Introduction: the Literary Mood of the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

The nineteenth-century fin de siècle proved a catalyst for a series of concerns that emerged during the ‘long nineteenth century’. Loss of religious faith, fears about the effects of the expanding metropolis, increasing political unrest in Europe, the emergence of the ‘New Woman’, apocalyptic predictions for the future and anxiety about scientific advances found expression in the late nineteenth-century novel. This was a powerful and influential medium where these issues were laid bare and debated, where the real concerns of the late nineteenth century could be dramatized through the lives of fictional protagonists and scrutinized through the acuity of the creative artist. Political, social, moral and scientific debates of the fin de siècle provided writers with much of the material out of which to fashion their dynamic narratives, and allowed them to engage creatively with the concerns that were occupying the most influential thinkers of the time and the population at large. Within these debates Karl Beckson argues that cultural trends were ‘moving in two simultaneously antithetical directions: declining Victorianism … and rising Modernism’ (Beckson, xiv), both of which were critical to the direction that the novel was to take over the next century or so.

And much may be done to change the nature of man himself.

T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics.