The ideal of the gentleman in the novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope

Abstract

The Victorian gentlemanly ideal was vital to both the lives and art of Charles Dickens, William M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope. This study attempts to define the significance of it to their morality, and to their fiction. The first chapter of the study traces the growth and evolution of the English gentlemanly ideal. In Part Two of this chapter, the Victorian interpretation of the ideal is assessed. The traditional features and the distinctive aspects of the Victorian perspective are seen in relation to the historical development of the ideal. The discussion is focussed on two levels. Major figures of the intellectual elite such as Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Newman, Thomas and Matthew Arnold, and Ruskin, were concerned with analysing the social and cultural ramifications of the gentlemanly ideal and estimating its ethical value. On another level, a vast literature flooded the market during these years, dealing with the more immediate problems of identifying and behaving like a gentleman. Samples from both sources are used to illustrate Victorian attitudes to traditional gentlemanly virtues. Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope were exponents of a literary form that was well-suited to accommodate the vagaries of the gentlemanly ideal. The novel had been both a source and a popular version of the ideal in the eighteenth century, and it continued to exert a strong influence with public opinion in the Victorian age. In Part Three of the first chanter the relationship between the novel and the gentlemanly ideal is elaborated on, preparing the way for the individual study of the three novelists. These chapters demonstrate the fact that they each responded to the gentlemanly ideal as percipient social critics, self-conscious Victorian gentlemen, and creative artists.