features of Victorian novel

The Victorian Novel: main features
First of all in the Victorian Age the dominating literary form was the novel.
It was in fact easier to be read and understood by simple people, its plot was more interesting than any other literary forms, the main protagonists of the novel were the same people who read it so that they felt deeply involved in the adventure told, the writer and his readers shared the same opinions, values and ideals because they belonged to the same middle class, the setting was mainly that of the same city where readers lived. In conclusion the novel was a kind of mirror which reflected society and where a self-identification of the readers was possible.
Of course the middle class readers were the most avid consumers, particularly women: they had the money to buy or to borrow books, they had plenty of free time to dedicate to reading, but they also had enough privacy to read. The problem of privacy was in fact very important: poor or working people lived in narrow houses and more than a single family often shared the same flat or, at worst, the same room. So they didn’t have the possibility to read because reading needed silence, tranquility, light.
In order to improve the reading public, in this period they started to publish novels in instalments: every week few pages of the novel (or a complete chapter), were included in one of the periodicals issued. This kind of publication had an important advantage on the price of the novel but also on the writers: they could check the reaction of their public to the plot and, if parts of it were not appreciated, they could decide to change it in accordance with the taste of readers. This happened because, if not satisfied, the readers could stop buying the magazine determining the failure of the novel and of its writer.
The novelists represented society as they saw it but, being aware of the problems created by industrialization, (exploitation of women and children, terrible living conditions