This paper analyses five Victorian novels - Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – to argue that the distinction between “popular” and “high” literature is a verdict delivered by cultural elites rather than an aesthetic argument. The paper draws on Stuart Hall’s theory of popular culture as an “arena of consent and resistance” and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to demonstrate how each novel was initially dismissed as popular, sensational or immoral. The analysis reveals how the term “popular” works as a disciplinary mechanism by punishing gender and sexual transgression. The eventual canonisation of these texts confirms Bourdieu’s theory as elite defenders like Walter Scott and Virginia Woolf wield their cultural authority to force a revaluation. The paper concludes by questioning which contemporary works might follow a similar trajectory - suggesting that popular continues to become a stadium of consent and resistance.