The question of social and class relationships in the British social-problem novel

The principal aim of this thesis is to explore social and class relationships in British social-problem novel as seen through the eyes of three prominent Victorian writers including Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens. The industrial novel emerged from the problems arising from the rapid process of the Industrial Revolution, which is closely described, together with its severe impact on the lives of British inhabitants, in Chapter Two. Apart from the origin of class antagonism, the second chapter also depicts the responses of the oppressed and disadvantaged working class to the ruthlessness and greediness of the industrial manufacturers in the form of the Luddite uprising, the Chartists movement and independent strikes and riots which often turned into verbally or physically violent actions leading to further deterioration of working relations. The chapters Three to Five offer the views of the above- mentioned authors on such distorted relations, and each of them, through the characters of their books, represents a possible solution leading to their improvement. The truth is, however, that even though the opinions of each of the three authors were influenced by different political or theological theories they believed in, or by their very personal experience, all of them..