Essay Instructions: You have to respond to the question and illustrate your argument with texts from the period( I will refer to a list to help you) and examine the critical and theoretical stances that inform your thesis.
I suggest that you refer to 4 or five literary texts and 2 or 3 critical ones from the following list:
Fiction
1. Austen, Jane. Emma. Northanger Abbey. 1803.
2. ---. Pride and Prejudice. 1813.
3. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, Aurora Floyd. 1863.
4. ---. Lady Audley's Secret. 1863.
5. Brontë, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 1848.
6. Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847.
7. ---. Shirley. 1849.
8. ---. Villette. 1853.
9. Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847.
10. Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh. (Written between 1873 ??" 1884) & (Published in 1903).
11. Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. The King with Two Faces. 1897.
12. Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. 1860.
13. ---. The Moonstone. 1868.
14. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. 1850.
15. ---. Hard Times. 1854.
16. ---. Great Expectations. 1861.
17. Eliot, George. Adam Bede. 1859.
18. ---. The Mill on the Floss. 1860.
19. ---. Middlemarch. 1874.
20. Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. 1848.
21. ---. Ruth. 1853.
22. ---. Sylvia's Lovers. 1863.
23. Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. 1878.
24. ---. The Trumpet ??" Major. 1880.
25. ---. Jude the Obscure. 1895.
26. ---. Tess.1891
27. James, Henry. Portrait of the Lady. 1881.
28. ---. The Turn of the Screw. 1898.
29. Meredith, George. Diana of the Crossways. 1885.
30. Scott, Sir Walter. Waverly. 1814.
31. ---. Ivanhoe. 1819.
32. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818.
33. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897.
34. Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1848.
35. ---. The Rose and the Ring. 1854.
36. Trollope, Anthony. Can you Forgive Her? 1865.
37. ---. Ayala's Angel. 1878.
38. Wilde, Oscar. The Canterville Ghost. 1887.
39. ---. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1891.
40. Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. 1861.
Non-Fiction Prose
41. Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1867 ??" 8.
42. Besant, Annie. Marriage, As It Was, As It Is. And As It Should Be: A Plea for Reform. 1878.
43. ---. The Political Status of Women. 1874.
44. Coleridge, Samuel. Biographia Literaria. 1817.
45. Hamilton, Susan, ed. Criminals, Idiots, Women, & Minors, second edition: Victorian Writing by Women On Women.
--- Cobbe, Frances Power. Celibacy V. Marriage. 1862.
--- Cobbe, Frances Power. Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors: Is the Classification Sound? A Discussion on the Laws Concerning the Property of Married Women. 1869.
--- Caird, Mona. "Marriage." 1888.
46. Mill, John Stuart. "The Subjection of Women." 1869.
47. Nightingale, Florence. Cassandra. 1979.
48. Oliphant, Margaret. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant. 2002.
49. Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies. "Of kings' Treasuries" and "Of Queens' Gardens. the" 1865.
50. Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. 1983.
51. Wollstonecraft, Mary. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." 1792.
52. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929.
53. ---. Professions for Women. 1931.
Theory
54. Basch, Francoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel.
55. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex.
56. Beer, Patricia. Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.
57. Branca, Patricia. Silent Sisterhood. Middle Class Women in the Victorian Home.
58. Burstyn, Joan. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood.
59. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
60. Cavallaro, Dana. French Feminist Theory: An Introduction.
61. Coward, Rosalind. "Are Women's Novels Feminist Novels." The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory.
62. Gagnier, Regenia. Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920.
63. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth ??" Century Literary Imagination.
64. Gorsky, Susan. "The Gentle Doubters: Images of Women in English Women's Novels, 1840 ??" 1920." Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives.
65. Harding, Sandra. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies.
66. Jenkins, Ruth. Reclaiming Myths of Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis.
67. Kolodny, Annette. "Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism." The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory.
68. Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism.
69. Moses, Claire and Claire Goldberg. French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century.
70. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing.
71. Foster, Shirley. Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual.
72. Hoagwood, Terence Allan and Kathryn Ledbetter. "Colour'd Shadows": Contexts in Publishing, Printing, and Reading Nineteenth ??" Century British Women Writers.
73. Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind.
74. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England.
75. Thompson, Nicola Diane. Victorian Writers and the Woman Questions.
As I mentioned you don't have to use all this list. This list is to refer to some literary texts( fiction and non-fiction) as well as critical and theoretical ones. You are not supposed to refer the whole list.