Search Our Essay Database

Essay Instructions: Explain what specific political, social, educational, religious, economic, and/or legal issues were raised for Victorians under the topic of "The Women Question." Talk specifically about Ellis and Mill; and illustrate one treatment of some aspects of this topic through analysis of relevant portions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. Then examine how some of these issues are treated in earlier literature by Romantic writer Mary Wollstonecraft and at the end of the century by Conrad in Heart of Darkness.

Essay Instructions: I want you to respond to this question in a professional essay form.

1. Using three different texts from any of these genres (you may choose one genre or more)??"novels, poetry, non-fiction prose??"discuss the 19th-century critique of marriage. Draw upon at least two authors from your Theory Sources list.

Note: Refer to 3 or 4 literary texts and 2 to 3 authors from Theory Sources list.
The list to refer to is:
Field: Nineteenth-century British Literature with a concentration on the Victorian Period. My emphasis will be on Women Victorian Writers.

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.


Poetry
41. Arnold, Matthew. "Isolation: To Marguerite." 1857.
42. ---. "To Marguerite: Continued." 1857.
43. ---. "Thyrsis." 1866.
44. ---. "Dover Beach." 1867.
45. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. 1865.
46. Browning, Robert. "Porphyria's Lover." 1836.
47. ---. "My Last Duchess." 1842.
48. Byron, Lord. "Darkness." 1816.
49. ---. Don Juan. 1819 ??" 1824.
50. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 1798.
51. ---. Christabel. 1798, 1800.
52. ---. " Kubla Khan." 1797 / 1818.
53. Keats, John. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad." 1819.
54. ---. "Lamia." 1819.
55. ---. "Ode to a Nightingale." 1819.
56. ---. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." 1820.
57. ---. "The Eve of St. Agnes." 1820.
58. Patmore, Coventry. "Angel in the House." 1854 / 1862.
59. Rossetti, Christina. "Goblin Market." 1832.
60. ---. "The Prince's Progress." 1866.
61. Tennyson, Lord Alfred. The Idylls of the King. 1856 ??" 85.
62. ---. The Princess. 1847.
63. ---. "The Sleeping Beauty." 1830.
64. Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. 1798.
65. ---. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. 1800.
66. Yeats, William Butler. Legend Poems.
Non-Fiction Prose
67. Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1867 ??" 8.
68. Besant, Annie. Marriage, As It Was, As It Is. And As It Should Be: A Plea for Reform. 1878.
69. ---. The Political Status of Women. 1874.
70. Coleridge, Samuel. Biographia Literaria. 1817.
71. 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.
72. Mill, John Stuart. "The Subjection of Women." 1869.
73. Nightingale, Florence. Cassandra. 1979.
74. Oliphant, Margaret. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant. 2002
75. Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies. "Of kings' Treasuries" and "Of Queens' Gardens. the" 1865.
76. Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. 1983.
77. Wollstonecraft, Mary. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." 1792.
78. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929.
79. ---. Professions for Women. 1931.
Theory
80. Basch, Francoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel.
81. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex.
82. Beer, Patricia. Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.
83. Branca, Patricia. Silent Sisterhood. Middle Class Women in the Victorian Home.
84. Burstyn, Joan. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood.
85. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
86. Cavallaro, Dana. French Feminist Theory: An Introduction.
87. Coward, Rosalind. "Are Women's Novels Feminist Novels." The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory.
88. Gagnier, Regenia. Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920.
89. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth ??" Century Literary Imagination.
90. Gorsky, Susan. "The Gentle Doubters: Images of Women in English Women's Novels, 1840 ??" 1920." Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives.
91. Harding, Sandra. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies.
92. Jenkins, Ruth. Reclaiming Myths of Power: Women Writers and the Victorian Spiritual Crisis.
93. 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.
94. Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism.
95. Moses, Claire and Claire Goldberg. French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century.
96. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing.
97. Foster, Shirley. Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual.
98. Hoagwood, Terence Allan and Kathryn Ledbetter. "Colour'd Shadows": Contexts in Publishing, Printing, and Reading Nineteenth ??" Century British Women Writers.
99. Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind.
100. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England.
101. Thompson, Nicola Diane. Victorian Writers and the Woman Questions.

Essay Instructions: Directions:
In a 3-5 page paper, write an argument using one of the three prompts below. Your
argument should feature a sound thesis statement and ample supporting evidence that
proposes a significant idea about one (or more) of the texts we?ve read.

2. Without considering the context in which the text was written, perform a close reading
(interpretation) of anything that we?ve read in the Victorian unit. You will likely need to
engage in both a literal and figurative interpretation. Because you only have 3-5 pages to
work with, choose the passage you want to interpret wisely. You?re probably better off
interpreting a smallish piece of text than interpreting a largeish chunk of text.

**BELOW IS THE MATERIAL WE HAVE READ AND WHAT YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE FROM. ONCE YOU HAVE CHOSEN ONE PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHICH ONE IT IS SO THAT I CAN COPY AND SEND OVER THE PAGES FROM THE BOOK. IT HAS BE SOURCED FROM THE BOOK!**

? from ?Captains of Industry,? Thomas Carlyle, 1083-1088.
? Chapters 2 and 3 of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, 1115-1121.
? from ?The Condition of the Working Class ?? Engels, 1101-1108.
? Chapter 3 of ?On the Origin of Species,? Charles Darwin, 1272-1277.
? from ?A Walk in a Workhouse?, Charles Dickens, 1425-1430.
? Respond:
?Week 8 (3/10): Victorian Poets (43 pages, 11 pages per day)
? ?Sonnets from the Portuguese,? Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1145-1148.
? ?Aurora Leigh,? Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1155-1174.
? Robert Browning, poems from 1325-1355.
? ?Dover Beach,? Matthew Arnold, 1562-1563.

Essay Instructions: For the term paper which deals with the treatment/representation of women or children in nineteenth-century Vitorian literature. This theme should be applied on two of these works:

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Princess (1847)

Elizabeth Browning, Aurora Leigh (1857)

Elizabeth Gaskell, Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)

Matthew Arnold, Selected Poems

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860)

Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (1878)


John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1862)

R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island

William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890)

H. G. Wells. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)

A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901)





This essay should use secondary sources, at least one of which should be in print.
BOOKS RELATED TO WOMEN AND THEIR POSITION IN VICTORIAN SOCIETY: A RANDOM SELECTION

Following are samples of critical texts dealing with different aspects of women and narration as they can be applied to a study of Victorian literature.


Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, 1982.

Calder, Jenni. Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction, intro David Daiches. New York: Oxford UP, 1976.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, 1982.

Habakkuk, John. Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership; 1650-1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Horstman., Allen. Victorian Divorce. London: Croom Helm, 1985.

Hughes, Winifred. The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s, 1980.

Langland, Elizabeth. Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.

Trodd, Anthea. Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel. London: Macmillan Press, 1989.

Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, 1972

__________,ed., A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of the Victorian Woman, 1977.

__________. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1920, 1985.