Choose one of the following questions and write an essay in answer that is at least 1,200 words (four full pages with bit on the 5th). You should use your book for quotations and other supporting material, but do not use any other outside sources.

1) Darwin’s The Descent of Man was very influential throughout the Victorian period. Choose a work that was published after the publication of Darwin’s piece and explore how Darwin’s work on evolution as shown in The Descent of Man influenced the other work you have chosen.

2) Oscar Wilde’s prose and dramatic work had a great deal of influence on how other aesthetics defined art and life. Choose another work from this movement and explore how it interacts with Wilde’s ideas as expressed in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray and/or The Importance of Being Earnest.

3) Although the Fin de Siécle is usually seen as period of great turmoil and change in opposition to the rest of the Victorian period, the 1890s is still very much part of the period. Compare and contrast an earlier Victorian work with one from the Fin de Siécle and be sure to show how they are both alike and different

4) Choose one of the women characters (including the journal pieces – in those works the real narrator acts a character) from the works we have read in this period and explore how she both departs from and conforms to Victorian conventions of femininity. You must define those conventions at some point in your answer.

5) Many of the writers we have read spend a great of time considering the current unhealthy state of Victorian society and arguing for a particular way of curing those social ills to make England healthy and strong once again. Choose two authors and compare and contrast both their critiques and plans for improvements.

6) Throughout the period, constructions of femininity and masculinity were very much under discussion. Choose two authors and compare and contrast their definitions of Victorian femininity and masculinity. If you so wish, you may center your essay around a specific issue that was particularly important to the gender you are discussing in your essay.