2009 0-7734-3854-8 The only study to focus on these three novels. The argument departs from previous scholarship by emphasizing the ambivalence and even, to some extent, hostility, evinced by each of the authors to aspects of modern social conditions, and by examining their discontents in detail. Also shows a portrayal by the authors of a gradual increase in the tensions they detect in social and artistic conditions during the modern period.