THE SOLDIER

The Soldier which belongs to war works of this author

since it focuses on the situation of a soldier in the war or
before it. a poem in which only one person speaks and tells
his feelings. The poem seems on the surface to be about a
soldier that is far from home not yet disillusioned by the
horrors of the war; he loves his country, England, and would
do anything for it, even die for saving his England.Rupert
Brooke opens the poem in the first stanza saying: If I
should die, think only this of me:/ That theres some corner
of a foreign field/ That is for ever England. There shall
be/ In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.They were
used to reinforce their native land, where they were from.
In these lines the speaker says that if he dies in an other
place, not being England, there will always be a piece of his
country.During the course of the poem the author deals
with two issues: death and love. Death because the speaker
is a soldier, most of them die, and possibly he will die in the
war; and love because the speaker shows us the love that
he has for his native land, England. It seems that he was a
true patriot. I think that this poem The soldier could be
divided into two parts, it is by means of its stanzas, but I
mean: the first stanza refers to the physical part of
people, in this case the soldier; and the second stanza
would be the psychological part. In the physical part, the
speaker uses words that refer to things that you can
touch, more or less, or verbs as for example bore, shaped,
made. In the second part, the psychological, the speaker
refers to feelings or things that you can not touch, using
words as for example mind, thoughts, sounds, dreams.
The meaning in the poem is straightforward; while you are
reading you can understand what Rupert Brooke is talking
about and referring to. I mean that The Soldier is not a
very complex poem when talking about its language. The
author of this poem uses clear connotations to refer to
what he wants to mean. We can say that Rupert Brooke
does not use an elaborate language. The author dedicates
the poem to death and love, as I have said some lines
before, and Brooke explains the feelings that the soldier
has when he becomes part of a war. The speaker, I mean,
the soldier, in my opinion, represents all the soldiers, and
what they feel when they are far away of their own
country, in this case, England. Rupert Brooke is not,
perhaps, glorifying war; he is only explaining what the
soldiers, maybe, feel. Although I have to say that the
author describes the situation of the soldier as if it was
easy and beautiful. The Soldier could be autobiographical
since there are first person pronouns. We can observe: I
(line 1) and me (line 1). Both pronouns refer to the speaker,
he talks in first person and in both the first and the
second stanza, the speaker is addressing somebody. For
this reason it could be that the author was telling us his
own story, a story that maybe could have been real. His
early poetry was classically inspired, with death as its most

frequent theme throughout. Later, he wrote more from his

personal experience gained in the South Seas and later in
his brief military career. The shortness of his life added to
his reputation, especially at a time when so many young men
were being killed. With regard to the length of the poem,
The Soldier is fourteen lines long and it is written in a
two stanza structure. It would be interesting to talk about
the historical context of Rupert Brooke and his works. Now
I am going to try to explain how Rupert Brooke shows
World War I in this work. Robert Brooke was rather a
pre-war poet. That is said because this author writes
before the World War I since his life was not so long
during the war, Brooke died only a year after this war. He
died in 1915 off the island of Lemnos in the Aegean on his
way to a battle at Gallipoli. I think that Rupert Brooke
showed in this poem the premonition of death, because he
probably knows or imagines the disaster that the war could
be. They wanted to remember that important event in his
life and especially he wants people to identify with his
works. In this poem that I have chosen, The Soldier, I
think that a lot of people felt identified, especially soldiers
and their families, they had their native land over all.
Rupert Brooke immerses the reader in the theme and at
the same time the poem makes you think about what it is
saying, the war, the death for their country, the end of a
life. This poem is a little sad, because you know that a lot
of families were broken, but it is also beautiful. The
Soldier is composed by simple words and especially has a
simple theme. I think that there is nothing confusing or
complex.

Horror of War in Dulce et DecorumEst Wilfred Owen's

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a magnificent, and terrible,
description of a gas attack suffered by a group of soldiers
in World War 1. One of this group is unable to get on his
helmet, and suffers horribly. Through his shifting rhythms,
dramatic description, and rich, raw images, Owen seeks to
convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the
patriotic cliches of those who glamorize war. In the first
of four stanzas, Owen presents the death-like calm before
the storm of the gas attack. Alliteration and onomatopoeia
join with powerful figurative and literal images of war to
produce a pitiful sense of despair. "Bent beggars", "knockkneed", cough and "curse" like "hags" through "sludge." All
of this compressed into just two lines! The third line places
the speaker of the poem with this trudging group. In the
simple "Men marched asleep" sentence, the three beats
imitate the falling rhythm of these exhausted men. The
pun "blood-shod" makes its grim effect on us slowly. We
guess, too, that "blind" and "lame" suggest several levels of
debilitation. The stanza ends with the ironic-quiet sounds
of the "shells" dropping "softly behind." In contrast to the
first stanza, the second stanza is full of action. The

oxymoron, "ecstasy of fumbling", seems at first odd, but

then perfect, as a way to describe the controlled panic
-instantly awakened with heightened sensibility- of men
with just seconds to find a gas mask. "But..." tells all. One
man is too late and is seen only through the "green sea" of
mustard
gas,
"yelling...
stumbling...drowning...guttering...choking."
The third stanza's brief two lines emphasize the nightmare
these events continue to be for our speaker. In the last
stanza, Owen becomes more insistent as he drives atus
with the steady rhythmic beat of iambic pentameter. We
feel the "jolt" of the wagon, see the "white eyes writhing"
in this "hanging face," and, most horribly, hear the
"gargling "of the blood choked lungs. The amazing soundfilled simile, "like a devil's sick of sin," testifies, along with
all the rest, to the overwhelming truth of this experience.
It is not "if" we could see the horror of this scene. We do
see it - through the vitality and freshness of Owen's
language. And, as he predicted, having seen it, we agree
with him that the old Latin proverb -dulce et decorum
est...- is indeed an odious Lie.

The Time Machine has two main threads. The first is the
adventure tale of the Eloi and Morlocks in the year 802,701
AD. The second is the science fiction of the time machine.
The adventure story includes many archetypal elements.
The Time Traveller's journey to the underworld, his fear
of the great forest, and his relationship to Weena, mirror
imagery prevalent in earlier literature, imagery strongly
associated with the inner workings of the human psyche.
The tale of 802,701 is political commentary of late
Victorian England. It is a dystopia, a vision of a troubled
future. It recommends that current society change its
ways lest it end up like the Eloi, terrified of an
underground race of Morlocks. In the Eloi, Wells satirizes
Victorian decadence. In the Morlocks, Wells provides a
potentially Marxist critique of capitalism.
The rest of the novella deals with the science fiction of
time travel. Before Wells, other people had written
fantasies of time travel, but Wells was the first to bring a
strong dose of scientific speculation to the genre. Wells
has his Time Traveller speak at length on the fourth
dimension and on the strange astronomy and evolutionary
trends he observes as he travels through time. Much of
this was inspired by ideas of entropy and decay
promulgated by Wells's teacher, Thomas Henry Huxley.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST- OSCAR WILDE

Jack Worthing, the plays protagonist, was discovered as
an infant by the late Mr. Thomas Cardew in a handbag in
the cloakroom of a railway station in London. Jack has
grown up to be a seemingly responsible and respectable
young man, a major landowner and Justice of the Peace in
Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate. In
Hertfordshire, where he is known by what he imagines to
be his real name, Jack, he is a pillar of the community. He
is guardian to Mr. Cardews granddaughter, Cecily, and has
other duties and people who depend on him, including
servants, tenants, farmers, and the local clergyman. For
years, he has also pretended to have an irresponsible
younger brother named Ernest, whom he is always having to
bail out of some mischief. In fact, he himself is the
reprobate brother Ernest. Ernest is the name Jack goes by
in London, where he really goes on these occasions. The
fictional brother is Jacks alibi, his excuse for disappearing
from Hertfordshire and going off to London to escape his
responsibilities and indulge in exactly the sort of behavior
he pretends to disapprove of in his brother.
More than any other character in the play, Jack Worthing
represents conventional Victorian values: he wants others
to think he adheres to such notions as duty, honor, and
respectability, but he hypocritically flouts those very
notions. Indeed, what Wilde was actually satirizing through
Jack was the general tolerance for hypocrisy in
conventional Victorian morality. Jack uses his alter-ego
Ernest to keep his honorable image intact. Ernest enables
Jack to escape the boundaries of his real life and act as he
wouldnt dare to under his real identity. Ernest provides a
convenient excuse and disguise for Jack, and Jack feels no
qualms about invoking Ernest whenever necessary. Jack
wants to be seen as upright and moral, but he doesnt care
what lies he has to tell his loved ones in order to be able to
misbehave. Though Ernest has always been Jacks unsavory
alter ego, as the play progressesJack must aspire to
become Ernest, in name if not behavior. Until he seeks to
marry Gwendolen, Jack has used Ernest as an escape from
real life, but Gwendolens fixation on the name Ernest
obligates Jack to embrace his deception in order to pursue
the real life he desires. Jack has always managed to get
what he wants by using Ernest as his fallback, and his lie
eventually threatens to undo him. Though Jack never really
gets his comeuppance, he must scramble to reconcile his
two worlds in order to get what he ultimately desires and
to fully understand who he is.
Algernon Moncrieff
Algernon, the plays secondary hero, is closer to the figure
of the dandy than any other character in the play. A
charming, idle, decorative bachelor, Algernon is brilliant,

witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful

paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements that either
make no sense at all or touch on something profound. Like
Jack, Algernon has invented a fictional character, a chronic
invalid named Bunbury, to give him a reprieve from his real
life. Algernon is constantly being summoned to Bunburys
deathbed, which conveniently draws him away from
tiresome or distasteful social obligations. Like Jacks
fictional brother Ernest, Bunbury provides Algernon with a
way of indulging himself while also suggesting great
seriousness and sense of duty. However, a salient
difference exists between Jack and Algernon. Jack does
not admit to being a Bunburyist, even after hes been
called on it, while Algernon not only acknowledges his
wrongdoing but also revels in it. Algernons delight in his
own cleverness and ingenuity has little to do with a
contempt for others. Rather, his personal philosophy puts a
higher value on artistry and genius than on almost anything
else, and he regards living as a kind of art form and life as
a work of artsomething one creates oneself.
Algernon is a proponent of aestheticism and a stand-in for
Wilde himself, as are all Wildes dandified characters,
including Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband, Lord Darlington
in Lady Windermeres Fan, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of
No Importance, and Lord Henry Wootton in The Picture of
Dorian Gray. Unlike these other characters, however,
Algernon is completely amoral. Where Lord Illingworth and
Lord Henry are downright evil, and Lord Goring and Lord
Darlington are deeply good, Algernon has no moral
convictions at all, recognizing no duty other than the
responsibility to live beautifully.
Gwendolen Fairfax
More than any other female character in the play,
Gwendolen suggests the qualities of conventional Victorian
womanhood. She has ideas and ideals, attends lectures, and
is bent on self-improvement. She is also artificial and
pretentious. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she
knows as Ernest, and she is fixated on this name. This
preoccupation serves as a metaphor for the preoccupation
of the Victorian middle- and upper-middle classes with the
appearance of virtue and honor. Gwendolen is so caught up
in finding a husband named Ernest, whose name, she says,
inspires absolute confidence, that she cant even see that
the man calling himself Ernest is fooling her with an
extensive deception. In this way, her own image
consciousness blurs her judgment.
Though more self-consciously intellectual than Lady
Bracknell, Gwendolen is cut from very much the same cloth
as her mother. She is similarly strong-minded and speaks
with unassailable authority on matters of taste and
morality, just as Lady Bracknell does. She is both a model
and an arbiter of elegant fashion and sophistication, and
nearly everything she says and does is calculated for
effect. As Jack fears, Gwendolen does indeed show signs

of becoming her mother in about a hundred and fifty

years, but she is likeable, as is Lady Bracknell, because her
pronouncements are so outrageous.
Cecily Cardew
If Gwendolen is a product of London high society, Cecily is
its antithesis. She is a child of nature, as ingenuous and
unspoiled as a pink rose, to which Algernon compares her in
Act II. However, her ingenuity is belied by her fascination
with wickedness. She is obsessed with the name Ernest
just as Gwendolen is, but wickedness is primarily what leads
her to fall in love with Uncle Jacks brother, whose
reputation is wayward enough to intrigue her. Like Algernon
and Jack, she is a fantasist. She has invented her romance
with Ernest and elaborated it with as much artistry and
enthusiasm as the men have their spurious obligations and
secret identities. Though she does not have an alter-ego as
vivid or developed as Bunbury or Ernest, her claim that she
and Algernon/Ernest are already engaged is rooted in the
fantasy world shes created around Ernest. Cecily is
probably the most realistically drawn character in the play,
and she is the only character who does not speak in
epigrams. Her charm lies in her idiosyncratic cast of mind
and her imaginative capacity, qualities that derive from
Wildes notion of life as a work of art. These elements of
her personality make her a perfect mate for Algernon.

An outpost of progress-Racial Equality Conrad is brilliant

at delivering the message that all people are equal. He does
this by revealing the capacity for evil, rather than the
more common emphasis on the inherent goodness within all
people. Carlier, Kayerts and Makola each believe that they
are superior to one another. Makola is equally racist and
mercenary. Carlier and Kayerts are equally morally
unhinged. Conrad's message is that all people, no matter
what their color or culture are, capable of despicable
actions. He tells us that we need the social structure
around us in order to keep our basic nature in check. But he
reveals that culture itself can also be evil. At once, Kayerts
and Carlier were held in check while they lived in their
homeland. But they are then propelled into aggression
against the people of Africa by that same culture.
Psychological Strength Conrad's work emphasizes the
fragility of humankind. He mocks cultural beliefs, and
people who subscribe to them. At the same time, he shows
us what happens when people are left to fend for
themselves without societal constraints. Carlier and
Kayerts descend rapidly into disintegration and
fragmentation when they have no one to reference to. They
are unable to sustain their idea of right and wrong when no
one is watching. The African forest itself serves as a
symbol of psychological flooding. The idea is that our

civilized psychological self, the self that we have been

trained to be, will fall if not carefully maintained. Conrad
gives us the idea that the land itself, and the wildlife it
supports are much stronger and forceful than man can ever
be. He sets a stark contrast between a delicately built
construct of human beliefs against the powerful natural
world. In the end, the natural world wins. Independent
Thought Carlier and Kayerts are incapable of independent
thinking. They adhere to the beliefs they have been taught
within their culture. When those beliefs do not hold in a
foreign environment, they collapse into depravity. Instead
of rising to the challenge that faces them, they passively
wait for their culture to come and rescue them. Even within
their own culture, they follow leaders without thinking
about it. Their thought patterns are based on who has
taught them. The status of their leaders is their focus, not
the worthiness of the leader's thoughts. Morality Conrad
plays with issues of morality by having his primary native
characters, Makola and his wife, betray members of their
own race and culture. The men of the trading station are
used to buy ivory without compunction. By doing this,
Conrad levels the playing field in terms of one's thoughts
about morality. One can no longer assign the term "good,"
to native people and "bad" to Europeans. One cannot turn
things the other way around either. At the end of the
book, Kayerts hangs himself on the cross. This is an act of
personal execution on the altar of common moral principles.
He knows he has done wrong, but realizes he was incapable
of stopping himself. He cries out to God for help. Only God
can reverse.

Gods Grandeur-Gerard Manley Hopkins

The first four lines of the octave (the first eight-line
stanza of an Italian sonnet) describe a natural world
through which God's presence runs like an electrical
current, becoming momentarily visible in flashes like the
refracted glintings of light produced by metal foil when
rumpled or quickly moved. Alternatively, God's presence is
a rich oil, a kind of sap that wells up "to a greatness" when
tapped with a certain kind of patient pressure. Given these
clear, strong proofs of God's presence in the world, the
poet asks how it is that humans fail to heed ("reck") His
divine authority ("his rod").
The second quatrain within the octave describes the state
of contemporary human life--the blind repetitiveness of
human labor, and the sordidness and stain of "toil" and
"trade." The landscape in its natural state reflects God as
its creator; but industry and the prioritization of the
economic over the spiritual have transformed the
landscape, and robbed humans of their sensitivity to the
those few beauties of nature still left. The shoes people

wear sever the physical connection between our feet and

the earth they walk on, symbolizing an ever-increasing
spiritual alienation from nature.
The sestet (the final six lines of the sonnet, enacting a
turn or shift in argument) asserts that, in spite of the
fallenness of Hopkins's contemporary Victorian world,
nature does not cease offering up its spiritual indices.
Permeating the world is a deep "freshness" that testifies
to the continual renewing power of God's creation. This
power of renewal is seen in the way morning always waits on
the other side of dark night. The source of this constant
regeneration is the grace of a God who "broods" over a
seemingly lifeless world with the patient nurture of a
mother hen. This final image is one of God guarding the
potential of the world and containing within Himself the
power and promise of rebirth. With the final exclamation
("ah! bright wings") Hopkins suggests both an awed intuition
of the beauty of God's grace, and the joyful suddenness of
a hatchling bird emerging out of God's loving incubation.
Form
This poem is an Italian sonnet--it contains fourteen lines
divided into an octave and a sestet, which are separated by
a shift in the argumentative direction of the poem. The
meter here is not the "sprung rhythm" for which Hopkins is
so famous, but it does vary somewhat from the iambic
pentameter lines of the conventional sonnet. For example,
Hopkins follows stressed syllable with stressed syllable in
the fourth line of the poem, bolstering the urgency of his
question: "Why do men then now not reck his rod?"
Similarly, in the next line, the heavy, falling rhythm of
"have trod, have trod, have trod," coming after the quick
lilt of "generations," recreates the sound of plodding
footsteps in striking onomatopoeia.
Commentary
The poem begins with the surprising metaphor of God's
grandeur as an electric force. The figure suggests an
undercurrent that is not always seen, but which builds up a
tension or pressure that occasionally flashes out in ways
that can be both brilliant and dangerous. The optical effect
of "shook foil" is one example of this brilliancy. The image
of the oil being pressed out of an olive represents another
kind of richness, where saturation and built-up pressure
eventually culminate in a salubrious overflow. The image of
electricity makes a subtle return in the fourth line, where
the "rod" of God's punishing power calls to mind the
lightning rod in which excess electricity in the atmosphere
will occasionally "flame out." Hopkins carefully chooses this
complex of images to link the secular and scientific to
mystery, divinity, and religious tradition. Electricity was an
area of much scientific interest during Hopkins's day, and
is an example of a phenomenon that had long been taken as
an indication of divine power but which was now explained in
naturalistic, rational terms. Hopkins is defiantly
affirmative in his assertion that God's work is still to be

seen in nature, if men will only concern themselves to look.

Refusing to ignore the discoveries of modern science, he
takes them as further evidence of God's grandeur rather
than a challenge to it. Hopkins's awe at the optical effects
of a piece of foil attributes revelatory power to a manmade object; gold-leaf foil had also been used in recent
influential scientific experiments. The olive oil, on the
other hand, is an ancient sacramental substance, used for
centuries for food, medicine, lamplight, and religious
purposes. This oil thus traditionally appears in all aspects
of life, much as God suffuses all branches of the created
universe. Moreover, the slowness of its oozing contrasts
with the quick electric flash; the method of its extraction
implies such spiritual qualities as patience and faith. (By
including this description Hopkins may have been implicitly
criticizing the violence and rapaciousness with which his
contemporaries drilled petroleum oil to fuel industry.) Thus
both the images of the foil and the olive oil bespeak an allpermeating divine presence that reveals itself in
intermittent flashes or droplets of brilliance.
Hopkins's question in the fourth line focuses his readers on
the present historical moment; in considering why men are
no longer God-fearing, the emphasis is on "now." The
answer is a complex one. The second quatrain contains an
indictment of the way a culture's neglect of God translates
into a neglect of the environment. But it also suggests that
the abuses of previous generations are partly to blame;
they have soiled and "seared" our world, further hindering
our ability to access the holy. Yet the sestet affirms that,
in spite of the interdependent deterioration of human
beings and the earth, God has not withdrawn from either.
He possesses an infinite power of renewal, to which the
regenerative natural cycles testify. The poem reflects
Hopkins's conviction that the physical world is like a book
written by God, in which the attentive person can always
detect signs of a benevolent authorship, and which can help
mediate human beings' contemplation of this Author.

The windhover is a bird with the rare ability to hover in

the air, essentially flying in place while it scans the ground
in search of prey. The poet describes how he saw (or
"caught") one of these birds in the midst of its hovering.
The bird strikes the poet as the darling ("minion") of the
morning, the crown prince ("dauphin") of the kingdom of
daylight, drawn by the dappled colors of dawn. It rides the
air as if it were on horseback, moving with steady control
like a rider whose hold on the rein is sure and firm. In the
poet's imagination, the windhover sits high and proud,
tightly reined in, wings quivering and tense. Its motion is
controlled and suspended in an ecstatic moment of
concentrated energy. Then, in the next moment, the bird is
off again, now like an ice skater balancing forces as he
makes a turn. The bird, first matching the wind's force in

order to stay still, now "rebuff[s] the big wind" with its
forward propulsion. At the same moment, the poet feels his
own heart stir, or lurch forward out of "hiding," as it
were--moved by "the achieve of, the mastery of" the bird's
performance.
The opening of the sestet serves as both a further
elaboration on the bird's movement and an injunction to the
poet's own heart. The "beauty," "valour," and "act" (like
"air," "pride," and "plume") "here buckle." "Buckle" is the
verb here; it denotes either a fastening (like the buckling
of a belt), a coming together of these different parts of a
creature's being, or an acquiescent collapse (like the
"buckling" of the knees), in which all parts subordinate
themselves into some larger purpose or cause. In either
case, unification takes place. At the moment of this
integration, a glorious fire issues forth, of the same order
as the glory of Christ's life and crucifixion, though not as
grand.
Form
The confusing grammatical structures and sentence order
in this sonnet contribute to its difficulty, but they also
represent a masterful use of language. Hopkins blends and
confuses adjectives, verbs, and subjects in order to echo
his theme of smooth merging: the bird's perfect immersion
in the air, and the fact that his self and his action are
inseparable. Note, too, how important the "-ing" ending is
to the poem's rhyme scheme; it occurs in verbs, adjectives,
and nouns, linking the different parts of the sentences
together in an intense unity. A great number of verbs are
packed into a short space of lines, as Hopkins tries to nail
down with as much descriptive precision as possible the
exact character of the bird's motion.
"The Windhover" is written in "sprung rhythm," a meter in
which the number of accents in a line are counted but the
number of syllables does not matter. This technique allows
Hopkins to vary the speed of his lines so as to capture the
bird's pausing and racing. Listen to the hovering rhythm of
"the rolling level underneath him steady air," and the
arched brightness of "and striding high there." The poem
slows abruptly at the end, pausing in awe to reflect on
Christ.
Commentary
This poem follows the pattern of so many of Hopkins's
sonnets, in that a sensuous experience or description leads
to a set of moral reflections. Part of the beauty of the
poem lies in the way Hopkins integrates his masterful
description of a bird's physical feat with an account of his
own heart's response at the end of the first stanza.
However, the sestet has puzzled many readers because it
seems to diverge so widely from the material introduced in
the octave. At line nine, the poem shifts into the present
tense, away from the recollection of the bird. The horseand-rider metaphor with which Hopkins depicted the
windhover's motion now give way to the phrase "my

chevalier"--a traditional Medieval image of Christ as a

knight on horseback, to which the poem's subtitle (or
dedication) gives the reader a clue. The transition between
octave and sestet comes with the statement in lines 9-11
that the natural ("brute") beauty of the bird in flight is
but a spark in comparison with the glory of Christ, whose
grandeur and spiritual power are "a billion times told
lovelier, more dangerous."
The first sentence of the sestet can read as either
descriptive or imperative, or both. The idea is that
something glorious happens when a being's physical body,
will, and action are all brought into accordance with God's
will, culminating in the perfect self-expression. Hopkins,
realizing that his own heart was "in hiding," or not fully
committed to its own purpose, draws inspiration from the
bird's perfectly self-contained, self-reflecting action. Just
as the hovering is the action most distinctive and selfdefining for the windhover, so spiritual striving is man's
most essential aspect. At moments when humans arrive at
the fullness of their moral nature, they achieve something
great. But that greatness necessarily pales in comparison
with the ultimate act of self-sacrifice performed by
Christ, which nevertheless serves as our model and
standard for our own behavior.
The final tercet within the sestet declares that this
phenomenon is not a "wonder," but rather an everyday
occurrence--part of what it means to be human. This
striving, far from exhausting the individual, serves to bring
out his or her inner glow--much as the daily use of a metal
plow, instead of wearing it down, actually polishes it-causing it to sparkle and shine. The suggestion is that there
is a glittering, luminous core to every individual, which a
concerted religious life can expose. The subsequent image
is of embers breaking open to reveal a smoldering interior.
Hopkins words this image so as to relate the concept back
to the Crucifixion: The verb "gash" (which doubles for
"gush") suggests the wounding of Christ's body and the
shedding of his "gold-vermilion" blood.

PIED BEAUTY-GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

The poem opens with an offering: "Glory be to God for
dappled things." In the next five lines, Hopkins elaborates
with examples of what things he means to include under
this rubric of "dappled." He includes the mottled white and
blue colors of the sky, the "brinded" (brindled or streaked)
hide of a cow, and the patches of contrasting color on a
trout. The chestnuts offer a slightly more complex image:
When they fall they open to reveal the meaty interior
normally concealed by the hard shell; they are compared to
the coals in a fire, black on the outside and glowing within.
The wings of finches are multicolored, as is a patchwork of
farmland in which sections look different according to
whether they are planted and green, fallow, or freshly

plowed. The final example is of the "trades" and activities

of man, with their ri
In the final five lines, Hopkins goes on to consider more
closely the characteristics of these examples he has given,
attaching moral qualities now to the concept of variety and
diversity that he has elaborated thus far mostly in terms
of physical characteristics. The poem becomes an apology
for these unconventional or "strange" things, things that
might not normally be valued or thought beautiful. They are
all, he avers, creations of God, which, in their multiplicity,
point always to the unity and permanence of His power and
inspire us to "Praise Him."
Form
This is one of Hopkins's "curtal" (or curtailed) sonnets, in
which he miniaturizes the traditional sonnet form by
reducing the eight lines of the octave to six (here two
tercets rhyming ABC ABC) and shortening the six lines of
the sestet to four and a half. This alteration of the sonnet
form is quite fitting for a poem advocating originality and
contrariness. The strikingly musical repetition of sounds
throughout the poem ("dappled," "stipple," "tackle,"
"fickle," "freckled," "adazzle," for example) enacts the
creative act the poem glorifies: the weaving together of
diverse things into a pleasing and coherent whole.
Commentary
This poem is a miniature or set-piece, and a kind of ritual
observance. It begins and ends with variations on the
mottoes of the Jesuit order ("to the greater glory of God"
and "praise to God always"), which give it a traditional
flavor, tempering the unorthodoxy of its appreciations. The
parallelism of the beginning and end correspond to a larger
symmetry within the poem: the first part (the shortened
octave) begins with God and then moves to praise his
creations. The last four-and-a-half lines reverse this
movement, beginning with the characteristics of things in
the world and then tracing them back to a final affirmation
of God. The delay of the verb in this extended sentence
makes this return all the more satisfying when it comes;
the long and list-like predicate, which captures the
multiplicity of the created world, at last yields in the
penultimate line to a striking verb of creation (fathersforth) and then leads us to acknowledge an absolute
subject, God the Creator. The poem is thus a hymn of
creation, praising God by praising the created world. It
expresses the theological position that the great variety in
the natural world is a testimony to the perfect unity of
God and the infinitude of His creative power. In the
context of a Victorian age that valued uniformity,
efficiency, and standardization, this theological notion
takes on a tone of protest.
Why does Hopkins choose to commend "dappled things" in
particular? The first stanza would lead the reader to
believe that their significance is an aesthetic one: In
showing how contrasts and juxtapositions increase the

richness of our surroundings, Hopkins describes variations

in color and texture--of the sensory. The mention of the
"fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls" in the fourth line, however,
introduces a moral tenor to the list. Though the description
is still physical, the idea of a nugget of goodness
imprisoned within a hard exterior invites a consideration of
essential value in a way that the speckles on a cow, for
example, do not. The image transcends the physical,
implying how the physical links to the spiritual and
meditating on the relationship between body and soul. Lines
five and six then serve to connect these musings to human
life and activity. Hopkins first introduces a landscape
whose characteristics derive from man's alteration (the
fields), and then includes "trades," "gear," "tackle," and
"trim" as diverse items that are man-made. But he then
goes on to include these things, along with the preceding
list, as part of God's work.
Hopkins does not refer explicitly to human beings
themselves, or to the variations that exist among them, in
his catalogue of the dappled and diverse. But the next
section opens with a list of qualities ("counter, original,
spare, strange") which, though they doggedly refer to
"things" rather than people, cannot but be considered in
moral terms as well; Hopkins's own life, and particularly his
poetry, had at the time been described in those very
terms. With "fickle" and "freckled" in the eighth line,
Hopkins introduces a moral and an aesthetic quality, each
of which would conventionally convey a negative judgment,
in order to fold even the base and the ugly back into his
worshipful inventory of God's gloriously "pied" creation.

My last DUCHESS-ROBERT BROWNING

This poem is loosely based on historical events involving
Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th
century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us
he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate
the Duke's marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the
daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the
visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of
the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The
Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then
about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a
diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted
with everyone and did not appreciate his "gift of a ninehundred-years- old name." As his monologue continues, the
reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the
Duke in fact caused the Duchess's early demise: when her
behavior escalated, "[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles
stopped together." Having made this disclosure, the Duke
returns to the business at hand: arranging for another
marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the

emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points

out other notable artworks in his collection.
Form "My Last Duchess" comprises rhyming pentameter
lines. The lines do not employ end-stops; rather, they use
enjambment--that is, sentences and other grammatical
units do not necessarily conclude at the end of lines.
Consequently, the rhymes do not create a sense of closure
when they come, but rather remain a subtle driving force
behind the Duke's compulsive revelations. The Duke is quite
a performer: he mimics others' voices, creates
hypothetical situations, and uses the force of his
personality to make horrifying information seem merely
colorful. Indeed, the poem provides a classic example of a
dramatic monologue: the speaker is clearly distinct from
the poet; an audience is suggested but never appears in the
poem; and the revelation of the Duke's character is the
poem's primary aim.
Commentary
But Browning has more in mind than simply creating a
colorful character and placing him in a picturesque
historical scene. Rather, the specific historical setting of
the poem harbors much significance: the Italian
Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and
his contemporaries, for it represented the flowering of the
aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in the
place of, the religious and the moral. Thus the temporal
setting allows Browning to again explore sex, violence, and
aesthetics as all entangled, complicating and confusing each
other: the lushness of the language belies the fact that
the Duchess was punished for her natural sexuality. The
Duke's ravings suggest that most of the supposed
transgressions took place only in his mind. Like some of
Browning's fellow Victorians, the Duke sees sin lurking in
every corner. The reason the speaker here gives for killing
the Duchess ostensibly differs from that given by the
speaker of "Porphyria's Lover" for murder Porphyria;
however, both women are nevertheless victims of a male
desire to inscribe and fix female sexuality. The desperate
need to do this mirrors the efforts of Victorian society to
mold the behavior--sexual and otherwise--of individuals.
For people confronted with an increasingly complex and
anonymous modern world, this impulse comes naturally: to
control would seem to be to conserve and stabilize. The
Renaissance was a time when morally dissolute men like the
Duke exercised absolute power, and as such it is a
fascinating study for the Victorians: works like this imply
that, surely, a time that produced magnificent art like the
Duchess's portrait couldn't have been entirely evil in its
allocation of societal control--even though it put men like
the Duke in power.
A poem like "My Last Duchess" calculatedly engages its
readers on a psychological level. Because we hear only the
Duke's musings, we must piece the story together
ourselves. Browning forces his reader to become involved in

the poem in order to understand it, and this adds to the

fun of reading his work. It also forces the reader to
question his or her own response to the subject portrayed
and the method of its portrayal. We are forced to
consider, which aspect of the poem dominates: the horror
of the Duchess's fate, or the beauty of the language and
the powerful dramatic development? Thus by posing this
question the poem firstly tests the Victorian reader's
response to the modern world--it asks, Has everyday life
made you numb yet?--and secondly asks a question that
must be asked of all art--it queries, Does art have a moral
component, or is it merely an aesthetic exercise? In these
latter considerations Browning prefigures writers like
Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde.

THE LADY OF SHALOTT-ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Originally written in 1832, this poem was later revised, and
published in its final form in 1842. Tennyson claimed that
he had based it on an old Italian romance, though the poem
also bears much similarity to the story of the Maid of
Astolat in Malory's Morte d'Arthur. As in Malory's
account, Tennyson's lyric includes references to the
Arthurian legend; moreover, "Shalott" seems quite close to
Malory's "Astolat."
Much of the poem's charm stems from its sense of
mystery and elusiveness; of course, these aspects also
complicate the task of analysis. That said, most scholars
understand "The Lady of Shalott" to be about the conflict
between art and life. The Lady, who weaves her magic web
and sings her song in a remote tower, can be seen to
represent the contemplative artist isolated from the
bustle and activity of daily life. The moment she sets her
art aside to gaze down on the real world, a curse befalls
her and she meets her tragic death. The poem thus
captures the conflict between an artist's desire for social
involvement and his/her doubts about whether such a
commitment is viable for someone dedicated to art. The
poem may also express a more personal dilemma for
Tennyson as a specific artist: while he felt an obligation to
seek subject matter outside the world of his own mind and
his own immediate experiences--to comment on politics,
history, or a more general humanity--he also feared that
this expansion into broader territories might destroy his
poetry's magic.
Part I and Part IV of this poem deal with the Lady of
Shalott as she appears to the outside world, whereas Part
II and Part III describe the world from the Lady's
perspective. In Part I, Tennyson portrays the Lady as
secluded from the rest of the world by both water and the
height of her tower. We are not told how she spends her
time or what she thinks about; thus we, too, like everyone
in the poem, are denied access to the interiority of her
world. Interestingly, the only people who know that she

exists are those whose occupations are most diametrically

opposite her own: the reapers who toil in physical labor
rather than by sitting and crafting works of beauty.
Part II describes the Lady's experience of imprisonment
from her own perspective. We learn that her alienation
results from a mysterious curse: she is not allowed to look
out on Camelot, so all her knowledge of the world must
come from the reflections and shadows in her mirror. (It
was common for weavers to use mirrors to see the progress
of their tapestries from the side that would eventually be
displayed to the viewer.) Tennyson notes that often she
sees a funeral or a wedding, a disjunction that suggests the
interchangeability, and hence the conflation, of love and
death for the Lady: indeed, when she later falls in love with
Lancelot, she will simultaneously bring upon her own death.
Whereas Part II makes reference to all the different
types of people that the Lady sees through her mirror,
including the knights who "come riding two and two" (line
61), Part III focuses on one particular knight who captures
the Lady's attention: Sir Lancelot. This dazzling knight is
the hero of the King Arthur stories, famous for his illicit
affair with the beautiful Queen Guinevere. He is described
in an array of colors: he is a "red-cross knight"; his shield
"sparkled on the yellow field"; he wears a "silver bugle"; he
passes through "blue unclouded weather" and the "purple
night," and he has "coal-black curls." He is also adorned in a
"gemmy bridle" and other bejeweled garments, which
sparkle in the light. Yet in spite of the rich visual details
that Tennyson provides, it is the sound and not the sight of
Lancelot that causes the Lady of Shalott to transgress her
set boundaries: only when she hears him sing "Tirra lirra"
does she leave her web and seal her doom. The
intensification of the Lady's experiences in this part of
the poem is marked by the shift from the static,
descriptive present tense of Parts I and II to the dynamic,
active past of Parts III and IV.
In Part IV, all the lush color of the previous section gives
way to "pale yellow" and "darkened" eyes, and the brilliance
of the sunlight is replaced by a "low sky raining." The
moment the Lady sets her art aside to look upon Lancelot,
she is seized with death. The end of her artistic isolation
thus leads to the end of creativity: "Out flew her web and
floated wide" (line 114). She also loses her mirror, which
had been her only access to the outside world: "The mirror
cracked from side to side" (line 115). Her turn to the
outside world thus leaves her bereft both of her art
object and of the instrument of her craft--and of her very
life. Yet perhaps the greatest curse of all is that although
she surrenders herself to the sight of Lancelot, she dies
completely unappreciated by him. The poem ends with the
tragic triviality of Lancelot's response to her tremendous
passion: all he has to say about her is that "she has a lovely
face" (line 169). Having abandoned her artistry, the Lady of
Shalott becomes herself an art object; no longer can she

offer her creativity, but merely a "dead-pale" beauty (line

157).

"Tears, Idle Tears" is part of a larger poem called "The

Princess," published in 1847. Tennyson wrote "The Princess"
to discuss the relationship between the sexes and to
provide an argument for women's rights in higher
education. However, the work as a whole does not present a
single argument or tell a coherent story. Rather, like so
much of Tennyson's poetry, it evokes complex emotions and
moods through a mastery of language. "Tears, Idle Tears,"
a particularly evocative section, is one of several interludes
of song in the midst of the poem
In the opening stanza, the poet describes his tears as
"idle," suggesting that they are caused by no immediate,
identifiable grief. However, his tears are simultaneously
the product of a "divine despair," suggesting that they do
indeed have a source: they "rise in the heart" and stem
from a profoundly deep and universal cause. This paradox is
complicated by the difficulty of understanding the phrase
"divine despair": Is it God who is despairing, or is the
despair itself divine? And how can despair be divine if
Christian doctrine considers it a sin?
The speaker states that he cries these tears while "looking
on the happy autumn-fields." At first, it seems strange
that looking at something happy would elicit tears, but the
fact that these are fields of autumn suggests that they
bear the memories of a spring and summer that have
vanished, leaving the poet with nothing to look forward to
except the dark and cold of winter. Tennyson explained
that the idea for this poem came to him when he was at
Tintern Abbey, not far from Hallam's burial place. "Tintern
Abbey" is also the title and subject of a famous poem by
William Wordsworth. (See the "Tintern Abbey" section in
the SparkNote on Wordsworth's Poetry.) Wordsworth's
poem, too, reflects on the passage of time and the loss of
the joys of youth. However, whereas Tennyson laments
"the days that are no more" and describes the past as a
"Death in Life," Wordsworth explicitly states that although
the past is no more, he has been compensated for its loss
with "other gifts":
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.
Thus, although both Wordsworth and Tennyson write
poems set at Tintern Abbey about the passage of time,
Wordsworth's poem takes on a tone of contentment,
whereas Tennyson's languishes in a tone of lament.

"Tears, Idle Tears" is structured by a pattern of unusual

adjectives used to describe the memory of the past. In the
second stanza, these adjectives are a chiastic
"fresh...sad...sad...fresh"; the memory of the birth of
friendship is "fresh," whereas the loss of these friends is
"sad"; thus when the "days that are no more" are described
as both "sad" and "fresh," these words have been
preemptively loaded with meaning and connotation: our
sense of the "sad" and "fresh" past evokes these
blossomed and withered friendships. This stanza's image of
the boat sailing to and from the underworld recalls Virgil's
image of the boatman Charon, who ferries the dead to
Hades.
In the third stanza, the memory of the past is described
as "sad...strange...sad...strange." The "sad" adjective is
introduced in the image of a man on his deathbed who is
awake for his very last morning. However, "strangeness"
enters in, too, for it is strange to the dying man that as his
life is ending, a new day is beginning. To a person hearing
the birds' song and knowing he will never hear it again, the
twittering will be imbued with an unprecedented
significance--the dying man will hear certain melancholy
tones for the first time, although, strangely and
paradoxically, it is his last.
The final stanza contains a wave of adjectives that rush
over us--now no longer confined within a neat chiasmic
structure--as the poem reaches its last, climactic lament:
"dear...sweet...deep...deep...wild." The repetition of the
word "deep" recalls the "depth of some divine despair,"
which is the source of the tears in the first stanza.
However, the speaker is also "wild with all regret" in
thinking of the irreclaimable days gone by. The image of a
"Death in Life" recalls the dead friends of the second
stanza who are like submerged memories that rise to the
surface only to sink down once again. This "Death in Life"
also recalls the experience of dying in the midst of the
rebirth of life in the morning, described in the third
stanza. The poet's climactic exclamation in the final line
thus represents a culmination of the images developed in
the previous stanzas.

ULYSSES-TENNYSON In this poem, written in 1833 and

revised for publication in 1842, Tennyson reworks the
figure of Ulysses by drawing on the ancient hero of
Homer's Odyssey ("Ulysses" is the Roman form of the
Greek "Odysseus") and the medieval hero of Dante's
Inferno. Homer's Ulysses, as described in Scroll XI of the
Odyssey, learns from a prophecy that he will take a final
sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife Penelope.
The details of this sea voyage are described by Dante in
Canto XXVI of the Inferno: Ulysses finds himself restless
in Ithaca and driven by "the longing I had to gain

experience of the world." Dante's Ulysses is a tragic figure

who dies while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for
knowledge. Tennyson combines these two accounts by
having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to
Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities, and
shortly before embarking on his final voyage.
However, this poem also concerns the poet's own personal
journey, for it was composed in the first few weeks after
Tennyson learned of the death of his dear college friend
Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Like In Memoriam, then, this
poem is also an elegy for a deeply cherished friend.
Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving poet, proclaims his
resolution to push onward in spite of the awareness that
"death closes all" (line 51). As Tennyson himself stated, the
poem expresses his own "need of going forward and braving
the struggle of life" after the loss of his beloved Hallam.
The poem's final line, "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield," came to serve as a motto for the poet's Victorian
contemporaries: the poem's hero longs to flee the tedium
of daily life "among these barren crags" (line 2) and to
enter a mythical dimension "beyond the sunset, and the
baths of all the western stars" (lines 60-61); as such, he
was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic
rebellion against bourgeois conformity. Thus for
Tennyson's immediate audience, the figure of Ulysses held
not only mythological meaning, but stood as an important
contemporary cultural icon as well.
"Ulysses," like many of Tennyson's other poems, deals with
the desire to reach beyond the limits of one's field of
vision and the mundane details of everyday life. Ulysses is
the antithesis of the mariners in "The Lotos-Eaters," who
proclaim "we will no longer roam" and desire only to relax
amidst the Lotos fields. In contrast, Ulysses "cannot rest
from travel" and longs to roam the globe (line 6). Like the
Lady of Shallot, who longs for the worldly experiences she
has been denied, Ulysses hungers to explore the untraveled
world.
As in all dramatic monologues, here the character of the
speaker emerges almost unintentionally from his own words.
Ulysses' incompetence as a ruler is evidenced by his
preference for potential quests rather than his present
responsibilities. He devotes a full 26 lines to his own
egotistical proclamation of his zeal for the wandering life,
and another 26 lines to the exhortation of his mariners to
roam the seas with him. However, he offers only 11 lines of
lukewarm praise to his son concerning the governance of
the kingdom in his absence, and a mere two words about his
"aged wife" Penelope. Thus, the speaker's own words
betray his abdication of responsibility and his specificity
of purpose.

Tess Durbeyfield Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and

distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate

intensity, Tess is indisputably the central character of the

novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a
distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a
mythic heroine. Her name, formally Theresa, recalls St.
Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher
reality cost her her life. Other characters often refer to
Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a Daughter
of Nature in Chapter XVIII, or refers to her by the
Greek mythological names Artemis and Demeter in
Chapter XX. The narrator himself sometimes describes
Tess as more than an individual woman, but as something
closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter
XIV, he says that her eyes are neither black nor blue nor
grey nor violet; rather all these shades together, like an
almost standard woman. Tesss story may thus be a
standard story, representing a deeper and larger
experience than that of a single individual.In part, Tess
represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in
England in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an
education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has
passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools, Tess
does not quite fit into the folk culture of her
predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from
rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher
world, however, as we discover on the first page of the
novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving
members of the noble and ancient family of the
dUrbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tesss blood, visible in
her graceful beautyyet she is forced to work as a
farmhand and milkmaid. When she tries to express her joy
by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the
third part of the novel, they do not satisfy hershe seems
not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the
other hand, her diction, while more polished than her
mothers, is not quite up to the level of Alecs or Angels.
She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is
a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in
nineteenth-century Britain, where old family lines retained
their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities
made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.
Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen
humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent biblical
allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tesss clan was
once glorious and powerful but is now sadly diminished, so
too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve,
fade with their expulsion from Eden, making humans sad
shadows of what they once were. Tess thus represents
what is known in Christian theology as original sin, the
degraded state in which all humans live, even whenlike
Tess herself after killing Prince or succumbing to Alec
they are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for
which they are punished. This torment represents the most
universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the human who

suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life
more degraded than she deserves.
Alec dUrberville An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man,
heir to a fortune, and bearer of a name that his father
purchased, Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tesss life.
His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueroras in
Alexander the Greatwho seizes what he wants regardless
of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than a grand
conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-dUrberville,
symbolizes the split character of his family, whose origins
are simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all,
Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name. Indeed, the divided
and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end
of the novel, when he quickly abandons his newfound
Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to believe
Alec holds his religion, or anything else, sincerely. His
supposed conversion may only be a new role he is playing.
This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its
consequences for Tess so severe, that he becomes
diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures
associations with fiery energies, as in the stoking of a
furnace or the flames of hell. His devilish associations are
evident when he wields a pitchfork while addressing Tess
early in the novel, and when he seduces her as the serpent
in Genesis seduced Eve. Additionally, like the famous
depiction of Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost, Alec does not
try to hide his bad qualities. In fact, like Satan, he revels
in them. In Chapter XII, he bluntly tells Tess, I suppose I
am a bad fellowa damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I
have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability. There
is frank acceptance in this admission and no shame. Some
readers feel Alec is too wicked to be believable, but, like
Tess herself, he represents a larger moral principle rather
than a real individual man. Like Satan, Alec symbolizes the
base forces of life that drive a person away from moral
perfection and greatness. Angel Clare A freethinking son
born into the family of a provincial parson and determined
to set himself up as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge
like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious
striving toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a
secularist who yearns to work for the honor and glory of
man, as he tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than
for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A
typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees
human society as a thing to be remolded and improved, and
he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the
values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His
love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one
expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent
spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general
attractiveness that makes him the love object of all the
milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.
TESS-Men Dominating Women

One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in

which men can dominate women, exerting a power over
them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this
command is purposeful, in the mans full knowledge of his
exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for
seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alecs act
of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess
experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious
instance of male domination over a female. But there are
other, less blatant examples of womens passivity toward
dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers
Tess, Tesss friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend
Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes their earlier
schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem disturbing. This
devotion is not merely fanciful love, but unhealthy
obsession. These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire
for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even realize
that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious
male domination of women is perhaps even more unsettling
than Alecs outward and self-conscious cruelty.
Even Angels love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems,
dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an
idealized picture of Tesss country purity for the real-life
woman that he continually refuses to get to know. When
Angel calls Tess names like Daughter of Nature and
Artemis, we feel that he may be denying her true self in
favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity
and experiences are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This
pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tesss
murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a
woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act
only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men,
when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at
Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the
accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant
men is interrupted, and Tesss act seems heroic.
Birds Images of birds recur throughout the novel, evoking
or contradicting their traditional spiritual association with
a higher realm of transcendence. Both the Christian dove
of peace and the Romantic songbirds of Keats and Shelley,
which symbolize sublime heights, lead us to expect that
birds will have positive meaning in this novel. Tess
occasionally hears birdcalls on her frequent hikes across
the countryside; their free expressiveness stands in stark
contrast to Tesss silent and constrained existence as a
wronged and disgraced girl. When Tess goes to work for
Mrs. dUrberville, she is surprised to find that the old
womans pet finches are frequently released to fly free
throughout the room. These birds offer images of hope and
liberation. Yet there is irony attached to birds as well,
making us doubt whether these images of hope and
freedom are illusory. Mrs. dUrbervilles birds leave little
white spots on the upholstery, which presumably some
servantperhaps Tess herselfwill have to clean. It may

be that freedom for one creature entails hardship for

another, just as Alecs free enjoyment of Tesss body leads
her to a lifetime of suffering. In the end, when Tess
encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and lying in
agony, birds no longer seem free, but rather oppressed and
submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic songbirds
hovering far above the Earththey are victims of earthly
violence, condemned to suffer down below and never fly
again. The Book of Genesis
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
is evoked repeatedly throughout Tess of the dUrbervilles,
giving the novel a broader metaphysical and philosophical
dimension. The roles of Eve and the serpent in paradise are
clearly delineated: Angel is the noble Adam newly born,
while Tess is the indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess
gazes upon Angel in Chapter XXVII, she regarded him as
Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam. Alec,
with his open avowal that he is bad to the bone, is the
conniving Satan. He seduces Tess under a tree, giving her
sexual knowledge in return for her lost innocence. The very
name of the forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase,
suggests how Eve will be chased from Eden for her sins.
This guilt, which will never be erased, is known in Christian
theology as the original sin that all humans have inherited.
Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that you
dont live anywhere, and his family is evicted after his
death at the end of the novel, their homelessness evokes
the human exile from Eden. Original sin suggests that
humans have fallen from their once great status to a lower
station in life, just as the dUrbervilles have devolved into
the modern Durbeyfields. The Injustice of Existence
Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to
such an extent that it begins to seem like a general aspect
of human existence in Tess of the dUrbervilles. Tess does
not mean to kill Prince, but she is punished anyway, just as
she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is
there justice waiting in heaven. Christianity teaches that
there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness
suffered in this life, but the only devout Christian
encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare,
who seems more or less content in his life anyway. For
others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of
heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions
otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches
heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems
shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of
the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice.
The forces that rule human life are absolutely
unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The
pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the
opening of the novel, and Tesss final rest at Stonehenge at
the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just
and fair, but whimsical and uncaring.
The MILL ON THE FLOSS Maggie Tulliver

Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist of The Mill on the Floss.

When the novel begins, Maggie is a clever and impetuous
child. Eliot presents Maggie as more imaginative and
interesting than the rest of her family and,
sympathetically, in need of love. Yet Maggie's passionate
preoccupations also cause pain for others, as when she
forgets to feed Tom's rabbits, which leads to their death.
Maggie will remember her childhood fondly and with
longing, yet these years are depicted as painful ones.
Maggie's mother and aunts continually express disapproval
with Maggie's rash behavior, uncanny intelligence, and
unnaturally dark skin, hair, and eyes. Yet it is only Tom's
opinion for which Maggie cares, and his inability to show
her unconditional love, along with his embarrassment at her
impetuosity, often plunges Maggie into the utter despair
particular to immaturity.
The most important event of Maggie's young life is her
encounter with a book of Thomas a Kempis's writings,
which recommend abandoning one's cares for oneself and
focusing instead on unearthly values and the suffering of
others. Maggie encounters the book during the difficult
year of her adolescence and her family's bankruptcy.
Looking for a "key" with which to understand her unhappy
lot, Maggie seizes upon Kempis's writings and begins
leading a life of deprivation and penance. Yet even in this
lifestyle, Maggie paradoxically practices her humility with
natural passion and pride. It is not until she re- establishes
a friendship with Philip Wakem, however, that Maggie can
be persuaded to respect her own need for intellectual and
sensuous experience and to see the folly of self-denial.
Maggie's relationship with Philip shows both her deep
compassion, as well as the self-centered gratification that
comes with having someone who fully appreciates her
compassion. As Maggie continues to meet Philip Wakem
secretly, against her father's wishes, her internal struggle
seems to shift. Maggie feels the conflict of the full
intellectual life that Philip offers her and her "duty" to her
father. It is Tom who reminds her of this "duty," and
Maggie's wish to be approved of by Tom remains strong.
The final books of The Mill on the Floss feature Maggie at
the age of nineteen. She seems older than her years and is
described as newly sensuousshe is tall with full lips, a full
torso and arms, and a "crown" of jet black hair. Maggie's
unworldliness and lack of social pretension make her seem
even more charming to St. Ogg's, as her worn clothing
seems to compliment her beauty. Maggie has been often
unhappy in her young adulthood. Having given up her early
asceticism, she longs for a richness of life that is
unavailable to her. When she meets Stephen Guest, Lucy
Deane's handsome suitor, and enters into the society world
of St. Ogg's, Maggie feels this wont for sensuousness
fulfilled for the first time. Stephen plays into Maggie's
romantic expectations of life and gratifies her pride.
Maggie and Stephen's attraction seems to exist more in

physical gestures than in witty discussion, and it seems to

intoxicate them both. When faced with a decision between
a life of passionate love with Stephen and her "duty" to her
family and position, Maggie chooses the latter. Maggie has
too much feeling for the memories of the past (and
nostalgia for a time when Tom loved her) to relinquish them
by running away.
Tom Tulliver
As a child, Tom Tulliver enjoys the outdoors. He is more
suited to practical knowledge than bookish education and
sometimes prefers to settle disputes with physical
intimidation, as does his father. Tom is quite close to
Maggie as a childhe responds almost instinctively to her
affection, and they are likened to two animals. Tom has a
strong, self-righteous sense of "fairness" and "justice"
which often figures into his decisions and relationships
more than tenderness. As Tom grows older he exhibits the
Dodson coolness of mind more than the Tulliver passionate
rashness, though he is capable of studied cruelty, as when
he upbraids Philip Wakem with reference to Philip's
deformity. Repelled by his father's provincial, small-minded
ways and the mess these ways caused the family, Tom joins
the ranks of capitalist entrepreneurs who are swiftly rising
in the world. Tom holds strict notions about genderhis
biggest problem with Maggie is that she will not let him
take care of her and make her decisions for her. Tom's
character seems capable of love and kindnesshe buys a
puppy for Lucy Deane, and he often ends up reconciling
with Maggiebut the difficult circumstances of his young
life have led him into a bitter single- mindedness
reminiscent of his father.
Mr. Tulliver
Like the other main characters of The Mill on the Floss,
Mr. Tulliver is the victim of both his own character and the
circumstances of his life. His personal pride and rashness
causes his bankruptcy; yet there is a sense, especially in his
illnesses, that Tulliver is also sheerly overwhelmed by the
changing world around him. Tulliver is somewhat more
intelligent than his wifea point of pride and planning for
himyet he is still "puzzled" by the expanding economic
world, as well as the complexities of language. The lifestyle
to which Mr. Tulliver belongsstatic, local, rural social
networks and slow saving of moneyis quickly giving way to
a new class of venture capitalists, like Mr. Deane. Part of
the tragedy of Tulliver's downfall is the tragedy of the
loss of his way of life. Mr. Tulliver is one of the few models
of unconditional love in the novel his affection for Maggie
and his sister, Mrs. Moss, are some of the few narrative
bright spots of the first chapters. Yet Tulliver can also be
stubborn and obsessively narrow-minded, and it is this that
kills him when he cannot overcome his hatred of Wakem.
Philip Wakem
Philip Wakem is perhaps the most intelligent and perceptive
character of The Mill on the Floss. He first appears as a

relief to Maggie's young lifehe is one of the few people

to have an accurate sense of, and appreciation for, her
intelligence, and Philip remains the only character who fully
appreciates this side of Maggie. Philip himself is well read,
cultured, and an accomplished sketcher. Philip's deformity
a hunched back he has had since birthhas made him
somewhat melancholy and bitter. Like Maggie, he suffers
from a lack of love in his life. His attraction to Maggie is, in
part, a response to her seemingly bottomless capacity for
love. Philip's gentleness, small stature, and sensitivity of
feelings cause people to describe him as "womanly," and he
is implicitly not considered as a passionate attachment for
Maggie. It is Philip who urges Maggie to give up her
unnatural self-denial. He recognizes her need for
tranquility but assures her that this is not the way to
reach it. Through the remainder of the novel, Philip seems
to implicitly offer Maggie the tranquility that she seeks
we imagine that Maggie's life with Philip would be calm,
happy, and intellectually fulfilling.
The Claim of the Past Upon Present Identity
Both characters and places in The Mill on the Floss are
presented as the current products of multi-generational
gestation. The very architecture of St. Ogg's bears its
hundreds of years of history within it. Similarly, Maggie
and Tom are the hereditary products of two competing
family linesthe Tullivers and the Dodsonsthat have long
histories and tendencies. In the novel, the past holds a
cumulative presence and has a determining effect upon
characters who are open to its influence. The first,
carefully sketched out book about Maggie and Tom's
childhood becomes the past of the rest of the novel.
Maggie holds the memory of her childhood sacred and her
connection to that time comes to affects her future
behavior. Here, the past is not something to be escaped nor
is it something that will rise again to threaten, but it is
instead an inherent part of Maggie's (and her father's)
character, making fidelity to it a necessity. Book First
clearly demonstrates the painfulness of life without a past
the depths of Maggie's childhood emotions are nearly
unbearable to her because she has no past of conquered
troubles to look back upon with which to put her present
situation in perspective. Stephen is held up as an example
of the dangers of neglecting the past. Dr. Kenn, a sort of
moral yardstick within the novel, complains of this neglect
of the past of which Stephen is a part and Maggie has
worked against: "At present everything seems tending
toward the relaxation of tiestoward the substitution of
wayward choice for the adherence to obligation which has
its roots in the past." Thus, without a recognition of the
past with which to form one's character, one is left only to
the whims of the moment and subject to emotional
extremes and eventual loneliness.
The Importance of Sympathy

The Mill on the Floss is not a religious novel, but it is

highly concerned with a morality that should function
among all people and should aspire to a compassionate
connection with others through sympathy. The parable of
St. Ogg rewards the ferryman's unquestioning sympathy
with another, and Maggie, in her final recreation of the St.
Ogg scene during the flood, is vindicated on the grounds of
her deep sympathy with others. The opposite of this
sympathy within the novel finds the form of variations of
egoism. Tom has not the capability of sympathizing with
Maggie. He is aligned with the narrow, self-serving ethic of
the rising entrepreneur: Tom explains to Mr. Deane that he
cares about his own standing, and Mr. Deane compliments
him, "That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help
anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice."
Stephen, too, is seen as a figure that puts himself before
others. His arguments in favor of his and Maggie's
elopement all revolve around the privileging of his own
emotion over that of others', even Maggie's. In contrast,
Maggie's, Philip's, and Lucy's mutual sympathy is upheld as
the moral triumph within the tragedy of the last book. Eliot
herself believed that the purpose of art is to present the
reader with realistic circumstances and characters that
will ultimately enlarge the reader's capacity for sympathy
with others. We can see this logic working against Maggie's
young asceticism. Maggie's self-denial becomes morally
injurious to her because she is denying herself the very
intellectual and artistic experiences that would help her
understand her own plight and have pity for the plight of
others.
The Effect of Society Upon the Individual
Society is never revealed to be a completely determining
factor in the destiny of Eliot's main charactersfor
example, Maggie's tragedy originates in her internal
competing impulses, not in her public disgrace. Yet, Eliot
remains concerned with the workings of a communityboth
social and economicand tracks their interrelations, as well
as their effect upon character, as part of her realism. The
Mill on the Floss sets up a geography of towns and land
holdingsSt. Ogg's, Basset, Garum Firs, Dorlcote Milland
describes the tone of each community (such as the rundown population of Basset). The novel tracks the growth of
the particular society of St. Ogg's, referencing the new
force of economic trends like entrepreneurial capitalism or
innovations like the steam engine. A wide cast of
characters aims to outline different strata in the society
such as the Dodsons, or the Miss Gueststhrough their
common values, economic standing, and social circles. In the
first part of the novel, Eliot alludes to the effect these

communal forces have on Maggie's and Tom's formation.

Toward the end of the novel, the detailed background of
St. Ogg's society functions as a contrast against which
Maggie seems freshly simple and genuine. The Disparity
Between the Dodsons and the Tullivers Early on in the
novel a distinction between the two families from which
Tom and Maggie are descended is drawn out. The Dodsons
are socially respectable, concerned with codes of behavior,
and materialistic. The Tullivers are less socially
respectable and have a depth of emotion and affection.
The constant repetition of the characteristics of the two
clans serves to create a division along which Maggie's and
Tom's growth can be tracked. Tom is associated with the
Dodsons, even more so when an adult, and Maggie is
associated with the Tullivers. Music We often see Maggie
nearly lose consciousness when listening to music; she is so
overcome with emotion and forgetful of any punitive or
self-denying impulses. As a motif, music works the opposite
way too: when Maggie experiences moments of profound,
unconscious discovery or understanding, these moments are
accompanied by a sense of music, as when she reads
Thomas a Kempis for the first time and feels as though she
hears, "a strain of solemn music." The vulnerability that
Maggie experiences in relation to music can also put her in
danger. Stephen Guest woos Maggie with music, not with
words, and we see that his singing creates an "emotion that
seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all
enjoyment, weak for all resistence." Music in The Mill on
the Floss is not meant to indicate moments when Maggie is
either succumbing to evil or experiencing good, but rather
it indicates her generally heightened sensibilitiesMaggie
seems to experience everything with more emotion than
others, and music is used throughout the novel to
underscore this effect. Animal Imagery Especially in the
early books of The Mill on the Floss, Tom, and especially
Maggie, are associated with animal imagery. The imagery is
usually of farm-type animalsponies, dogs, ducksand
usually points to the character's capacity for affection or
non-adherence to social convention. Following Darwin, Eliot
uses this imagery also to gesture toward the wider relation
between humans and animals that can be especially seen in
young children. Thus, when Maggie and Tom reconcile in
Chapter IV of Book First, the narrator points out, "We
[adults] no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere
impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in
every respect like members of a highly civilized society.
Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals."
Dark and Light Women The motif of darkness and
lightness of womenmeaning their eyes, hair, or skinis
often used to emphasize the uniqueness of Maggie's
appearance. The motif of darkness and lightness connects
to the motif of the distinctions between the Dodsons and
the Tulliversthe Tullivers have darker skin, while the
Dodsons have lighter skin. The Dodsons, and indeed, all of

St. Ogg's, respect or covet Lucy Deane's fair appearance.

Her lightness is also prized in a larger cultural arena, and,
in Book Fourth, Maggie becomes frustrated by the
traditional plot lines in which the light, blond women live
happily ever after in love. Maggie's family views her
darkness as ugly and unnatural, yet by the end of the novel,
it has made men perceive Maggie as more beautiful because
her darkness is a rarity.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (Frame story, koncentricna

struktura, prica u okviru price, pocinje i zavrsava se
Nelinom pricom)
Heathcliff
Wuthering Heights centers around the story of Heathcliff.
The first paragraph of the novel provides a vivid physical
picture of him, as Lockwood describes how his black eyes
withdraw suspiciously under his brows at Lockwoods
approach. Nellys story begins with his introduction into the
Earnshaw family, his vengeful machinations drive the entire
plot, and his death ends the book. The desire to understand
him and his motivations has kept countless readers engaged
in the novel. Heathcliff, however, defies being understood,
and it is difficult for readers to resist seeing what they
want or expect to see in him. The novel teases the reader
with the possibility that Heathcliff is something other than
what he seemsthat his cruelty is merely an expression of
his frustrated love for Catherine, or that his sinister
behaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romantic hero.
We expect Heathcliffs character to contain such a hidden
virtue because he resembles a hero in a romance novel.
Traditionally, romance novel heroes appear dangerous,
brooding, and cold at first, only later to emerge as fiercely
devoted and loving. One hundred years before Emily Bront
wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that a reformed
rake makes the best husband was already a clich of
romantic literature, and romance novels center around the
same clich to this day. However, Heathcliff does not
reform, and his malevolence proves so great and longlasting that it cannot be adequately explained even as a
desire for revenge against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc.
As he himself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely
sadistic, as he amuses himself by seeing how much abuse
she can take and still come cringing back for more. Critic
Joyce Carol Oates argues that Emily Bront does the same
thing to the reader that Heathcliff does to Isabella,
testing to see how many times the reader can be shocked
by
Heathcliffs
gratuitous
violence
and
still,
masochistically, insist on seeing him as a romantic hero.
It is significant that Heathcliff begins his life as a
homeless orphan on the streets of Liverpool. When Bront
composed her book, in the 1840s, the English economy was
severely depressed, and the conditions of the factory

workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were so appalling

that the upper and middle classes feared violent revolt.
Thus, many of the more affluent members of society
beheld these workers with a mixture of sympathy and fear.
In literature, the smoky, threatening, miserable factorytowns were often represented in religious terms, and
compared to hell. The poet William Blake, writing near the
turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of Englands dark
Satanic Mills. Heathcliff, of course, is frequently
compared to a demon by the other characters in the book.
Considering this historical context, Heathcliff seems to
embody the anxieties that the books upper- and middleclass audience had about the working classes. The reader
may easily sympathize with him when he is powerless, as a
child tyrannized by Hindley Earnshaw, but he becomes a
villain when he acquires power and returns to Wuthering
Heights with money and the trappings of a gentleman. This
corresponds with the ambivalence the upper classes felt
toward the lower classesthe upper classes had charitable
impulses toward lower-class citizens when they were
miserable, but feared the prospect of the lower classes
trying to escape their miserable circumstances by acquiring
political, social, cultural, or economic power.
Catherine
The location of Catherines coffin symbolizes the conflict
that tears apart her short life. She is not buried in the
chapel with the Lintons. Nor is her coffin placed among the
tombs of the Earnshaws. Instead, as Nelly describes in
Chapter XVI, Catherine is buried in a corner of the
kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry
plants have climbed over it from the moor. Moreover, she
is buried with Edgar on one side and Heathcliff on the
other, suggesting her conflicted loyalties. Her actions are
driven in part by her social ambitions, which initially are
awakened during her first stay at the Lintons, and which
eventually compel her to marry Edgar. However, she is also
motivated by impulses that prompt her to violate social
conventionsto love Heathcliff, throw temper tantrums,
and run around on the moor. Isabella LintonCatherines
sister-in-law and Heathcliffs wife, who was born in the
same year that Catherine wasserves as Catherines foil.
The two womens parallel positions allow us to see their
differences with greater clarity. Catherine represents wild
nature, in both her high, lively spirits and her occasional
cruelty, whereas Isabella represents culture and
civilization, both in her refinement and in her weakness.
Edgar Just as Isabella Linton serves as Catherines foil,
Edgar Linton serves as Heathcliffs. Edgar is born and
raised a gentleman. He is graceful, well-mannered, and
instilled with civilized virtues. These qualities cause
Catherine to choose Edgar over Heathcliff and thus to
initiate the contention between the men. Nevertheless,
Edgars gentlemanly qualities ultimately prove useless in his
ensuing rivalry with Heathcliff. Edgar is particularly

humiliated by his confrontation with Heathcliff in Chapter

XI, in which he openly shows his fear of fighting
Heathcliff. Catherine, having witnessed the scene, taunts
him, saying, Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as
the king would march his army against a colony of mice. As
the reader can see from the earliest descriptions of Edgar
as a spoiled child, his refinement is tied to his helplessness
and impotence.
The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes
Catherine and Heathcliffs passion for one another seems
to be the center of Wuthering Heights, given that it is
stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed
in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major
conflicts that structure the novels plot. As she tells
Catherine and Heathcliffs story, Nelly criticizes both of
them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this
passion is obviously one of the most compelling and
memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide
whether Bront intends the reader to condemn these
lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic
heroes whose love transcends social norms and conventional
morality. The book is actually structured around two
parallel love stories, the first half of the novel centering
on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the
less dramatic second half features the developing love
between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the
first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and
order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The
differences between the two love stories contribute to the
readers understanding of why each ends the way it
does.The most important feature of young Catherine and
Haretons love story is that it involves growth and change.
Early in the novel Hareton seems irredeemably brutal,
savage, and illiterate, but over time he becomes a loyal
friend to young Catherine and learns to read. When young
Catherine first meets Hareton he seems completely alien
to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from contempt
to love. Catherine and Heathcliffs love, on the other hand,
is rooted in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to
change. In choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a
more genteel life, but she refuses to adapt to her role as
wife, either by sacrificing Heathcliff or embracing Edgar.
In Chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since
she was twelve years old and her father died have been like
a blank to her, and she longs to return to the moors of her
childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly
superhuman ability to maintain the same attitude and to
nurse the same grudges over many years.
Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliffs love is based on their
shared perception that they are identical. Catherine
declares, famously, I am Heathcliff, while Heathcliff,
upon Catherines death, wails that he cannot live without his
soul, meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and
is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or

arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that

Catherine and Heathcliffs love is based upon their refusal
to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is
fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation
are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by
the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and
distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights
presents a vision of life as a process of change, and
celebrates this process over and against the romantic
intensity of its principal characters.

The Precariousness of Social Class

As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons
occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of
late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British
society. At the top of British society was the royalty,
followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then
by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the
population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class,
possessed servants and often large estates, they held a
nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of
aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because
aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry,
however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject
to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but
find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not
share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was
really a gentleman would consider such questions as how
much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had,
how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and
whether his money came from land or tradegentlemen
scorned banking and commercial activities. Considerations
of class status often crucially inform the characters
motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherines decision to
marry Edgar so that she will be the greatest woman of the
neighborhood is only the most obvious example. The
Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but
nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through
their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on
much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage,
they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks
with great puzzlement, resembles that of a homely,
northern farmer and not that of a gentleman. The shifting
nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in
Heathcliffs trajectory from homeless waif to young
gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman
again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks
that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in dress and manners).
The Conflict between Nature and Culture
In Wuthering Heights, Bront constantly plays nature and
culture against each other. Nature is represented by the
Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in
particular. These characters are governed by their

passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility.

Correspondingly, the house where they liveWuthering
Heightscomes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the
other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton family
represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.
When, in Chapter VI, Catherine is bitten by the Lintons
dog and brought into Thrushcross Grange, the two sides
are brought onto the collision course that structures the
majority of the novels plot. At the time of that first
meeting between the Linton and Earnshaw households,
chaos has already begun to erupt at Wuthering Heights,
where Hindleys cruelty and injustice reign, whereas all
seems to be fine and peaceful at Thrushcross Grange.
However, the influence of Wuthering Heights soon proves
overpowering, and the inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange
are drawn into Catherine, Hindley, and Heathcliffs drama.
Thus the reader almost may interpret Wuthering Heightss
impact on the Linton family as an allegory for the
corruption of culture by nature, creating a curious reversal
of the more traditional story of the corruption of nature
by culture. However, Bront tells her story in such a way as
to prevent our interest and sympathy from straying too far
from the wilder characters, and often portrays the more
civilized characters as despicably weak and silly. This
method of characterization prevents the novel from
flattening out into a simple privileging of culture over
nature, or vice versa. Thus in the end the reader must
acknowledge that the novel is no mere allegory.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Pip As a Bildungsroman (obrazovni roman), Great
Expectations presents the growth and development of a
single character, Philip Pirrip, better known to himself and
to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip
is by far the most important character in Great
Expectations: he is both the protagonist, whose actions
make up the main plot of the novel, and the narrator, whose
thoughts and attitudes shape the readers perception of
the story. As a result, developing an understanding of Pips
character is perhaps the most important step in
understanding Great Expectations.
Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the
events of the novel take place, there are really two Pips in
Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the character
the voice telling the story and the person acting it out.
Dickens takes great care to distinguish the two Pips,
imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and
maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels
about what is happening to him as it actually happens. This
skillfully executed distinction is perhaps best observed
early in the book, when Pip the character is a child; here,

Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but
also enables us to see and feel the story through his eyes.
As a character, Pips two most important traits are his
immature, romantic idealism and his innately good
conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to
improve himself and attain any possible advancement,
whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry
Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same
idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear
of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands
ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not
want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator
judges his own past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving
himself credit for good deeds but angrily castigating
himself for bad ones. As a character, however, Pips
idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather
narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify situations based
on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the
people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman,
for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a
gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe
and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.On the other hand, Pip is at
heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact
that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness
throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying
Herberts way into business, etc.) and his essential love for
all those who love him. Pips main line of development in the
novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his
innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature
idealism.
Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pips
desire for advancement largely overshadows his basic
goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his
idealistic wishes seem to have been justified, and he gives
himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the
discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy
Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pips
oversimplified sense of his worlds hierarchy. The fact that
he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the
brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize
that ones social position is not the most important quality
one possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has
caused him to hurt the people who care about him most.
Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the
man who narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman.
Estella Often cited as Dickenss first convincing female
character, Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who
darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves
as a bitter criticism against the class system in which she
is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to
torment men and break their hearts, Estella wins Pips
deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the
warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story,
Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she

represents Pips first longed-for ideal of life among the

upper classes, Estella is actually even lower-born than Pip;
as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she is the daughter
of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from the
very lowest level of society.Ironically, life among the upper
classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead,
she is victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than
being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she
is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to
express emotion and interact normally with the world. And
rather than marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip,
Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats
her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years.
In this way, Dickens uses Estellas life to reinforce the
idea that ones happiness and well-being are not deeply
connected to ones social position: had Estella been poor,
she might have been substantially better off. Despite her
cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life,
Dickens nevertheless ensures that Estella is still a
sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her
inner struggle to discover and act on her own feelings
rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing,
Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of Estellas inner life,
which helps to explain what Pip might love about her.
Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip,
but she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly
warns him that she has no heart and seems to urge him as
strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her behind.
Finally, Estellas long, painful marriage to Drummle causes
her to develop along the same lines as Pipthat is, she
learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner
feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has become
her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says
to Pip, Suffering has been stronger than all other
teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, butI hope
into a better shape.
Miss Havisham The mad, vengeful Miss Havisham, a
wealthy dowager who lives in a rotting mansion and wears an
old wedding dress every day of her life, is not exactly a
believable character, but she is certainly one of the most
memorable creations in the book. Miss Havishams life is
defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson
on what was to have been their wedding day. From that
moment forth, Miss Havisham is determined never to move
beyond her heartbreak. She stops all the clocks in Satis
House at twenty minutes to nine, the moment when she
first learned that Compeyson was gone, and she wears only
one shoe, because when she learned of his betrayal, she
had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of manic,
obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises
her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men. Miss
Havisham is an example of single-minded vengeance pursued
destructively: both Miss Havisham and the people in her
life suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss

Havisham is completely unable to see that her actions are

hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at the end of
the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pips heart
to be broken in the same manner as her own; rather than
achieving any kind of personal revenge, she has only caused
more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for
forgiveness, reinforcing the novels theme that bad
behavior can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.

Ambition and Self-Improvement

The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple:
affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than
social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes
the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by
exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvementideas
that quickly become both the thematic center of the novel
and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of
Pips development. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he
can conceive of something that is better than what he
already has, he immediately desires to obtain the
improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a
wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral
shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realizes that he
cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pips desire for selfimprovement is the main source of the novels title: because
he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has
great expectations about his future.Ambition and selfimprovement take three forms in Great Expectations
moral, social, and educational; these motivate Pips best and
his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires
moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself
when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs
him to act better in the future. When he leaves for
London, for instance, he torments himself about having
behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip
desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he
longs to become a member of her social class, and,
encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains
fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this
fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides
Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system
of his era and to make a point about its capricious nature.
Significantly, Pips life as a gentleman is no more satisfying
and certainly no more moralthan his previous life as a
blacksmiths apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational
improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social
ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full education is a
requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an
ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement.
Pip understands this fact as a child, when he learns to read
at Mr. Wopsles aunts school, and as a young man, when he
takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through
the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that

social and educational improvement are irrelevant to ones

real worth and that conscience and affection are to be
valued above erudition and social standing.
Social Class Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens
explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging
from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor
peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the
middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss
Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the
novels plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the book
Pips realization that wealth and class are less important
than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this
realization when he is finally able to understand that,
despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, ones social
status is in no way connected to ones real character.
Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class lout, while
Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the
novels treatment of social class is that the class system it
portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model
of Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility
and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters
whose fortunes have been earned through commerce. Even
Miss Havishams family fortune was made through the
brewery that is still connected to her manor. In this way,
by connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work
and self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the
novels overarching theme of ambition and selfimprovement.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence The theme of crime, guilt,
and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely
through the characters of the convicts and the criminal
lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the
smithy to the gallows at the prison in London, the imagery
of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming
an important symbol of Pips inner struggle to reconcile his
own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice
system. In general, just as social class becomes a
superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look
beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external
trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts,
jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that
Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his inner conscience.
Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first simply
because he is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him
because he is afraid of the police. By the end of the book,
however, Pip has discovered Magwitchs inner nobility, and
is able to disregard his external status as a criminal.
Prompted by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade
the law and the police. As Pip has learned to trust his
conscience and to value Magwitchs inner character, he has
replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.
Comparison of Characters to Inanimate Objects

Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images

of inanimate objects to describe the physical appearance
of
charactersparticularly
minor
characters,
or
characters with whom the narrator is not intimate. For
example, Mrs. Joe looks as if she scrubs her face with a
nutmeg grater, while the inscrutable features of Mr.
Wemmick are repeatedly compared to a letter-box. This
motif, which Dickens uses throughout his novels, may
suggest a failure of empathy on the narrators part, or it
may suggest that the characters position in life is
pressuring them to resemble a thing more than a human
being. The latter interpretation would mean that the motif
in general is part of a social critique, in that it implies that
an institution such as the class system or the criminal
justice system dehumanizes certain people.
Satis House in Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent
Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize Pips
romantic perception of the upper class and many other
themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss Havishams
wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and
degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast
symbolize Miss Havishams past, and the stopped clocks
throughout the house symbolize her determined attempt to
freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it
was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery
next to the house symbolizes the connection between
commerce and wealth: Miss Havishams fortune is not the
product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in
industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated
stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that
pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of
its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.
The Mists on the Marshes The setting almost always
symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and always sets a
tone that is perfectly matched to the novels dramatic
action. The misty marshes near Pips childhood home in
Kent, one of the most evocative of the books settings, are
used several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty. As
a child, Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in these mists;
later, he is kidnapped by Orlick and nearly murdered in
them. Whenever Pip goes into the mists, something
dangerous is likely to happen. Significantly, Pip must go
through the mists when he travels to London shortly after
receiving his fortune, alerting the reader that this
apparently positive development in his life may have
dangerous consequences.
Bentley Drummle Although he is a minor character in the
novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important contrast with
Pip and represents the arbitrary nature of class
distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected the ideas of
moral, social, and educational advancement so that each
depends on the others. The coarse and cruel Drummle, a
member of the upper class, provides Pip with proof that
social advancement has no inherent connection to

intelligence or moral worth. Drummle is a lout who has

inherited immense wealth, while Pips friend and brother-inlaw Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he
earns. Drummles negative example helps Pip to see the
inner worth of characters such as Magwitch and Joe, and
eventually to discard his immature fantasies about wealth
and class in favor of a new understanding that is both more
compassionate and more realistic.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Elizabeth Bennet
The second daughter in the Bennet family, and the most
intelligent and quick-witted, Elizabeth is the protagonist of
Pride and Prejudice and one of the most well-known female
characters in English literature. Her admirable qualities
are numerousshe is lovely, clever, and, in a novel defined
by dialogue, she converses as brilliantly as anyone. Her
honesty, virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the
nonsense and bad behavior that pervade her class-bound
and often spiteful society. Nevertheless, her sharp tongue
and tendency to make hasty judgments often lead her
astray; Pride and Prejudice is essentially the story of how
she (and her true love, Darcy) overcome all obstacles
including their own personal failingsto find romantic
happiness. Elizabeth must not only cope with a hopeless
mother, a distant father, two badly behaved younger
siblings, and several snobbish, antagonizing females, she
must also overcome her own mistaken impressions of Darcy,
which initially lead her to reject his proposals of marriage.
Her charms are sufficient to keep him interested,
fortunately, while she navigates familial and social turmoil.
As she gradually comes to recognize the nobility of Darcys
character, she realizes the error of her initial prejudice
against him.
Fitzwilliam Darcy
The son of a wealthy, well-established family and the
master of the great estate of Pemberley, Darcy is
Elizabeths male counterpart. The narrator relates
Elizabeths point of view of events more often than
Darcys, so Elizabeth often seems a more sympathetic
figure. The reader eventually realizes, however, that Darcy
is her ideal match. Intelligent and forthright, he too has a
tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and his high
birth and wealth make him overly proud and overly
conscious of his social status. Indeed, his haughtiness
makes him initially bungle his courtship. When he proposes
to her, for instance, he dwells more on how unsuitable a
match she is than on her charms, beauty, or anything else
complimentary. Her rejection of his advances builds a kind
of humility in him. Darcy demonstrates his continued
devotion to Elizabeth, in spite of his distaste for her low
connections, when he rescues Lydia and the entire Bennet
family from disgrace, and when he goes against the wishes

of his haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by

continuing to pursue Elizabeth. Darcy proves himself
worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up repenting her earlier,
overly harsh judgment of him.
Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley
Elizabeths beautiful elder sister and Darcys wealthy best
friend, Jane and Bingley engage in a courtship that
occupies a central place in the novel. They first meet at
the ball in Meryton and enjoy an immediate mutual
attraction. They are spoken of as a potential couple
throughout the book, long before anyone imagines that
Darcy and Elizabeth might marry. Despite their centrality
to the narrative, they are vague characters, sketched by
Austen rather than carefully drawn. Indeed, they are so
similar in nature and behavior that they can be described
together: both are cheerful, friendly, and good-natured,
always ready to think the best of others; they lack entirely
the prickly egotism of Elizabeth and Darcy. Janes gentle
spirit serves as a foil for her sisters fiery, contentious
nature, while Bingleys eager friendliness contrasts with
Darcys stiff pride. Their principal characteristics are
goodwill and compatibility, and the contrast of their
romance with that of Darcy and Elizabeth is remarkable.
Jane and Bingley exhibit to the reader true love
unhampered by either pride or prejudice, though in their
simple goodness, they also demonstrate that such a love is
mildly dull.
Mr. Bennet Mr. Bennet is the patriarch of the Bennet
householdthe husband of Mrs. Bennet and the father of
Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary. He is a man driven
to exasperation by his ridiculous wife and difficult
daughters. He reacts by withdrawing from his family and
assuming a detached attitude punctuated by bursts of
sarcastic humor. He is closest to Elizabeth because they
are the two most intelligent Bennets. Initially, his dry wit
and self-possession in the face of his wifes hysteria make
him a sympathetic figure, but, though he remains likable
throughout, the reader gradually loses respect for him as
it becomes clear that the price of his detachment is
considerable. Detached from his family, he is a weak father
and, at critical moments, fails his family. In particular, his
foolish indulgence of Lydias immature behavior nearly
leads to general disgrace when she elopes with Wickham.
Further, upon her disappearance, he proves largely
ineffective. It is left to Mr. Gardiner and Darcy to track
Lydia down and rectify the situation. Ultimately, Mr.
Bennet would rather withdraw from the world than cope
with it.
Mrs. Bennet Mrs. Bennet is a miraculously tiresome
character. Noisy and foolish, she is a woman consumed by
the desire to see her daughters married and seems to care
for nothing else in the world. Ironically, her single-minded
pursuit of this goal tends to backfire, as her lack of social
graces alienates the very people (Darcy and Bingley) whom

she tries desperately to attract. Austen uses her

continually to highlight the necessity of marriage for young
women. Mrs. Bennet also serves as a middle-class
counterpoint to such upper-class snobs as Lady Catherine
and Miss Bingley, demonstrating that foolishness can be
found at every level of society. In the end, however, Mrs.
Bennet proves such an unattractive figure, lacking
redeeming characteristics of any kind, that some readers
have accused Austen of unfairness in portraying heras if
Austen, like Mr. Bennet, took perverse pleasure in poking
fun at a woman already scorned as a result of her ill
breeding.
Love Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most
cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship
between Darcy and Elizabeth. As in any good love story, the
lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling blocks,
beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers own
personal qualities. Elizabeths pride makes her misjudge
Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcys
prejudice against Elizabeths poor social standing blinds
him, for a time, to her many virtues. (Of course, one could
also say that Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Darcy of
pridethe title cuts both ways.) Austen, meanwhile, poses
countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love
between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherines
attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingleys snobbery,
Mrs. Bennets idiocy, and Wickhams deceit. In each case,
anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better
social connections, interfere with the workings of love.
Darcy and Elizabeths realization of a mutual and tender
love seems to imply that Austen views love as something
independent of these social forces, as something that can
be captured if only an individual is able to escape the
warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound
some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about
love, using the character of Charlotte Lucas, who marries
the buffoon Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that
the heart does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her
central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a
force separate from society and one that can conquer even
the most difficult of circumstances.
Reputation Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a
womans reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is
expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the
social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This theme
appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield
and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the
reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other
points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior of Mrs. Bennet
gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and
snobbish) Darcys and Bingleys. Austen pokes gentle fun at
the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when
Lydia elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of
wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious

matter. By becoming Wickhams lover without benefit of

marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social
pale, and her disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family.
The fact that Lydias judgment, however terrible, would
likely have condemned the other Bennet sisters to
marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should
Elizabeths reputation suffer along with Lydias? Darcys
intervention on the Bennets behalf thus becomes all the
more generous, but some readers might resent that such an
intervention was necessary at all. If Darcys money had
failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy
have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of
prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and
Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many
ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance
placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and
Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures,
and to what extent does it simply accept their
inevitability?
Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both
reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the
middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of
class are strictly drawn. While the Bennets, who are middle
class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and
Darcys, they are clearly their social inferiors and are
treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of classconsciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins,
who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class
patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins
offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold
such views. His conception of the importance of class is
shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the
dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not
as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do
anything he can to get enough money to raise himself into a
higher station. Mr. Collinss views are merely the most
extreme and obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is
therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social
hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its
correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy
virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley-Jane
marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness
to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby
implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and
unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class
must be made with the understanding that Austen herself
is often criticized as being a classist: she doesnt really
represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants
she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen
does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of
that structure
Courtship

In a sense, Pride and Prejudice is the story of two

courtshipsthose between Darcy and Elizabeth and
between Bingley and Jane. Within this broad structure
appear other, smaller courtships: Mr. Collinss aborted
wooing of Elizabeth, followed by his successful wooing of
Charlotte Lucas; Miss Bingleys unsuccessful attempt to
attract Darcy; Wickhams pursuit first of Elizabeth, then
of the never-seen Miss King, and finally of Lydia. Courtship
therefore takes on a profound, if often unspoken,
importance in the novel. Marriage is the ultimate goal,
courtship constitutes the real working-out of love.
Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a persons
personality, and each courtship becomes a microcosm for
different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as
a means to social advancement).
Journeys
Nearly every scene in Pride and Prejudice takes place
indoors, and the action centers around the Bennet home in
the small village of Longbourn. Nevertheless, journeys
even short onesfunction repeatedly as catalysts for
change in the novel. Elizabeths first journey, by which she
intends simply to visit Charlotte and Mr. Collins, brings her
into contact with Mr. Darcy, and leads to his first proposal.
Her second journey takes her to Derby and Pemberley,
where she fans the growing flame of her affection for
Darcy. The third journey, meanwhile, sends various people
in pursuit of Wickham and Lydia, and the journey ends with
Darcy tracking them down and saving the Bennet family
honor, in the process demonstrating his continued devotion
to Elizabeth.
Pemberley
Pride and Prejudice is remarkably free of explicit
symbolism, which perhaps has something to do with the
novels reliance on dialogue over description. Nevertheless,
Pemberley, Darcys estate, sits at the center of the novel,
literally and figuratively, as a geographic symbol of the man
who owns it. Elizabeth visits it at a time when her feelings
toward Darcy are beginning to warm; she is enchanted by
its beauty and charm, and by the picturesque countryside,
just as she will be charmed, increasingly, by the gifts of its
owner. Austen makes the connection explicit when she
describes the stream that flows beside the mansion. In
front, she writes, a stream of some natural importance
was swelled into greater, but without any artificial
appearance. Darcy possesses a natural importance that is
swelled by his arrogance, but which coexists with a
genuine honesty and lack of artificial appearance. Like the
stream, he is neither formal, nor falsely adorned.
Pemberley even offers a symbol-within-a-symbol for their
budding romance: when Elizabeth encounters Darcy on the
estate, she is crossing a small bridge, suggesting the broad
gulf of misunderstanding and class prejudice that lies
between themand the bridge that their love will build
across it.

VANITY FAIR Rebecca Sharp

Child of a poor artist and a French opera girl, Becky Sharp
early learns to shift for herself. Her mother dead, Becky's
father with "a great propensity for running into debt, and a
partiality for the tavern" brings her up. From her mother
she has a knowledge of French from her father the ability
to ward off creditors. With this heritage of Bohemian
blood, and a clever mind, Becky lives by her wits. At her
father's death (two bailiffs quarrel over his corpse) Becky
is accepted at Miss Pinkerton's to teach French in
exchange for schooling, free board and room, and a little
money. Ingenious Rebecca manufactures a laudable
ancestry for herself, and although she is at heart selfish
and hostile, she can act the part of modesty, simplicity,
gentleness, and untiring good humor. When she cares for
the rich Miss Crawley (who has 70,000 pounds) Rebecca's
"little nerves seemed to be of iron and she was quite
unshaken by the duty and tedium of the sick chamber."
In addition to her mental endowment, Rebecca has
physical charm, described by Dr. Squills as "Green eyes,
fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development."
Mrs. Bute Crawley laments Rebecca's physical attraction
when she looks at her own dumpy, misshapen, blueblooded daughters.
Becky has one determination: to carve out a place for
herself in Vanity Fair. Although she hasn't blushed
naturally since she was eight years old, she can blush at
will. She exploits her aloneness and lack of protection.
She can cry when she wants to, but the most genuine
tears she sheds are those when she has to refuse
marriage to the wealthy Sir Pitt Crawley, because she
has already married his son, Rawdon.
When she and Rawdon are living on nothing a year,
Rebecca deals with the creditors. It is she who starts
the rumor that Rawdon has inherited from his rich aunt,
and thereby gets out of Paris without paying any debts,
since she has ordered a newly decorated apartment
against her return. It is she who settles for a
percentage of Rawdon's debts in England, so that he
may return to London for a fresh start.
Among Rebecca's talents are music, both piano and
voice. She can sketch, talk French like a native, dance,
act, mimic. Not only her physical charm attracts Lord
Steyne, but her wit and mimicry and her ability to get
money out of him, even when he realizes she is
outwitting him. The more money she wheedles out of
him, the more amused he is, until the fatal day when
Rawdon walks in on the two of them.
Rebecca's ambition is her outstanding characteristic.
She sacrifices husband, child, friends to it; but she
enjoys the battle. In a letter to Amelia, after Becky has

gone to Queen's Crawley, she says, "At least I shall be

amongst gentlefolksand not with vulgar city people."
This jibe refers to both the Sedleys and the Osbornes
because George has thwarted her marriage with Joseph
Sedley. She continues, "You might lodge all the people in
Russell Square in the house, I think, and have space to
spare."
Although Rebecca is a merciless social climber, has
abandoned her child, whom she hates, has destroyed
Rawdon and will destroy Joseph, yet it is she who brings
Amelia to her senses, and who realizes that the one true
gentleman in the whole of Vanity Fair is Dobbin. After
eavesdropping on William's talk with Amelia, Becky says
to herself, "What a noble heart that man has, and how
shamefully that woman plays with it . . . if I could have
had such a husband as thata man with a heart and
brains too! I would not have minded his large feet . . ."
Rebecca determines to help William's cause with Amelia.
For once she acts unselfishly. When she has destroyed
the memory of George for Amelia, she soothes and
kisses her, a "rare mark of sympathy with Mrs. Becky."
Rebecca also protects Amelia from the two ruffian
friends who follow Rebecca and are intent on exploiting
Amelia.
Thackeray explains why Becky does what she does: "She
was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and
mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and
circumstance . . . " Becky succeeds in establishing
herself in Vanity Fair, at the cost of the lives of two
men and the alienation of all her friends and family. She
serves as a direct contrast to Amelia. Amelia Sedley
Exactly opposite from Rebecca, Amelia has many
advantages. Miss Pinkerton describes her as industrious,
obedient, sweet, and beloved. She has mastered these
accomplishments:
music,
dancing,
orthography,
embroidery, and needlework. However, Miss Pinkerton
suggests that she use a backboard for four hours each
day for the next three years to improve her carriage,
"so requisite for every young lady of fashion." The
author indicates her need of "backbone" by suggesting
the use of the backboard. Whereas Rebecca's chief
quality is ruthless ambition, Amelia exhibits weak
humility and blind loyalty. Only in protection and care of
Georgy does she rise above her natural submission to
defend her own ideas. Once she prevents her mother
from giving Georgy medicine, causing a rift between
herself and her mother. She objects when old Osborne
wants Georgy. In both cases, she returns to a sweet and
reasonable attitude when she has convinced herself of
her own selfishness. Protected by doting parents,
Amelia leads a sheltered existence saddened by
George's neglect and his apparent willingness to forget
her when her fortune has vanished. Sweet, lovable,
refreshing, she has not the sparkle nor the mentality of

Becky. She does have the lifetime devotion of William

Dobbin, who sees that George marries her; and looks
after her when George dies. Amelia's loyalty and long,
blind devotion to George amount almost to stupidity. Any
fault in George she interprets as a fault in herself and
accuses herself of guilty love to account for his having
been killed. The fate of Europe is the fate of her lover
to Amelia. Amelia's innocence and ready belief in other
people make her unbelievably good in contrast to
Becky's unbelievable duplicity. Both attract young men,
but for different reasons. Becky's wit and physical
charm win a following, whereas Amelia's goodness and
sweetness charm all who meet her. Becky can cry when
she wants to; Amelia cries over a dead canary, a mouse,
the end of a stupid novel, or the slightest unkind word
to her. She remains blind to Dobbin's goodness
throughout much of the book and although her eyes have
been opened to a certain extent regarding Becky, yet
when she thinks Becky needs a friend, she returns to
comfort and help her.
HUMOR Joseph, embarrassed when he first meets
Rebecca, turns red, can't talk, and yanks the bell rope
loose. Sir Pitt is a stingy, dirty, disreputable boor who
can't spell, doesn't read, eats boiled mutton, and has
but one candle in the house; but it stands in an ornate
silver candlestick, and three footmen serve the boiled
mutton. Old Sir Pitt proposes marriage to Becky:
"I'm an old man, but a good'n. I'm good for twenty
years. I'll make you happy, see if I don't. You shall do
what you like; spend what you like; and 'av it all your own
way. I'll make you a settlement. I'll do everything
reglar. Look year!" and the old man fell down on his
knees and leered at her like a satyr.
Rebecca started back a picture of consternation. In the
course of this history we have never seen her lose her
presence of mind; but she did now, and wept some of the
most genuine tears that ever fell from her eyes. "Oh,
Sir Pitt!" she said. "Oh, sirII'm married already ."
When the party gets ready to leave Brighton, Amelia
rises to pack, while her husband lies in bed "deploring
that she had not a maid to help her." When Becky wants
to impress someone with her domesticity and her love
for her child, she pulls out a little shirt that she is
sewing for little Rawdon, but he outgrows it long before
it is finished. Jos calls on Becky in her room at the
"Elephant." She has to do some quick house cleaning:
In that instant she put a rouge-pot, a brandy-bottle, and a
plate of broken meat into the bed . . . she placed herself on
the bednot on the bottle and plate, you may be sure . . .
she put her hand to her heart with a passionate gesture of
despair, burying her face for a moment on the bed. IRONY:
Thackeray's irony takes a wide rangesometimes biting,
sometimes playful, but always pertinent. A sample of
comment on money follows: "I for my part, have known a

five-pound note to interpose and knock up a half-century's

attachment between two brethren; and can't but admire,
as I think what a fine and durable thing Love is among
worldly people." "What a charming reconciler and
peacemaker money is!" "The good quality of this old lady
has been mentioned . . . She had a balance at her banker's
which would have made her beloved anywhere."When Becky
and Rawdon look for George in order for Rawdon to
gamble with him, the author remarks, "I hope the reader
has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs.
Crawley to suppose that they ever would have dreamed
of paying a visit to so remote a district as Bloomsbury,
if they thought the family whom they proposed to
honour with a visit were not merely out of fashion, but
out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no
possible manner." Women come in for a good share of
Thackeray's sarcasm. He has his tongue-in-cheek as he
describes Becky's need of a mother. "All she wanted was
the proposal, and ah! how Rebecca now felt the want of a
mother!a dear, tender mother, who would have
managed the business in ten minutes . . .""All old
women were beauties once, we very well know." Miss
Pinkerton writes Mrs. Bute that Miss Tuffin is sweet,
young, eighteen, and therefore, probably not suitable.
She illustrates Thackeray's idea that "natural jealousy .
. . is one of the main principles of every honest woman."
Mrs. Bute is reluctant to forgive the begging Miss
Horrocks. "But those who know a really good woman are
aware that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the
humiliation of an enemy is a triumph to her soul." Mrs.
Bute, in her treatment of Miss Crawley ". . . ground down
the old lady in her convalescence in such a way as only
belongs to your proper-managing, motherly, moral
woman." Becky's friendship with Lady Jane is such that
". . . these two ladies did not see much of each other
except upon those occasions when the younger brother's
wife, having an object to gain from the other,
frequented her. They my-loved and my-deared each
other assiduously, but kept apart generally . . ." In
ironical comments on society and life in general,
Thackeray lets the reader know that even those in
modest circumstances love their children. Dobbin writes
his mother ". . . who was fond of him, although she was a
grocer's wife and lived in a back parlour in Thames St."
Captain Dobbin makes conversation ". . . like a
consummate man of the world . . . some topic of general
interest such as the opera . . . or the weatherthat
blessing to society." Gossips have not changed since
Vanity Fair"The tartwoman hints to somebody, who
took an affidavit of the fact to somebody else, that
there was a great deal more than was made public
regarding Mr. Crisp and Miss Sharp . . ." Of deaths and
funerals, Thackery comments, "Could the best and
kindest of us who depart from the earth, have an

opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she . . .

would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon
our survivors were consoled . . ." Of weddings, he says,
"After three or four ceremonies, you get accustomed to
it, no doubt; but the first dip, everybody allows, is
awful." And of the fighting in Belgium, he says, "For a
long period of history they have let other people fight
there." Thackerays characterizations are often ironic.
The rich Miss Crawley says of herself, Rebecca, and
Rawdon: "'We're the only three Christians in the county
my love,' in which case it must be confessed that
religion was at a very low ebb in the county of Hants."
George broke up Becky's marriage to Joseph and "she
loved George Osborne accordingly." Miss Crawley
"showed her friendship by abusing all her intimate
acquaintances to her new confidante (than which there
cant be a more touching proof of regard)." Joseph's
eating is "the delightful exercise of gobbling." As an
invalid, he takes two-thirds of the bottle of champagne.
Mr. Sedley says that if Joseph should receive word of
the death of the rest of the family, he would say "Good
Gad!" and go on with his dinner. Mr. Osborne's
disposition has suffered because ". . . he has not been
allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this
reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old
gentleman . . . " Maria Osborne Bullock ". . . felt it her
duty to see her father and sister as little as possible."
Mr. Osborne called kicking a footman downstairs a "hint"
to leave. Lord Steyne says his wife is as gay as Lady
Macbeth and calls his home a "temple of virtue." Lady
Fits-Willis is of the "best people." Her patronage helps
Becky. The lady "asked her to her own mansion, and
spoke to her twice in the most public and condescending
manner . . . The important fact was known all over
London that night . . ." At Vauxhall "our young people
made the most solemn promises to keep together . . . and
separated in ten minutes afterwards."
George Sedley Osborne, John Sedley's godson, has been
close to the Sedley family all his life. He and Joseph
have gone to school together. Old Osborne has
commanded him to marry Amelia, and this plan has been
understood for years.
George Osborne belongs to Vanity Fair. As a boy he has
been ashamed of William Dobbin, his protector at
school, because he feels Dobbin is of a lower social
status. His sisters convince him he is one of the most
deserving characters in the British Army, and "he gave
himself up to be loved with a great deal of easy
resignation." George loves Amelia after his fashion, but
he loves himself more; and often when his sisters think
he is with Amelia,

Meeting at Night-Robert Browning

The title of the poem alone indicates an intention and
perhaps a great need to get to The meeting Place. The
Poet uses imagery that is quite descriptive and eloquent.
He manages to turn a gloomy and perhaps scary night into
one that is filled with anticipation and love. Perhaps he is
frightened by the mysterious darkness and the little
sounds that surround his journey, but this is not indicated
in the poem.
From the very beginning the tone of the story can be
interpreted based on the description of the setting. The
gray sea and the long black land gives a feeling of eternal
darkness and loneliness; the phrase long black land
emphasizes this effect on the reader. In lines 3-4, it is
almost as if the boat surprises the still and serene water,
waking it from its sleep.From that point on he is alert and
excited about the journey in the night. He describes what
he hears and sees and it all seems beautiful to him. This is
a man who notices everything around him with a heart filled
with enthusiasm. Robert Browning does a fine job in using
imagery to fully describe the scenery and everything
around the lover on his journey. The author does not
provide all the details needed for the reader to come to an
immediate conclusion, therefore putting the job of
assuming in their hands. For the poem to be understood
well it must be analyzed in depth. The serenity and time of
day creates a mysterious atmosphere, questions arise such
as why is he meeting at night?
Robert Browning takes the reader through a journey with
his elaborate writing style and detailed descriptions of the
scenery. With Roberts thorough descriptions he illustrates
the lovers actions with detail and the several changes in
setting until the very end, where two hearts are joined
together in harmony. To better demonstrate the tone,
feeling, and psychological state of the characters, Robert
puts literary devices to work. In the second stanza, it
seems as though he has wings on his feet. Such a long
journey a mile of warm sea scented beach, and three
fields to cross and nowhere in the poem is it mentioned
that he is tired. He is certainly a very happy person whose
purpose is to meet his love no matter what the cost
Neither gray sea nor the long black land will stop him
from getting there.
This poem is very romantic, one could call it a love story,
where a tap at the pane signaled I am here, open the
door. Two lovers meet in the night, perhaps not to be seen
by anyone, the tone throughout the poem is mysterious,
filled with anticipation and a great love. Two people whose
hearts beat as one.
DOVER BEACH-R.BROWNING
This poem is, unarguably, about a loss of faith. With many
new philosophies during the Victorian Era, such as
existentialism, materialism, socialism, darwinism, anarchism
and a lot more -ism's, a massive stepping down from the

Christian faith occured (in Great Britain). Matthew Arnold

places the poem in a more existentialist/agnostic view, as
he does not question God, but the way people follow God
and the decline in what their faith was before the
Victorian Era. What he describes in Dover Beach, the
seemingly peaceful Sea of Faith, only serves to compare his
real view of the church. Historically, during the Victorian
Era, the Anglican Church became what some would call a
"decorated coffin". People would go to service because it
was a tradition, or a habit- one of the original reasons the
Anglican Church had trouble with the Catholics (as the
Catholics were more prone to this, and the Anglicans
supported more "liberal" ideas at the time). What Arnold
sees is a dead church and a reality in which there is nothing
to look forward to.
"The Blessed Damozel" is a beautiful story of how two
lovers are separated by the death of the Damozel and how
she wishes to enter paradise, but only if she can do so in
the company of her beloved."The Blessed Damozel" is one
of Rossetti's most famous poems and has been dissected
and explicated many times by many different people. Even
so, they all revolve around the same ideas and themes. The
theme of Rossetti's poem is said to have been taken from
Vita Nuova, separated lovers are to be rejoined in heaven,
by Dante. Many people say his young vision of idealized love
was very picturesque and that the heavens Rossetti so
often painted and those which were in his poems were much
like Dante. The heaven that Rossetti painted in "The
Blessed Damozel" was warm with physical bodies and
beautiful angels full of love. This kind of description of
heaven was said to have been taken from Dante's ideas.
Others said that Rossetti's heaven was described so in
"The Blessed Damozel" because he was still young and
immature about such matters. In other words, he had not
yet seen the ugliness and despair that love can bring, which
he experienced later in his life after the death of his true
love Elizabeth Siddal. "The Blessed Damozel" is beautiful in
that if flows so easily from one line to the next and it
seems, although it is not very apparent, that Rossetti filled
it with symbolism and references to his own personal
feelings and future life. The first few stanzas tell of how
the Damozel is in heaven overlooking earth and thinking of
her lover. Rossetti writes in stanza three of how time to
the Damozel seemed to last forever because she was
without her love. "To one it is ten years of years..." There
are a few stanzas in the poem where the narrative jumps to
her lover. In stanza four, it is the lover on earth talking
about his beloved. The next few stanzas describe heaven,
where it lies, and other lovers reuniting around her as she
sits and watches...alone. In stanzas ten and eleven, her
earthbound lover describes the sound of her voice like a
bird's song which tells the reader that not only is he
thinking of her, but it hints he can hear her and feel her
about him. Of course, she can not understand why she must

be miserable in heaven when all others are with their loves,

after all, "Are not two prayers a perfect strength?"
(stanza 12). In stanza thirteen, she dreams of the day that
they will be together and present themselves in the beauty
and glory of God. It is also in this stanza that Rossetti lets
the reader know that she has not yet entered heaven. She
is at the outer gates of the kingdom of heaven. Through
the second half of the poem, the Damozel refers to herself
and her lover as "we two" and describes how they will be
together again someday in heaven. The Damozel even says
she will teach him the songs that she sings...and she dreams
of them together. It is in the next stanza, (stanza 17), that
the narrative changes again back to the lover. He says that
she keeps on saying "we two" but when and will they ever
really be together like they used to be. Rossetti is using
the Damozel in these few stanzas to describe how the
Damozel would want her ideal and perfect love to be, but
could that really be with her in heaven and him on earth?
The two worlds separating them doesn't keep them apart in
thought, but it is not possible to be together. In stanza
twenty-two, she once again says that she will want their
love to be as it was on earth with the approval of Christ
the Lord. Near the end of the poem, in the last couple of
stanzas, the Damozel finally realizes that she can have
none of this until the time comes. The Damozel suddenly
becomes peaceful and lets the light take her in stanza
twenty-three. It is there that the reader also realizes that
she will enter heaven without her love. Her lover on earth,
of course, knows this and it is there in the last stanza that
"I saw her smile...I hear her tears." Apart, but together in
hearts, the two are separated by two worlds so great that
there is nothing that can be done but hope and pray. And
that is why the Damozel "laid her face between her hands,
And wept

Song-Christina Rossetti :.The poem is about the death of

the writer herself. The writer wants that her loved one will
never forget her even though she will be six feet
underground. The green grasses with dewdrops symbolizes
freshness. She wants that her lover would still remember
her and will never forget her after her death. She wants
that her memories will still be fresh in her lover's heart.
She doest not want her lover to put roses on her grave and
sing songs for her for she will never hear or see those
things for she will already be dead"
"Sartor Resartus"claims to be the autobiography of the
fictional DiogenesTeufelsdrockh developer of the Clothes
Philosophy (the title means the tailor retailored). It is
supposedly put together from scraps of diaries, journals
and letters discovered thrown randomely into three large
laundry bags and edited by a fictional editor. It is
organized very loosely and uses a lot of fragmentary

material. The central incident describes Teufelsdrockh's

discovery of the Clothes Philosophy as a result of a
mystical experience. One day while in the throes of
despair, he realizes that there must be something more
important than happiness, because happiness is not possible
for human beings. That something he realizes is work. Man
is given the opportunity to work, and that work and not any
result from it is what is truly important. Man needs to rid
himself of himself and direct himself to others. He must
rid himself of materialistic desires and focus on the
spiritual."
John Ruskin-THE STONES OF VENICE, Victorian
England's greatest writer on art and literature, believed
himself to be an adopted son of Venice, and his feelings for
this beautiful, melancholy city are nowhere better
expressed than in The Stones of Venice, a collection of
essays first published between 1851 and 1853. This
abridged edition, which contains Ruskin's famous essay
"The Nature of Gothic," captures the essence of his
masterpiece, offering readers a marvelously descriptive
and discursive tour of the glorious city of Venice before it
was transformed by postwar restoration. As Ruskin wrote
on his second visit to Venice in 1841, "Thank God I am here,
it is a Paradise of Cities." --This text refers to an out
offprint or unavailable edition of this title
WALTER PATER-THE RENAISSANCE One is from the
conclusion of The Renaissance. These words originally
appeared in Pater's October 1868 review of William
Morris's poetry. The implication that everything is
permitted, that all that matters is the intensity of the
experience, seemed to many Victorians to give blanket
license to all sorts of debaucheries. Pater removed the
controversial Conclusion from the book's second edition. It
was returned to later printings with Pater's clarification
that it should be interpreted in light of his book Marius
the Epicurean (1885). Here is his oft-quoted description of
Leonardo's Mona Lisa:
The major themes in Markheim are similar to those of
Stevenson's famous novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (1886), namely the struggle between good
and evil and freewill and predestination within the human
soul. In Markheim this assay between the opposing forces
of virtue and malevolence in the individual is expressed
through the figure of the ambiguous double or
doppelgnger, the visitant, who most critics interpret to be
the embodiment of Markheim's conscience. Initially,
Markheim believes the apparition to be Satan proffering
him help in committing another murder to prevent capture
and culpability. However, Markheim is ultimately impressed
by his discussion with the other to seek contrition. Once
Markheim's achieves penance and triumphs over his own

depravity, he sees the visitant/double as transfigured. It

is Markheim's own guilty conscience that prompts his
confession, both to himself and others, and through which
Markheim realizes a state of repentance and redemption.
Somewhat ironically, Markheim both fulfils and defeats the
visitant's own prediction by effecting self-change through
choosing good and thereby inviting death, the most likely
result of his confession of homicide. The theme of selfreflection is expressed, in part, through the imagery of the
multiple mirrors that earlier confronted Markheim, one is
actually referred to as a hand-conscience. Plot and Major
Characters On Christmas Day, Markheim, a thirty-six year
old man, enters a pawnshop. He has sold various items
there before and tells the pawnbroker he would like to buy
a gift for a woman he is courting. Inside, Markheim beholds
himself reflected in a mirror and becomes highly agitated,
saying to the pawnbroker: Why, look herelook in itlook
at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor Inor any man.
Markheim witnesses in the mirror a horrifying selfawareness and self-accusation, a damned reminder of
years, and sins and follies. When the pawnbroker turns
away Markheim stabs him in the back with a dagger, killing
him. Markheim is next apprehended by numerous
shadow[s] of himself, peering out from other looking
glasses, in which he glimpses his face repeated and
repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and
detected him. Markheim then looks for money he knows
the pawnbroker keeps in a drawing room above the shop. A
mysterious figurea visitantconfronts Markheim there.
This eidolon seems to know Markheim well, in fact, the man
has an uncanny likeness to himselfand discusses
Markheim's past with himprophesying a life of increasing
wickedness for Markheim which will only desist in death:
You will never change; and the words of your part on this
stage are irrevocably written down. Markheim asks the
wraith if he is the devil and the other answers with an
offer to assist Markheim in locating the hidden money and
escaping before the pawnbroker's servant returns.
Markheim defends himself to the doubleclaiming that in
himself both good and evil coexistwho professes an
interest in both vice and virtue, but states that he only
exists for evil as inherently manifested in character not
act. When the pawnbroker's maid is about to enter the
shop, the double encourages Markheim to kill her and flee.
Instead, Markheim confesses to the maid: You had better
go to the police. I have killed your master. And as he
does so, the features of the visitor began to undergo a
wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened
with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded
and

Victorian Poetry The Victorian Period literally describes

the events in the age of Queen Victorias reign of 18371901. The term Victorian has connotations of repression
and social Reign of 1837-1901. The term Victorian has
connotations of repression and social conformity, however
in the realm of poetry these labels are somewhat
misplaced. The Victorian age provided a significant
development of poetic ideals such as the increased use of
the Sonnet as a poetic form, which was to influence later
modern poets. Poets in the Victorian period were to some
extent influenced by the Romantic Poets such as Keats,
William Blake, Shelley and W.Wordsworth. Wordsworth
was Poet Laureate until 1850 so can be viewed as a bridge
between the Romantic period and the Victorian period.
Wordsworth was succeeded by Lord Tennyson, Queen
Victoria's favourite poet. Victorian Poetry was an
important period in the history of poetry, providing the link
between the Romantic movement and the modernist
movement of the 20th Century. It is not always possible to
neatly categorize poets in these broad movements. For
example Gerard Manley Hopkins is often cited as an
example of a poet who maintained much of the Romantics
sensibility in his writings. Female Victorian Poets Before
the Victorian era there were very few famous female
poets. In the early nineteenth century writing was still
seen as a predominantly male preserve. However despite
views such as this the Victorian period saw the emergence
of many important female poets. The Bronte sisters were
perhaps better known for their romantic novels but their
poetry, especially that of Emily Bronte, has received more
critical acclaim in recent years. Many have suggested that
her works were a reflection of the difficulties women of
that period faced. Other significant female poets include
Elizabeth Browning and Christina Rossetti. Christina
Rossetti in some ways could be viewed as a more typical
Victorian poet. Her poetry reflected her deep Anglican
faith and frequently pursued themes such as love and
faith.
Housman was born in Burton-On-Trent, England, in 1865,
justas the US Civil War was ending. As a young child, he
was disturbed by the news of slaughter from the former
British colonies, and was affected deeply. This turned him
into a brooding, introverted teenager and a misanthropic,
pessimistic adult. This outlook on life shows clearly in his
poetry. Housman believed that people were generally evil
and that a life conspired against mankind.
Housman's poetry is similarly pessimistic. In fully half the
poems the speaker is dead. In others, he is about to die or
wants to die, or his girlfriend is dead. Even though death is
a really important setting for Housman, a few of his poems,
show an uncharacteristic optimism and love of beauty.
Religion is another theme of Housman's. Housman seems to
have had trouble reconciling conventional Christianity with
his homosexuality and his deep clinical depression. All show

a sense of the fragility of life, the perversity of existence,

and a thinly veiled homosexual longing, in spite of the fact
that many of the poems apparently speak of young women.
Housman is considered a minor poet, primarily because of
his use of rhyme and meter, and frequent and effective use
of imagery and symbolism.
WELL TO DO WOODS NO MORE-HOUSMAN
This verse belongs to the collection the last poems which
was published when the writer was aware that he will write
no more (the death is coming after him). It means
symbolically that writer will write no more (naslov). Laurels
are all cut-since he wont be able to write and create works
of art no more. The possibility to reach the fame through
the great achievement in life is cut. He doesnt have
inspiration as he used to have in early days of his life. And
soon will evening shut- symbolize the spiritual death. By
repeating the lines from the beginning of the poem the
poet wants to emphasize his sorrow for not being able to
write any more. The sorrow can be seen in the description
of the woods was leafy and wild but is not any more and he
is sad because of that.
TO STAND UP STRAIGHT-HOUSEMAN
The poet is giving us two possibilities for living life. You can
either be active in your life and try to gain knowledge and
fact the world with open eyes or you can lie and do nothingmeaning to be passive in life and know nothing ,being
interested in nothing.
Both possibilities are extreme for the poet-does not give
us solution.
HERE DEAD LIE WE-HOUSEMAN
The poet is saying that the soldiers are dead because they
had chosen to fight and die for their honour of the country
and not to shame their land in the war. They were young
they had ideals, were full of life they were ready to give
their lives for their country.
A PASSER-BY-ROBERT BRIDGES
The ship saking in the port, there is a narrator on the
shore watching. Narrator images that ship sailing in some
other place and image himself on that ship. The author is a
typical representative of post-Victorian age.
He is watching the ship which has a clear goal, and the
narrator admires the ship personalities, ship who is lake a
human being is different from him, narrator is disillusioned
he is stativ, passive can not move anywhere, disoriented,
confused. This struggle for power will lead into a horrible
crizes. They were right to question whole value of Victorian
period.
WINTER-WALTER DELA MARE
He was a poet who had an ability to intensify a logical
moment and to give the detailed image, forever fixing a
moment of transformation. In this lyrical poem he gives the

description of the cold winter day transforming into the

frosty winter night.
I-describes the winter and snow, cold wind. The robin is
alone on the leafless branch since all the other birds had
gone to the south. The poet compares himself with the
robin since all writers are also gone.
II-the description of the winter sun it make snow on the
fields look unbelievable white and beautiful.
III-and the thick darkness spark by spark slowly covers
the field instead of the sun, the moon appears in the sky
making the field look glittering and beautiful
THERE ON THE DARKENED DEATHBED- JOHN
MASEFIELD the narrator is describing the man who is
dying-the description of the last moment when a person is
dying( everything is darkened in the room) 70 years the
brain flared man achieved a lot of thing in his life, he was a
successful. His fiction and senses are dying and the body is
useless. The poem develops under the improvement of
science and medicine. The cells made him human, he was a
good man. The man really dies when he remembrance of him
disappeared, and pessimistic view of the poem. No matter
how successful and wise and good you are in your life
everybody forget you in the need.
Whatever you do in life the time will fade it away. This is
why this is pessimistic but at the same time realistic poem.
WILLIAM MORIS-NEAR AVALON
Avalon-an island where king Arthur was taken after death,
paradise, Arthur was of Celtic origin, heroic codecomitatus consisted of all the warriors in the world. The
king was sick and country becomes a wasteland. Life is more
important than fame.
I-he is ready to give his life for fame. The lady of the lake
(Avalon)who is her lover-the lady of fame.
III-they cant see anything, man have blinded, they havent
real picture.
IV-they havent memory(na povratku jarboli pocepani a oni
tuzni)

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI-THE WOODSPURGE

Lyrical poetry first person narration.when the wind came
down,he went into the woods.He is out at the open,there is
this English of him, he is very disturbed emotionally.this is
a desperation.He doesnt say a word.he saw a
woodspurge.he learnt that this flower had a cup of
three.he turned into eyes,his perception sharpened after
the powerful experiences.
I-everything is still ,after the wind came down that was
strong wind,the narrator said his own experience.he was
walking when wind started and he went into the woods.IIhe put his hair fall over,he was exposed,worried,has a
problem.he is disturben emotionally but dont have a
reason.-this is a depevation-he doesnt say a word.

III-he is silent his eyes are opened ,sees this flower.

IV-it was deep grief for him.he larned that woodspurge has
cups of three,he will never forgot.
THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE-ALGERNON CHARLES
SWINBURNE woman knows the secret of life.she
dominated the world because she gave life.the female was
sacred.Prospernine became the queen of the underworld
because she wanted to. Everything grows out of it birthdeath-rebirth
The woman is more important then man. This melancholic
poem begins with a description of the beyond. the poetic
voice is weary of all earthly aspects of experience and the
entire human condition weary of emotions and passions.
Time itself is tiresome and meaningless. Sleep appears as a
welcome respite in the garden of Proserpine where life and
death are neighbours. in persepine s grim underground
garden nothing grows but her sacred flower, the poppy,
which brings sleep. From crushed
Buds queen of the underworld makes wine for the
death.But like the men.the corn is already dead,its too
late.The men and the corn plants are destined to die
before they can live..Death imparantly takes all living
things.It doesnt matter if one is the strongest man on the
earth or the most physically beautiful. The image of P.. as
the pale woman with cold hands whose presence erases any
vestiges of love from the dead as they enter her garden
folfils the gloomy,final destiny of every man.She meets the
dead from everywhere and from all times.P-of the
underworld garden doesnt remember her mother,does not
concern herself with the seasons of earth and feel no
anxiety of separation.In life neither joy nor sorrow is
certain.We can be thankful that nothing is cursed to live
eternal.
THE DEATH BED-SIEGFRIED SASSOON the poet is
describing a soldeier who is wounded and is dying.the
silence of death is all around and it is unshakable-meaning
that he cannot avoid death-it is inevitable.The narrator is
agains war,he declares war has no sense and what its
purpose?why should young people die?the dying person cen
see different colors throught eye-of his hard open eyes
and he imagines that he is on the shore at the
mortalshore which is actually the border between life nad
death.Death is surely coming after him.The death came up
to him,stopped and lokked at him carefully.The narrator
begs the death not to take him,he is young and good boy
who actually was forced to go to the war,which he hatedand
that authorities made him to go and fight for
country.Those same men started war for their own
benefits,but death repliesj choose him so the poor young
soldier died and there was silence and safety.
VICTORIAN NOVEL

Charles Dickens exemplifies the Victorian novel better

than any other writer. Extraordinarily popular in his day
with his characters taking on a life of their own beyond the
page, Dickens is still the most popular and read author of
the time. His first real novel, The Pickwick Papers, written
at only twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his
subsequent works sold extremely well. He was in effect a
self made man who worked diligently and prolifically to
produce exactly what the public wanted; often reacting to
the public taste and changing the plot direction of his
stories between monthly numbers. The comedy of his first
novel has a satirical edge which pervades his writings.
These deal with the plight of the poor and oppressed and
end with a ghost story cut short by his death. The slow
trend in his fiction towards darker themes is mirrored in
much of the writing of the century, and literature after his
death in 1870 is notably different from that at the start
of the era. William Thackeray was Dickens' great rival at
the time. With a similar style but a slightly more detached,
acerbic and barbed satirical view of his characters, he also
tended to depict situations of a more middle class flavour
than Dickens. He is best known for his novel Vanity Fair,
subtitled A Novel without a Hero, which is also an example
of a form popular in Victorian literature: the historical
novel, in which very recent history is depicted. Anthony
Trollope tended to write about a slightly different part of
the structure, namely the landowning and professional
classes. The Bront sisters wrote fiction rather different
from that common at the time. Away from the big cities
and the literary society, Haworth in West Yorkshire held a
powerhouse of novel writing: the home of the Bront
family. Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bront had time in their
short lives to produce masterpieces of fiction although
these were not immediately appreciated by Victorian
critics. Wuthering Heights, Emily's only work, in particular
has violence, passion, the supernatural, heightened emotion
and emotional distance, an unusual mix for any novel but
particularly at this time. It is a prime example of Gothic
Romanticism from a woman's point of view during this
period of time, examining class, myth, and gender. Another
important writer of the period was George Eliot, a
pseudonym which concealed a woman, Mary Ann Evans, who
wished to write novels which would be taken seriously
rather than the silly romances which all women of the time
were supposed to write. Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti: self-portrait. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
was a mid-19th century arts movement dedicated to the
reform of what they considered the sloppy Mannerist
painting of the day. Although primarily concerned with the
visual arts, two members, the brother and sister Dante
Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, were also poets of
some ability. Their poetry shares many of the concerns of
the painters; an interest in Medieval models, an almost
obsessive attention to visual detail and an occasional

tendency to lapse into whimsy. Dante Rossetti worked with,

and had some influence on, the leading Arts and crafts
painter and poet William Morris. Morris shared the PreRaphaelite interest in the poetry of the European Middle
Ages, to the point of producing some illuminated
manuscript volumes of his work. The Georgian poets were
the first major grouping of the post-Victorian era. Their
work appeared in a series of five anthologies called
Georgian Poetry which were published by Harold Monro and
edited by Edward Marsh. The poets featured included
Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H.
Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. Their
poetry represented something of a reaction to the
decadence of the 1890s and tended towards the
sentimental. Brooke and Sassoon were to go on to win
reputations as war poets and Lawrence quickly distanced
himself from the group and was associated with the
modernist movement. Other notable poets who wrote about
the war include Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred
Owen, May Cannan and, from the home front, Hardy and
Rudyard Kipling. Although many of these poets wrote
socially-aware criticism of the war, most remained
technically conservative and traditionalist.