Victorian literature

In the book, A picture of Dorian gray, we see Oscar Wilde use a lot of references to flowers intentionally to try to convey a hidden message. During the victorian era flowers had defined meaning to the world. Flowers were a form of communication, on there own, that gave meaning and emotions to specific flowers constructing a hidden message. Just like today flowers still uphold the symbols they represent. We see that a rose is a representation of love, beauty, and compassion while the thorns are…

follows the life of a young man, Dorian Gray, in the Victorian Society. The main character is Dorian Gray, a young man who attempts to be young forever. At the beginning of the book, Dorian has many interactions with Lord Henry, a sarcastic, influential, and intelligent man. Lord Henry uses many epigrams, witty sayings that reveal deep truths about Victorian society. Wilde uses blunt epigrams to reveal the hidden truths of high society during the Victorian era a time and place where people are…

August Strindberg’s play Miss Julie written during the Victorian age exemplified the conflicts created within a master-servant relationship. During this time, the elite: the rich, property owners, aristocrats were thought to be superior to the masses. This is exactly, the kind of society that philosopher, Karl Marx detested. Marx supported the lower class: the common people, the servants, the masses and believed that the masses untimely had the potential to rise above the oppressors if they…

Jack the Ripper. 2014. “The ‘Dear Boss’ Letter.” In Voices of Victorian England: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life, edited by John A. Wagner, 244-245. Santa Barbara: Greenwood: An Imprint of ABC-CLIO. This source is extremely useful because the Jack the Ripper murders are one of the most infamous crimes of the whole era, and this supposedly was the first letter that he sent to the newspapers about his murders. This letter is extremely useful in the paper because it provides an example…

Cary Fukunaga changes Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre to highlight the ideals of his audiences mindset, such as the ideal of marrying for love rather than independence to create a fast paced romance. The film appeals to the themes in the film such as gender equality and independence but dilutes the meaning through the incapacity to reveal Jane’s inner thoughts and enhances the meaning through cinematography. The introduction of the character St John at the beginning of the film…

add, immured/ In the hot prison of the present, month/ To month with weary pain” (Arnold 21-25). Similar to Dorian Gray, the speaker would do anything to stay young and beautiful, aware of the better life one can live in society. During the late Victorian Era, there was an immense pressure put upon people to maintain their beauty. Aestheticism was an ongoing movement where individuals only had a value in society if they had a youthful appearance. Pressure to look a certain way took over the…

The Victorian period was a golden era for taxidermy and general morbidity. Walter Potter was an English self-taught taxidermist and became famous for his intrinsic work, in which he was able to take advantage of the increasing audience for this type of art. He stuffed and preserved animals, putting them in costumes and setting them up as if they were telling a story. He was one of the pioneers in this line of work, and the period of time in which he lived couldn’t have been better for his…

“others”. For example, in Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw”, the two dead servants, Peter Quint, the master’s former valet and Miss. Jessel, the former governess, come back to haunt the Bly. The two figures exactly represent the class segregation in Victorian-era Britain. In this story, the servants are the “others”. Henry James’ depiction of two ghostly servants does not eliminate people’s fear towards the stereotype, but instead reinforces the demonic impression of these socially others.…

manners, when Joe visited him in London, and embarrassed Pip in front of Miss Havisham. Joe stayed true to who he was, and acted as a true man of gentility would. During Pip’s quest for gentility, Dickens uses him to show everything that is wrong with Victorian Era gentility. The terms “wealthy” and “gentleman-like” are not interchangeable. Joe Gargary, Pip’s brother-in-law and best friend, is a perfect example of that. While Joe is certainly not wealthy, his fine character attributes perfectly…

important in school, work and other aspects, like marriage. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, the satire of an upper-class Victorian marriage can also be seen as a parody of the noble Victorian society as a whole. Wilde uses short dialogue to mock upper-class marriage in order to highlight and ridicule the flashbacks of society as a whole during this Victorian era. Wilde’s clever mind comes up with the proposal in the conversation between Algernon and Jack in the beginning of the…