Grade 11 English University Prep

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Grade 11 EnglishUniversity Prep

• The Victorian Novel

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Victorian Novels

• Victorian novels (written in English in the 1800s
  when Queen Victoria ruled) are
• Very long
• Mostly made up of conversations and/or letters,
  rather than events occurring
• Filled with people of three classes (nobility,
  middle class and lower/poor class) who arent to
  mix, socialize or date
• Dark and brooding, full of disease, poverty and
  death
• As eloquently, formally and fancily written as
  possible
• Usually spiced up by a hidden secret, usually
  involving long-lost twins, amnesia, insanity, out
  of wedlock pregnancy, crime, secret marriages,
  bastard children, lost fortunes, monsters,
  ghosts, pirates, exiles returned from prison or
  Australia and nasty workhouses, orphanages or
  factories.

Actually by Charlotte Brontes sister Emily
Actually by Charles Dickens
Actually by Charles Dickens
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Victorian Novels

• Mary Shelleys Frankenstein
• A series of letters and conversations reveal, all
  in flashback, that a man secretly made a monster,
  and its been murdering people and brooding over
  its fate, destiny and possible happiness. Things
  dont go well, and the monster kills itself in a
  fire.

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Victorian Novels

• Bram Stokers Dracula
• A series of letters and conversations reveal,
  mostly in flashback, that a man is secretly a
  monster, and has been murdering people and must
  be killed. With all the people dying of
  consumption, whos going to notice two little
  holes in someones neck?

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Victorian Novels

• Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of
  Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• A series of letters and conversations reveal,
  mostly in flashback, that a man has secretly
  accidentally turned himself into a monster, which
  has been murdering people and must be killed.

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Victorian Novels

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes novels
  and short stories
• With a great deal of focus upon conversations and
  letters, a detective uncovers the facts about
  secret marriages, pregnancies, thefts, orphans,
  identical twins, brothers returned from
  Australia, lunatics, amnesiacs, fires and etc.

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Victorian Novels

• H.G. Wells The Time Machine
• In this work of Victorian speculative fiction,
  the story is told (in conversation, in flashback,
  by two narrators) of a man who makes a time
  machine and travels through time. In the future,
  society has divided into a frail, helpless upper
  caste, and a bunch of lower caste monsters who
  devolved from the proletariat, working class
  people.

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Victorian Novels

• Charles Dickens Oliver Twist
• A poor orphan escapes a workhouse only to fall
  into the clutches of a criminal who keeps a gang
  of child pickpockets, but Oliver wont turn to
  crime. Executions, secrets and murders abound.

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Victorian Novels

• Charles Dickens David Copperfield
• A half-orphaned boy is abused by his horrible
  step-father, gets sent to a boarding school, must
  work in a nasty factory and tries to live his
  life. Executions, secrets, crime and murders
  abound. People go to Australia.

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Victorian Novels

• Charles Dickens Great Expectations
• An orphan meets a criminal who later is sent to
  Australia and helps him escape his manacles. The
  orphan lives with his abusive sister until she is
  beaten and becomes a brain-damaged invalid, and
  he loves a girl who lives with a crazy, cruel,
  abusive old shut-in lady. There is darkness,
  cruelty, people sent to jail and Australia, and
  old ladies being lit on fire.

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Victorian Story

• Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
• A cruel, stingy man (Ebenezer Scrooge) who does
  not help poor people and crippled children is
  visited by ghosts who convince him hes a bit of
  a monster and frighten him into becoming more
  Christmassy.

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Womens Books

• In a stereotypical chick flick or womans book,
  (e.g. Bridget Jones Diary) the heroine must
  choose between two men. The exciting one is
  usually a jerk. The nice one is boring. How to
  choose?
• The traditional solution is to tame or reform
  the exciting jerk. Note this works less well in
  real life. Read Cosmo.

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Victorian Novels

• Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights
• On the blasted, windy, rainy moors, a poor gypsy
  man who is an exciting jerk and a woman who is
  out of his social reach are passionately in love.
  There is also a nice, kind, boring man who loves
  her who she is supposed to marry. The gypsy
  jerk(Heathcliffe) is shattered by this and storms
  out and carries on. She married the boring guy.
  Eventually she gets sick and dies, and the
  exciting boor ends up wailing and crying and
  trying to dig up the corpse of his deceased love.
  Then he becomes a cruel idiot and angrily and
  cruelly raises his sickly, bastard son who he
  hates, and torments the daughter of his dead
  love. Eventually, when the daughter is in love
  with someone he doesnt approve of, he goes
  insane, sees the ghost of his dead love, and
  dies. The end.

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Victorian Novels

• Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre
• An orphan girl who wont do what shes told or
  defer to her betters survives the most horrible
  foster parenting (a horribly cruel old invalid
  lady) and boarding school, manages not to die of
  consumption, has two men to choose from (one
  boring, religious and nice, and the other an
  angry jerk). There are secrets, lost fortunes,
  foster children, angst, poverty and fires.

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