...home all day to oversee the domestic duties in the reign of Queen Victoria. A woman's place was in the home, as domesticity and motherhood were considered by society at large to be a sufficient emotional and economic fulfillment for females. These constructs kept women far away from the public sphere in most ways, but during the 19th century charitable missions did begin to extend the female role of service, and Victorian feminism emerged as a potent political force. The transformation of Britain into an industrial nation due to the industrialization had profoundly influenced the ways in which women were to be believed ideally in Victoria times. Newly emerged urban jobs formed an urban living style that no one had lived before, it prompted a change in the ways in which appropriate male and female roles were perceived. In particular, the notion of separate spheres, which woman was in the private sphere of the home and hearth, man was in the public sphere of business, politics and sociability - came to influence the choices and experiences of all women. The Victorian era from 1837 to 1901 is characterized as the domestic age, idealized by Queen Victoria, who came to represent a sort of femininity that was centered on the family, motherhood, and respectability. Accompanied by Albert, Prince Consort, her beloved husband, and by her many children in Balmoral Castle, Victoria became an icon of late 19th-century middle-class femininity and domesticity. In fact, Queen Victoria came to...
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...People living in the Victorian era had many dangers to their health due to so many diseases and lack of knowledge of medicines. Death rates were high and children never lived long because of all the horrible conditions people lived in. Because of these horrible illnesses, diseases, and lack of medicinal knowledge, many people suffered. Consequently, Victorian age health was horrible with nutrition, general health, and diseases affecting their daily life. Back then, general health was greatly affected by simple things such as a window being closed. Due to this, life expectancy was very low and women's health was highly affected. Life expectancy was so low that even at the of the Victorian period, infant mortality was about ten times as high as it is today (Mitchel 192). Rural people lived longer than the city dwellers due to the fact that they weren't packed together spreading diseases, rural people had lots of space between each others so that getting sick or dying was not as common. Women were also extremely affected to the uncontrolled illness and sickness being passed around. Because of women's working class, many of them got sick off of the patients they worked with....
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...Have you ever wondered about the Victorian england era? If not these facts will surely get you interested. During the Victorian era many things were different then from today. This includes classes of people, food, sports, and clothes. First of all, the classes of the Victorian era were different from today there was no middle class, upper class, and lower class. The class went more like unemployed, employed poors, gentleman, and upper class. The classes gentleman and upper class were treated like kings while unemployed and low wage employed men were treated like garbage. Unemployed people were able to pick to live in a Work Home or on the street. People in work homes were split up from their wife and children, but the children could see...
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...The Plight of a Victorian Era Wife American author, Kate Chopin, in her narrative short story, "The Story of an Hour," recounts the story of an hour in the life of Mrs. Louise Mallard, a young woman "with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (Chopin, 605). Chopin's purpose for writing this short story is to address the lack of independence and social status that was an everyday part of life for married women living in the Victorian era. She adopts a sympathetic tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in her female readers. In 1870, Kate married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana businessman of French-Creole descent. In New Orleans, where Chopin and her husband lived until 1879, she was among Southern high society. Proper Southern women of this time were expected to be submissive, compliant and stoic. Coming from a long line of Southern females, I know this to be true. The society of this era viewed the altruistic wife, reliant on her husband and devoted to her children, as the feminine ideal. Chopin's forward-thinking literary works of the late nineteenth century were not considered socially acceptable, so it wasn't until the 1960s or 1970s that she became "an integral part of the evolution of feminism" (katechopin.org). Chopin begins "The Story of an Hour" with an instant, essential revelation of the story's pinnacle. Readers learn in the first sentence that the story's main character, Mrs. Mallard, is "afflicted with...
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...Payton Diamond English III Honors 03/20/14 Roles of Women in the Victorian Era The idea of being told whether you could marry, have children, an education or a career is not something that many of us in today's society can relate to, but this was the accepted norm for women during the time period leading up to Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The Victorian Era was a time of rigid moral values and beliefs about women's roles. Throughout the book there are signs that society was changing, many of the long held morals were loosening up and women were beginning to question their faith, religion and place in society. Facing a similar evolution of her role, in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess reinforces the struggles of women in this time period living a life filled with complications such as having to work to provide for her family, being caught up in a twisted love triangle, and being shunned by her society due to challenges and circumstances she lived with. As many women were doing, Tess left home to work early in the book. Many women during this time broke away from the path many of their female ancestors had followed. Women no longer had to stay at home and follow the stereotypes that had been made, but they could leave home and find work in the cities. Many women during the late 1800s and early 1900s found jobs in factories or worked jobs that men thought they could handle. Tess first left her house to work for the d’Urbervilles on their mansion. She was to take care of the birds. Tess...
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...Victorian Era Research Paper The victorian era was a very difficult time for people and for the most part your life was based on luck depending on what kind of social class you were born into that would also for the most part determine how your education was and how your lifestyle was.Some of the main things thats was really big in the victorian era social class system was education,jobs and medical treatment.The whole reason of my paper is to tell you how your life was mostly gonna be depending on what class you were born into First,How the social classes worked were if you were born into say the lower class or the working class you got the worst of the worst doing mostly physical labor jobs like for example;farming and cleaning for very little pay usually paid daily.Now say you were not poor nor rich you would be placed in the middle class mainly doing mental work for say the church for instance,you would get a get amount of pay monthly or annually.For the lucky citizens who were born into the upper class you did no work and you gained your money from inheriting land or property from your family and investments and unlike the lower class you made a lot of money from not doing anything because they were just special like that(Victorian-era)....
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...organized by the working class. ∙ (A charter is a written statement describing the demands of a group.) ∙ The Chartist did not meet any of their demands. ∙ Chartists were jailed or transported to Australia ∙ The middle class had won this battle but there was a tension between the middle- and working class. 3. Would the lives of working men and women be different if they had the right to vote? If they had someone who represented them properly in the Parliament, then yes. 4. How are the mid-Victorian and the late-Victorian periods different? mid-victorian: ∙ A time of success and wealth ∙ Factory acts improved the conditions of the working class: Child labour was limited, and working hours were shortened. ∙ Britain earned profit from selling machinery to the rest of Europe and America. ∙ Britain kept out of war. ∙ In 1854-1855 Britain fought against Russia in the ”Crimean War”. ∙ Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s: ”The Charge of the Light Brigade”. late-victorian: ∙ Economic depression, because of the other countries who became competitors instead of markets for British goods. ∙ The Labour Party were formed in the end of the century in opposition to the middle class and its...
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...19th century English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray said, “It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England”. What he meant by this is that during Victorian times, while every other class was fluctuating in power and influence, one could count on the middle class to be somewhat of a constant and sign of hope, as well as an example for what normalcy and a hopeful future could offer. During the Victorian Era, the success of the diverse middle-classes in the Victorian period was truly in their ability to, through various economic, political and social means, universalize a set of principles based on individuality and progress and establish themselves as an emerging powerhouse. All of these changes transformed both the aspirations and the value that the emerging Victorian Middle Class represented. Not only was there a split between the ‘big three’ classes of the Victorian Era, but in the midst of the Middle Class as well there were different variations of societies. As the author R.H. Gretton phrases it, the middle class was simply “in all probability, intentional and desirable, an admission of successful upward striving.” And the Middle Class strived to reach that ultimate point of success through various social, economic, and political aspects. The economic boundary of the Victorian Middle Class still has not been defined to its accuracy, as the diversity between the class itself was immense. Due to the Industrial Revolution, there were many more opportunities...
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...Regardless of these obstacles and her father’s disapproval of her career choice, she continued to pursue art and painting. Cassatt, an impressionist painter, did not conform to standard male images of women and therefore her paintings differ from the more general male representations, especially of women readers during the Victorian period. Cassatt expresses her world through women and therefore “…offers a new vision of the unconsidered facts of everyday bourgeois life…” (Yeh, 1976:359). Cassatt’s work is regarded by Yeh (1976:359) as women-centred art as she regards women as complete within themselves. In her work she represents women as independent, pursuing interests which are not necessarily directed toward the need of her family. Reading women, portraying the reader’s inner strength often occur as a theme in her paintings. Femininity in the Victorian era In the latter Victorian period women artists and their work were considered inferior. In an attempt to overcome the stereotypical female image their work became increasingly more vocal and confident and promoted the emerging image of the educated, modern and free women. Femininity in the Victorian era was generally thought to be connected with both maternal and wifely functions in a family. Women were expected to devote themselves to their husbands and to provide a comforting shelter to their families and children from the exterior...
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...Dickens was born in the year 1817, Victorian Era Mid 19th century till to beginning of 20th century, Hard Times published on 1854, Schools become mandatory in 1889. _____________________________________________________________________ OUR TALK WILL BE DIVIDED INTO 4 PARTS: INTRODUCTION OF VICTORIAN ERA The Victorian era of British history: was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death, on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain, where during that time, the British Empire has existed for centuries and was able to maintain a world order which rarely threatened Britain’s wider strategic interests. By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, The British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth’s surface and at least a quarter of the world’s population. One of the ways they achieved such a thing is through the Industrial Revolution. What is the Industrial Revolution exactly? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a working person would be lucky to have 1 or 2 shirts. To make fabric, these people had to spend their whole lives weaving this shirt and as demand for british goods increased, they needed a way to speed up things in a way without affecting it economically. As a result, they came up with the idea of factories where workers would repeat the same thing over and over again. So I want you to think like a business man in the victorian era right now. What would make sense...
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...Summary Published in 1891, The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel. An immediate and popular success, it has never been out of print. The story is set in London towards the end of the 19th century. Basil Hallward has painted a portrait of a handsome young man, Dorian Gray. Thrilled by the beauty of the painting, Dorian Gray wishes that he could always stay as young as his image in the picture. He gives up his soul to achieve this wish. Dorian sets out on a life of self-indulgence and evil. His behaviour seems to be reflected in the portrait and he realises that his wish has come true – the portrait is beginning to show a corrupted man while he remains unchanged physically. Frightened of what is happening, Dorian hides the picture in a locked room. The years pass and Dorian leads an increasingly depraved life, but the years have no effect on him; he looks as young and beautiful as ever. Then one evening he meets the artist once more and, after he has shown him the evil-looking portrait, Dorian kills him in a fit of hatred. Dorian tries to carry on with his immoral life but he is tormented by feelings of guilt and decides that the only way he can make up for what he has done is to destroy the painting. In the climax of the story Dorian tries to kill the man in the portrait, but kills himself in the process. Aestheticism was inspired by the principle of 'art for art's sake (art for the love for art) ...it had to simply create beauty. The Aesthete believed that...
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...Gray” which was immediately attacked in many papers for its homoerotic theme it had, which was considered immoral by Victorian standards and would come to play a huge role in his legal trials.( Ellmann) .He went on to write a play, “Lady Windermere’s Fan” which was a literary and financial success for Wilde which prompted him to continue writing plays. These included “ A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance Of Being Ernest”. In the summer of 1891, Oscar Wilde first met Lord Alfred Douglas. They soon became lovers, both infatuated with each other until Wilde was arrest some years later. Wilde sued Alfred Douglas’s father for accusing him of homosexuality. The case was later thrown out, but Wilde was sentenced to two...
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...Discuss the 'Fallen Woman' as a Familiar Feature of Victorian Writing Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton may be characterised as a 'social problem' novel. Basch (1974: 263) states, 'Mrs Gaskell's impure women came from ... the work and exploitation which she knew, relatively speaking, better than other novelists.' Gaskell was the wife of a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. She devoted her time to setting up homes for fallen women, and after Mary Barton women became her central characters, her novels primarily seen through women's eyes. Thomas Hardy, since his career began, has been notably associated with his portrayal of female characters. Erving Howe even writes about 'Hardy's gift for creeping intuitively into the emotional life of women.' (Boumelha 1982: 3) From this point of view, I intend this essay to establish a comparison between Gaskell's 'fallen woman' in Mary Barton and the way in which Thomas Hardy frames his central female character in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.In the context of the nineteenth century, there emerged an increasingly ideological 'rethinking' of sexuality, particularly of the female. Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man later in 1871 argued that men and women were somehow mentally different. Darwinian sociology led to sexual stereotypes such as Clement Scott's 'men are born "animals" and women "angels" so it is in effect only natural for men to indulge their sexual appetites and, hence, perverse, "unnatural" for women to act in the...
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...Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray alludes to homosexuality throughout the entirety of the novel. While homosexual relations between the characters are not directly discussed, the context and conversations between the characters points to homosexual relations between all of the male characters. Oscar Wilde, himself, was part of the Decadents movement at the end of the Victorian period. Decadents are known for undermining the mainstream Victorian ideals. There has been a significant change in society’s morals since the publication of the novel in 1891. A person reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in today’s culture may see nothing wrong about the context of the novel or the relationships between the characters within it but, at the time of publication, it was seen by society as an immoral book and even used in the trial against Oscar Wilde that resulted in two years imprisonment and hard labor. I will argue that using the characters of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton, and Basil Hallward, Oscar Wilde supports the common Decadents belief that open sexuality in mainstream Victorian culture would make for a better, happier society. From the very beginning of the novel, homosexual relations are apparent through the conversation about Dorian Gray between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. As Lord Henry questions Basil about the mysterious person in his painting, Basil’s odd obsession with Dorian becomes evident. He describes their meeting as being destined to happen and...
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...How far do you agree with the opinion that Wilde uses conventions of dramatic comedy in The Importance Of Being Earnest to satirise and undermine the institution of marriage? Lane Lane: I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first- rate brand. Algernon: Is marriage so demoralising as that? Lane: I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Even though lane does not think marriage is demoralising, he is not to be trusted as he later says, ‘consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person’. This then raises the question of why did his marriage end, if it was not ‘demoralising’ or a ‘pleasant state?’ Algernon regards Lane’s views on marriage as “somewhat lax.” Laid back or not as strict as it should be taken + Questions of marriage and whether its ‘demoralising’ or a ‘pleasant state’ are mentioned so early in the play, by lane and Algernon. This depicts that the rest of the play will be an ongoing debate on the institution of marriage. Algernon; Oh! There is no use speculating on that subject. Divorces are made In Heaven (Act1, page 4) this shows an inversion as the actual phrase is meant to say that ‘marriage are made in heaven’. (A reversal of the usual order of words) this might...
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