Jane Austen Essays (Examples)

Jane Austen's Emma
Jane Austen's Gentleman Ideal in Emma

In her third novel, Jane Austen created a flawed but sympathetic heroine in the young Emma oodhouse. idely considered her finest work, Austen's Emma once again deals with social mores, particularly those dealing with ethical actions and social status.

This paper focuses on how Austen uses the figure of George Knightley to propose a new English Gentleman Ideal to criticize the strictures regarding the role of women and the skewed relationship between the sexes. In the first part, this paper looks at the social world of England in the early 19th century, in which Austen lived. It then compares the reality of these conditions with the seemingly idyllic settings Austen portrayed in novels like Emma.

The second part of the paper then examines Austen's redefinitions of the ideal English gentleman, as embodied by Mr. Knightley. Despite the expected happy ending, this paper argues that Austen…

Jane Austen's Persuasion: Anne Elliot's Coming Out The writings of Jane Austen are often considered to be the representation of an excessively conservative era. Though this may truly be the case especially in regards to the formal and informal interactions between the opposite genders. A woman's reputation could be made or broken by a simple turn of events. The challenge of maintaining these standards for conduct, where even the minutest misunderstanding might cause years of disassociation seems to be as formidable as any. The story is one of the personal growth of the heroine Anne Elliot. She branches out into a world, limited by her position but much less so than before.
Though waters of social understanding were often murky the reality of Persuasion is such that the heroine, Anne Elliot is assuming the role of "director" of her own life. Austen is telling the story of a woman learning that…

Emma: The Character of Frank Churchill and 'reading' the moral qualities of men in Jane Austen
One of the challenges posed by Jane Austen, of her heroine Emma oodhouse, in the novel entitled Emma, is how Emma must learn to be a good reader of both male and female characters. The persona of Frank Churchill poses a constant series of challenges to Emma -- is Frank a rouge and a coxcomb, or is he a nice young man, worthy (and willing) as a marital prospect? This education of Emma in moral terms is illustrated by the choice eventually posed for the titular heroine, between Mr. Knightly and Frank Churchill. By becoming a better reader of the human character in general, Emma learns that Mr. Knightly is the better choice of the two male romantic prospects, and also, by extension that she has misread the female characters of Harriet Smith and Jane…

Emma Woodhouse and Frank Churchill
Jane Austen in her novel, 'Emma', has created two very identical characters namely the heroine of the novel, Emma and the man she becomes infatuated with, Frank Churchill. Both the characters bear many similarities with regard to their disposition, attributes and social standing. The passages that introduce the two characters reveal that they both grew up in affluent families and did not have much to worry about. This opulence had a profound impact on their personalities and both turned into vain, self-absorbed persons as adults.

A brief look at the introduction of Frank and Emma shows how the two characters acquired similar attributes. The opening lines of the novel introduce the heroine in these words:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with…

This is a fact that Austen herself most certainly appreciated as an unmarried female of the same social set she was writing about, which explains the centrality of this concept to so many of her novels. Persuasion is far from the only Austen novel where conflicts between emotional love and the necessary practical considerations of marriage arise, nor the only one where ironic changes in circumstance lead to the formation and/or solidification -- as well as the dissolution -- of friendships. Similar circumstances occur in Emma and Pride and Prejudice, for example, and Anne Elliott could certainly have taught Emma Wodehouse and Elizabeth Bennett something about love and politics as these two heroines of these respective novels also navigate the waters of their social class and end up finding themselves husbands, whether or not they even knew they were looking.
Elizabeth Bennett regarded most men with disdain -- most people,…

Having said this, it is difficult to image a man such as Darby falling for her.
The film version of Elizabeth is also changed by certain plot changes that were made in the movie. Perhaps one of the most annoying scenes in the film is when Elizabeth goes outside in her bedclothes. Austen's Elizabeth would have never done such a thing. It is also worth noting that it is difficult to believe that the Bennets were as poor as the film depicted. A few of the party scenes where Elizabeth is the object of Darcy's attention are excluded from the film and they do not allow us to see Elizabeth's true character like we should. It is also worth noting that her personality seems to change halfway through the film. The first part of the film she spends far too much time giggling and in the second half of the…

Rochester was burned and maimed in a fire set by his first wife who had all this time lived in the attic of the house guarded by a nurse. The man who once had the confident gait is seen standing blindly in the rain as Jane approaches the house after her decision is made to return to Rochester. The scene is reversed as Jane stands talking to Rochester who is now groping through air with a stump for an arm and with blinded eyes straining to see and it is now her turn to assure him of her devotion because she is already fulfilled in the knowing that she is just what he wants:
On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails," he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. "It is a mere stump -- a ghastly sight! Don't you think so,…

Obedience in Jane Austen's Persuasion
Is obedience a virtue or a vice? Actually, it can be either. As Shakespeare notes, "Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, / And vice sometime by action dignified" (2.3.21-22). This means that one can obey an unjust order and commit a sin, or one can disobey an unjust order be virtuous. The question of obedience in Austen's Persuasion is a serious one because what hinges upon it is the fate of two individuals who love each other. It is the age-old theme of two people who are in love being separated by some authority figure. Austen explores this tension by locating it in the social context of Bath, where high society flourishes in a state of superficial exuberance. Thus, the question of obedience is tied to the social view of poverty. Anne's family and Lady Russell try to convince her that poverty is the main…

Feminist Reading of Austen's Persuasion
"I Will Not Allow ooks to Prove Anything":

Women Reading and Women Writing in Austen's Persuasion

Feminist criticism is equally concerned with female authorship and with female readership and in the case of Jane Austen, both issues must be addressed. Frantz in 2009 noted that on one level Austen's influence on female readership has been immense: she claims that "readers and authors of contemporary romance claim Jane Austen as the fountainhead of all romance novels," a genre which constituted the "largest share of the consumer market in 2008" but which is assumed to have an exclusively female readership. Yet feminist criticism of the early novel overall has begun to focus specifically on the rationale offered for novel-reading in the eighteenth century, when the printer's apprentice Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela in imitation of what Jenny Davidson describes as "conduct manuals," or books of etiquette for female readers. As Davidson…

Emma
The Marriages in Emma, by Jane Austin

Emma is the story of four marriages and the realities that motivated these couples to join together. This paper will examine the factors that come into play when a man makes his decision to marry and the degree of love and emotional attachment each relationship reflects. The unions are looked at in order of highest degree of emotional attachment and love to least.

Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins

Emma attempts to make a match between Mr. Elton, the village vicar, and Harriet Smith, a seventeen-year-old woman of undetermined background. In the process of bringing the two together, Harriet becomes enamored with Mr. Elton and rejects a proposal from Robert Martin, believing, with Emma's encouragement, that Martin is beneath her and Elton would raise her social status.

For his part Mr. Elton is flattered by the attention that Emma gives him during the course of her matchmaking…

The lack of rights within marriage that makes women basically "property" to the man is obviously central to this story, as indicated by the way in which Maria is imprisoned. There are a variety of ways in which this most disturbing of issues is addressed in the book. Women who are married loose control over their own bodies, and are required to submit to caresses to which their soul does not consent. One woman in the madhouse is, in fact, there specifically because she could not tolerate her husband's caresses. "she had been married, against her inclination, to a rich old man,... In consequence of his treatment... she had... lost her senses." (1.39) Not only is a woman prone to institutionalized rape, but she also has no right to require the man to remain as he was before they wed. Maria declaims bitterly of how her husband deteriorates into a…

223) a person without a condition of some kind, was cruelly marginalized by society, as even the well-meaning people would avoid the connection with someone who was not seen well by the others, so as not to be marginalized in his or her turn. The situation of the woman is again entirely dependent on the man, since the society would not accept a woman who did not perform her usual role as a wife and a mother. Mrs. Smith marriage to a man who was not 'what he ought' obviously affects her long after the death of her husband: "Anne saw the misery of such feelings. The husband had not been what he ought, and the wife had been led among that part of mankind which made her think worse of the world than she hoped it deserved." (Austen, 2003, p. 212) as in Pride and Prejudice, there is…

Sensibility omen's Identities Are Determined and Limited by the Expectations of Their Societies
Literature written by and about women lends itself very well to feminist interpretative approaches of various kinds. Such approaches often examine the literature of earlier centuries for signs of discontent with or subversive suggestions against aspects of a society in which men have exclusive control of power. Such an approach is especially fruitful to use when examining Jane Austen's novels since she was writing in a cultural climate that did not accept direct opposition to the status quo. Only through an indirect critique could she publish views critical of the prevailing laws and conditions under which women of her time were forced to live.

By 1811, when Sense and Sensibility was published, an intense backlash against the women's rights fiction of the 1790s had made the publication of blatantly feminist works impossible in England. Yet the women's rights…

These two instances of prematurely formed first impressions make up one way in which the "prejudice" of the title is shown in the novel. The characters in this novel are very quick to form opinions of each other, doing so even before they meet each other, and this has a major effect on their relationships. The result of these first two cases of unseen first impressions is actually positive, and fairly quickly resolved -- Jane and Mr. Bingley end up falling in love, proving the correctness of their hastily formed first impressions. These are instances where the affects of first impressions on character relationships are actually beneficial, because they are fulfilled. More often in the novel, however, the gossip and ballroom behavior that tends to lead to first impressions between the characters -- especially the Bennett sisters and the various men they become involved with -- ends with a different…

SENSIBILITY AND PAUL DE MAN "CONCLUSIONS"
Despite the fact that De man was not a trained philosopher his post war theoretical work is majorly concerned with the nature of the subject and the language in addition to the role played by language and subject in the larger epistemological question of how and what one can claim to know. As a scholar in the field of literature, however, he often took his departure from, and kept returning to, the problems that mostly affect literature in terms of language and criticism. De man did some work in literary theory and criticism dating back to 1950s, although this work cannot be associated with any previous school of criticism that were flourishing during that era. (De man 567)

esearch questions

What major theme does Austen bring about in her book 'sense and sensibility'

What styles does she use to build on the major theme?

Theoretical foundation

One obvious reason…

y the final chapter, although Huck has come to like Silas and Sally, he knows that they are still a part of the society he has come to distrust and fear so, before the dust from his adventures is fully settled he is already planning to detach himself again:" but I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before" (chapter 43, Electronic text center, University of Virginia Library).
In Austen's novel the theme is to show the violation of the moral and social codes and its disastrous results in a humored way. While human follies and stupidities lead to the violation of the code and only the self-knowledge can prevent the human error, Jane Austen's main theme becomes to know yourself. Through self-analysis Emma changes…

She is "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition" (7). In this respect, Heckerling pays tribute to Austen in creating a similar character. Because of their wealth, both Emma and Cher are spoiled, in control socially, and tend to think too highly of themselves. This is a result of the lack of a maternal figure in their lives, as well as their fathers' over-indulgence. Cher has everything a teenage girl could want: money, her own Jeep, a huge wardrobe, et cetera. Like a lot of girls, she spends a large amount of time and money at the mall; however, she spends hundreds and thousands of dollars on her clothes, not the kind of money a typical teenager would spend. Because her father is so busy with his court cases, he has little time to spend with her to give her guidance and discipline. An example…

sher, Emma, Huck Finn, they all have a mentor at some point in their lives. Huck is guided by Jim, who although described like a child who needs constant guidance (like all the slaves were thought to be in that time), is often sounding like the voice of reason. sher is helped to follow his love for art by his mother first, then the Rebbe steps in and brings him under the guidance of Jakob Kahn, an experienced and famous artist who will act as his final mentor.
The protagonists in all three novels are very strong willed, intelligent young people who are willing to sacrifice a lot for their personal freedom and for their right to remain true to themselves. They are prepared to go a long way to find their vocation or the meaning of their life. lthough acting in their own interested, they are also dedicated to…

Daughters in literature requires a thorough analysis of gender roles and norms. The concept of daughter is directly linked to gender roles, as being a daughter entails specific social and familial responsibilities. Daughters' rights, roles, and responsibilities vis-a-vis their male siblings can therefore become a gendered lens, which is used to read literature. This is true even when the daughters in question are not protagonists. For example, Sonya in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is not a protagonist but her supportive role has a tremendous impact on main character Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. Likewise, no one of King Lear's three daughters is the play's protagonist but they nevertheless propel the plot of the play and are central to its outcome. Virginia oolf's To the Lighthouse barely features any of the Ramsay daughters, and yet there are ample textual references to the role of daughters in families and correspondingly, the role of…

Through their relationship, we see how Charlotte decided to marry him because she did not want to be left alone and without anyone at all.
Pride and Prejudice allows us to see the different types of marriage through each relationship. Not all marriages are equal and husbands and wives are never easy to understand. Lydia marries ickham and their marriage is shallow as the two are inexperienced in the ways of a healthy relationship. Lydia may be a beautiful woman but she is ignorant when it comes to her husband and his behavior. Lydia's relationship with ickham weakens over time and the two grow apart. From this couple, we can see how a good marriage takes hard work and commitment. Things will not improve if each partner goes his or her separate ways and the couple spends more time apart than they do together. This frustration is viewed by Jane…

In this simple, somewhat old-fashioned novel in which happiness is demonstrated by young girls successfully marrying, the ending of the novel is much more preferable to the beginning. The novel ends, of course, with Elizabeth marrying Mr. Darcy in a state of happiness. The beginning of their relationship, however, was characterized by a sense of tension and perhaps even mutual dislike on the part of both parties, as Mr. Darcy refuses to dance with Elizabeth due to his displeasure with his surroundings. However, much as the narrator in "Happen Endings" alludes to, the subsequent events that occur after this initial one are what set up the happy ending. Mr. Darcy is eventually attracted to Elizabeth's intelligence and caring, compassionate nature. In fact, the ending of this novel shows how the pair are able to overcome a number of obstacles, even Elizabeth's initial refusal of Mr. Darcy's proposal -- all of…

Emma is a likeable character or not. Emma is an interesting and complex character, and she can be quite unlikable, especially when she meddles in the affairs of others and does not recognize the danger of that meddling. However, in the end she shows that she has grown up, can take responsibility for her actions, and is finally ready for true love, so she is a likable character.
Emma is an interesting character, but she does become likable, even though she can be callous, and is truly a snob. Austen introduces Emma at the beginning of the book by saying, "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (Austen 3). Immediately many female readers might be put off,…

life of a clergyman in Victorian society as presented in the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The paper explains how the society of those days perceived Church and focuses on the negative portrayal of clergymen by Austen.
PIDE AND PEJUDICE: LIFE OF A CLEGYMAN

Pride and prejudice is undoubtedly the most important work of Jane Austen and one, which presents Victorian society in its true light. The novel sheds light on the society of those days and shows how various characters evolved under restriction posed by societal rules and regulations. This is probably one reason why we find Austen's clergymen to be repressed figures who were more inclined to serve themselves than others. The negative portrayal of the life of a clergyman in Pride and prejudice is closely linked with the fact that Victorian society was a highly class conscious society where people of humble professions were not given…

Home
A round character has multiple dimensions as a human being, and strikes more than one 'note' in the text -- for instance, the snobbish Mrs. Elton of Emma is a one-dimensional presence in that novel, while Hardy's Bathsheba is contradictory as a real human being, and one cannot predict her likely actions.

Retrospective narration is narrated from the point-of-view of a present day narrator, looking into the far-off past of a long-ago world, like Hardy's third person omniscient narrator of Far from the Madding Crowd, or a narrator looking back on his own life, like Dickens' David Copperfield.

Didactic literature teaches an explicit lesson of how one ought to behave, like Jane Austen's Emma, or how human life evolves in strange ways in the point-of-view of the narrator, as in Joseph Andrews by Fielding.

A novel of manners is plot-driven in terms of questions about how its characters should or do behave…

Shaw's primary purposes in writing Pygmalion, the story of a phonetics professor who, on a bet, transforms a guttersnipe of a flower girl into a lady, was to educate. The title of the play comes from the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who created a statue of surpassing beauty; at his request, the gods animated the statue as Galatea. The myth is updated, and substantially altered, by Shaw; instead of a statue, Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower girl, whose accent immediately marks her out as from the very bottom of the English class structure. Professor Henry Higgins, an expert on accents and pronunciation, represents Pygmalion. He undertakes to transform her speech so that she can be taken for a duchess at a society party and succeeds in spite of the inherent difficulties.
In his foreword to the play, Shaw writes, "It is so intensely and deliberately…

Because of the differences in their social status to Robert/Travis', they cannot conceive of Harriet/Tai's attraction to and ultimate love for him, the one due to his wealth and the other due to his habits. This change is necessary for the sympathies of the audience to remain intact. Had Cher objected to Travis simply on the grounds of his financial standing, the audience would not have any sympathy for her. But because he is a stoner and somewhat stupid, her desire to find Tai someone better makes some sense. In Austen's time, class and money were everything; people could be cut off for marrying beneath them, so such a seemingly shallow stance on Emma's part would have been not only understood, but expected.
Character is by no means the only -- or even the most important -- adjustment that Heckerling made in adapting Emma into the movie Clueless. The entire…

Storni, Alfonsina. "You ant Me hite." The Norton Anthology of orld
Vol. F. Ed. Sarah Lawall and Mayard Mac. New York: Norton, 2002. 2124-2125

The poem titled "You ant Me hite" written by Alfonsina Storni explores the issue of women mistreatment by men. The women complain how men expect them to be virgins when they (men ) are not.

Atwood, Margaret and Martin, Valerie.The Handmaid's Tale . Anchor.1998

In this book the author portrays how women are only valued for their fertility and they are allowed access to education in the patriarch society. This work is important to the research since it shows how women were mistreated by being regarded as sex symbols as well as not being allowed access to education.

Staves, Susan. Married omen's Separate Property Rights in England, 1660(1833. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.

This work is a recollection of the actual case studies and examples of various property settlements from several literary works.…

Colonel Brandon is a quiet and reserved man who loves Marianne. Of course the question arises as to why Brandon did not reveal illoughby's character: unlike the intemperate Marianne, Brandon shows too much reserve. illoughby, despite his faults, is attractive because of his passionate love of sentimental verse, but Marianne must learn to look beneath the surface of both her two suitors. This is made difficult by Brandon's reserve and sense of propriety. Until Brandon speaks the truth, Marianne and Elinor do not know that behind illoughby's charming demeanor there is an ugly, sensual and mercenary side. Beneath Brandon's seemingly implacable surface there is a man who is good, kind and truly romantic, given that the reason he took on his ward Eliza was that she was the daughter of a woman he loved, who was forced to marry his brother.
Brandon's actions, beneath his surface of good sense, actually…

There has been a lot of debate and discussions on how exactly these so called heritage films must be interpreted, in academic circles as well as in the mainstream press, and in the more specialized film publications.
As a part of the debate, certain issues became more important than others, and some of them were that a limit must be imposed on this type of trend in production, and that in terms of subject matter of the film, the sources from which the film would draw, the casting in the film, and the style. Would all these factors be able to make up and contribute to a major genre of films? As a matter of fact, heritage films do indeed operate at the culturally respectable end of the market, and they are also the main players in the British Art Film genre. The heritage film generally has a sort of…

2).
The availability of the Internet, many beleaguered doctors fear, will make it easier for hypochondriac patients to find new and rare illnesses to diagnose themselves with -- however, even doctors acknowledge the value of the Internet in their own work, when cases baffle them. "eb-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use....Using clusters of symptom-related words, they [the doctors] searched Google for a correct diagnosis and compared the internet diagnosis with those in the journals....Google searches found the correct diagnosis in 15 - or 58 per cent - of cases proving, say the authors, that the engine is a useful aid, particularly if the condition has 'unique' symptoms...But patients doing a Google search may be less likely to reach the correct diagnosis" ("GPs should Google diagnosis: study," Nine MSNBC, 2007). Again, one of…

Madness in Women
In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) finds expression as a deteriorating mental state of the character.

Largely guided by their urge to break off from the shackles of the society and the pining for the freedom that has been sadly denied to them, women exhibit a kind of madness in their effort to restore the balance. This is fairly obvious from the many literary works created by women. These works invariably depict the quest for freedom and very often they end up as the lamenting tones of a deranged personality. In most of the novels and the works in consideration we see the struggle for expression and the quest to overcome masculine oppression (on the part of the author) is expressed as a deteriorating mental state…

Fiction's Come a Long Way, aby
The development of fiction from its nascent stages until today's contemporary works is a storied one. Many features mark contemporary fiction and differentiate it from the classics of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries: For one, modern writers use different perspectives to narrate: In some works, the narrator switches from third-person omniscient to first person, and in some contemporary works, even the challenging second-person. Experimentation in styles also marks contemporary fiction: Nabokov, perhaps fiction's greatest ever stylist, has written one novel penned to ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and another as literary criticism on a purposefully mediocre poem. (Nabokov: Lolita and Pale Fire).

ut one of the most pronounced shifts in fiction over these centuries has been the move from stuffy, high art to a fixation on and immersion in pop culture. George Eliot, for instance, in "Daniel Deronda," interspersed a very staid narrative with…

Huckleberry Finn's violent, alcoholic father, after Finn escapes from the Widow, is an extremely negative paternal force of socialization. Finn, rather than be integrated into society like Emma, must leave society and find his own values, rather than the hypocritical values imposed upon him by others. The most fundamental of these values are his friendship with Jim, an escaped Black slave, who is his truest friend in the novel. Jim follows Huckleberry Finn everywhere, and Finn saves his life on several occasions by lying. Huck feels guilty because he has been taught this is 'stealing' another person's property, because Jim is 'owned' but Huck's natural humanity tells him otherwise. Unlike Emma's natural, ungoverned impulses, which led her to play with the fates of others, Huck's natural inclinations are the best part of his character, unlike his friend Tom Sawyer who is more socialized in morals and books (the sort…

Oliver went home with the elderly gentleman and his family and for the first time in his life, Oliver found himself in a situation where someone cared for him.
Oliver's moral character was somewhat better than Moll's. Despite the fact that he had no moral guidance, he recognized that stealing was wrong. Dickens writes,

hat was Oliver's horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking on with his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the Dodger plunge his hand into the old gentleman's pocket, and draw from thence a handkerchief…in an instant, the whole mystery of the handkerchief, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy's mind (82).

Moll, on the other hand, turned to theft deliberately when she was too old to turn the heads of men. Unlike the young Oliver who was too young to contemplate the…

Failure of Family: The Irony of the Vicar of akefield
Tolstoy states that every happy family is the same (Tolstoy 1). He says this because happiness is the effect of a life well lived and not of any other cause, which is also the philosophy of Plato (Plato 47). Unhappy families, however, are unhappy mainly because they have failed to live well, or virtuously. That is the case of the Primrose family in The Vicar of akefield: the family undergoes terrible misfortunes mainly because it fails to live for the good or to understand its own place in the world. The primary responsibility for the misfortune falls on the parents who fail to recognize their own faults and do not raise their children correctly. The parents also fail to realize who they are in social terms and thus deceive themselves as to their actual social value. This paper will show…

feminist implications of Maria Edgeworth's novel, Belinda. In many ways, Edgeworth's Belinda seems to flaunt the 19th century ideas about the proper behavior of women in society.
Yet the novel also indicates and does little to challenge many the accepted roles of women in society. The relative success of Jane Austin's novels in comparison to Edgeworth's may be related to our modern conception of an English lady as cultured and demure above all. All in all, Belinda is an important look at women's roles in 19th century Europe.

A chapter-by-chapter summary of the plot may be useful in putting the rest of the essay in context. Edgeworth's novel is made up of an impressive 31 chapters. Chapter I simply introduces the reader to the characters, and chapter II Masks continues a conversation between Belinda Portman and the Lady Delacour, after which they leave to the house of Lady Singleton for a…

Relationship of "The Old English Baron" and "Vathek" to 18th Century English Gothic Fiction
The rise of Gothic fiction in English literature coincided with the advent of the Romantic Era at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Gothic masterpieces such as Shelley's Frankenstein, Lewis's The Monk, and Stoker's Dracula would capture the imagination by fueling it with the flames of horror, suspense, other-worldliness and mystery. These elements are significant because the Age of Enlightenment had been characterized by a cold, objective, analytical focus on nature and humankind. It had been based on the concept that reason was sufficient to explain all events in the world and in fact all creation. Yet as Shakespeare's Hamlet reminded readers, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Shakespeare 1.5.167-168). Part of this interest in the Gothic was inspired by…

Victorian Prose and Poetry, by Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom. Specifically, it will discuss ealism and compromise in Victorian Literature. How do Victorian writers search for realistic compromises with the world around them?
VICTOIAN LITEATUE

In Victorian literature, ealism followed the age of omanticism, and ealism quickly evolved into Naturalism, practiced by many authors of the time, including Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Sinclair Lewis. "There was a time when the intellectual and spiritual life of Europe as a whole was dominated by neo-classicism; it was dominated in the next era by omanticism; and then it was dominated by ealism, which developed into Naturalism" (Baker 58). ealism in literature attempted to portray things as they really were, scientifically and without emotion, placing man in balance with nature.

The task of realism, Howells felt, was to defend "the people" against its adversaries. The realist, he wrote, "feels in every…

Sir Walter Scott was a writer a part of the romantic era, roughly 1797 -- 1837. Scott was born slightly before the beginning of this era, in 1771, and died nearly at the same time the period changed in 1832. Scott is known as a novelist, playwright, and poet of Scottish descent. The beginning of the omantic period is typically attributed to the publication of Wordworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, and closed with the rise into power of Queen Victoria. This is a period in literature that produced outstanding lyrical poetry, a few dramas, and several novelists that were popular, including Scott. Scott was known for the ability to blend European history into entertaining narratives. Scott happened to have mass appeal during this period, able to reach readers of various classes and places within the Victorian era. At the time of the omantic Era, authors such as Jane Austen were…

The Randall novel also violated several caveats placed by the Mitchell estate upon authorized sequels: "that Scarlett never die, that miscegenation and homosexuality be avoided" and Randall further suggests that "Scarlett had a black ancestor, that Tara was really run by savvy slaves who knew how to manipulate their white masters and that Rhett pursued Scarlett only because she looked like her mulatto half-sister, Cynara, who was the true love of his life" (Katutani 2007).
As noted by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in its "Comprehensive Opinion Vacating Preliminary Injunction" dated October 10, 2001, finding in favor of Randall's publishers, copyright law does not protect an artist against criticism or commentary -- far from it, copyright was designed to promote freedom of expression, yet that was exactly what the Mitchell estate was attempting to stifle. (17).

orks Cited

"Comprehensive Opinion Vacating Preliminary Injunction." Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals

October 10, 2001. November…

Women's Education 1840s
An Analysis of Women's Education in the 1840s

Women in both Britain and America were set to receive greater attention in the realm of academia in the 1840s than they had in decades prior. The Bronte sisters had both begun their writing careers that same decade and Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel was published at the end of it. Mary Shelley had been writing for nearly three decades already -- Frankenstein being published a year after the death of Jane Austen. Women of letters had obviously received an education -- but from where? This paper will look at women's education in the 1840s and show how it was changing.

Changes

Jane Sherzer (1916) notes that "in West Virginia, in Southern Indiana and Illinois there were no schools for the higher education of women up to 1840" (p. 1), however, she adds that "early in 1840, in Indiana there were two schools started…

Class struggles are one type of such instability, and this instability is hinted at again and again throughout the novel. Esteban's rape of one of the servants at the hacienda is indicative of the subjugation and authority that exists within the household, and the fact that this union ends up resulting in a child can be seen as indicative of the generative power of such a power and class structure. This child also ends up having a child, however, and the grandson of this class rape completes the cycle of violence by imprisoning and raping Esteban's granddaughter, showing a new type of class dominance that is representative of the equal evils yet changed perspective of the socialist/Communist regimes.

Gender Struggles and Female Power/Independence

Another very evident strain throughout the House of Spirits, and one that can be seen in both instances of rape along with may other events and details of character…

"Specifically, it's an extension of the familiar Amazon store (where, of course, Kindles will be sold). Amazon has designed the Kindle to operate totally independent of a computer: you can use it to go to the store, browse for books, check out your personalized recommendations, and read reader reviews and post new ones, tapping out the words on a thumb-friendly keyboard. Buying a book with a Kindle is a one-touch process" (Levy 2007). It encourages consumption and purchasing of literary material filtered through one corporation's portal. Independent bookstores that showcased new authors will find it even more difficult to survive in the new, 'Kindled' world.
The Kindle's domination extends not only to fiction, but also to news. The Kindle "not only displays the news" but it "also speaks it with a computerized voice" with free downloadable new pronunciations for the week's newsmakers (Arango 2009). However, the domination of the Kindle…

Furthermore, this brief introduction details the different types of legislation regarding men and women that Wollstonecraft supported. Next, this chapter moves onto Wollstonecraft's own life and actions, as well as a brief description of the time period in which she lived. These descriptions allow the reader to understand how Wollstonecraft was both revolutionary and conventional, in addition to how society encouraged and discouraged her various roles. Furthermore, I introduce these ideas to personify the struggle in which Wollstonecraft operated every day. It is this struggle that I emphasize during this chapter, giving the reader an idea of the challenging nature of Wollstonecraft's life because of it, in addition to its contribution to her struggle on paper. This chapter also introduces the reactions that others had to her work, as well as a tribute to its lasting contributions. I remark that Wollstonecraft is a strong voice among other female writers…

In this regard, when wage levels fell in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the standard of living for laborers and cottagers in England declined precipitously and they were compelled to use the majority of their cash, garden crops, and milk just to buy bread and clothing (Kulikoff 2000:19). Not surprisingly, many of these workers found it almost impossible in some cases to even survive, even with the entire family - including young children - working as hard as possible (Kulikoff 19).
In some cases, laborers (but not their families) were paid in food and drink as part of their wages and some likely kept fowl or a pig, and cottagers, of course, produced much of their own food; nevertheless, poor landless families ate bread and porridge, on occasion supplemented by milk, ale, cheese, eggs, or cheap meat, a diet that was far removed from the same level enjoyed…

We have come full circle to the days of local businesses, but geography has been eliminated as a barrier to communication. Companies are now expected to contribute to their local economy and culture. Whatever a company does at home will be broadcast to the world, positive or negative. Wal-Mart is highly criticized for its low wages, even though the company admits it does not expect to retain entry level employees. However, the company's support in its local communities wherever the stores are found counter the bad publicity about wages. In fact, Wal-Mart is a good example of several of the tenets listed here, especially that of agility. It has changed its management architecture, so that local managers have the local power to make the individual outlets good citizens of their communities.
So Jack Welch's simple rules for management need to be modified. Even the CEO who followed him has done…

Short story -- A brief story where the plot drives the narrative, substantially shorter than a novel. Example: "Hills like White Elephants," by Ernest Hemingway.

Allusion -- A casual reference in one literary work to a person, place, event, or another piece of literature, often without explicit identification. It is used to establish a tone, create an indirect association, create contrast, make an unusual juxtaposition, or bring the reader into a world of references outside the limitations of the story itself. Example: "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot alludes to "Paradise Lost" by John Milton.

epetition -- The repeating of a word or phrase or rhythm within a piece of literature to add emphasis. Example: The story of Agamemnon in The Odyssey by Homer.

Blank verse -- Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents, most closing resembling the natural rhythms of English speech. Example: "The Princess" by Alfred…

hetorical Strategy hetoric Identities
Burned: A rhetorical analysis of a modern adolescent novel in verse

The book Burned by Ellen Hopkins examines how being raised in a fundamentalist religious faith can make it difficult for an adolescent to establish an independent identity. All adolescents must go through a struggle in our society to establish a positive sense of self, but the protagonist's circumstances make it particularly difficult. In Burned, Pattyn Scarlet Von Stratten, the eldest daughter in a large Mormon family, is sent away to live with her aunt, after her family can no longer control her. Pattyn finds happiness and freedom in the arms of a non-Mormon boy named Ethan. However, that happiness is shattered when she returns home and eventually Ethan dies in a car crash.

This narrative might seem impossibly melodramatic and unrealistic on paper. However, the way that Hopkins conveys it is through a unique style: through poetry. The…

I had to go into town on Saturdays to the dentist and I joined the Sunshine Club that was organized by the Mobile Press Register." He goes on to tell about entering a work of writing on the children's page publication, which he had called "Old Mr. usybody." The first installment of his writing appeared in a Sunday edition under his real name, which was Truman Streckfus Persons. The second installment never was published after the townspeople figured out he in actuality ' was serving up local scandal as fiction'. (Compote in Interview)
Capote and Writing Technique

When asked the question of "Are there devices one can use in improving one's technique? Capote answered by stating, "Work is the only device I know of. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then…

Forster, oolf
At the beginning of E.M. Forster's book A Room with a View, the inn's guest Mr. Emerson states: "I have a view, I have a view. . . . This is my son . . . his name's George. He has a view, too." On the most basic level, this statement is just as it appears: Mr. Emerson is talking about what he sees outside of his window. However, the comment also suggests one of the major themes of this book, as well as another early 20th-century novel, Jacob's Room, by Virginia oolf: That is, the view one social class has of another. These books by Forster and oolf described the times in socio-economic terms as well as how the characters related to them.

Forster's novel A Room with a View details the happenstance of the young middle-class Englishwoman Lucy Honeychurch in the early 1900s on a visit to Florence,…

Fashion
Romantic Era Fashion

In Europe, the Romantic Period lasted from approximately 1820-1835 and had very distinctive flavor. People were disenchanted with writing and paintings that followed dour religious subject matter for the main part and took away humanity. The Romantic Era can be seen as the birth of the humanist period that continues to this day. People wanted to express themselves as individuals with passion and emotion. This was reflected in the art of the day, in the literature from such great poets and novelists as Edgar Allen Poe and Jane Austen, and in the fashion that became popular for a brief time and then faded away. This was a fashion that was tempered with diversity due to the class of the people wearing it and the utility of the garments. This research paper discusses the fashions of the day and how they were influenced, especially in England by a newfound…

Poe, Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is perhaps the best-known American entry into the genre of Romantic and Gothic tale, yet it is worth asking what elements actually identify it as such. Spitzer describes the level of Gothic excess here:

Roderick and Madeline, twins chained to each other by incestuous love, suffering separately but dying together, represent the male and the female principle in that decaying family whose members, by the law of sterility and destruction which rules them, must exterminate each other; Roderick has buried his sister alive, but the revived Madeline will bury Roderick under her falling body. The "fall" of the House of Usher involves not only the physical fall of the mansion, but the physical and moral fall of the two protagonists. (Spitzer 352).

To a certain degree, this marks Poe's story out for particular interest, particularly for…

Art has always been used as a means of expression and of confirmation of events and movements that take place in the society in that respective period of time. The Neo-Classical and Romanticist art makes no exception to this rule and the two periods have been considered in the history of artistic art as two of the most representative for the expressivity they brought to the world of the arts as well as through the painters they inspired. Jacques-Louis David and Eugene Delacroix are two of the most representative painters of the New Classical period and the Romanticist art and their paintings are significant for the symbols and ideals these two periods provided for the artistic world.
Neo-classical art must be seen in the wider context of the 18th century and the era of Enlightenment when the new perceptions on the role of reason were redefined against the concepts of the…

doind a research project pay green?
I collected an articles .

Joe right's 2005 motion picture "Pride and Prejudice" involves a series of elements related to ideas like family, faithfulness, and marriage. By presenting the central characters as individuals who struggle to remove social status boundaries, the film makes it possible for viewers to gain a more complex understanding of thinking during the late eighteenth century. Elizabeth Bennet is the film's protagonist and by looking at matters from her perspective viewers are able to learn more about her surrounding environment and about the feelings present in a society that promotes a strict set of legislations that are focused both on rational and on moral ideas.

Elizabeth Bennet is a very complex character and it is actually intriguing how her intellect virtually pushes individuals who are unable to adapt on a social level to the limits of her community. Elizabeth gradually becomes a…

On the contrary, "You Have Got Mail" is a new style of comedy movie that involves romance in a much open manner that it could not attract all age groups.
Key Features of New Comedy

Few traits of new comedy are as follows:

It revolves more around a boy and a girl and their love story

It involves a lot of physical relationship between male and female ( Richmond )

Related with love, desire and money

The comedy involves many subjects that were not considered as appropriate to be discussed openly in the past like homosexuality (Duralde).

Sex related jokes have become an integral part of comedy

Sex is also involved in today's concept of comedy

Destructive Impacts of Comedy

Comedy has always been a source of entertainment for every individual of all fields of life. It is a means to relax and with its involvement in Hollywood movies, number of cinemagoers of all age groups increased drastically as…

Gothic Fiction
Dracula is a far more traditional Gothic novel in the classic sense than the four books of the Twilight series, in which Bella Swan and her vampire lover Edward Cullen never even fully consummate their relationship until they are married in the third book Eclipse, and Bella does not finally get her wish to become a vampire until the fourth and final book Breaking Dawn. Far from being Edward's victim, or used as a pawn and discarded, she is eager to leave her dull, empty middle class life behind and become part of the Cullen vampire family. When she nearly dies giving birth to their half-vampire daughter, Edward finally does 'turn' her to save her life, and to paraphrase the title of the old song, we can only hope that she is satisfied. Bella in fact is a very traditional and conservative character, including her religion and even her…

Slang and Communication in CLUELESS
One way that human culture tends to be defined is both the way we are able to manipulate the environment and communicate cognitively with an idea of past, present and future. Communication allows for group behavior to occur, cooperation, problem solving, and the ability to think beyond one's self as an individual and more as a community that can express itself in subtle and artistic ways. Communication is thus the act of conveying information through thoughts and messages, but has a critical point -- to be effective it must be understood. This requires a sender, a message and a recipient in which information exists in the mind of the sender; is formulated in a way that has meaning, and then transmitted to the receiver in ways that they can understand (Chandler, 2010). Slang, in communications is the use of more informal words and expressions that may…

Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding," written by Ian att.
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

The novel is in nothing so characteristic of our culture as in the way that it reflects this characteristic orientation of modern thought" (att 22). This is how att defines the novel that he discusses and picks apart in his book. att wrote this book in 1957, after studying the 18th century novel for many years. He feels the writing of the three authors he discusses, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, was influenced by broad changes in their society. To make his point, he says, "Defoe, Richardson and Fielding were no doubt affected by the changes in the reading public of their time; but their works are surely more profoundly conditioned by the new climate of social and moral experience which they and their eighteenth-century readers shared" (att 7).

This is…

true since we were children and we were told by adults that "words will never hurt us." A good many of us would most likely have preferred the sticks and stones because physical injuries often heal far more quickly and far more effectively than psychological ones.
And yet, even as we must all acknowledge the basic principle that words can do real harm, many people continue to insist that sexist language is a trivial concern. This paper looks at the reasons why it is important to be careful about the language that we use. It is all too easy for opponents of care in language to toss off concerns about bias as "political correctness." But it is important that the rest of us insist that "political correctness" can be viewed another way: As basic courtesy and civility.

Because language is one of the most powerful forces that there is, anyone who…

Angels Fear: A Historical Mystery
hat were the clothes like in 1811?

Sebastian has a curricle. hat were modes of transportation like in London in 1811?

hat was law enforcement like at this time?

How did the different religious personages interact with society?

How different were the streets of London in 1811 from today?

hat sorts of productions were put on at the theater?

How did the sexes typically mingle (were there social taboos about men and women, single or married, being seen in public together?

hat was the class hierarchy like in 1811 in England?

How common were murders in London in 1811?

as dueling with pistols legal in 1811?

This question might be answered by consulting a fashion era database -- something like Victoriana Magazine, which describes fashion and accessories of the Regency Era on its website. The site provides picture drawings of men's and women's fashion which appear to come from advertisements of that time. This site…