Victorian Philosophical Anti-Rationalism -- the anti-practical and anti-Utilitarian philosophy of Newman, Pater, and Arnold
The Victorian era in England gave birth to Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian philosophy of social governance, to the scientific philosophy of Darwinism, and to the application of scientific principles to social philosophy in the form of Social Darwinism. Perhaps this scientific and methodical era, an era that oversaw the full flowering of the Industrial Revolution's stress upon machinery into the transformation into the human body and mind as a machine-like worker drone, inevitably spawned a kind of counter-revolutionary philosophy and ethos for the age -- namely the idea and ideals that cohered and evolved over the course of the Oxford Movement, the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movement, and finally coalesced into the austere vision of the poet and philosopher Matthew Arnold.

One of the earliest counters to the pragmatism and utilitarianism so popular at the time of Victoria's reign was…...

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Works Cited

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy: Sweetness and Light & Hebraism and Hellenism. From Prose of the Victorian Period, Edited by William E. Buckler, pages: 457-486.

Newman, John Henry. "Idea of a University: Knowledge Its Own End, Knowledge and Learning, Knowledge and Skill, and Knowledge and Religion." From Prose of the Victorian Period, Edited by William E. Buckler pages 223-225.

Pater, Walter Horatio. "The Renaissance." From Prose of the Victorian Period, Edited by William E. Buckler, pages 545-553.

Dr. Jekyll and Victorian Literature
England during the reign of Queen Victoria was a very rigid, prudish, and regulated society, very different from the world today. In Victorian England, there were very strict rules which dictated the behavior of the citizenry. Those who wanted to be accepted in proper society were heavily restricted in every aspect of their lives. There were restrictions on alcohol and other substances which lesser individuals might succumb to. There were restrictions on interactions with other people, particularly members of the opposite sex or with those who were in a different social stratum than themselves. For example, a gentleman did not consort daily with a servant, nor would a common gentleman be likely to consort with members of royalty or landed gentry. Some men accepted these rules and others were incapable of conforming. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tells the…...

Victorian era Ireland, Miss Julie depends on effective costumes. Costume designer Consolata Boyle delivers, providing the titular protagonist with the requisite garb of the era. Issues of gender and social class are conveyed through clothing in Miss Julie, as the title character wears rich silks and other gleaming fabrics that denote her social status, Likewise, the colors of Miss Julie's dresses are deep jewel tones befitting her wealth and power. The preponderance of the color green also corresponds with the film's being set in the Emerald Isle. Thus, Boyle was give considerably more leeway in her selection of hues had she been constricted to working with the original script for the stage play, which was set in Sweden. Some of the defining features of Miss Julie's Victorian dresses include lace trims, particularly around collars and lapels, ruffled bottoms of dresses, long sleeves as well as long length dresses, stark…...

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References

The Homesman.

The Imitation Game

Miss Julie

"Miss Julie Set and Costume Design." https://prezi.com/fwqii4tr6q1p/miss-julie-set-and-costume-design/

Art Nouveau & Modernism
The time period following the Victorian era was marked by widespread changes in design, styles, and art in general. Two of the most important movements of the time between 1850 and 1929 are Art Nouveau and Modernism. This essay aims to provide a valuable view of both movements through images and words, in order to enlighten the reader on these two very influential eras.

The Art Nouveau movement began at the turn of the 20th century in all of Europe's prominent municipalities as a response to the parallel scholastic art forms of the time. This society of new and youthful ideas adhered strongly to one fundamental principle: that the spirit of aesthetics should remain closely tied to the natural world, with more moderation than prehistoric traditionalists used. The aggressive alteration shaped by the rising rebellion at the turn of the century lead the trend toward many types of…...

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References:

Debora L & Silverman (1992). Art nouveau, University of California Press; California.

Freedgood, E (2002). Fringe. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press.

Gay, P (2009). Modernism, The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. 1st ed. Vintage Books; London.

Liska, V (2007). Art Belle and Modernism, John Benjamins Publishing; Netherlands.

Victorian Female Sexuality
Victorian Sexuality: George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. arren's Profession and Thomas Hardy's "The Ruined Maid"

omen in the Victorian era must have suffered enormously under the massive double standards and the shameful image of a woman who wanted to be on her own. It is clear from examining the literature of the period how much discrimination was placed on women in the era. George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. arren's Profession and Thomas Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" show the intense sexual and gender discrimination that women in the Victorian era had to endure and the extreme consequences that were reserved for them upon breaking such strict traditions on sexuality and love relationships; however, George Bernard Shaw does allow for a greater sense of freedom for his female characters as his work was written much later at the tail end of the Victorian era, as long as they avoid the contact of men…...

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Works Cited

Hardy, Thomas. "The Ruined Maid." All Poetry. 1866. Web.  http://allpoetry.com/poem/8442925-The_Ruined_Maid-by-Thomas_Hardy 

Shaw Festival. Mrs. Warren's Profession: Connections Shaw Festival Study Guide. 2008. Web.  http://www.shawfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Mrs_Warrens_Study_Guide.pdf 

Shaw, George Bernard. Mrs. Warren's Profession. Gutenberg EBook. 2011. Web.  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1097/1097-h/1097-h.htm

Alice in Wonderland as Victorian Literature -- Being a child in Victorian England was difficult. They had to behave like the adults did, follow all rules, they had to be seen but not heard. Children, however, are naturally curious; unable to sit for long periods of time, and as part of normal cognitive development, consistently asking questions about the world. In fact, childhood is the period when a child acquires the knowledge needed to perform as an adult. It is the experiences of childhood that the personality of the adult is constructed. Alice's adventures, then, are really more of a set of curiosities that Carroll believed children share. Why is this, who is this, how does this work? and, her journey through Wonderland, somewhat symbolic of a type of "Garden of Eden," combines stark realities that would be necessary for her transition to adulthood.

For Victorians, control was part of not…...

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Sander, David. The Fantasic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Fantasy Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Thacker, Debora and Jean Webb. Introducing Children's Literature. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Walker, Stan. "Novels for Students: Alice in Wonderland." 1999. Enotes.com. .

Meanwhile, Melmotte introduces Marie into the matrimonial arena at an extravagant ball for which, in hope of favors that will come, he gains the patronage of several duchesses and other regal individuals. Marie, believed to be the heiress of millions, has many highly placed but poor young noblemen asking for her hand in marriage. She falls in love with Sir Felix Carbury, who is the most shady of them all. Felix's interest in Marie has nothing to do with love, but only with her wealth. This behavior is expected, since he is just following through on all that he has been told while growing up. He has learned his lessons well. His mother commends him often for winning Marie's heart, even if it is for the wrong reasons.. As Trollope writes:

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it was so, and was quite…...

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Books Cited

Austin, J. Pride and Prejudice. Retrieved August 25, 2007. Retrieved August 25, 2007. http://www.bookwolf.com/Free_Booknotes/Pride____Prejudice/pride____prejudice.html

Chopin, K. "Story of an Hour." Retrieved August 25, 2007.  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/ 

Eliot, G. Middlemarch. Retrieved August 25, 2007. http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/eliot/middle/

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Yellow Wallpaper" Retrieved August 25, 2007 http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

In the face of this awareness of human decline and despair the protagonist pledges love to his partner. This love is described as "true," which implies a love that is faithful and enduring and which can transcend the loss of faith in the world.
This vision or poetic image of loss of faith in human nature can be seen, albeit in a different light, in the work of Browning. An example would be the poem "Fra Lippon Lippi." In this poem the poet questions the nature of art and whether it should be true-to -- life or idealistic. The question is related to the way that art can best serve religious purposes and also refers to the gap between ordinary life and religious faith. The argument that runs throughout the poem is that the religious authorities are more concerned with appearances than expressing deep religious convictions.

Many of Browning's poems were…...

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Works Cited

Arnold M. Dover Beach. 12 August, 2010.

Sir Walter Scott was a writer a part of the romantic era, roughly 1797 -- 1837. Scott was born slightly before the beginning of this era, in 1771, and died nearly at the same time the period changed in 1832. Scott is known as a novelist, playwright, and poet of Scottish descent. The beginning of the omantic period is typically attributed to the publication of Wordworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, and closed with the rise into power of Queen Victoria. This is a period in literature that produced outstanding lyrical poetry, a few dramas, and several novelists that were popular, including Scott. Scott was known for the ability to blend European history into entertaining narratives. Scott happened to have mass appeal during this period, able to reach readers of various classes and places within the Victorian era. At the time of the omantic Era, authors such as Jane Austen were…...

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References:

Edinburgh University Library. "Walter Scott." Edinburgh University Library, Web, 2014, Available from:   2014 March 04.http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/home.html .

MacKenzie, Robert Shelton. Sir Walter Scott: The Story of His Life. Kessinger Publishing, 2009. Print.

Scott, MD, Professor Walter. The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott: With a Biography, and His Last Additions and Illustrations, Volume 7. Nabu Press, 2010. Print.

dining room. day.
MOTHER, ALICIA, and BOBBY are seated around the table. ALICIA and BOBBY are eating hungrily; MOTHER is staring at the wall vacantly.

ALICIA

What's wrong, Mom?

MOTHER

(distracted)

Hmm?

ALICIA

I asked you what's wrong. You've been taring at the wall for the past five minutes.

MOTHER

It's nothing, honey.

BOBBY

It's the kitchen.

MOTHER looks sharply at BOBBY.

MOTHER

What?

BOBBY

The kitchen. it's weird in there. I don;t really like it. It feels...funny. Like someone is after you.

ALICIA

(in a spooky voice)

And if you aren't a good little boy, the spirit of the kitchen will put you in the oven and make you into Thanksgiving dinner!

ALICIA cackles wickedly. FATHER enters, dressed for work and carrying a briefcase. He kisses MOTHEr on the top of the head.

FATHER

Isn't it a little early for evil laughter? What's going on?

ALICIA

I'm just telling Bobby hat he's right about the kitchen being haunted...

MOTHER

That's enough, you two. This house is not haunted.

ALICIA

No, that would be too exciting.

ALICIA flounces up…...

Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of ordsworth. The simplest way to summarize the ordsworthian child is to recall that well-known line from a short lyric (which would be appended as epigraph to later printings of ordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of Early Childhood") -- "the child is father of the man." Here, self-definition in adulthood, and indeed the poetic vocation, are founded in the perceived imaginative freedom of childhood.
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

hy with such earnest pains…...

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Works Cited

Arnold, Matthew. "The Forsaken Merman." Web. Accessed 15 April 2012 at:  http://www.bartleby.com/101/747.html 

Arnold, Matthew. "William Wordsworth." In Steeves, H.R. (ed.) Selected Poems of William Wordsworth, with Matthew Arnold's Essay on Wordsworth. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921. Print.

Arnold, Matthew. "Youth's Agitations." Web. Accessed 15 April 2012 at: http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/12118/

Bloom, Harold. "Introduction." In Bloom, Harold (ed.). Bloom's Major Poets: A.E. Housman. New York: Chelsea House, 2003. Print.

Victorian Prose and Poetry, by Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom. Specifically, it will discuss ealism and compromise in Victorian Literature. How do Victorian writers search for realistic compromises with the world around them?
VICTOIAN LITEATUE

In Victorian literature, ealism followed the age of omanticism, and ealism quickly evolved into Naturalism, practiced by many authors of the time, including Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Sinclair Lewis. "There was a time when the intellectual and spiritual life of Europe as a whole was dominated by neo-classicism; it was dominated in the next era by omanticism; and then it was dominated by ealism, which developed into Naturalism" (Baker 58). ealism in literature attempted to portray things as they really were, scientifically and without emotion, placing man in balance with nature.

The task of realism, Howells felt, was to defend "the people" against its adversaries. The realist, he wrote, "feels in every…...

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References

Baker, Joseph E., ed. The Reinterpretation of Victorian Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950. Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Decker, Clarence R. The Victorian Conscience. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1952.

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895; Selections Illustrating the Editor's Critical Review of British Poetry in the Reign of Victoria. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1895.

Trilling, Lionel and Bloom, Harold, eds. Victorian Prose and Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Stephen lackpool, on the other hand could be considered to be from the other side of the tracks. He was a poor man and worked in ounderby's factory as a weaver. The language that Dickens' uses to describe the world that lackpool is from is quite depressing. He tells us that the Gradgrinds live at Stone Lodge. This name itself conjures up and image of a mini castle surrounded by lush, green grass. He describes Stephen lackpool's environment as a place 'where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in' and 'the whole an unnatural family, shouldering and trampling and pressing one another to death'. He even lets us know that Stephen looks much older than his forty years because of the life and environment he is from. Poor Stephen loses his job for standing up for his coworkers and also left Coketown in…...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dickens, Charles. (1987). Hard times for these times. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

(Accessed on June 30, 2010).http://teachers.ewrsd.k12.nj.us/savedoff/humanities_9/victorian/characteristics_of_victorian_era.htm

  (Accessed on June 30, 2010).http://www.victoriaspast.com/FrontPorch/victorianera.htm 

Vic Women
Women as Outsiders: A Comparison of Jane Eyre and "The Horse Dealer's Daughter"

Women are often portrayed as a marginalized "other" or outsider in literature, reflecting the degree to which they are outside the traditional patriarchal concepts of authority and power as well as (for much of Western history) outside the practical and legal means of self-sufficiency and self-direction. As the times have shifted, the particular perspective and definition of women as outsiders has also changed, as can be seen in a comparison of the central figures in Charlotte Bronte's Victorian-era novel Jane Eyre and DH Lawrence's more modern short story "The Horse Dealer's Daughter." Interestingly, both heroines are seen as similarly detached from traditional power structures, yet the degree to which Jane distances herself through her morality actually gives her power, while the increasing amorality of the times leads Mabel (Lawrence's protagonist) down a path of deeper despair, self-directed…...

Scientific Objectivity and Scientific Irascibility:
Melvin Harris' rhetoric on the perpetration of the fraud of the Maybrick Ink test

According to author Melvin Harris, one of the most infamous hoaxes ever perpetrated against the community of scientists, historians, and laypersons was that of the Maybrick 'Jack the Ripper' diaries. Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who terrorized prostitutes during the late Victorian Era, remains a great unsolved crime. The supporters of the so-called Maybrick diaries claimed to solve the Jack the Ripper murders by implicating convicted 19th century murderer John Maybrick. The diaries were 'discovered' during the late 20th century and a subsequent book by Shirley Harrison was published to support this claim that Maybrick was 'Jack.' However, Melvin Harris in his essay "The Maybrick Hoax: A fact-file for the perplexed," disputes the scientific evidence presented by the supporters of the Maybrick theory. Scientific tests of the diaries proved contradictory, and according…...

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Works Cited

Harris, Melvin. "The Maybrick Hoax: A fact-file for the perplexed," 1997: 1-5.

The idea of a fashion revolution is that something disruptive happens in the fashion world.  We saw a fashion revolution after people rejected the commodities culture of the 1980s.  There was a fashion revolution at the turn of the 20^th century, as women rejected the clothing of the Victorian era, rejected the corset, and embraced clothing that was more comfortable.  In fact, throughout history there have been many pivotal moments where fashion and costume has been revolutionized.  These moments have reflected other changes in culture, such as societal views towards women. 

There are....

I. Introduction
A. Hook: Have you ever wondered about the mysterious allure of gothic fashion?
B. Background information: Explain what gothic fashion is and its origins.
C. Thesis statement: This essay will explore the elements of a gothic wardrobe and the reasons why it has captivated individuals throughout history.

II. Elements of a Gothic Wardrobe
A. Dark colors: Discuss the significance of black as the predominant color in gothic fashion.
B. Layering: Examine how layering allows gothic fashion enthusiasts to create a dramatic and mysterious look.
C. Fabrics: Analyze the importance of materials such as velvet, lace, and leather....

Concise and Descriptive Titles:

Feminism: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective
The Evolution of Feminism: From Suffrage toIntersectionality
Feminism in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
The Impact of Feminism on Society: Empowerment and Equality

Titles Emphasizing Specific Aspects of Feminism:

The Intersectional Nature of Feminism: Beyond Gender to Inclusivity
Feminism and Social Justice: Intersectionality in Practice
Feminist Theory: Key Concepts and Controversies
The Role of Feminism in Resisting Oppression: A Call for Action

Titles with a Personal Touch:

My Feminist Journey: Navigating the Challenges and Embracing the Power
The Feminism I Believe In: A Personal Reflection on Values and Goals
Feminism and....

Selecting Essay Topics that Cover a Book

1. Character Analysis

Topic: The protagonist's struggle with identity and purpose in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Focus: Examine the protagonist's evolving self-awareness, the challenges they face, and how their journey shapes their character.

2. Theme Exploration

Topic: The theme of prejudice and its impact on society in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."
Focus: Analyze how the novel portrays different forms of prejudice, its consequences, and the characters' responses to it.

3. Symbolism and Imagery

Topic: The use of symbolism and imagery to create atmosphere in Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."
Focus: Discuss how specific symbols....