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Narrative 'voice' in the novel is discussed, focusing on how voice can illuminate differences between narrative theory and novel theory in literary criticism. Writers discussed include Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Christa Wolf, and Gustav Flaubert, and critics discussed include Georg Lukacs, M.M. Bakhtin, and Fredric Jameson.

Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' presents the complex relation of self with language, gender, community and being. The novel has parts which cannot be unequivocably designated as the consciousness of any single character which implies a dissolution of the boundaries of the ego and the ability to merge with the consciousness of others and the external world. This allows for the portrayal of consciousness as severed from self. They reveal the form of a self without an identity, waiting to be filled with a character.

Charlotte Bronte's 'Villette' portrays the home in a seemingly complicated and oppositional relationship with the self. This is done through the context of disjunction which stipulates that Lucy Snowe will have to choose between a self-sacrificing marital home and a self-serving educational establishment. Lucy indicates that the domestic ideal does not stem from romance or the egocentric concerns of a sexual relationship but from something more communitarian. This exclusion of the sexual in the marital household reflects the exclusion from the home of personal intentions.

Joseph Conrad's 'The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' demonstrates the author's mastery of his craft. The novel marks a significant phase in Conrad's career since it heralds the end of his apprenticeship by demonstrating his mastery of aesthetic and rhetorical skills. The text demonstrates his mastery in the overall performance of narrative structure as well as in the handling of dialogue, characterization, setting and ethical significance. Moreover, the racism in the novel is a reflection of the story's authenticity since it acknowledges the reality of the era's class structure.

Different theoretical perspectives have been argued in an effort to prove superiority and wrest the primacy once held by the formalists. One instance of disagreement involves Henry James. During the latter part of the 1970s and the early years of the 1980s, Fredric Jameson revised the aesthetics established by James and based the revision on his own marxist principles. On the other hand, Harold Bloom edited two collections of essays which were anti-marxist and deconstructionist while reassessing James's work as allegorical. This argument over the aesthetic of Henry James is discussed.

'The Pickwick Papers' is widely regarded as a novel depicting popular knowledge of what Christmas is and that it embodies the introspection that comes with the season. However, it is also proposed that the novel has erotic appeals which highlights the fat. This analysis is based on the theories advanced by Sigmund Freud with the reader being transported into the sexuality of childhood. The novel's lustful slant is made evident through the flesh-images it presents to the reader.

An analysis of the works of women novelists in the 19th century reveals the transition of the novel from a medium that showcased the captivity of women in a society that excluded them and was dominated by men to one of emancipation. The transition comes at the wake of women's transcendence into areas such as the workplace that were formerly restricted to men. Actress Demi Moore's movies, for instance, reveal the migration of captive women into a state of emancipation as portrayed in 'A Few Good Men' and 'G.I. Jane.'

An analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel 'The Witch' reveals his preoccupation with demonology and his early childhood wish of empathizing with the devil. In the novel, the beautiful wife Lena was murdered by the mistress who was ugly but could satisfy the husband's sexual appetite. The boyhood restrictions of a Jewish home gave Singer the cabalistic gift of demonology as a future way of resolving his early sexual fears which was expressed in the novel.

The search by feminist scholars for early published writings of American women revealed that a large number of women have actually published not just fiction but works in other genre as well. In the 19th century, although women were barred from certain activities, they found that writing was one domain where they could expand their horizons. An analysis of women writers such as Susan Warner, Maria Susanna Cummin and Augusta Evans Wilson showed expressions of anti-sentimentality arising from the realization that subjection, victimization and relationality were destructive to them.