When at first thinking of the Victorian texts, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde and The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells, I had a difficult time imagining what these two could possibly share together. It was easier to deduce the differences between the two texts; however, by critically thinking and close reading into the themes and […]
Deception is never a good thing and most times it doesn’t end well. Deception was used to manipulate family members and get out of family affairs. It also has been used as a cover up for an alternative lifestyle. Deception has been used mainly to separate the private self to the public self. Two pieces […]
A name – to most – is just that: a somewhat arbitrary social convention with the simple, practical purpose of easily distinguishing person A from person B. At what point, though, does a name transcend its practicality and hold more value? This interesting philosophical question is something that is explored both by Oscar Wilde and […]
Deception and leading a double life is a common theme found in Gross Indecency by Moises Kaufman and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, with societal pressures being the suggested cause for these lies. Ironically enough, Gross Indecency is written about Oscar Wilde himself, who was trialed and found guilty of committing homosexual […]
Introduction & Background Hello, Victorian Era Literature students! I have provided for you a step-by-step tutorial on how to effectively use the Old Bailey Online archive and how one can apply its usage to a text. In a wide array of NINES-based digital archives, I was assigned the Old Bailey archive and frankly, I had […]
The Old Bailey Archive focuses on the various crimes and trials throughout the Victorian Era in England. The site is maintained by Open University, University of Hertfordshire and University of Sheffield, and was last updated in April of 2013. The Old Bailey, as the site itself notes, was active from 1674 until 1913. Throughout its […]
There are many websites that help us learn from the past. One of the great archival sites is the NINES website. This cite allows the user to go into different archives. One of them that a person can go into from the NINES website is The Old Bailey site. When you first go to the […]
Throughout Victorian literature, there are many reoccurring themes that seem to be significant to the era and genera. One that seems to be most prevalent is that of the poor woman trying to improve her circumstances, as well as that of the fallen woman. These two themes can be seen quite clearly in Thomas Hardy’s […]
In Victorian literature male characters and female characters are by default different in where they work how they dress, act and the expectations of them. One of the themes that I picked up on was the sexualization of men and women as depicted in novels. It is for this reason that I chose Thomas Hardy’s […]
Love is a notable theme found in many texts, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde also follow this pattern. In both of these texts, however, love is more often confused with infatuation with an idealized version of the person. In The Picture of Dorian […]
Religion and Social Division in the Victorian Era The Victorian Era was a period in which there was a clearly established and stratified social hierarchy. There existed a strict adherence to the social conventions of the time, and one’s social standing was primarily based on inheritance: ancestral lineage took precedence over virtually everything else. Similarly, […]
With reading the novels Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, and The Picture of Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde, I have come to the conclusion that Tess and Sibyl are equals. Both of these women can be persuaded to do anything. They also are weak characters in both novels, even though one of the […]
NINES Tutorial: The Yellow Nineties Online The Yellow Nineties Online is an online database which is “focused on The Yellow Book and other avant-garde aesthetic periodicals” and can be found at www.1890s.ca. The site, which is edited by Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, is host to completed editions of 13 volumes of The Yellow […]
The Rossetti Archive is a digital archive that “facilitates the scholarly study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” Rossetti is most known through his life’s work. He spent most of his life as a writer, designer, painter, and translator. Due to his wide ranging abilities, Rossetti has been called “the most important and original artistic force in […]
The Rossetti archive is a comprehensive collection of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti comprised for the promotion of furthering intellectual studies in regards to the work of Rossetti. Rossetti is viewed by those who collaborated in the construction of the archive as, “…the most important and original artistic force in the second half of […]
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg is, what I believe, a disturbing look into the world of mental illness. Hogg uses religion as a basis for this tale of a mentally ill young man. Robert Wringhim Colwan is an outcast within his own family. He is neither a son […]
Jane Eyre is based on the life story of a woman who seems relatively independent, despite her poor social status. Throughout the novel, she seems to be brave enough to leave any situation she doesn’t like. This is seemingly interesting because she has no money or family to support her. This is similar to the […]
The depiction of Creole women in Victorian era literature is vastly different when comparing works by Mary Seacole and Charlotte Bronte. Although the works in question – Jane Eyre and Adventures of Mrs. Seacole – are different genres, the commonality of features they share is far more than one would expect between a fiction and […]
While we did not read all of Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, we did read enough to be able to compare the historical person Mrs. Seacole to that of the fictional character Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre and Mrs. Seacole are quite similar in a few ways. One can see early on in […]
Jane Eyre, the central character of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, is a complex character that relies on resilience to survive the harsh world she lives in, surrounded by characters that show her cruelty and neglect. Helen, however, is shown to be a much more passive character, showing no resistance to her poor treatment, even […]
Women in Victorian era England were constantly being offered exemplary females to venerate and emulate. There were individuals in positions of power such as the queen who was thought to be a “mother” to her country and there were also various characters in the stories within the yearly keepsake that pushed their fictional experience upon […]
Prior to reading this tale, I rarely had a full grasp of what the setting looked like in texts read for class. Most was left to imagination and I had minimal knowledge on how to gain a better understanding. I did little research on where novels actually took place or how the original work actually […]
The String of Pearls: and its monsters The reason I chose to identify the monsters of The String of Pearls is because the concept of the main characters Sweeney Todd and Mistress Lovette being the monsters of the story really fascinates me. And although it is quite obvious that their actions are monstrous that is […]
Plenty of us know the character of Sweeney Todd. Famously portrayed by Johnny Depp in the infamous Tim Burton film adaptation, this barber of both beards and blood is a macabre individual many would not like to have ‘shave their beards’. But what is not common knowledge is that Sweeney Todd itself originated back in […]
My group’s Lo-Fi mapping assignment was focused on the London map of 1775, a map which actually predates the publication of the story by several decades. Our focus was set on the areas immediately surrounding Fleet Street and The Temple gardens. Interestingly enough, though, the area that I found most peculiar was a dense cluster […]
Many Victorian texts are online these days, but getting them there can be difficult to do. It is a long process if it is to be done with the most effectiveness for the reader. Putting a text online is actually a very interesting process. It is time consuming, but very rewarding at the same time. […]
The String of Pearls, published in 1846, is the frightening and slightly disturbing tale of a “demon barber” who murders his customers and eventually assists in selling them as meat pies. Though the story takes place during 1785, it is just as much a fictional story as a social commentary of the 1840s. During our […]
While reading about the characters’ journeys throughout The String of Peals, there was definitely a lack of visualization when it came to picturing the locations of the various shops on Fleet Street, and indeed the placement of Fleet Street in London. Obviously, reading about the places in the story gives way to description and imagery. […]
Before entering this class, the Victorian Era was one that seemed pretty two-dimensional and straightforward to me. My idea of the time was a bit off—as I discovered soon after visiting the Neville Museum exhibit. Rather than puffy dresses and embellishments, I found the era to be much more practical and humble that I first […]
Before entering this class, the Victorian Era was one that seemed pretty two-dimensional and straightforward to me. My idea of the time was a bit off—as I discovered soon after visiting the Neville Museum exhibit. Rather than puffy dresses and embellishments, I found the era to be much more practical and humble that I first […]
The portrait of Queen Victoria composed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning portrays Queen Victoria as a child who has been called to the throne in a city that still mourns its previous monarch, her uncle. Undoubtedly a bundle of nerves, Queen Victoria must inhabit the throne which was once held by her father and three uncles; […]
Throughout the Victorian period, Queen Victoria was seen as a beacon of hope and change. This is reflected in many aspect of Victorian living, including home-wear and the poetry that surrounded the time. This was clearly portrayed in the Victorian exhibit at the Neville Public Museum. All aspects of life seemed to try to incorporate […]
When exploring the Neville Museum’s exhibit on Victorian artifacts it became clear to me that not only was I to discover artifacts that one would expect from such a grandiose time in history (lacey curtains and frilly dresses being just one example of such fancy), but I was also about to embark on a journey […]
Victorian Imagery: Actual vs Idealized Victorian Era arts, both literary and traditional, developed a very interesting divergence from the established norms of the time through the use of realism. Realism as a literary technique allowed writers to convey rhetoric in new ways and we see the advent of […]
The Victorian time period in Great Britain and in The America’s is surprisingly similar concerning the ideas of city structure. During this time period England and Scotland were going through the post-enlightenment and an urbanization phases in their history. There were also many medical advances that happened during this period. Gone were the crowded streets […]
My research trip to the Neville Public Museum of Brown County for my Victorian Era Through Literature class I couldn’t help but be impressed with the artifacts they have collected and displayed for Queen Victoria. I was excited to see part of the poem Crowned and Wedded by Elizabeth Barrett Browning being displayed in the […]
The Neville Museum’s Victorian artifacts reveal an outstandingly positive perspective of Queen Victoria that had apparently been prevalent in England during her reign. There were different artifacts including portraits, a book and a pair of plates bearing a depiction of the queen. One artifact in particular that had captured my attention was a ceramic figurine […]