The Secret History of the Rise of the Novel: The Novel and the Middle Class in English Studies

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This essay examines when and why the middle class entered into histories of the novel. Analysis of histories of the novel from throughout the course of the nineteenth century shows that the middle class only became associated with the eighteenth-century novel at the close of the century. Indeed, before this point, any association of the novel with commerce or with a specific class was seen as undermining the genre's claim to literary and educational value. However, at the close of the century, just as English Studies was being institutionalized at universities in the United States and Great Britain, the early novel was also being claimed both as a worthy genre and as an expression of the values of an emergent middle class. The novel as an art-form reflecting the values of a new middle class, I contend, can be read as a covert account of the position of newly professional English professors, as they try to bring literary culture and humane morality to the "rising" class of aspiring, business-oriented students, while also fending off the "corrupt," exclusive, classics-based educational schemes of the old upper classes, all the while refusing to descend to the coarseness and brutality of mere popular culture. In sum, the novel conceived as a middle-class genre worthy of study becomes a displaced argument for the legitimacy and vitality of the new field of English studies itself.