Realism, Initially

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues that the pictorial initials that begin chapters within many Victorian novels participate in and theorize these novels' modes of realism. Initials' dual pictorial-alphabetic form enacts an experience of leaving behind their illustrative image for sequential, alphabetic reading, thereby constituting the paradoxical meaningfulness of superfluous details in these novels' story worlds. By intimating extradiegetic character connections, the initials in Charles Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop create a sense that its character network is horizonless. In Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters , initials suggest an unlimited granularity of pertinent intradiegetic detail.