Victorian Period Essays

  • Laws, Lawyers, and Punishment in the Victorian Period

    753 Words  | 2 Pages

    Laws, Lawyers, and Punishment in the Victorian Period The Law •At the beginning of the 19th century there were 3 types of law in England: -Common Law: the “law of the land”(Pool 127), which was built up over many centuries *referred to in order to determine such cases as the validity of a contract or whether or not someone was guilty of murder •3 courts that heard cases: -King’s Bench- criminal cases -Eschequer- disputes about money -Common Pleas- disputes between citizens

  • Mothers of the Victorian Period

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mothers of the Victorian Period There is no doubt in the fact that motherhood has changed throughout history in the way that it is practiced and perceived. Although hard to classify motherhood as an "easy" task in any time period, mothers of the Victorian period were among those who have had it the hardest. For example, Natalie McKnight, author of Suffering Mothers in Mid-Victorian Novels, states: "When I first began studying the lives of Victorian women, I sympathized with the many women who

  • The Degradation of Wives in the Victorian Period

    2496 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Degradation of Wives in the Victorian Period The degradation of the married woman in the Victorian era existed not only in that she was stripped of all her legal rights but also that no obligations were placed in her realm. Upon marriage, Victorian brides relinquished all rights to property and personal wealth to their husbands. Women were, under the law, “legally incompetent and irresponsible.” A married woman was entitled to no legal recourse in any matter, unless it was sponsored and

  • The Victorian Period and Literature

    1327 Words  | 3 Pages

    not included (Cruttenden 86). The culture of a time period can affect the future in many distinguishing ways such as with wonderful works of art, or with advances in technology and science. The term Victorian exemplifies things and proceedings during the presiding of Queen Victoria; Victoria became queen of Great Britain and Ireland in 1837 (World Book 320). Queen Victoria’s control ended in 1901when she passed away (Holt 874). “The Victorian age was not one, not single, simple, or unified, only

  • Poetry Styles of the Victorian Period

    1166 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Victorian Period (1833-1901) brought about the expansion of Britain’s booming economy. In Britain, around the beginning of the Victorian Period, the consequence of industrialism brought much unrest across the land. The factories were notorious for their horrible working conditions, and the common workers’ housing was atrocious. Victorians were struggling with religious, philosophical, and social ramifications (854-856). The complex background to what was happening in Britain at the time led

  • The School System in the Victorian Period

    1178 Words  | 3 Pages

    The school system in the Victorian period School systems throughout the Victorian time period changed, making learning a requirement for everyone, not just the rich families, or the boys. Education was less advanced; they didn’t have a stable school system. The schools didn’t have the technology we have today. The Victorian school systems are different from the current system. The main people to attend school then were the boys. Most poor children did not go to day school, and by 1831, 1,250,000

  • Fading Faith: An Analysis of the Victorian Period

    1809 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Victorian period began with the accession of Queen Victoria; when she gained power in the throne. The era can be separated into three sections: the early Victorians, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the late Victorians. Some early Victorian writers include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Tennyson Alfred, and Robert Browning. Also, the idealism of this time was utilitarian. Nature was viewed as cruel and harsh, which is the complete opposite from the Romantic period. Some key themes included evolution

  • The Victorian Period And Modernist Poetry In The Victorian Era

    1017 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Victorian Era began in 1837, when Victoria became Queen, and this era ended around her death on January 22, 1901. This was a great era, because it brought peace and prosperity to Britain. The Victorian Era brought a rapid change and developments in nearly all aspects. This era brought many new writers and many different styles of writing. This era brought great writers like William Blake, Lord Byron, and John Keats. Victorian Era poetry was a mix between the Romantic period and Modernist poetry

  • Heartless Capitalism Exposed in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

    2293 Words  | 5 Pages

    symbolic characterization of Bob Cratchit and his family, juxtaposed against Scrooge's heartless capitalist ideals. Through this powerful theme of industrial suffering, Dickens permits the reader to visualize the suffering of the poor during the mid-Victorian period. Similarly, the theme of industrial suffering may be defined as the suffering of the lower class individuals under the capitalists. In "A Christmas Carol" Bob Cratchit embodies this theme by toiling strenuously for a heartless capitalist (Scrooge)

  • Anti-Semitism in Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels

    3548 Words  | 8 Pages

    Trollope's Palliser Novels Because Anthony Trollope belonged to the Liberal party, one would assume that he would be less concerned with the glorification of a specific social class to the neglect of any other. Yet, of the major novelists of the Victorian period, none was more infatuated with the code of the gentleman than Trollope. His political beliefs, which might seem to conflict with those of a Liberal, are best defined by his own description of himself as "an advanced, but still a conservative

  • Feminism in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    Feminism in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh In Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates an independent, intelligent young woman. Barrett Browning successfully demonstrates the difficult obstacles women had to overcome in the Victorian period. There were preconceived ideas of what "proper" women were suppose to do with their life. Not that this idea has completely been surmounted in our time. Barrett Browning though is optimistic about the goals women can achieve. She wants to demonstrate

  • Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre - Miss Temple's Influence on Jane Eyre

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    Temple's Influence on Jane Eyre "Jane Eyre" is set during the Victorian period, at a time where a women's role in society was restricted and class differences distinct. A job as a governess was one of the only few respectable positions available to the educated but impoverished single women. Not only is "Jane Eyre" a novel about one woman's journey through life, but Brontë also conveys to the reader the social injustices of the period, such as poverty, lack of universal education and sexual inequality

  • Religion and Relationships in Christina Rossetti’s Work

    4397 Words  | 9 Pages

    much fiction, especially poetry, these hidden triumphs are often so subtle that the reader may not recognize the achievement or the repressed emotion to which it relates. Christina Rossetti is known as one of the primary female figures of the Victorian Period. The majority of her poetry falls into one of two categories: religion and relationships. Many of her poems on relationships included a theme of death, yet often centered on the relationship between the dead or dying and their loved ones. She

  • D.h. Lawrence

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    tried to alienate her children from their father. The difference in social status between his parent’s was a recurrent motif in Lawrence’s fiction. David Herbert was ranked among the most influential and controversial literary figures of the Victorian Period. In his more than forty books, Lawrence celebrated his vision of the natural, whole human being, opposing the modern society. This opposition of society was used to write books, stories, poems of the heightened sensation and emotion he felt.

  • freedol Nora's Freedom in Ibsen's A Doll's House

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    "escaping". It is difficult to balance our personal need for freedom with our responsibility to others.  In Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, the character of Nora Helmer had suffered greatly to achieve her personal freedom. A woman of the Victorian period, Nora Helmer was both a prisoner of her time as well as a pioneer. In her society women were viewed as a inferior to men and were not provided full legal rights. Women of that era were expected to stay at home and attend to the needs of their

  • Daniel Deronda

    1654 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gwendolyn Harleth, a young English woman, but also with Daniel Deronda’s discovery of his Jewish identity. Through characters like Mirah and Mordecai Cohen, Eliot depicts Jewish cultural identity in the Victorian period. Reaction to Daniel Deronda exposes the deeply embedded anti-semitism of the period. The story follows the tow main characters over the course of several years as they struggle with their own self discovery. The novel’s primary female character, Gwendolyn, is an essentially aloof

  • The Meaning of Heart of Darkness in the Post-Colonial Climate

    3729 Words  | 8 Pages

    Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has rarely been disputed on the basis of its literary merits; in fact, it was long seen as one of the great novels of the burgeoning modern era, a sort of bridge between the values and storytelling styles of the waning Victorian period and those of the modern era (Gatten), and regarded a high-ranking space amidst the great literature of the century, if not the millennia (Mitchell 20). Conrad’s literary masterpiece manages references to other great literature, universal themes

  • The Oxford Movement and Jane Eyre

    1449 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Oxford Movement and Jane Eyre The Victorian period from the mid to late 1800's was a time of internal religious turmoil for England. In the Anglican Church there were many different groups competing to define the doctrine and practice of the national religion. The church was politically divided in three general categories following: the High Church, which was the most conservative; the Middle, or Broad Church, which was more liberal; and the Low Church, which was the Evangelical wing of the

  • Nature Imagery in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Arnold's To Marguerite--Continued and Dover Beach

    1471 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nature Imagery in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Arnold's To Marguerite--Continued and Dover Beach Two poets who used an abundance of nature imagery in the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Matthew Arnold. In Tennyson's In Memoriam, he utilizes many different aspects of nature as metaphors to describe his emotions after the death of a close friend. Arnold's poetry uses different types of water as metaphors in To Marguerite--Continued and Dover Beach. In the beginning of Tennyson's

  • Science in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Hard Times by Charles Dickens

    3616 Words  | 8 Pages

    illusion, childhood and man versus nature. The first book I will examine in this essay, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, comes from this literary period and focuses on the man versus nature theme, namely the theme of scientific development and it’s contrast to nature. The second book I will look at in this essay comes from the Victorian period of the 19th century. This period saw the rise of the Industrial Revolution and of huge social and political change. Hard Times by Charles Dickens deals with these issues