You will write one short paper (3-4 pages) on Lady Audley's Secret, The Woman in White , or Bleak House, and one longer research paper (10-12 pages) due at the end of the semster. Construct a thesis that you can adequately support within this page limitation. I DO NOT WANT you to use outside sources for this paper except ones we have read and discussed in class. Instead, you should base your discussion on a brief passage from the novel and organize a specific argument around it that uses other parts of the novel for support.
If you would like to write your essay on Lady Audley's Secret, you might consider the following questions.
1. Analyze the description of Audley Court that opens the novel. Discuss the symbolic significance of the details you find most interesting: what does the novel invite us to think will happen to the inhabitants of this house, based on its appearance and its history? Connect the description of the house and grounds to the events in the rest of the novel. Be sure that you organize your discussion: make a specific argument about the description; do not simply paraphrase it.
2. Discuss some specific aspect of the novel's portrayal of Lucy Audley. How does it present her? How does it try to encourage our curiosity about her?
3. Choose a brief passage that describes and/or narrates Robert Audley's detective work. How does he go about solving mysteries? What do we learn about him from his detection techniques? What social commentary do his characterization and motivation make?
4. Robert Audley seems obsessed with George Talboys. Why do you think the novel is so insistent on this obsession?
5. Compare and contrast Robert Audley's and Clara Talboy's respective descriptions of and comments on George Talboys. Choose two brief paragraphs for comparison and write an analysis of them that uses other parts of the novel for support.
6. Discuss the significance of Alicia Audley. How does the novel characterize her? What does Robert Audley think about her? How does the novel convey his opinions of her? What significance does the change in her opinion of Robert have? What do her confrontations with and arguments about Lady Audley illustrate?
7. Discuss the roles of Phoebe and Luke Marks. How do their actions shape the unfolding plot of the novel? What symbolic significance might their roles have? With who does the novel invite us to sympathize in the plot revolving around them – the Marks or Lady Audley? Why? OR discuss a specific aspect of the characterization and importance of just Phoebe Marks in order to demonstrate her importance to the novel as a whole.
8. Discuss a passage in which Lady Audley reflects on her situation and on the course of action she will take. What do we learn about her from her thoughts? Does the novel invite us to sympathize with her or to become fascinated by her, or both? Why? How does Braddon use scenes like this to affect our understanding of Lady Audley’s interactions with other characters – what do we learn by seeing her in private that we would not otherwise have learned?
9. Discuss the final chapter of the novel. What issues does it seek to resolve? What characterizes the tone and style of this chapter? What does the final paragraph seek to convey?
10. Choose some specific aspect of Manse's 1863 review of sensation novels and write an analysis of it in which you first, outline the points he makes; and second, speculate on the significance of his argument. Why does he seem so worried about sensation novels: what does he think they represent? What dangers do they have? How are larger issues like class mobility at work in his discussion of novels and literature in general? Base your discussion on a brief passage and organize a specific argument about it that uses the novel for support.
If you would like to write your essay on The Woman in White, you might consider the following questions (adapted from online book clubs!). Better yet are the discussion topics found on a wiki created by students in a Victorian Lit class at the U of Iowa. For this short paper, for any of these topics, choose a short excerpt, providing what you find is an essential part of the narrative, and explore its meaning and importance.
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1. Laura is presented as an ideal of Victorian womanhood, obedient, respectful of social conventions, and willing to sacrifice her own wishes for others. How does her double, Anne Catherick, illuminate the dark side of that ideal?
2. Social class plays a very big role in the novel, more emphatically perhaps for Walter, but for all the characters. In the novel, how is pedigree intertwined with deception and immorality? How are the underprivileged used as a screen for viewing the upper-crust characters? How does Collins explore the themes of respectability and social class?
3. Why is Marian so mesmerized by Fosco, who she says "has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him"? In his concluding narrative, Count Fosco describes his love for Marian as “the first and last weakness” of his life. Why is Fosco able to see Marian, despite her physical unattractiveness, as a "magnificent creature"? How does Marian illuminate yet a different aspect of womanhood?
4. When Hartright returns from Honduras to restore Laura's true identity, he brings tactics he had first used "against suspected treachery in the wilds of Central America" to "the heart of civilised London." Why is he forced to work outside the laws and conventions of society to achieve his aim? What larger point does Collins make by this comparison?
5. In his preface to the 1860 edition of The Woman in White, Collins wrote, “An experiment is attempted in this novel, which has not (so far as I know) been hitherto tried in fiction. The story…is told throughout by the characters of the book.” Was the experiment a success? What is gained and what is lost in telling the story exclusively through first person narratives? What qualities does each narrator bring to the story? How does each change our view of the characters? Do you see an issue/problem with Hartright's takeover of the narrative?
6. Wilkie Collins has been hailed as the creator of the “sensation novel.” Citing examples from The Woman in White, how would you support this statement?
7. Throughout the novel, how and why does Collins use premonitions and dreams to foreshadow key events
If you would like to write your essay on Bleak House, I would recommend even more firmly that you choose a passage you feel has significance and do a close reading of it. Some larger thematic ideas:
1. The opening chapter has often been singled out for appreciative comment. Why? What are the key rhetorical patterns you detect? What is the point of the repeated images? What kind of London--what kind of England-- is depicted here?
2. Work with one of the complex contrasts in Bleak House we discussed. What is Dickens trying to get us to see by creating so many contrasts? Do they inform the larger meanings of the novel in any way?
3. What differences are there between the two narrators? Is there a pattern to their narrations? How is the complex story divided between them? Where/when do the narrations intersect--that is, does Esther appear in the sections she doesn't narrate? How do we characterize the two narrators? Why does one speak in the present tense, one in the past? What is Dickens trying to do with them? Why does Dickens write Esther so that she occasionally withholds information from us? Why does the novel end as it does, with Esther in mid-sentence? Why does Esther tell her story, and for whom?
Esther is, of course, another one of Dickens's orphans....
4. The meaning of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been lost; what remains are "walls of words" (ch. 1), document bags, and sheets of parchment. In what ways does Dicken's characterization of the case find an analog in the novel itself?
5. For a novel that centers on a court case, what do we really know about J & J? What do we learn about the will that ends the case? Why doesn't Dickens include dramatic courtroom scenes (we almost get to watch the end of J & J, but along with Esther and Allan Woodcourt, we can't get into the courtroom!). Dickens had been a court reporter earlier in his life, and he could describe courtroom scenes with real skill (see The Pickwick Papers and A Tale of Two Cities, for instance). Why does he deliberately refrain from showing us the court in action here?
6. Bleak House presents--well, a bleak outlook in most ways. But in the novel, Dickens also creates many humorous characters and situations. What are some of these, and how do the comic and serious elements in the novel work together? You might think in general terms about whether the novel is tragic or comic (regarding which, consider the rush of incidents in the last ten chapters).
7. Dickens certainly plays the social critic in this novel (see especially the brief but powerful paragraph that concludes chapter 47). But what exactly is Dickens criticizing, and what precise solutions does he posit? What is the place of the law in his social critique? How does disease as a plot element and a metaphor fit in? What kind of philanthropy or social action can cure England of its ills?
8. The central narrative element in the novel--Lady Dedlock's exposure and its result--is spurred on by class assumptions. (again, would Jenny have worried so much about having a child out of wedlock?) Given the large cast of characters (consider Tulkinghorn here, as well as Mr. George and Mr. Rouncewell), the discussion strand that begins with chapter 2, and Sir Leicester Dedlock's moving transformation into something like a human being near the end of the novel, what do you think Dickens is getting at? What are his own ideas about the dangers and values of class distinction?
9. Inspector Bucket suddenly becomes prominent in the dramatic conclusion of the story. In what ways is Bleak House an early detective novel? Do other characters engage in detection as well? Do we as readers double Bucket in this respect, also working out "whodunit"?