THE EVOLUTION OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOLOGISM IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE: FROM DICKENS TO HENRY JAMES

Abstract

This article investigates the evolution of artistic psychologism in Victorian literature, tracing its development from the early social-behavioural psychologism of Charles Dickens through the moral-analytical psychologism of George Eliot and the atmospheric interiority of Charlotte Bronte, to the refined central-consciousness technique of Henry James. The study argues that this evolution is not a linear progression but a complex, multi-directional process shaped by sociocultural, scientific, and philosophical transformations of the Victorian era. Drawing on close reading and comparative-typological analysis of representative works including Great Expectations, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, and The Portrait of a Lady, the article identifies four distinct phases in the development of psychologism: the social-external phase, the moral-analytical phase, the atmospheric-symbolic phase, and the cognitive-perspectival phase. Each phase is defined by a characteristic set of narrative techniques, authorial strategies, and philosophical assumptions about the nature of individual consciousness. The findings demonstrate that Victorian psychologism constitutes a unified but internally differentiated literary phenomenon, and that its evolution anticipates the stream-of-consciousness experiments of literary modernism. The article contributes to the comparative study of English literary history and offers a typological framework applicable to the analysis of psychologism across literary traditions.

Keywords

Victorian literature, artistic psychologism, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Henry James, narrative technique, interior monologue, free indirect discourse, central consciousness, literary evolution, stream of consciousness, Victorian novel, poetics, comparative analysis.