BETWEEN HOME AND SOCIETY: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
BETWEEN HOME AND SOCIETY: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the dichotomy of public and private spheres in three major Victorian novels: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Vanity Fair. The analysis focuses on the ways in which Victorian fiction problematizes the relationship between individual subjectivity and the institutional structures of nineteenth-century society. The paper explores how the boundaries between public and private life become increasingly unstable within Victorian culture. In all three novels, private emotions and personal relationships are continuously shaped by social expectations, economic pressures, class hierarchy, and mechanisms of institutional power. The paper argues that the Victorian novel does not present the public and private sphere as clearly separated categories, but rather as dynamic and mutually dependent structures characterized by tension, overlap, and conflict. While Wuthering Heights dramatizes the destructive collision between emotional autonomy and social legitimacy, Jane Eyre presents the possibility of a fragile reconciliation between individual freedom and public order. Vanity Fair, on the other hand, exposes the dominance of public performance, money, and social ambition over private morality and emotional authenticity. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that the Victorian novel functions as an important literary space for examining the instability of identity within the broader processes of social modernization and cultural transformation.

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