Textuality » 5BSU Interacting
The Victorian Compromise pag. 299
Exercises
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Compromise: a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands.
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NOUN: stability, duty, respectability, comfort, charity, prudery
ADJECTIVE: stable, dutiful, respectable, comfortable, charictable, prude
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1. They felt obliged to support certain values which offered solutions or escapes
2. These values were refined by the upper middle classes, who had political and economic power, but they were of equal application to all strata of society.
3. Victorian code of value consist of: the idea of being respectability distinguished the middle from the lower class. Respectability was the mixture of both morality and hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards. The family was a patriarchy until where the husband represented authority and the key role of women concerned the education of children and the managing of the house. Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms, and being prude in its most etreme manifestationns led to the denutation of nudity.
The Victorian novel pag. 300
Exercise 4
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One reason for this was the enormous growth in the middle classes, who were avid consumers of literauture. They borrowed books from circulating libraries and read various periodicals.
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A lot of works were published in thepages of periodicals.
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The novelists wanted to reflect the social changes that had been in progress for a long time, such as the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns.
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They depicted society as they saw it
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Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte.
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The main feature of the Victorian novel are: the voice of the omniscient narrator, the setting was the city, the plot was long, Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of chracters.
Victorian Education pag. 307
Exercises
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The picture represented the youth education, indeed all pictures show children with their teachers at school.
The British Empire pag. 324-325
Exercises
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Queen: a woman who rules a country because she has been born into a royal family, or a woman who is married to a king.
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An Empress is therefore like a queen. Also, just as a queen is the wife of a king, an empress might be the wife of an emperor, meaning she's not the ruler of the country but just married to the ruler.
British imperial trading routes pag. 329
Exercise 4
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1. Britain developed its imperial expansion throughout the centuries thanks to its domination of the seas. Protecting its ocean trading routes was the primary importance to Britain.
2. Trading posts in Malasya provided acess to the Strait of Malacca, the gateway to China. With Honk Kong, Britain opened up a sphere of influence in the 'Middle Kingdom'
3. Interests in the Mediterranean increased with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which reduced the costs of travelling to India.
4. British influence was increased by flows of British migrants to the colonies and the growth of Christmas missionary societies, which contributed to spreanding British customs and social structures through the conversion of native populations.
Charles Darwin and evolution pag 330-331
Exercises
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In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species. Although evolutionary ideas were not new to the Victorians, Darwin's radical contribution was his theory of 'natural selection' and his stress on the godless element of chance involved in evolutionary variation.