A Comparative Study of Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre with the “Structure of Feeling” — The Contradiction Writing of the Victorian Era

Abstract

Raymond Williams, an important British Marxist literary theorist, coined the term “Structure of Feeling” to analyze the shared personal feeling and experiences of people during specific historical periods. This framework reveals unstructured yet pervasive social mentality and emotional responses, offering a unique perspective for interpreting literature from social transition periods. Based on this theory, this study compares Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838) and Charlotte Brontë’ s Jane Eyre (1847), two iconic Victorian-era (1837-1901) works, to explore the shared emotional tensions in 19th-century British industrialization and urbanization. The research demonstrates that both novels sharply criticize structural injustices like the Poorhouse system, class divisions, and gender oppression while compromising with mainstream ideology and values through magic solutions such as kinship redemption, unexpected inheritance of fortune, and marital order. These narratives modes reflect the dynamic tension unique to Victorian era’s transitional period between old and new values. This contradictory nature mirrors Williams’ “Structure of Feeling”, revealing the complex interplay between individual experiences and social structures, as well as the collusion between critical demands and ideological frameworks during social transformation.