Victorian Era Essays (Examples)

Victorian Philosophical Anti-Rationalism -- the anti-practical and anti-Utilitarian philosophy of Newman, Pater, and Arnold

The Victorian era in England gave birth to Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian philosophy of social governance, to the scientific philosophy of Darwinism, and to the application of scientific principles to social philosophy in the form of Social Darwinism. Perhaps this scientific and methodical era, an era that oversaw the full flowering of the Industrial Revolution's stress upon machinery into the transformation into the human body and mind as a machine-like worker drone, inevitably spawned a kind of counter-revolutionary philosophy and ethos for the age -- namely the idea and ideals that cohered and evolved over the course of the Oxford Movement, the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movement, and finally coalesced into the austere vision of the poet and philosopher Matthew Arnold.

One of the earliest counters to the pragmatism and utilitarianism so popular at the time of Victoria's…

Dr. Jekyll and Victorian Literature

England during the reign of Queen Victoria was a very rigid, prudish, and regulated society, very different from the world today. In Victorian England, there were very strict rules which dictated the behavior of the citizenry. Those who wanted to be accepted in proper society were heavily restricted in every aspect of their lives. There were restrictions on alcohol and other substances which lesser individuals might succumb to. There were restrictions on interactions with other people, particularly members of the opposite sex or with those who were in a different social stratum than themselves. For example, a gentleman did not consort daily with a servant, nor would a common gentleman be likely to consort with members of royalty or landed gentry. Some men accepted these rules and others were incapable of conforming. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tells…

Victorian era Ireland, Miss Julie depends on effective costumes. Costume designer Consolata Boyle delivers, providing the titular protagonist with the requisite garb of the era. Issues of gender and social class are conveyed through clothing in Miss Julie, as the title character wears rich silks and other gleaming fabrics that denote her social status, Likewise, the colors of Miss Julie's dresses are deep jewel tones befitting her wealth and power. The preponderance of the color green also corresponds with the film's being set in the Emerald Isle. Thus, Boyle was give considerably more leeway in her selection of hues had she been constricted to working with the original script for the stage play, which was set in Sweden. Some of the defining features of Miss Julie's Victorian dresses include lace trims, particularly around collars and lapels, ruffled bottoms of dresses, long sleeves as well as long length dresses, stark waist…

Art Nouveau & Modernism

The time period following the Victorian era was marked by widespread changes in design, styles, and art in general. Two of the most important movements of the time between 1850 and 1929 are Art Nouveau and Modernism. This essay aims to provide a valuable view of both movements through images and words, in order to enlighten the reader on these two very influential eras.

The Art Nouveau movement began at the turn of the 20th century in all of Europe's prominent municipalities as a response to the parallel scholastic art forms of the time. This society of new and youthful ideas adhered strongly to one fundamental principle: that the spirit of aesthetics should remain closely tied to the natural world, with more moderation than prehistoric traditionalists used. The aggressive alteration shaped by the rising rebellion at the turn of the century lead the trend toward many…

Victorian Female Sexuality

Victorian Sexuality: George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. arren's Profession and Thomas Hardy's "The Ruined Maid"

omen in the Victorian era must have suffered enormously under the massive double standards and the shameful image of a woman who wanted to be on her own. It is clear from examining the literature of the period how much discrimination was placed on women in the era. George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. arren's Profession and Thomas Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" show the intense sexual and gender discrimination that women in the Victorian era had to endure and the extreme consequences that were reserved for them upon breaking such strict traditions on sexuality and love relationships; however, George Bernard Shaw does allow for a greater sense of freedom for his female characters as his work was written much later at the tail end of the Victorian era, as long as they avoid the contact…

Alice in Wonderland as Victorian Literature -- Being a child in Victorian England was difficult. They had to behave like the adults did, follow all rules, they had to be seen but not heard. Children, however, are naturally curious; unable to sit for long periods of time, and as part of normal cognitive development, consistently asking questions about the world. In fact, childhood is the period when a child acquires the knowledge needed to perform as an adult. It is the experiences of childhood that the personality of the adult is constructed. Alice's adventures, then, are really more of a set of curiosities that Carroll believed children share. Why is this, who is this, how does this work? and, her journey through Wonderland, somewhat symbolic of a type of "Garden of Eden," combines stark realities that would be necessary for her transition to adulthood.

For Victorians, control was part of…

Meanwhile, Melmotte introduces Marie into the matrimonial arena at an extravagant ball for which, in hope of favors that will come, he gains the patronage of several duchesses and other regal individuals. Marie, believed to be the heiress of millions, has many highly placed but poor young noblemen asking for her hand in marriage. She falls in love with Sir Felix Carbury, who is the most shady of them all. Felix's interest in Marie has nothing to do with love, but only with her wealth. This behavior is expected, since he is just following through on all that he has been told while growing up. He has learned his lessons well. His mother commends him often for winning Marie's heart, even if it is for the wrong reasons.. As Trollope writes:

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it was so, and was…

In the face of this awareness of human decline and despair the protagonist pledges love to his partner. This love is described as "true," which implies a love that is faithful and enduring and which can transcend the loss of faith in the world.

This vision or poetic image of loss of faith in human nature can be seen, albeit in a different light, in the work of Browning. An example would be the poem "Fra Lippon Lippi." In this poem the poet questions the nature of art and whether it should be true-to -- life or idealistic. The question is related to the way that art can best serve religious purposes and also refers to the gap between ordinary life and religious faith. The argument that runs throughout the poem is that the religious authorities are more concerned with appearances than expressing deep religious convictions.

Many of Browning's poems…

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…

dining room. day.

MOTHER, ALICIA, and BOBBY are seated around the table. ALICIA and BOBBY are eating hungrily; MOTHER is staring at the wall vacantly.

ALICIA

What's wrong, Mom?

MOTHER

(distracted)

Hmm?

ALICIA

I asked you what's wrong. You've been taring at the wall for the past five minutes.

MOTHER

It's nothing, honey.

BOBBY

It's the kitchen.

MOTHER looks sharply at BOBBY.

MOTHER

What?

BOBBY

The kitchen. it's weird in there. I don;t really like it. It feels...funny. Like someone is after you.

ALICIA

(in a spooky voice)

And if you aren't a good little boy, the spirit of the kitchen will put you in the oven and make you into Thanksgiving dinner!

ALICIA cackles wickedly. FATHER enters, dressed for work and carrying a briefcase. He kisses MOTHEr on the top of the head.

FATHER

Isn't it a little early for evil laughter? What's going on?

ALICIA

I'm just telling…

Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of ordsworth. The simplest way to summarize the ordsworthian child is to recall that well-known line from a short lyric (which would be appended as epigraph to later printings of ordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of Early Childhood") -- "the child is father of the man." Here, self-definition in adulthood, and indeed the poetic vocation, are founded in the perceived imaginative freedom of childhood.

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

hy with…

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…

Stephen lackpool, on the other hand could be considered to be from the other side of the tracks. He was a poor man and worked in ounderby's factory as a weaver. The language that Dickens' uses to describe the world that lackpool is from is quite depressing. He tells us that the Gradgrinds live at Stone Lodge. This name itself conjures up and image of a mini castle surrounded by lush, green grass. He describes Stephen lackpool's environment as a place 'where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in' and 'the whole an unnatural family, shouldering and trampling and pressing one another to death'. He even lets us know that Stephen looks much older than his forty years because of the life and environment he is from. Poor Stephen loses his job for standing up for his coworkers and also left Coketown in…

Vic Women

Women as Outsiders: A Comparison of Jane Eyre and "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"

Women are often portrayed as a marginalized "other" or outsider in literature, reflecting the degree to which they are outside the traditional patriarchal concepts of authority and power as well as (for much of Western history) outside the practical and legal means of self-sufficiency and self-direction. As the times have shifted, the particular perspective and definition of women as outsiders has also changed, as can be seen in a comparison of the central figures in Charlotte Bronte's Victorian-era novel Jane Eyre and DH Lawrence's more modern short story "The Horse Dealer's Daughter." Interestingly, both heroines are seen as similarly detached from traditional power structures, yet the degree to which Jane distances herself through her morality actually gives her power, while the increasing amorality of the times leads Mabel (Lawrence's protagonist) down a path of deeper…

Scientific Objectivity and Scientific Irascibility:

Melvin Harris' rhetoric on the perpetration of the fraud of the Maybrick Ink test

According to author Melvin Harris, one of the most infamous hoaxes ever perpetrated against the community of scientists, historians, and laypersons was that of the Maybrick 'Jack the Ripper' diaries. Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who terrorized prostitutes during the late Victorian Era, remains a great unsolved crime. The supporters of the so-called Maybrick diaries claimed to solve the Jack the Ripper murders by implicating convicted 19th century murderer John Maybrick. The diaries were 'discovered' during the late 20th century and a subsequent book by Shirley Harrison was published to support this claim that Maybrick was 'Jack.' However, Melvin Harris in his essay "The Maybrick Hoax: A fact-file for the perplexed," disputes the scientific evidence presented by the supporters of the Maybrick theory. Scientific tests of the diaries proved contradictory,…

From these examples there is a varied sense of the realism of Eliot in both her prose and her poems. The realism of Eliot demonstrates a reflection of the era. The naturalist and realism movements were ingrained in the Victorian 19th century and yet the descriptive nature of Eliot's works make them in many ways timeless. The characters are enveloped with the reader into the surroundings of events of human social drama.

orks Cited

Eliot, George. The Best-Known Novels of George Eliot: Adam Bede, the Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola. New York: Modern Library, 1940.

Eliot, George, Brother and Sister

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html

Eliot, George, Two Lovers

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html

Eliot, George in a London Drawingroom

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html

Eliot, George, Mid my Gold-brown Curls

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html

Eliot, George, Two Lovers, in Stevenson, Burton Egbert. The Home Book of Verse. At http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/george_eliot/poems/3456

Pizer, Donald. Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Revised ed. Carbondale, IL:…

He tells alton he was "surprised that among so many men of genius . . . that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret" (37). Here Shelley illuminates the weakness of man with Frankenstein's inability to control himself in this situation. Shelley placed Frankenstein in this environment because he represented "modern scientist is search of the spark to animate lifeless matter" (right 14). Like Prometheus, he is penalized for "meddling in the work of the gods" (14). Shelley foreshadows the mood of the novel when she writes, "Frightful it must be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" (Shelley xxv). Here Shelley is making a stand against certain aspects of knowledge. hile knowledge itself is not bad, the desire for knowledge to do great things for the sake of fame or…

Old Nurse's Story

Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" uses gothic imagery and Victorian themes to elucidate the role and status of women. Online critics claim the story is filled with themes of "male domination, females' sense of powerlessness due to this dominance, and the ambiguous results of women's struggle against males in the Victorian era," ("The Damning Effects of a Patriarchal Society in "The Old Nurse's Story" and "The Yellow allpaper"). Indeed, these three core elements are absolutely evident in this haunting tale about rediscovering personal identity via encounters with the past. The motif of haunting allows the past to return to the present in eerie ways. Relying on ghosts allows the author to present the suggestion that the past haunts the lives of all individuals, and that women have trouble extricating themselves from negative situations because of the constraints of dead social institutions and norms.

However, Hughes and…

"The Sleeping Beauty" by Lord Alfred Tennyson uses several narrative techniques. The first of which can be seen in the second line of the first stanza. "She lying on her couch alone" (). The phrase uses incorrect English to change the tone of the poem. Although the poem does not try to establish a rhyming pattern in the BC in the first stanza with "grown" and "form," the two words sound well together as though they rhyme. The pattern however is ABABCDCD with BC sounding like they should rhyme. All the "slumberous light" uses personification to describe light.

Many of the lines within the first stanza are filled with imagery of this woman: "A braid of pearl" and "rounded curl." She is so beautiful and magnificent that even the smallest things she does are explained or described on a grand scale. She is the epitome of beauty and wears the…

I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects," continued my benefactress; "to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood." (Bronte, 1922, p. 28)

The young girl was to be defined by her future prospects, being meager, as she was an orphan with little income, she was to be taught an even more extreme form of humility because she would have to use her charm alone to get a good match or secure a position as a governess or ladies maid. There was little love in her early years, whether with her hostile relatives or in her school. As any reader would find it was this poor disposition she gained from her early life that she had to overcome to gain her match.

Just as women were ideally brought up by…

Jack proceeds to let the audience know "…the vital importance of Being Earnest."

Distortion, Moral Conduct, and Restoration Comedy

Of course, deception and frivolity are part of a farce, and the way that ilde has written the play characters switch identities as a way for the theme to be deliberately distorted. So this bothers critic Mary McCarthy, who complained that the play has the character of a "…ferocious idyll" and insists that the only moral alternatives offered by ilde are "selfishness and servility" (Parker, 1974). By "deliberately distorting actuality" ilde is actually expressing what most people can see is a "comic version of the human condition," Parker writes in the Modern Literature Quarterly. Parker explains that though McCarthy is using standards that don't really fit with a farcical play (particularly in that era), she may be onto something with her assertion that the play is about selfishness because indeed the…

British Lit. Romanticism to Present

Following the liberating Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the age when humanity was triumphing through literature and Rousseau's philosophy was inspiring revolutions, the age of Romanticism saw the birth of some genius writers of its own. Among them, Lord Byron, a man who lived his thirty-six years with the intensity of one who wants to know it all and do it all, was a prolific writer whose works were the expression of his time.

Lord Byron was the restless soul who burnt every resource he had in his inquiries about the meaning of life. He traveled extensively and, like most of his fellow artists, was enchanted with the exotic of the East. Byron was both blessed and haunted by his genius. His image on the seashore, watching the fire lit to burn Shelly's body at Via Reggio, in Italy, is one of those images most…

One cannot build the right sort of house -- the houses are not really adequate, "Blinds, shutter, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the star. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow." The stare here is the metonymic device -- we assume it is stranger, the outside vs. The inside, but for some reason, it is also the authority involved, and one that is able to ensure adequacy. In a similar vein, the "churches were freest from it," but they offer only an homage' to safety, and use their power to shut people out from the light that "made the eyes ache" and had been inhumanly oppressive. The prison, though, is "so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive star blinked at it and left it to such refuse of reflected light as could find." The stare is…

hile the contemporary society might regard an issue such as one's marriage with the sister of his deceased wife as being absurd, this problem dominated affairs in Great Britain for most of the Victorian era. "The "Deceased ife's Sister" controversy was about the potential for triangular desire: two women as potential rivals for one man and one man desiring two women -- who, moreover, are sisters" (Chambers). Religion was particularly important in this situation, as concerns regarding rivalry between sisters go back to biblical times. The authorities saw this problem as one that would negatively affect the cleanliness of the English family and the individuals who were involved in the controversy claimed that the government should be able to impose moral laws upon British citizens.

The relationship between biological sisters was apparently one of the strongest connections from the Victorian era, thus meaning that a disruption would severely affect individuals…

Idyllic, Idolizing, Late Victorian Tears

The poem by the Victorian poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson entitled "Tears, idle tears," has the unfortunate status of having its become such a common phrase in modern parlance, that the reader finds him or herself bracing his or her ear for more and more cliches as the poem progresses. In other words, one hears that tears are idle so often, one can easily forget, not only that Tennyson said, "I know not what they mean," but that the poem attempts to express the seriousness of futility of grief, or outward displays of affection by calling tears idle, in that they do no real work in the world. The use of 'idle' in multiple variances of meaning, from impractical and lazy, to idyllic, to idolizing is in fact quite profound and sophisticated, yielding a poem with a compact linguistic and stylistic structure.

It is also…

Particularly, as
slavery and segregation had contributed to the establishment of a wealthy
ownership class in the United States, so had the nature of its 20th century
consumer culture helped to enforce separate racial societies. Thus, even
as white women struggled for recognition and equal rights, the climb from
domestic servitude would be a great deal more arduous for a female African
American culture which had been conditions through centuries of slavery
toward assumed domestic servitude. To this extent, the parallels which
Odem's text draws between slavery and female inequality bear a shared
relationship in defining America's gendered culture.
Today, women have in many ways been relieved of the domestic roles
once foisted upon them with no outlet of relief. Indeed, it is
increasingly common and standardized to find women in all walks of
professionalism and at positions of authority. Moreover, the premise that
the woman should be expected to…

gender have influenced the historic development of science in the west, as reason and science have long been seen as male traits. Similarly, gender ideals such as the characterization of females as maternal, associated with nature, irrational, and week have been reflected in scientific literature. Today, science continues to be influenced by ideas of gender, as literature reflects gender biases, and female scientists routinely must challenge gender biases.

Many of the ideals the influence the historic development science come from the Enlightenment, a time during the 17th and 18th centuries where reason was seen to be a driving force for progress. Enlightened men were rational, and sought happiness, knowledge, and freedom. Given this emphasis on rationality, and the association of women with the home and emotion, women were largely excluded from the ideals of the Enlightenment. The rational affairs of humankind were thought to be left to men, who acted…

com). Sedate it is definitely not. e read, "Even from this distance the tower's abundant ornamentation is clear. Its Northern Italian Gothic style adds exotic elements to the neighborhood's skyline." (iboston.org). Trinity Church cannot be overlooked when examining the history and architecture of Boston. It is said, "James O'Gorman described Trinity as 'a cultural event of the first importance in American history'" (O'Gorman qtd. In iboston.org). Trinity church is significant because it "represents a departure of the Boston's mind from its Puritan past, and emergence of American creativity as a force in architecture" (iboston.org). The churches of Boston are not special to Bostonians. It is written in the Catholic Historical Review that in 2005, "The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced... that it had included the Historic Catholic Churches of Greater Boston, Massachusetts, in its 2005 list of America's Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places" (Catholic Historical Review). The churches of…

Embattled Paradise by Arlene Skolnick

Embattled Paradise

Title, Author, Publication Date

Arlene S. Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty, 1993

Book Summary

The conflation of the evolution of the family and revolutions in society are chronicled in Skolnick's book in an optimistic and realistic treatment. With deep longitudinal research of families extending from childhood years in the 1920s, the book is objective and informed. Skolnick's interpretation is both eloquent and enlightening. With a strong research base and a social scientist's eye, Skolnick reasons that the American family has not been devastated. Countering the political right, Skolnick asserts that the changes in American family life reflect and resonate with sea change in society. In her words, "Changes in our hearts and minds are responses to large-scale social change, rather than a fall from moral grace." Skolnick firmly grounds the changes she discusses in history, economics, politics,…

Virginia Woolf knew there were deaths visible to the public and deaths that occurred deep within one's heart and mind to which no one else is witness. The Victorian period was an incubator for the private death of every woman's thoughts and ideas. Woolf laments, "There is no woman in the Cabinet; nor in any responsible post. All the idea makers who are in a position to make ideas effective are men…Why not bury the head in the pillow, plug the ears, and cease this futile activity of idea-making?" (1Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid).

In her essay Evening Over Essex: Reflections in a Motor Car, Woolf captured the sequence that kept repeating in her life -- a sequence all too common during the period in which Woolf lived: "Also there was disappearance and the death of the individual. The vanishing road and the window lit for a second…

Chekhov employed an attitude similar to most nineteenth century short story writers, as he attempted to captivate the reader's attention through putting across concepts that would make it especially difficult for him or her to keep his or her state of mind. The lawyer and the banker both go through intense emotional and physical occurrences as they struggle to find their personal identity. The fact that the banker eventually comes to feel sorrow for his thinking is essential because the story provides readers with a turn of events as characters experience significant change as a result of observing that their previous perspective concerning the world was not necessarily accurate.

The moment when the reader becomes acquainted with the fact that the lawyer has won when considering his state of mind as he left confinement is essential for the short story. This concept and the fact that the banker starts to…

" Instead of establishing a set rhythm as with his rhyme scheme, he punctuates in order to delineate an end of a particular episode within the poem which also helps the audience understand when and where his narration changes. Each period concludes an establish section of the poem, the first period ends on "Over her, thrashing and thrusting until he was spent." (ln 8), which importantly ends his narrative of Victorian sex. The following breaks each connote the ending of one thought tangent and the beginning of another. The implication on narrative voice occurs through the shifting of his speaking tone and message after periods. In his first address the narrator is informative, the second he is reflective and the third he places mockery on contemporary standards. Thus, punctuation in this case is use to delineate what specific theme and audience he is address. The use of commas is also…

Karel Reisz' 1981 motion picture The French Lieutenant's Woman is based on the novel and the director also seems to be appreciative in regard to postmodernism and existentialism when considering the elements that he introduces in the film. Reisz created his film by designing a story within a story as he presents viewers with an account involving the actors playing Victorian characters. The director is not apparently concerned about criticizing a Victorian society, as he apparently wants audiences to think about how dilemmas present in the nineteenth century could also emerge in the 1980s. Reisz was well aware that he needed to address existentialism in his film, and he knew that he needed to do so by combining concepts contemporary to him and elements originating in Victorian England.

While Fowles used the narrator's voice with the purpose of intervening at different moments in the novel, Reisz has characters in the…

Even though many sought change, it took many decades for their reform to take hold and of course, like all change there were many set backs along the way. One popular writer of the time quipped that the women of New York City should be paid as street sweepers for each stroll they took. Reform of the era's fashions may have been hard to come by because dress reform was a dangerous topic. The Victorian era was a male dominated culture intent on maintaining the boundaries between the masculine and feminine genders.

The United States in the nineteenth century was a time when abandoning the accepted norms of fashion could provoke violence and ridicule. Even clothing for children was slow to change. Infants were almost habitually dressed in long night gowns and older children in both urban and rural families wore poorly fitted dress like clothes until they could work…

uthering Heights

Emily Bronte is an author who was born in 1818. She is known for publishing her only novel, uthering Heights, in 1847 under the name of Ellis Bell, a year before her death. Her stellar work of art, uthering Heights, narrates her experience with both the Romantic periods, which lasted from years 1785 to 1830, to that early Victorian era, from 1830 to 1848 (Landers).

The Theme of Love in uthering Heights

The uthering Heights is a passionate story of a love triangle involving two family generations that intermarry. These families are the Earnshaws and the Lintons. The love tale includes a technique of a story within a story, and is narrated by two different characters. It is of importance to note that the two characters also happen to have different knowledge about the two families. One character has a profound knowledge of the families. Her name is…

Further, the modern novel also focuses on issues of social and historical change and the use of such points-of-view as stream of consciousness. Other typical characteristics of modernism are open form, free verse, discontinuous narrative, juxtaposition, classical allusions, unconventional metaphors and the bringing in of other cultures and languages.

Clearly, the experiences of the Great War had a lasting effect on its generation of writers. Many of them served in the military during the war, such as Ernest Hemingway, and witnessed the atrocities personally. The disillusionment felt by this generation at the notion of so many deaths for no real reason created a mentality of pessisims and questioning of society as it has been. This sense of disillusionment was expressed in their writing, where the great writers shunned the traditions of the Romantic and Victorian eras and instead created works that focused on human misery, suffering and cruelty. They incorporated…

London has a rich architectural history. Some of the most popular buildings today come from the 19th century when Victorian Gothic architecture was popular. St. Pancras New Church offers a take at Greek revival style with a brick build, faced with Portland stone. Another Victorian style building, Manchester Town Hall, while built in the same century as St. Pancras, has its differences thanks to the rapid expansion and accompanying pollution so frequently seen in Victorian cities. Both structures hallmarks of British Victorian architecture, but also indelibly varied and indicative of the skill and engineering of the architects of the era.

Pancras Paris Church, also called St. Pancras New Church is a Greek evival church located in St. Pancras, London. The structure was constructed in three years from 1819-1822 and designed by Henry William and William Inwood. Placed along the south side of Euston oad and the northern boundary of Bloomsbury,…

Nights at the Circus" is a fairy tale in the modern times. It revolves around the circus star, Sophie Fevvers, who is half-human and half-swan, and who is the passionate object of professional and moral pursuit of Jack Walser, a devout journalist who must seriously investigate into the truth or falsity of this half-human, half-animal phenomenon. Fevvers is surrounded by equally phenomenal characters, such as the prophesying pig named "Sybil,," the clown offo, the circus owner Colonel Kearney, Mignon and Lizzie. Wasler's intense investigation leads him to join the circus team, disguised as a clown, in order to complete and satisfy his obsession of getting to the bottom of Fevver's mysterious person and reality. In the course of their togetherness -- which begins in London, proceeds to Petersburg and Siberia and returns to London --, it is Wasler who transforms from his selfish point of reference to a childlike one,…

CO Chanel

Today, the term "designer" is too often associated with people who churn out clothing lines every season. In this sense, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel stands as a breed apart. Fashion analysts today attribute the birth of modern fashion to Coco Chanel. She is viewed as a woman and an artist ahead of her time. Her clothing influenced not only the way women dress, but the way women define femininity. In this sense, Chanel is very much a part of the modern artistic movement, along with the likes of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau.

This paper examines the many facets of Coco Chanel's artistry. The first part of the paper looks at Chanel as a product of her social environment, discussing the factors that have contributed to the evolution of Chanel's style and clothing designs. The next part then looks at Chanel's designs and choice of fabrics. Chanel never defined…

An empty self wishes for nothing more than to e guided and taken care of, easy prey for an abuse therapist, or even one who is not intentionally abusive but is not trained to recognize and understand the underlying issues. Wide and varied research supports Cushman's theory on this point, proving that decontextualization of the individual, the devaluation of the patience, a belief in the universality of a therapeutic technology and the encouragement of idealization can all lead to therapeutic abuse (608). Cushman compares patients who are exploited by life-style therapy to people who are victimized by cults. Their empty selves make them susceptible to feeling "transformed" because they cannot see themselves within a larger communal matrix. Cushman argues that a main component of preventing this kind of abuse is part of what he is after in writing this article -- straightforward talk about life-style solutions and their possible dangers.…

Nightingale met a friend Richard Monckton Miles in 1842. Then in 1844, Nightingale asked Dr. Howe if she could do a charitable job in a hospital like the catholic nuns, and refused her marriage to her cousin, Henry Nicholson. By 1845, Nightingale started training herself in the nearby Salisbury Hospital, but her parents were not happy about it, seeing nursing as an inappropriate job for a well to do woman like their daughter. In the next year, Nightingale began teaching herself from the government blue books. In the meantime, Monckton Miles wanted to marry her, but soon she travelled to Rome, Italy with friends to avoid him. Britain unlimited, 2009). Finally, after she attended the Herbert's Charmouth convalescent home, her knowledge was recognized. In 1849, after refusing finally to Miles proposal, she decided to go to Egypt while accompanying her friends, the Bracebridges. They then travelled through Europe, and ended…

Throughout her novels and short stories, Jewett uses the weakness or malicious of the male characters to allow her female characters more power and therefore independence. Many scholars also believe that Jewett was also commenting on the decreased importance of the old New England male image of fisherman and provider of the household. As New England itself became industrialized, the role of the sole provider as the male failed to keep its significance which would then increase the separation between male and females. Therefore, Jewett sometimes intentionally paralyzes the male characters within New England contexts, and then places more social and economic power within the hands of the women of New England; who she portrays as much more adaptable then their male counterparts.

In the midst of this failing male patriarchal system, Jewett presents a myriad of strong female characters who are more than amble to handle life without such…

Henry James's work is not only a book about bad parenting, as it is not a book about relationships. It is about a fragmented and decadent society where normal values, such as caring for your child and offering her a loving home, become relative. This relativism of values leaves the character without a norm and without intrinsic knowledge about doing what is right.

Maisie's parents are not necessarily bad people in a complex meaning of the concept of "bad," just as Mrs. Wix, no matter how much the reader gets attached to her because of the way she adores Maisie, is not a sublimely good person. At least, despite developing interesting characters, James's objective is not to define good and bad and categorize his characters accordingly. I believe his goal is to see what the characters are doing and how they are behaving in a particular societal context, namely that…

).

Waverley Park was designed for and reflected a demographic shift in Melbourne's population away from the inner suburbs to the south and east. Waverley Park was a symbol of, and a contributor to, the shift of the locus of power within the Victorian, later Australian, Football League from the clubs to the league, a change whose consequences are still being felt in 2000. The stadium reflected an Australian tradition of multi-sports facilities despite its genesis in Australian ules, both in its conception and subsequent development. Waverley Park played a significant role in the development of post-war Australian football, cricket and baseball. In April 2000 it was nominated for the Victorian Heritage egister by the City of Greater Dandenong (Hay et al.).

Waverley reflected also a major geographic shift, taking the game away from the traditional inner urban areas to outlying suburbs where a more affluent society with discretionary income…

This reveals the more liberated ideals of the west and of the pioneer culture. First, Alexandra envisions herself "being lifted and carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from pain." The masculine figure takes the place of the gossamer female angel. She is about to be subsumed by the ethereal lover. "hen he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was covered." Here, gender roles are again reversed as they are in the previous passage when the man is the angel. The man is now being veiled, his "face was covered." Veil is usually used to conceal the woman's but not the man's…

accepting slavery in the west may never be uncovered to a level of acceptance of those who suffered under the terrible treatment. Slavery was an unjust and evil order which structured society on the basis of skin color, nationality, and land ownership. While understanding this concept is difficult to some, alternate theories which have been brought forth over the past three decades as a result of the merging of advancing sociology, psychological, and political studies are even more difficult to comprehend, unless the proponents of the same are still holding an axe which needs to be ground.

One such theory is expounded in White on Black. The article, which propounds to be a piece of scholarly research, attempts to piece together apples and oranges in order to create a reasonable theory. But what seems to be more the object of the article is to give black Americans, and blacks world…

People living double lives and the adult themes associated with many of the main characters' forays were hard to talk about openly at the time of its writing. But the play allowed people an insight into others' lives, and also gave them an outlet for their own thoughts, since the Victorian era was relatively repressive. This is also important to remember when considering the 2002 Parker adaptation. This version had the same themes, but in a modern times contextual way. This helps current audiences relate to the same feelings and emotions that 1890's audiences were able to.

The Parker adaptation takes Wilde's original concept and sheds new light on it. While it retains the same setting, the lines in the Parker version are delivered by modern actors and actresses. n a way, it is entirely impossible to capture the exact same meaning, tone, structure, and themes if the linguistics are…

Gende in Poety / Liteatue Lesson

Lesson Duation

mins

Rational: This is an intoduction to the gende issues which wee so pevalent in the Victoian ea, and a backdop to show why they still exist today and the ham they can inflict.

Syllabus Outcome: This pat of the lesson helps meet outcome 1, o the ability to intepet meanings and themes within texts. By using abstact thinking pocesses, the students will make connections between the texts pesented and show how they ae, o ae not elated. Accoding to the eseach, "A student esponds to and composes inceasingly sophisticated and sustained texts fo undestanding, intepetation, citical analysis and pleasue" (Boad of Studies fo NSW 2003 p 32).

Syllabus Content: This will help meet outcome 4, whee "a student selects and uses languages foms and featues, and stuctues of texts accoding to diffeent puposes, audiences and contexts, and descibes and explains thei…

Domestic Prison

Gender oles and Marriage

The Domestic Prison: James Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) and "The Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin depict marriage as a prison for both men and women from which the main characters fantasize about escaping. Louise Mallard is similar to the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is that they are literally imprisoned in a domestic world from which there is no escape but death or insanity. As in all of this early feminist fiction, the women characters are defined as 'sick', either physically or mentally, for even imaging a situation on which they might be free, for they are allowed no lives of their own. Louise Mallard was overjoyed when she heard that her husband was killed in an accident,…

In this scene Anna points at Sanderson and identifies him as "the man who betrayed me," but it makes no difference. She is banished. Sanderson is not. David, the Squire's son who is in love with her, is shocked and anguished to learn the truth about his beloved, that she is not a pure and moral woman. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that Anna is "wanton" and immoral -- she probably likes sex and cannot control her baser instincts.

If a woman becomes impure as a result of sexual activity, this implies a societal view of sex as low and dirty. At the same time it is juicy and fun to gossip about Anna's scandalous behavior, as Griffith clearly shows when Martha tells the Squire and appears to be tremendously self-satisfied in her total condemnation of Anna. Men, because they are men, cannot be expected to resist, but women because…

Indian Architecture

In the photographs provided, the building's architectural context has quite obviously changed over time.

The oldest-looking photo of the three shows little development in the surrounding area, while the placement of trees on the building's immediate ground looks artful.

The other two photos are more recent, as one shows subsequent development in the area behind the building.

One give a glimpse of a large white building whose twentieth-century style does not sit entirely harmoniously with the Victorian-seeming construction of the building under consideration -- and also shows broken windows visible in the main central tower.

The other photo displays recent blight and disrepair on a smaller building -- advertising posters, missing bricks and roof tiles -- although it's not clear whether this smaller building is part of the larger complex around the building under consideration.

One other noteworthy bit of context can be glimpsed in the oldest of…

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Mather 22)

Hawthorne clearly stepped away from the Puritan ethic by consistently alluding to the existence of the earthly supernatural. Though this was a fear of the Puritans, clearly it was associated with Satan and possession of the living. In Hawthorne's works the supernatural was associated with less grand sources, such as those seen in Young Goodman Brown. (Hoeltje 39-40) Hawthorne allows his characters to explore concepts that would have been those deemed heretical within the Puritan settings of the works.

In The Birth-Mark, Hawthorne associates the active expulsion of character traits of humanity clearly results in the death of the whole.

The line of divergence in "The Birth Mark" is indicated by its name. e all have our birth-marks, -- traits of character, which may be temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the background, but which cannot be eradicated and are certain to reappear at unguarded moments, or on…

History Of Psychology and Hysteria

Hysteria, symbolize women in the field of psychology during history and in many different cultures for the reason that the issues that society goes through are reflected in the area of psychology. Hysteria has been broken down into various parts in history that had to change influences on the diagnosis and its implication for women. History has shown that parallel patterns can be observed in the growth of menstruation and sexuality. Hysteria is unquestionably the first mental disorder attributable to women, precisely labeled in the second era BC. This was until Freud looked at it as being an entirely female illness. Above 4000 years of history, this syndrome was reflected from two viewpoints which were the scientific point-of-view and the demonological standpoint.

What is Hysteria?

esearch shows that Hysteria was the ?rst psychological disorder that was labeled at women. This condition is known for having…

American Moderns: Fashioning a New National Culture

Literature and historians alike look to the past to define the present. In many ways, one can look at the defining moments in American history to understand the foundation in which today's culture exists. This paper asks one to examine the specific period of time after the Civil ar and how the men and women born of these decades until the First orld ar created a new American culture. This involves looking at the work of historians like Christine Stansell in order to gain a better understanding of the pillars and forces that shaped American culture at the time.

It is apparent that times were changing drastically from the Victorian era to the Modern era. People's morals and values were changing as writers and artists pushed the envelope and introduced new ideas into the mainstream. It can also be assumed that these "new…

These changes would not come to fruition until the omen's Suffrage Movement. However, the treatment of Sarah demonstrates that although she broke law and strict gender roles, rather than punishment, she received honor and the pension that she deserved. omen who attempted to circumvent the established rules would often find themselves shamed and ridiculed, or in some cases, charged criminally. A soldier's camp was not thought to be the place for a woman of high social status.

omen who broke the mold were an insult to mainstream society. omen who took on male roles were not considered to be socially acceptable, but the fact that Sarah was not court marshaled, but instead received her pension that was due demonstrates that the underpinnings of a shift in societal attitudes was beginning to weave itself into the fabric of society and the traditional definition of masculinity was being threatened (Vettel-Becker). The first…

40"Lie close," Laura said, 41 Pricking up her golden head:

42"We must not look at goblin men, 43We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?"

46"Come buy," call the goblins

Hobbling down the glen.

48"Oh," cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura, 49 You should not peep at goblin men."

Lizzie cover'd up her eyes, 51 Cover'd close lest they should look;

Laura rear'd her glossy head, 53 and whisper'd like the restless brook:

54"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie, 55 Down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket, 57 One bears a plate, 58 One lugs a golden dish

Of many pounds weight.

How fair the vine must grow

Whose grapes are so luscious;

How warm the wind must blow

Through those fruit bushes."

64"No," said Lizzie, "No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us, 66 Their evil gifts would harm us."…

Graves, R.N. (1995). Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain." The Explicator, 53 (2): 96-99.

In this essay, the eventual unity of the iceberg and the Titanic is described as a kind of love relationship. Ironically, the supposedly unsinkable ship and the iceberg were 'born for one another' to create a historical, real life metaphor of the folly of humanity. The word 'consummation' at the end of the poem is given great significance. There is a kind of humor to how the jarring hemispheres -- the 'shaken world' -- makes the crash seem like a common wedding night metaphor -- 'the earth moved.' The unity of ship and iceberg is like a sexual union of an overly willing groom and a cold bride. The ship is an illustration of the Victorian folly of trying to overcome the natural world -- both the coldness of the sea and also human sexuality.

What…

woman's rights were little recognized. As a creative source of human life, she was confined to the home as a wife and mother. Moreover, she was considered intellectually, emotionally and spiritually inferior to man (Compton's 1995), even wicked, as in the case of mythical Pandora, who let loose plagues and misery in a box. This was the early concept of woman in the West as an adjunct to man, although the woman in the East was not without property and individual rights and freedoms. Just the same, a woman was subject to man and could not own property, could not remarry and boys were preferred to girls. ut when allowed some rights, such as during the Middle Ages, a woman proved what she could achieve. A woman from an aristocratic family or line, for example, possessed power and prestige like a man in her class. England's Queen Elizabeth in the…

In chapter "Majesty," Colley argues that with George III in the late eighteen-century, the British began to define royal culture as interlinked with patriotism. The royal family became a focus of patriotic attention and George III was beloved by his people. In chapter "Womanpower," Colley brings the readers' attention to the role of ordinary women who became active participants in defining national identity. Women, she argues, were not confined to the household but became increasingly vocal about their role in the society. In "Manpower," Colley discusses how joining the war efforts against foreign invaders became a symbol of patriotism, especially for the Scots and Welshmen who also thought economic benefits in this endeavor.

The final chapter and the conclusion deal with the reforms of the early eighteenth century and the early Victorian era. The British passed the Catholic emancipation, compromising Protestantism's role in cementing British identity (p. 361), but the…

James does imply in the prologue of the Turn of the Screw that there is a deeper meaning to the governess' narrative than merely a straightforward ghost story. So it is unlikely that, as some critics claim, it was merely meant to be a simple ghost story with no deeper meaning or symbolism. However interpretation of the tale has sometimes been taken to the opposite extreme as well, with critics reading far too much in certain dialogue, passages and references than the author likely ever intended. Ultimately, Sigmund Freud would probably have a field day interpreting the sexual repression of the critics who have analyzed this novella so intently.

orks Cited

Cefalu, Paul a. "Rethinking the Discourse of Colonialism in Economic Terms: Shakespeare's the Tempest, Captain John Smith's Virginia Narratives, and the English Response to Vagrancy." Shakespeare Studies. 28 (2000): 85-119.

James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw: And Other…