fiction, which is preoccupied with the Victorian period, is a significant trend in contemporary British fiction. This dissertation considers neo-Victorian fiction as a subgenre of contemporary historical fiction and a form which engages with the Victorian age, society, and culture. The study aims to explore the sense of history in neo-Victorian fiction in the contexts of postmodern and practical realist historiography. It examines Ever After (1992) by Graham Swift, Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell, and Lady's Maid (1990) by Margaret Forster in order to find out what these novels suggest through the image of the Victorian age they evoke. This study argues that neo-Victorian fiction oscillates between the two ends of a spectrum, metafictionality and neo-realism, with some novels getting very close to either of these two ends and some others remaining more in between. Labelling novels closer to one end of the spectrum as “the metafictional neo-Victorian novel” and those closer to the other end as “the neo-realist neo-Victorian novel”, the study proposes that while the former often adopts a deconstructive attitude towards history, the latter has a reconstructive agenda. Deconstructive and reconstructive approaches to history often coexist in the novels that remain in between the two ends of the spectrum. While the return to the Victorian age often works to show history as fiction in metafictional neo-Victorian novels, this return works to reveal that fiction can function like history in the sense of complementing official history and contributing to readers' historical knowledge in neo-realist neo-Victorian novels.

Subject Keywords

Neo-Victorian fiction, History, Ever After, Cloud Atlas, Lady's Maid

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105441

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis