This course examines three English novels, inspired stories of memorable characters caught in the web of their social circumstances, which still speak to us today: the fate of a child's heart in the wake of the Industrial Revolution; a romance in which pride and prejudice meet amid the "dark Satanic mills" of Manchester; and an insightful interrogation of marriage and "the new woman" as England enters the modern age at the close of the 19th century. Bringing imaginative color and emotional resonance to such timeless subjects as education, work, religion, social class, money, gender roles, love, marriage, morals, and manners, these novels also address a variety of social upheavals—political, economic, and cultural. Readings: Charles Dickens, Hard Times; Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; George Gissing, The Odd Women.