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Brooke Smith
Part two
Number one
The rise of the novel in the eighteenth century created responses for on going concerns in Victorian culture. It was sort of an antidote to the problems that were rising and forming as the class statures and rising middle class came into being. It attempted to answer questions such as what is natural? and what should women be valued for? As complex as these questions are, the novel addressed them and others over the course of a century, twisting and turning the ideological belief systems upon which Victorian culture relied. At first the novel served as a conduct book for Victorian woman by narratively speaking about proper gender formations. Therefore Victorian woman and the novel both gained their legitimacy together. The novel however was not entirely systematic; it was symptomatic. By the close of the nineteenth century the novel began to question the very bindings it created. The domestic sphere is fragmented, the construction of gender is questioned, and aristocratic principles of marriage for economic gain is destroyed...