Shortish Victorian literature

[Bellrosk]

Ok, so there's less than a month from my AS literature exam
So I'm cramming in some more extended reading.

I'm looking for some shortish Victorian novels, some poetry and some plays.
Oscar Wilde has done a fair few short ones.

Obviously they need to have some relevance to the four themes -
Empire & Industry
Role of women
Religion & Science
Urban poverty.

So far I've read:

-Wuthering Heights
-A Doll's House
-Mayor of Casterbridge
-North and South
-Water Babies
-Master Georgie

and a few poems.

Everything helps :)

[wessexgirl]

Ok, so there's less than a month from my AS literature exam
So I'm cramming in some more extended reading.

I'm looking for some shortish Victorian novels, some poetry and some plays.
Oscar Wilde has done a fair few short ones.

Obviously they need to have some relevance to the four themes -
Empire & Industry
Role of women
Religion & Science
Urban poverty.

So far I've read:

-Wuthering Heights
-A Doll's House
-Mayor of Casterbridge
-North and South
-Water Babies
-Master Georgie

and a few poems.

Everything helps :)

Is Master Georgie the Beryl Bainbrige book? I didn't think that was set in Victorian times, but maybe I've got the wrong one.

You have to try Dickens. I know a lot of his books are huge tomes, but Hard Times is quite slim, and you'll find out out about industrialisation and the urban poor there. The role of women is also important in Jane Eyre, and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but they may be too long for you to finish in time.

I'm not sure whether Thackeray would be classed as Victorian, but Vanity Fair is excellent, funny and satirical, and there are elements of Empire there with Jos Sedley and his Indian enterprise, but I think that may be slightly too soon (I can't remember offhand but it probably is, as Waterloo is in there, which is 1815, before Victoria came to the throne). However, it shows the beginnings of Empire, so it may help.

I would go for more Hardy too, something like Jude the Obscure for poverty and women's role, and Tess of the Durbervilles for the same things. Cranford would be good for the impact of the coming of the railways on a small town, and therefore your industrialisation, (I would say Middlemarch, but it's huge), but Cranford has the advantage of being a collection of short stories really, so you can't go wrong.

[Nightshade]

NOrth and South by elizabeth Gaskell- oh wait that isnt that short.. I will think on this and getback to you.

[wessexgirl]

NOrth and South by elizabeth Gaskell- oh wait that isnt that short.. I will think on this and getback to you.

I think he's read that one Nightie.....:)

Mary Barton deals with the urban poor and industrialisation, as many of Gaskell's seem to do, but I think it may be too long.

Why not try Tennyson with The Charge of the Light Brigade? It's about a monumental ****-up re. expansionism, (I assume), as it is the Crimean War, although technically it's not part of The British Empire, (I don't think). We must have been fighting the Russians over something though, probably land, ergo empire building :).

Does it have to be British, only I was thinking you couldn't do better than Louisa May Alcott and Little Women to show the role of women, and how Jo was different, by wanting to make her living from writing? It's largely autobiographical.

Sorry for the asterixs - I wasn't swearing honest, just a saying :blush:.

[wessexgirl]

Christina Rossetti
Matthew Arnold, particularly On Dover Beach
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Alfred Tennyson In Memoriam

all relating to religion/faith/spirituality etc.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I would never usually advocate not reading the whole novel, but in this case as it seems more like supportive reading as I can gather, I would feel free to treat longer texts as secondary sources and dip into them at will. Just an idea.

Religion & Science: Jekyll and Hyde, (short), Sherlock Holmes stories, (science, forensics etc), Matthew Arnold/Tennyson in poetry (religion, loss of).

Empire & Industry: Gaskell, Dickens, Hardy, Wordsworth in poetry (negative effects of industrialisation) John Ruskin leading to Wilde (reaction against industry, or the affects of industry on the individual, read Wilde’s “Soul of Man Under Socialism”).

Role of women: Brontes, Austen (you can usually get away with Austen as Victorian) otherwise maybe Thackeray.

Urban poverty: Dickens, Dickens, Dickens, Gaskell, possibly Eliot.