Major Characteristics of Modern Novel.
Since the beginning of Modern literature, novel has become its most important feature. It is written on all themes and subjects. The modern novel is realistic one it mostly shows the harsh realities of life. It deals with all the facts of life, the pleasant as well as the unpleasant, the beautiful as well as the ugly. The sufferings of the poor, their misery as well as good in them are realistically presented.The modern age is the age of interrogation. Old values have been rejected. The Hero in the modern novel is a confused one because of the choice between capitalism and communism, science and religion, God and the Atom Bomb. The two World Wars have given a new direction to the novel. The modern novel presents realistically the doubts, and conflicts and frustrations of the modern worlds. It is therefore, pessimistic in tone. We can also find criticism in the works of many novelist, E.M. Forster attacks on the business mind. Aldous Huxley analyses the disease of modern civilization and searches for a cure.

The modern novel usually has a serious story where we can find the element of materialism.

“Stream of consciousness novel” has set a new technique introduced in the novel genre where the inner feeling or thoughts of characters are presented. Modern novels have stories that do not have a proper ending. These novels are like an incomplete sentences. This incompleteness can also be found in the beliefs of modern men.

The modern novel is highly psychological. Novelists like Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, have made the English novel extremely psychological in nature. They revealed that human consciousness has very deep layers, and buried under the conscious, are the sub-conscious and the unconscious.

We can also find novels where books are destroyed so that people should not get any emotions, because emotions are behind human sufferings.

In the end, Modern novel is not like Victorian novel but it has made its separate and unique position in English Literature…