The Victorian Provincial Novel

Abstract

Provincial novels such as those by Gaskell, Trollope, and Eliot are well-known, well-loved, and often canonical, but scholars have not always examined in detail the characteristics that qualify them as provincial. Furthermore, past scholarship tends to focus on a negative definition of the provincial, concentrating on its difference from the metropolis, and on the ways in which provincial novels ignore the forces of modernity. However, this article traces the resurgence in scholarship on the subgenre of the Victorian provincial novel and how this scholarship transcends discussion of the local. This article shows that Victorian provincial novels connect to debates about regionalism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and empire.Gaskell's Cranford, Trollope's Barchester, Oliphant's Carlingford, and Eliot's Middlemarch are key examples of fictional towns that figure prominently in the Victorian provincial novel. These novels are well-known, well-loved, and often canonical, but scholars have not always examined in depth the characteristics that qualify these texts as provincial. Earlier notable monographs on the provincial include W. A. Craik's Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel (1975), John Lucas' The Literature of Change: Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Provincial Novel (1977), Shelagh Hunter's Victorian Idyllic Fiction (1984), and P.D. Edward's Idyllic Realism from Mary Russell Mitford to Hardy (1988). Recently, however, there has been an increase in literary studies on this topic, with important recent contributions pertaining to nineteenthcentury provincial novels such as Ian Duncan's inf luential chapter "The Provincial or Regional Novel" (2002), and articles by critics such as Josephine McDonagh and John Plotz. Although locale is everything in provincial novels, this does not mean that studies of this topic are confined to the local. In this article, I will show how recent work on the subgenre of the provincial novel rejects traditional readings of the province as simply nostalgic and resistant to modernity and instead explores connections between the provincial and debates about regionalism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and empire. As I illustrate, studies of provincial novels also highlight interesting questions about the history of the novel, genre, gender, and mid-Victorian realism. While many of the recent contributions to this topic are found in companions to literature, the questions and issues explored within these pieces raise the hope that more articles and monographs on provincialism and the novel will be forthcoming.Clergymen battling in Barchester, the ladies of Cranford panicking about home robberies that turn out to be fabrications, Maggie Tulliver crying over her cut hair, and Miss Marjoribanks' successfully shifting focus from a candidate's political position to his campaign ribbon colors: these are examples of a comedy of small-scale crises that occur frequently in Victorian provincial novels published in the 1850s and 1860s. Neither country nor city, to use Raymond Williams' fam...