46c Victorianism intro

1. ELIT 46C Class 1
How did Charlotte
Brontë make it easier
to breathe?

2. She created
Eyre!

3. 
 The Website and Canvas
 The Green Sheet
 The Syllabus
 Quizzes
 Lecture: Introduction to
Victorian Literature
 Author presentation:
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
 Homework
AGENDA

4. The Green Sheet and Syllabus

5. 
Using Canvas
We will use Canvas to communicate, see grades,
access course documents and assignments, take
quizzes, and submit homework.
You should be able to access this course by logging into Canvas and
using your college credentials.
Go to https://deanza.instructure.com
Use your college credentials to log in.
You will be taken to the Canvas dashboard where you should see our
course. If you do not have access to this course via Canvas, please let
me know as soon as possible.

6. When you first log in to Canvas, the website will look
similar to this. Start by clicking on “pages” to enlarge the
framed picture part of the webpage.
Click Here to enlarge

7. Notice the expansion of the screen. Here you can easily access the links to the
course presentations, discussion forums, and online reading links. Click on
“Week 1” and then “Class 1” to review todays presentation and to do your
homework using the “discussion” link.
Links to Class
Documents
and Presentations

8. The links on the left of this view will help you navigate the Canvas site. You
can check your grades, assignments, and announcements here. All the way to
the left, you will see your calendar, which is quick way to check due dates.
Canvas Navigation tools

9. To take a quiz, click here.

10. To enlarge the primary page even further, click on the three horizontal lines
(the hamburger) in this view. This configuration makes the primary page the
easiest to navigate.

11. 
The Green Sheet:
What you will find here
 Course Requirements
 Assignments and
values
 Participation
 Required Materials
 Books
 Computer Access
 Class Policies
 Plagiarism
 Conduct and
Courtesy

12. 
Texts and Required Materials:
 The Norton Anthology English
Literature 9th edition, Volume 2
 Wuthering Heights: Emily
Bronte
 Two large Blue Books (for the
midterm and final exams).

13. 
Requirements:
☛ Formal writing: Two out of class essays.
☛ Two exams (objective and essay)
☛ A series of discussion posts to the class
website
☛ Reading quizzes and in-class
assignments.
☛ Active participation in class discussions and regular attendance.
You will earn real points for your participation in activities.
☛ Keeping up-to-date on the assignments and reading.

14.  Grading

15. The Syllabus:
The Course Calendar

16. 
 The syllabus is a tentative schedule.
 It may be revised during the quarter.
 Use it to determine how to prepare for class.
Week and
Days 
What we
will do 
in class 
Homework due
before the next
class  Project Title
Date

17. 
Posting Homework
 Click on the icon for “Week 1” on
the home page
 Click on the icon for “Class 1” on
the next page
 Click on the link to the “Class 1
Discussion”
 Click on the “Reply” button to
post your homework

18. Is this class
too hard?
Is this class
History 10?
Will I be the
teacher’s
favorite?

19. 
THE VICTORIAN
PERIOD
 The Victorian era of British history was the period of queen
Victoria's reign from 1837 until her death in 1901.
 During her reign, the population of London grew from
about 2 million to well over 6
 It was in the nineteenth century that England reached its
height as a world imperial power, both economically and
culturally, supplanting Paris as the hub of European culture.

20. 
 The Victorians lived in an age that John Stuart Mill
termed “an age of transition” caught between a
vanishing past and an uncertain future. In many
ways the Victorian age reflected values that Queen
Victoria herself espoused: moral responsibility
and domestic propriety.
 Queen Victoria was the first monarch who lived
in the age of photography.
 Because the Victorian period lasted so long and
because it was a time of such great change, it is
hard to characterize in any singular, overarching
feature, or sense, of the time. Thus, scholars often
refer to three distinct phases within the
Victorian period: early (1830-1848); mid
(1848-1870); and late (1870-1901).
Queen Victoria
(1837- 1901)

21. 
THE EARLY PERIOD (1830-1848): A TIME OF
TROUBLES
 Public railways expanded on an unprecedented scale; and second,
the British parliament passed a reform bill in 1832 that (at
least to some degree) redistributed voting rights to reflect
growing population in newly industrializing centers like
Manchester and Liverpool.
 A group called the Chartists organized themselves to fight for
workers' rights. The organization fell apart by 1848 but their
efforts set the stage for real and meaningful reform.
 The literature of this time period often focused on the plight of
the poor and the new urban reality of industrial England.

22. Mass
Production

23. 
Children were expected to
help to support their
families. They often worked
long hours in dangerous jobs
and in difficult situations for
low wages.

24. Workers wanted to live
nearby their working
places because it was time-
saving. As a result of these
demands and overcrowded
conditions, the housing
became scarce and
expensive; therefore, so
many people lived in slum-
housing or were homeless.

25. 
THE MID-VICTORIAN
PERIOD (1848-1870)
 The mid-Victorian era was somewhat less
tumultuous than was the earlier Victorian period as the
relationship between industry and government began to
work itself out.
 England was proud of its science and technology, as
is evidenced by the Crystal Palace, centerpiece of the
Great Exhibition of 1851.

26. Queen
Victoria
(1837- 1901)

27. 
Mid-Victorian Continued:
Religion and Science
 By the mid-Victorian period the Church of England had evolved into three
factions: a Low (or Evangelical) Church, a Broad Church, and a High
Church.
 New discoveries in the sciences also led to a new mode of reading the
Bible: Higher Criticism approached the Bible not as a divine and infallible
text but rather as an historically produced set of documents that reflected
the prejudices and limitations of their human writers.
 Among other scientific works of the time Charles Darwin's The Origin of
Species(1859) and The Descent of Man(1871) seemed to challenge all previous
thinking about creation and man's special role in the world.

28. 
THE LATE PERIOD (1870-1901):
DECAY OF VICTORIAN VALUES
 For many, the late-Victorian period was merely an extension, at least on the
surface, of the affluence of the preceding years. For many others, though,
the late-Victorian period became a time to fundamentally
question―and challenge―the assumptions and practices that had
made such affluence possible.
 Home-rule for Ireland became an increasingly controversial topic of
debate.
 In 1867 a second Reform Bill passed, extending voting rights even further
to some working-class citizens.

29. 
THE NINETIES
 Gone was trust in Victorian propriety and morality. Instead, many writers
struck a "fin de siècle" (or end-of-century) pose: a weary sophistication
with the optimism of forward progress when the limits of that progress
seemed all too near in sight.
 The 1890s, a transitional phase between the optimism and promise of
the Victorian period and the Modernist movement, during which artists
began to challenge just how genuine that optimism and promise had been in
the first place.

30. 
The Woman Question
 Despite its having been an era of great social change, the Victorian period
saw little progress for women's rights.
 While the "Woman Question" often sought, at least in principle, rights for all
women, it was primarily addressed to women of the middle class.
 The problem of prostitution gained increasing visibility because it was
actually a better choice for many women relative to the working
conditions they faced in factories.
 Many men argued adamantly for women's rights, and many women
(like Queen Victoria herself) were not convinced that women should
enjoy equality with men.

31. 
Literacy and Reading
 As of 1837 roughly half of England's population was literate.
 Because of advances in printing technology, publishers could provide
more texts to more people.
 Many famous novelists, like Charles Dickens, for example, published their
work not in book form at first but in serial installments in magazines.
 The practical reality of publishing in serial form had a direct impact
on style, including how plots were paced, organized, and
developed. (The experience of reading serialized novels is similar to that
of the modern television viewer watching a program that unfolds in a
series of hour or half-hour segments.)

32. 
Short Fiction
and the Novel
Short fiction thrived during the Victorian period.
The novel was perhaps the most prevalent genre
of the time period.
A common theme among Victorian novelists
involves a protagonist who is trying to define
him- or herself relative to class and social
systems.

33. 
Victorian Poetry
 While prose fiction was the most widely circulated kind of writing in
the Victorian period, poetry retained its iconic status as "high
literature." Most readers continued to expect poetry to teach a
moral lesson, even though many writers were uncomfortable
with that aim.
 Victorian poetry, in general, is less subjective than that of the
Romantics. An interest in the past, both the classical and the
medieval, appears in the subjects, and in the use of mythological and
historical allusions. The dramatic monologue is used greatly by the
poets. The themes are more realistic, discussing such issues as
child labor, the rights of women, science and religion. The elegy is one
of the most popular poetic forms in the period, a form of poetry that
laments the dead or the past. Victorian poetry is often characterized
by doubt and psychological conflicts.

34. 
VICTORIAN
DRAMA
 The Victorian theater was
a popular institution.
 Playwrights like George
Bernard Shaw and Oscar
Wilde began to reflect the
pretentious values and
behavior that they
believed characterized
Victorian life. Shaw often
addressed difficult social
issues in his work, which
came to be known as
“problem plays.”
Oscar Wilde
(1856-1900)
George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)

35. 
Non-Fiction Prose
 Nonfiction prose writing gained wide readership during the
Victorian period, due again to the vibrant periodical culture.
 In his 1889 essay, “Style,” Walter Pater argued that
nonfiction prose, though not necessarily superior to other
genres, did provide Victorian authors with the ideal
vehicle for expressing ideas directly about the many
issues of the day.

36. 
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
née Elizabeth Barrett, (born March 6,
1806, near Durham, Durham county,
England—died June 29, 1861,
Florence, Italy), English poet whose
reputation rests chiefly upon her love
poems, Sonnets from the
Portuguese and Aurora Leigh, the latter
now considered an early feminist text.
Her husband was Robert Browning
(who we will be reading soon).

37.  Elizabeth, the eldest child of Edward Barrett Moulton, spent her girlhood at a
country house near the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire. At the age of 15, she fell
seriously ill, probably as the result of a spinal injury, and her health was permanently
affected.
 In 1836 her family moved to London, where she contributed to several periodicals,
and her first collection, The Seraphim and Other Poems, appeared in 1838.
 After the death by drowning of her brother, Edward, she developed an almost
morbid terror of meeting anyone apart from a small circle of intimates. Her name,
however, was well known in literary circles, and in 1844 her second volume of
poetry, Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, was enthusiastically received.
 In January 1845 she received from the poet Robert Browning a letter that begins
with “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” and culminates with
“I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart—and I love you too.” In early
summer the two met. Their courtship (whose daily progress is recorded in their
letters) was kept a close secret from Elizabeth’s despotic father, of whom she stood
in some fear.
 In the summer of 1861 Browning suffered a severe chill and died.

38. 
 Allingham, Philip V. “Nineteenth-Century British and
American Copyright Law.” http://www.victorianweb.org
authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html. Accessed 23 August 2017.
 Daniels, Barbara. “Poverty and Families in the Victorian Era.
www.hiddenlives.org.uk/ articles/poverty.html. Accessed 23
August 2017.
 Greenblatt, Stephen, Gen. Ed. The Norton Anthology of English
Literature. 9th Edition. Vol 2. Norton, 2012.
 Fletcher, R.H. A History of English Literature.
 The Victorian Web. www.victorianweb.org/. Accessed 23
August 2017.
Works Consulted

39. 
Buy books
Register for Wordpress
Assigned Reading:
Introduction to
Victorianism 1017-1043
Take Quiz 1
Barrett Browning, “The
Cry of the Children”
1124