Leisure and Conversation in the Fin de Siècle Novel

This project examines images of leisure in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Golden Bowl, and Howards End. These novels, all of which are set in Britain, depict the rapidly changing post-industrial social landscape at the turn of the nineteenth century. This era saw the rise of middle-class power and promised the reward of upward mobility to those who embraced bourgeois values. The texts under discussion in this study illuminate the ways in which social climbers can perform the class to which they aspire by adopting patterns of communication similar to those in positions of power. Individuals who have wealth and status expect members of their class to, among other things, converse and comport themselves in a particular way, even during non-working hours. Consequently, I argue that these novels, in part, complicate the notion of leisure by proposing that there is none, if any, time that is truly free, particularly to those who wish to improve their economic circumstances. Middle-class aspirants can learn from these texts how to mimic the cultural cues that identify one as having high social status. However, they must commit to transparency, expect surveillance from others, and keep an ever-watchful eye on themselves. By problematizing leisure in this way, these novels show the pernicious effects of bourgeois surveillance on the individual’s body and mind, as well as on the larger cultural organism