The Concept of Evil in Victorian Novels

With the rise of literacy in Victorian England, novels grew in popularity, and they reflected many aspects of the period in which they were written. Social, political, and economic views of Victorian society are passed over to today's society with the help of novels like Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. These novels contained information about how Victorian society viewed the issues of labor, religion, economics, and social structure, along with the concepts of love, desire, evil, and more. The concept of evil, in particular, was used as a mutual approach that moves the plot in all of these novels. While doing this, the authors of these books describe the concept of evil differently. To be precise, in three of the most well-known novels of the Victorian era, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the concept of evil is worked through three different bases, and reasons with the help of the characters.

Wuthering Heights, one of the most well-known romance novels of the period, uses excessive rage and a desire for vengeance to reflect the evil in the story it cites. Brontë’s take on evil consists of one’s dramatic approach to emotions. While one of her main characters, Heathcliff, creates the essential ground for almost everything that develops in the story, he causes many mishaps and too much harm to people around him and himself. The harm brought to the other people by Heathcliff justly induces the impression of his being an evil person in the reader. His evil side, on the other hand, does not manifest itself until he is exiled and Catherine marries Edgar Lockhart. At that point in the plot, he swells with anger and plans revenge on Edgar and everyone related to him. Thus, he ruins the lives of many people, including his wife and son. So, it is safe to say that Emily Bront's concept of evil in this novel is the exaggeration of emotions, particularly anger and obsession, combined with complexity.

With its more realistic reflections of the Victorian Period, even though Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations follows a similar route to Wuthering Heights, it dictates that evil is the lack of morality. In this book, Pip, as a round character, develops and changes a lot; however, in the end, his sense of morality remains. This keeps him from hurting anyone and following his destructive emotions, such as anger, as mentioned above. Unlike Pip, the villain of the book, Orlick is a devoted follower of destruction. He is full of anger throughout the story and is jealous of Pip for several reasons, such as having people on his side all the time. Apart from Orlick’s attack on Pip’s sister, his attempt to kill Pip shows that Orlick is capable of doing anything to satisfy his anger, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. Briefly, while Charles Dickens presents us with a realistic villain, he shows us that what makes Orlick evil is his ignorance of moral sense in his actions.

When it comes to The Picture of Dorian Gray, the concept of evil becomes hypocrisy, obsession with youth and desire, and a weak will. As a remarkable man in his times, Oscar Wilde followed different mindsets such as aestheticism and hedonism; however, in this novel of his, his characters’ aim at achieving pleasure results in doom. On the one hand, Lord Henry, who had a significant impact on Dorian Gray, can be accepted as the true villain of the story. For others, Dorian Gray is the real villain because he was the one who let Lord Henry’s ideas affect him so recklessly and decided his actions, for example, while killing Basil Hallward. Dorian took Lord Henry's words about his youth and the pleasures of life too far, which led to him making several mistakes to find pleasure in his life. He got affected so much by what he wanted that when things did not go the way he expected them to go, he got violent in different ways. Moreover, he was not embarrassed by his actions until one point because his actions were not reflected in his appearance, meaning that they were not seen by the public. This meant that as long as they did not interfere with his life and social status, he would be able to do as he liked. These notions took him to the point of being a murderer. It can be stated that Oscar Wilde’s way of creating evil in his plot was to give his main character a weak will and a hypocritical worldview on the way to gaining pleasure.

To sum up, there are three different takes on the concept of evil in Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wuthering Heights, this concept is the obsession with destructive emotions. In Great Expectations, it is the lack of morality that causes one to become evil, while in The Picture of Dorian Gray, evil means not being able to take a strong stance in the face of new ideas and turning an idea into a hypocritical advantage in doing as one wishes.