Like many others taking the class, I am not very familiar with Victorian literature. I’ve found the Victorian texts that I have read to be very dense, so I am looking forward to challenging myself and further developing my literary analytical skills. In addition, I want to gain a deeper insight into the culture of the time period. I find it a very interesting exercise to compare and contrast the schools of thought and ways of living of different cultures and time periods, and by the end of the year, I would love to know to what extent people have changed from the Victorian time period to today.

Primarily, I am excited to reread Great Expectations by Charles Dickens which is a novel that I explored in my early years of high school. It will be interesting to tackle different themes and notice details that a high school Sophomore would skip over, or be too naïve to pick up on. Besides that, I haven’t had much, or any experience with the other texts mentioned in the syllabus. I’ve never read Brontë or Tennyson or even Oscar Wilde, and as an English major, I feel like those names are widely known in the ‘literature community,’ so I’m kind of a ‘disappointment’ in that regard. I’ve enjoyed the literature, but I think it will be good for me to become more well-rounded and knowledgeable by exploring Victorian Literature.

Like many others taking this course, Victorian-era literature is not something that I am well versed in or have a significant understanding of. Although along the way I have a read a couple of Victorian novels (Dracula and A Christmas Carol), I read them without having any understanding of what Victorian literature is; I just knew they were classic novels. So I suppose my hopes for this course, is to have an understanding of what constitutes Victorian literature. Obviously it is mainly characterized by the time period the works were produced in, but I’m interested to see if there are any similarities between the literature, such as themes and influences. Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde are two authors whose works I am excited to read, they are very revered and I think getting introduced to their works are important for me as an English major. I hope to maintain an interest in the literature throughout the semester, and I am excited to establish my own ideas about the Victorian Era.

The idea of “Victorian Literature” as a category or a sort of genre is a bit confusing to me. I feel that the various “Victorian” pieces of literature I have read have little in common. Of course, the similarities between, say, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are quite obvious, but compare either of those to A Tale of Two Cities and the commonality is hard to find. The Bronte novels deal a bit with stratified class, but they are not explicitly political as so much of Victorian Lit seems to be. I understand that they’re given this label simply because they were written during the reign of Queen Victoria, but I struggle with the idea that this is all they shared.

You can look at a Romantic piece of literature and quickly pull out the themes and characteristics that make it Romantic. This is not so easily done with Victorian writing. I don’t know what to look for, aside from a publication date, that would mark a piece of literature as Victorian. I don’t even know if there are any characteristics to look for. But I would assume that writers living in the same place at the same time with similar experiences would have more in common than a date. What were the common influences? Were there any major tropes? What themes and conflicts were popular to focus on? And how does someone like Oscar Wilde fit in to this, or does he? This is what I would like to learn about Victorian literature!

I first read Charlotte Brontë’s, Jane Eyre in middle school and instantly found comfort in Jane because she was a woman of her own making. Jane forged her own path and rarely questioned her ability to fly freely, like a bird without a net to ensnare her. It’s without question that Jane, like Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights or Helen in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was a controversial character for her time and this is where my curiosity lies. I want to learn more about the women of these novels, I want to understand their roles as it relates to their gender and class and how these factors contribute to the prospects available to women during the Victorian era. 

These interests stem from my exposure to the courses I enrolled in with Professor Beltz-Hosek that were focused primarily on the Gender and Narration in Wuthering Heights and the Brontë oeuvre. These courses offered me the pleasure to re-read my favorite novels written by the Brontë sisters while also discussing these texts in relation to one another. This semester, I am eager to compare the female representation (Nelly, Catherine I, and Catherine II) in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to the female representation in Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations, especially regarding Mrs. Joe Gargery, Miss Havisham, and Estella.

To be completely honest, I know absolutely nothing about the Victorian era or the literature that comes along with it. This course fit into my schedule, fulfills one of my English requirements, and I enjoyed my English course last semester with Dr. Schacht, so here I am. On that note, I have high expectations for this course because I can only go up from here when it comes to my knowledge on this subject.

When Dr. Schacht asked us to share our favorite piece of literature from the Victorian era in class, nothing came to mind because I’m not even sure what makes a piece of literature Victorian. However, when the other people in the class started mentioning different works I did recognize a few such as Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and Charles Dickens. Overall, I’m looking forward to learning about this time period as a whole because I’ve never taken a course that focuses on this subject alone. What makes this time period so unique and why is it beneficial for me to learn? Since my major and passion is education, I’m also excited to make connections between education during the Victorian age and what I’m learning in my classes about education today.

My fondness for Victorian Literature began when I was tasked with reading Jane Eyre in my senior year of high school English. It was the end of the year and I had already completed my formal final exam for the class. Thus, when my teacher gave us one last project, to read and give a presentation on the novel many consider to be Charlotte Brontë’s masterwork, my motivation to complete the task was perhaps understandably low. Despite my exhaustion, there was a preternatural power within Brontë’s writing, and particularly within the characterization of her unlikely heroine, that caused me to devour the novel. It was this same preternatural power that led me to read Jane Eyre for a second time, this time more carefully and more critically. As a result of this second read, I was inspired to read more by Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, Anne and Emily. This summer, I was able to dive deeper into the world of the Brontë sisters by reading Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte’s Villette, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Being that these novels are narrated by or feature a prominent, independent, and arguably controversial female character, I cannot help but wonder what the predominant gender roles were at the time when the Brontë sisters were writing their novels. I also would like to know how much the Brontë’s, through the characterization of their heroines, truly subverted said gender roles? Moreover, can their works be considered examples of proto-feminism? It is my hope that one, some, or all of these questions might be answered by the end of the semester.

When I originally added this course, it was in a bit of a panic because I was enrolled in another course that fit poorly into my schedule. Towards the end of add/drop week, upon noticing there was only one spot left in this course, I added it on an impulse. I didn’t know anything about Victorian literature. The reason I decided to keep it in my schedule and give it a try was because of the promise of connecting literature and science in the course description. I have a vested interest in this above all else; I am an English major on the pre-medical track, and throughout my college years, I have been trying to collect reasons and develop an explanation for why I, a non-STEM major, am still ideally suited for my desired career. I am very much interested in the intersection between the arts and STEM, and how academic work in each of these fields is beneficial to the other. This semester, I am hoping to learn what differentiates Victorian literature from that of other eras, as well as continue to analyze and understand why the fields of STEM and the arts have each been essential to the other throughout history.

Truthfully, I know nothing about Victorian Literature. However, prior to registering for this course, I did just a little bit of research. I have come to learn that this literature came before a time of romanticism and was followed by a time of realism. As I didn’t learn much from my few google searches, I would first really like to dig into what Victorian literature really is. Why is it classified as Victorian literature? It it just the time period it was written in that allows it to fall under this category? Or, is it the themes portrayed or style of writing? I would love to learn about the connection between Victorian Literature and what exactly about it led to a time of realism. Additionally, what changed in the time of romanticism to bring about this specific type of literature? It would be interesting to explore the hard work and perseverance characteristics, that google also informed me were typical of this era, and see how things have evolved in comparison to modern day. Lastly, what did Queen Victoria do that she had an entire era of literature named after her?

            What I have read of Victorian Literature is only two novels, Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. This being said, there’s a lot I’d like to learn about Victorian Literature, particularly how male and female authors of the time doffer in writing styles and/or subjects, if they do differ at all. Since we read both Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte in this course, I hopefully will begin to understand how gender roles and stereotypes potentially effected the writers of the Victorian period.

Since my knowledge of. Victorian literature is limited, it’s difficult to know what I want to learn specifically. However, I am always interested in how race is or isn’t included in a piece of literature. For example, in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is described as being “dark” and “black” and the negative diction surrounding descriptions of his skin may be indicative of a general sentiment of many Victorian people. So, I’m very excited to see if anything like this comes up.