Family Its Demons 19c Novel

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course explores the topic of family in its various ramifications as it figures in two English and two Russian novels of the 19th century: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) will be paired with Dostoevsky’s Demons (1872), and George Elliot’s Middlemarch (1872), with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). Family is a focal point where individual lives intersect to form a small community, which further intersects with the wider community and society at large. This intermediate position explains the centrality of family as a theme in the European novel of the 19th century. (Taught in English; satisfies the HUMW-II requirement.)