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Nineteenth-century Britain, also known as the Victorian Britain, was the age of prosperity, advancement, the dominance of the British Empire, liberality, and enhancements in diverse social grounds. Through the light of New Historicist approach, the present study comes to critically question the idealism of the Victorian era and particularly that of the 1880s. Through exploring George Bernard Shaw’s Widower’s House it is intended to provide an illuminating understanding of the different aspects of the Victorian England. Focusing on the works of literature, New Historicist critical stadnpoint brings about less subjective views towards the past and a clearer view of all incidents. The present study seeks to demonstrate that England, and more specifically London as the centre of the nineteenth-century world, was not the suggested paradise described in newspapers but rather a city in which poverty enslaved people and suffocated them in dreadful houses built around the city without having basic facilities. Sartorious in Widowers’ Houses , as a brutal slum landlord who keeps his tenants in such a dreadful condition, represents the owners of such indecent houses which have been rented to poor classes of society. This research lastly demonstrates the controversy of the state of the city suggested by authorities and the true state suggested by the author. 

The purpose of the present study is to employ René Girard’s concept of “metaphysical desire” in a comparative study of Pinter’s The Lover and Stoppard’s The Real Thing. René Girard has investigated the idea of imitative desire in a rather distinguished way. He contends that the nature of desires is neither innate nor autonomous, but rather we borrow them from the others. He argues for the idea that human beings are always looking for stronger mediators to gratify their desires. The imitative desire itself, once satisfied, is not gratified and the search for stronger impulses or mediators always continues in a never-ending process that Gerard refers to as “metaphysical desire”. The present research intends to look for metaphysical desire in the lives of the characters, wherewith they can examine the role of the mediator in the characters’ lives as well. Since metaphysical desire, as Gerard argues, leads individuals either to perfection or destruction and alienation, the characters are shown to imitate their metaphysical desire leading them to experience destructive consequences and family corruption. Consequently, the characters who have pursued their metaphysical desire on the verge of a negative sideline all fail to enjoy a life they long for, and are subject to alienation and misfortunes within which they constantly experience great pains. The characters also turn into obstacle-addicts who, metamorphosed into masochists and losing their lives for good, find no chances to change life as they long for.