The death of a child as a plot device in the Victorian novel

The subject matter of the article is the death of a child in the Victorian novels from Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Gaskell to the writers of the end of the century, who reconsider and rework the Victorian tradition according to the demands of time (Thomas Hardy, Marie Corelli). During the first half of the 19th century, the child is depicted as a victim of the adults. In ‘social novels’, the child becomes a victim of the unfair society (characterized by poverty of certain classes, difficult living conditions, unemployment, family abuse etc.). In other cases, the wrong pedagogical system applied to the child is to blame. However, there are novels which show a child’s death as a problem of their parent’s inner disorder (or just unhappiness). This picture can be seen mostly in the novels of the second part of the century (George Eliot’s novels, for instance). Something makes the characters of the novel unfit to be good parents and they are not ‘allowed’ to have a child until their problems are solved. The death of a child can also serve as a mark separating one part of the novel from another. In such cases death is a controversial phenomenon: the mother is devastated with grief, but, at the same time, the new ways, perspectives and hopes are in front of her now, when the child is gone. This is especially typical with the death of illegitimate children (like in the novels of T. Hardy or Mrs. Henry Wood). Such a problem as a child’s suicide, which appeared on the pages of novels by the end of the 19th century, is also under analysis. It seems that writers in many countries ‘discover’ children suicide at this period of time, and English writers are no exception (for instance, T. Hardy or M. Corelli). The child takes his own life, which is a form of protest against the cruel reality. The reality causes an inner conflict of a little soul, which cannot be settled in any other way than killing oneself.