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Comparison of Victorian era and modern era literature
Comparison of Victorian era and modern era literature
Victorian age in literature
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Being Lucy Honeychurch
In E.M Forster’s novel A Room With A View, Lucy Honeychurch serves as the central character and heroine who is bridled by her social upbringing in a time when shifts in society are prevalent. Lucy is tied to other characters in the book that Forster has written to represent the slowly diminishing Victorian Era and she is introduced to characters that represent the accelerating approach of the Edwardian era. She is an ordinary, proper English girl with an extraordinary view of beauty in the world around her and a multitude of untapped reserves of passion. Through the characters placed in her life, her unknowing passions and her central being, this novel shows the evolution of a young girl into a woman of purpose and choice.
In the name itself, A Room With A View, Forster is giving the reader an insight into the plight of Lucy Honeychurch. It stands as a symbol. The Room itself correlates to the confines of society in how small and walled off it makes people from one another all for the sake of societal hierarchy. Some rooms are big and expensive while some are small and dingy, but either way there is a wall in between them all. In Lucys case, she is given a room with the view of a courtyard, which is never changing and ordinary. What she really wants is the room with a view of the beautiful Arno River. This parallels to her life in that she’s been given mundane, safe and boring, but what she longs for is excitment and romance.
Forester inserted a handful of characters to surround Lucy during this time in her life to demonstrate the views and beliefs of people in this particular era to better understand her dilemmas. During a time when society was on the cusp of change, there are people who try to refuse ...
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...n she would be amazed at what she could do. The narrator describes Lucy's playing as a place where she is neither "rebel or a slave."(----) Her music is her escape and her first stepping stone into a world made up of her own choices lead by passion.
Essentially, Lucy Honeychurch is the classic good girl that wants to follow the rules that are laid before her. However, due to chance meetings and actions, she is thrown off course and in turn gets a real glimpse of true social freedom and beauty. Though she is thrown back and forth between the person she needs to be and the person she wants to be, her growth throughout the novel shows us the progression of an unsure girl into a level headed woman. Through the influence of the people in her life and her own reserves of passion, Lucy Honeychurch finally taps into her true self and is able to find true excitment and love
There are many fictional elements that are important when it comes to short stories. These elements help the reader understand the story in more depth, and help to gain a better understanding of what the author’s purpose is. One of these elements is setting. Setting is the time and place in which a story takes place, it can help determine the mood, influence how characters’ act, change the dialog in the story and can reflect how the characters interact in society. In the short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” the setting is a very important element to show the development of the girls and how they changed throughout the story. There are two different places which we consider the setting. There is the church and the cave. With these two different settings we see different lessons being taught in each
The rooms where the action of a story takes place are also very important. Some the rooms used in the book are bedrooms, the dining room, the parlor, and the enclosed garden patio. The first room we see inside of this old house is the garden patio. This room is interesting because the smell from the patio is always associated with the title character. Felipe looks for her in this garden; he smells the patio plants in her hair. Symbolically, the garden can be associated with the mind, with the unconscious, or it may give you clues to your own inner state. The plants, flowers, and fruit found in the garden may also enhance t...
Jane Eyre has been acclaimed as one of the best gothic novels in the Victorian Era. With Bronte’s ability to make the pages come alive with mystery, tension, excitement, and a variety of other emotions. Readers are left with rich insight into the life of a strong female lead, Jane, who is obedient, impatient, and passionate as a child, but because of the emotional and physical abuse she endures, becomes brave, patient, and forgiving as an adult. She is a complex character overall but it is only because of the emotional and physical abuse she went through as a child that allowed her to become a dynamic character.
This is juxtaposed with the various aspects of British culture imposed on Lucy’s home island. As a child, Lucy attended “Queen Victoria Girls’ School” (Page 18), a school...
Also the Dance Hall across the street can be seen as a symbol of escape. Its name, Paradise Dance Hall, is a contrast to the lives of the characters, and to the current situation in the world as seen in the play. Also, Laura spends much of her time listening to her mothers' old records, hearing the same old music over and over again. I believe that the music coming from the dance hall can be interpreted to be Laura's possibility to escape from her monotonous life, a possibility that she cannot currently utilise.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Sarah Waters’ Affinity reflects the subjection of the main character, Margaret Price, to the ideology of her parents and the high society of England. In the passage from pages 209-210, Margaret’s subjection comes out in her discussion with Selina Dawes of the function of the women in society. This passage shows Margaret’s acknowledgment of herself outside the normal guidelines of women in society; this belief in herself as an outcast, ironically, further subjects Margaret to the position of women in her society.
She lives her life on her own terms than that of the views of society. She is the minority in her way of thinking that is okay not to have love and life figured out by the time she is 30 years of age. All her aspirations are laughed at by her friend Lucy, whom puts her down for trying make a better life for herself instead of following with the etiquettes of society. “Forgive my plainness, Eliza. It is the task of friendship, sometimes to tell disagreeable truths. I know your ambition is to make a distinguished figure in first class society; to shine in the gay circle of fashionable amusements..(Foster 27). Instead of encouraging Eliza, Lucy dashes her
The novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, has a plot that is filled with an extraordinary amount of problems. Or so it seems as you are reading it. However, it comes to your attention after you have finished it, that there is a common thread running throughout the book. There are many little difficulties that the main character, the indomitable Jane Eyre, must deal with, but once you reach the end of the book you begin to realize that all of Jane's problems are based around one thing. Jane searches throughout the book for love and acceptance, and is forced to endure many hardships before finding them. First, she must cope with the betrayal of the people who are supposed to be her family - her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. Then there is the issue of Jane's time at Lowood School, and how Jane goes out on her own after her best friend leaves. She takes a position at Thornfield Hall as a tutor, and makes some new friendships and even a romance. Yet her newfound happiness is taken away from her and she once again must start over. Then finally, after enduring so much, during the course of the book, Jane finally finds a true family and love, in rather unexpected places.
It is the aim of this piece to consider how two elements are developed in the opening chapters of three classic novels written by 19th century English women: Emma, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, respectively. The elements to be considered are a) character; and b) character relationships. Consideration will be given to see how each opening chapter develops these two aspects, and the various approaches will be compared and contrasted as well.
In the fourth paragraph, that fact that the Signora had "promised" them both rooms with views is repeated from the first paragraph. This shows that Lucy is obviously used to getting her own way and can afford to make a fuss and this is a reflection on the society from which she comes giving us a closer insight into her character and the standards she expects.
The 19th century is the time of the strong female character and female protagonist. Bronte exemplifies this concept as she develops Lucy’s personality to be conflicted between wanting a companion and also wanting to be completely independent of others (Lorber). During the first few chapters, Lucy does not take the spotlight in her own story. She makes it a point to focus on the other people she lives without interacting with them entirely. Rarely does she take part in conversation. This leads the reader to believe that she was unhappy living to be in a household to serve another such as Paulina. The young child “occasionally chatting with [her] when [they] were alone in [their] room at night” (22) is the only character that really pays Lucy any attention and yet this attention is short and half lived. Lucy and Paulina share no more than a few words at a time sporadically throughout the first few chapters. This allows her to do as she pleases without the “annoyance” of another trying to keep her from where she wants to
In its historical context A Doll’s House was a radical play which forced its audience to question the gender roles which are constructed by society and make them think about how their own lives are a performance for Victorian society.
She is marginalize from society by her partner and she has to live in the shadows of him. She is unbelievably happy when she found out about the death of her husband. She expresses her feelings of freedom in her room where she realize she will live by herself. This illustrates that Louise has been living in an inner-deep life disconnected form the outside world where only on her room away from family and friends she discovers her feelings. It is important to mention that even though Louise has a sister, she does not feel the trust to communicate her sentiments towards her. We discover a marginalization from family members and more surprising from a women, Louise’s sister. The narrator strictly described Louise’s outside world but vividly reveals what is in her mind. At the same time she feels guilty of her emotional state by recognizing that she loved Brently mallard sometimes, her husband. Louise contradict herself but this demonstrates her emotional feelings about her husband disregarding her marriage. The situation of this woman represents the unhappiness and disgraceful life that women had to suffer from their
A Room with a View follows the experience of Lucy in Florence, Italy and Surrey, England (general location was referred to as Summer Street or Surrey Hills throughout the book). These two places are presented as near polar opposites in the novel. Examining how they differ helps to explain Lucy’s conflict with identity and the meaning of the novel.