1800s British Novels Roundup
Inheritance drama, bad marriages, and no one watching the kids
This year, I set out to read more “classics.” I’ve been doing it - slowly. I got through Vanity Fair after three months - and it was worth it.
Having read (and given up on) a few 1800s British novels, I wanted to share some recurring themes that stood out.
Context: what I read
Theme 1: Some things are very similar, some are very different.
Parts of these stories felt VERY relevant to our lives. The characters deal with the same interpersonal issues that people do today:
Messy relationships: infidelity, jealousy, secrets
Frenemies and fake friendships
Sibling rivalry
Financial challenges: sudden bankruptcies, debts from gambling and overspending
These could easily be plots from Succession or any HBO drama.
At the same time, some stuff felt…just different. There’s the obvious (e.g., gender roles), but plenty of other stuff:
Kids are a much smaller part of the picture. Wealthy families handed them off to governesses. No “who’s taking them to practice” discussions. Parents were busy — riding horses, playing piano, or doing... nothing. In my review of All Joy and No Fun, I had noted that kids used to work for their parents and now parents work for their kids. But for the wealthiest families, it felt like parents and kids lived parallel and distinct lives.
The upper class doesn’t really work that much. They sit around, ride horses, go to their clubs, and play piano. They own lots of land which tenants rent. A lot of plotlines are just: “How do I get Uncle or Aunt So-and-So to leave me their fortune?” Felt like a contrast to today, where wealthier people often work more hours than others.
There wasn’t much hustle culture: Upward mobility wasn’t really a thing. You were either born into money or you weren’t. Many of the plots are basically about what happens when that money runs out — and people trying to fake it anyway. And when characters do get rich, they’re often ridiculed (like a lazy, corpulent tax collector for the East India Company). Today, there is a lot of emphasis on economic agency and “making it,” but that really wasn’t the case then.
Theme 2: Lots of morality
Without career ambitions or economic agency, the stakes shift to character and moral agency. Your moral choices — kindness, cruelty, loyalty, manipulation — are the story. The books tend to reward virtue (e.g, the virtuous person gets a surprise inheritance).
The only exception to this is Vanity Fair - which is subtitled “A Novel Without a Hero.” Everyone’s a mess, and Thackeray just kind of shrugs and says, “That’s life.”
Theme 3: Marriage was everything
Every one of these books centers around marriage — who will marry whom, why, and what happens after. Not because it’s romantic, but because it was the most consequential decision a person could make. Sometimes the only real one.
Some marry for love, other for status, other for money. Bad marriages are common — and often hidden. It reminded me of Fortune’s Children, which tells the story of the Vanderbilt descendants, who similarly often had “useful” marriages as opposed to happy ones. Today, people see marriage as a “capstone event” once you’ve made it - but then, it was the thing itself.
How to actually enjoy these books
Push through the first 60 pages. Once you get into the plot, it’s good and fun reading. Before then, it can feel like a slog.
You don’t need to understand every word. How to Read a Book helped me let that go. Just keep moving. You can always re-read them.
Don’t be afraid to quit. I bailed on Oliver Twist and Daniel Deronda after reading hundreds of pages of both. It’s fine.
Stick to one time period. If you read a few Victorian novels in a row, things start to click — the word choice, the social cues, even the weird estate laws.