Department of English

​​In this course, we will read some of the best-loved novels of all time. As the novel developed in 19th-century England, it did so in a context of changing gender roles, increasing class mobility, and troubling new ways of seeing the world, fostered by such figures as Darwin, Marx and Freud. At the same time, the British witnessed a vast expansion of their empire, a spate of class uprisings across Europe, and an industrial revolution that set in motion two centuries of climate change. The novel itself grappled with all of these changes—both explicitly and implicitly, with both anxiety and optimism. It helped shape our Western sense of who we are and how we live in the world. We will therefore consider not only how the novel works out the question of “who am I” but also the consequences of the answer for the worldview we inherit. As we explore the dominant attitudes fostered by the novel-as-usual, we will also experiment with other ways of reading, designed to help us better imagine ourselves as embedded, embodied, ecological beings. Texts include: Frankenstein, Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The War of the Worlds. First-years and non-majors welcome.