Nineteenth Century (Post Romanticism, GRE Lit) – Flashcards

Anne Bronte Novel about a governess, Agnes Grey, who works for two horrid families (the Bloomfields and the Murrays) before opening a school with her widowed mother. During her time in her second situation at the Murray's, she meets her future husband Mr. Weston and the flirt Rosalie Murray Ashby.

Anne Bronte/Acton Bell The novel is framed as a letter from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events leading to his meeting his wife. A mysterious young widow arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years, with her young son, Arthur Huntingdon, and servant. She lives there in strict seclusion under the assumed name Helen Graham (real name: Helen Lawrence Huntingdon) and very soon finds herself the victim of local slander. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert Markham, a young farmer, discovers her dark secrets. In her diary, Helen writes about her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol, and the world of debauchery and cruelty from which she has fled. This novel of marital betrayal is set within a moral framework tempered by Anne's optimistic belief in universal salvation.

Charlotte Bronte Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the byronic[1] master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. Other important names to remember: Blanch Ingram, the Reed family, Mr. Brocklehurst, Bessie Lee, Bertha Mason Opening lines: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

Emily Bronte The novel, which is the complicated love and grief of Heathcliff, is told from Nellie Dean, Mr. Heathcliff's servant, to Mr. Lockwood, his tenant at Thrushcross Grange. Important names: Hareton, the Earnshaws, and the Lintons. Opening Lines: 1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.

Poem by Emily Bronte

Poem by Emily Bronte

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Summary: Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. Also wrote: Widowers' Houses, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, The Devil's Disciple, Casesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, Pygmalion, Androcles and the Lion, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, Saint Joan

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Biographical: Irish playwrite, novelist, essayist. Ardent socialist. Synopsis: Lady Britomart Undershaft, the daughter of a British earl, and her son Stephen discuss a source of income for her grown daughters Sarah, who is engaged to Charles Lomax, and Barbara, who is engaged to Adolphus Cusins (a scholar of Greek literature). Lady Britomart leads Stephen to accept her decision that they must ask her estranged husband, Andrew Undershaft, for financial help. Mr. Undershaft is a successful and wealthy businessman who has made millions of pounds from his munitions factory, which manufactures the world famous Undershaft guns, cannons, torpedoes, submarines and aerial battleships. When their children were still small, the Undershafts separated; now grown up, the children have not seen their father since, and Lady Britomart has raised them by herself. During their reunion, Undershaft learns that Barbara is a major in The Salvation Army who works at their shelter in West Ham, east London. Barbara and Mr. Undershaft agree that he will visit Barbara's Army shelter, if she will then visit his munitions factory. When he visits the shelter, Mr. Undershaft is impressed with Barbara's handling of the various people who seek social services from the Salvation Army: she treats them with patience, firmness, and sincerity. Undershaft and Cusins discuss the question of Barbara's commitment to The Salvation Army, and Undershaft decides he must overcome Barbara's moral horror of his occupation. He declares that he will therefore "buy" the Salvation Army. He makes a sizeable donation, matching another donation from a whisky distiller. Barbara wants the Salvation Army to refuse the money because it comes from the armaments and alcohol industries, but her supervising officer eagerly accepts it. Barbara sadly leaves the shelter in disillusionment. According to tradition, the heir to the Undershaft fortune must be an orphan who can be groomed to run the factory. Lady Britomart tries to convince Undershaft to bequeath the business to his son Stephen, but he will not. He says that the best way to keep the factory in the family is to find a foundling and marry him to Barbara. Later, Barbara and the rest of her family accompany her father to his munitions factory. They are all impressed by its size and organisation. Cusins declares that he is a foundling, and is thus eligible to inherit the business. Undershaft eventually overcomes Cusins' moral scruples about the nature of the business. Cusins' acceptance makes Barbara more content to marry him, not less, because bringing a message of salvation to the factory workers, rather than to London slum-dwellers, will bring her more fulfilment.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Summary: Proposes the idea of "art for art's sake." Basil Halliwell paints a striking portrait of an English aristocrat, Dorian Gray. Gray wishes to always remain young as he is in the portrait and instead of him, the portrait starts to age. Starts living a life of debauchery-Sibyl Vance (young actress) falls in love with him and kills herself. Dorian kills Basil after he shows him the painting. In the end, Dorian kills himself by stabbing the painting. Opening Lines: The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Biographical: Disciple of John Ruskin and Walter Pater. Proponent of the aesthetics movement. Homosexual relationship with Lord Aldred Douglas resulted his arrest and sentencing to 2 years hard labor. Afterward, left to Paris in disgrace and poverty and died not long after. Summary: Jack and Algernon are wealthy gentlemen. Jack (known to Algernon as Ernest) lives a respectable life in the country providing an example to his young ward Cecily. Algernon lives in luxury in London and has invented an imaginary invalid friend (Bunbury) whom he visits in the country whenever an unappealing social engagement presents itself. Jack has also invented a character - a wayward younger brother called Ernest whom he uses as pretext for going up to London and enjoying himself. Jack wants to marry Algernon's cousin Gwendolen, but must first convince her mother, Lady Bracknell, of the respectability of his parents. For Jack, having been abandoned in a handbag at Victoria station, this is quite a difficult task. Algernon visits Jack's house in the country and introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, knowing that Cecily is already fascinated by tales of Ernest's wickedness. He further wins her over and they become engaged. Shortly after, Jack arrives home announcing Ernest's death. This sets off a series of farcical events. Cecily and Gwendolen have a genteel stand-off over which of them has a prior claim on 'Ernest'. Jack and Algernon vie to be christened Ernest. Eventually, Jack discovers that his parents were Lady Bracknell's sister and brother-in-law and that he is, in fact, Algernon's older brother, called Ernest. The two sets of lovers are thus free to marry. During these events the characters of Canon Chasuble and Cecily's governess Miss Prism have also fallen in love, and in the best tradition of the well-made play the story ends with all the loose ends tied up and everyone set to live happily ever after. Also wrote: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, De Profundis, The Decay of Lying, The Soul of Man under Socialism

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Biographical: Born to conservative Scottish Presbryterian family, but became a socialist and agnostic. Suffered from ill-health and travelled extensively both to relieve health problems and in search of adventure. Summary: London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the misanthropic Edward Hyde. Gabriel John Utterson hears the story about Mr Hyde who tramples a young girl and returns to give him a check from Dr Henry Jekyll. A year passes uneventfully. One night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde beat a man to death with a heavy cane - Sir Danvers Carew, also a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, who suspects Hyde of the murder. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde. Jekyll shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own. Eventually they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll's clothes and dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Jekyll's letter explains that Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, this being Mr Hyde. The transformation was incomplete, however, in that it created a second, evil identity, but did not make the first identity purely good. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. He confesses to killing Sir Danvers Carew. He no longer has control over his transformation, and takes a potion to stop the transformation Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a necessary ingredient to make more. Ironically, Jekyll learns that this most necessary ingredient was in the first instance of his experiments, sullied. Subsequent supplies are pure and thus lacking the quality that makes the potion successful for his experiments. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in either case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr Jekyll. He ends the letter saying "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end." With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close. Opening Lines: Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. Also wrote: Treasure Island, A child's Garden of Verses, Kidnapped, Catriona, The Master of Ballantrae

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion

Gerard Manley Hopkins Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build - but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Glory be to God for dappled things - For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) First two and last two stanzas The Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord: Three hundred souls, O alas! on board, Some asleep unawakened, all un- warned, eleven fathoms fallen Where she foundered! One stroke Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak! And flockbells off the aerial Downs' forefalls beat to the burial. ... And the prayer thou hearst me making Have, at the awful overtaking, Heard; have heard and granted Grace that day grace was wanted.' Not that hell knows redeeming, But for souls sunk in seeming Fresh, till doomfire burn all, Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow's spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

Thomas Hardy Biographical: A Victorian realist in the tradition of Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. Summary: Jude Fawley yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. Jude teaches himself Greek and Latin. The naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, and, because she erroneously believes she is pregnant, he marries her. The marriage is a failure, they separate, and Arabella later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually marries. However, she soon regrets this, because in addition to being in love with Jude, she is physically disgusted by her husband, and, apparently, by sex in general. Sue soon leaves Phillotson for Jude. Because of the scandal Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. Soon after Arabella reappears and this complicates matters. But Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and moroseness. Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle. "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. He murders Sue's two children and commits suicide by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage. Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time's actions, Sue turns to the church that has ostracised her and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. She becomes convinced that she should have never left Philloston, for religious reasons. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage. Jude dies after trying to visit Sue in freezing weather. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor. Opening lines: The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master, in addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had bought at an auction during the year in which he thought of learning instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he had never acquired any skill in playing, and the purchased article had been a perpetual trouble to him ever since in moving house.

Walter Pater One of the most important books of criticism of the period. His essay on Leonardo DaVinci and the Mona Lisa is hugely influential.

William Morris (lecture delivered 1877, p. 1882) Biographical: Socialist poet, writer, painter, furniture designer, businessman, printer. Summary: Argues that in the mid-19th century, the "lesser arts," which included "the crafts of house-building, painting, joinery and carpentry, smiths' work, pottery and glass-making, weaving, and many others," should not be divorced from the higher arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. He asserts that the Decorative Arts ought to be interwoven with the Higher Arts into a "great body of art," for, as he explains, it is the responsibility of the craftsman to also perform as an artist, "till the web, the cup, or the knife, look as natural, nay as lovely, as the green field, the river bank, or the mountain flint." To the craftsman falls the responsibility of making objects that are, first, useful and second, that they "give people pleasure." The second part of Morris's lecture focuses on the tragedy of the factory worker's dehumanizing experience. He proposes that all handicraftsmen strive to become artists and that all manufacturers recognize that in their "greed of money" they threaten the life of these Deocrative Arts. He warns his listeners that the "death of one art means the death of all." Morris encouraged the craftsmen in his audience to look to Nature and History as their art teachers. In particular, he encouraged the study of "ancient art" rather than only find influence from "the feeble work all round us." He hoped for the birth of a new form of art that reflected the simplistic, clean, and decent elements found among Historical and Natural influences, rather than a mere un-thinking replication of industrially-produced pieces. Morris then acknowledged the craftsman's frustrations with the public's "bargain-hunter" appetite for things "cheap" and "nasty," and he placed the blame on "all classes" but placed the remedy with the craftsmen in his audience - that they must learn to be artists and create demand by only producing excellence. Also wrote: The Defense of Guenevere, The life and Death of Jason, The Earthly Pardise, Volsunga Saga, The story of Sigurd the Volsung, A Dream of John Ball, News from Nowhere

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) Biographical: Daughter of Italian exile. Sister of Pre-Raphaelite Dante Rossetti. Brother William Michael Rossetti described her as "replete with the spirit of self-postponement." First two stanzas Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpeck'd cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;— All ripe together In summer weather,— Morns that pass by, Fair eves that fly; Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp bullaces, Rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries, Taste them and try: Currants and gooseberries, Bright-fire-like barberries, Figs to fill your mouth, Citrons from the South, Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy." Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, Laura bow'd her head to hear, Lizzie veil'd her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. "Lie close," Laura said, Pricking up her golden head: "We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?" "Come buy," call the goblins Hobbling down the glen.

Christina Rosetti My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

Matthew Arnold Summary: He uses poetry written in other languages - French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek - as a means of testing English poetry. The testing is sometimes a severe one. Readers may also protest that despite Arnold's wit, his essay is limited by an incomplete recognition of the values of comic literature, a shortcoming abundantly evident in the discussion of Chaucer. Nevertheless, whether we agree or disagree with some of Arnold's verdicts, we can be attracted by the combination of traditionalism and impressionism on which these verdicts are based, and we can enjoy the memorable phrasemaking in which the verdicts are expressed. "The Study of Poetry" has been extraordinarily potent in shaping literary tastes in England and America. Important Quotes: "The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can."

Matthew Arnold Summary: Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda. According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture [...] is a study of perfection". He further wrote that: "[Culture] seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light [...]". His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy. The book contains most of the terms - culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others - which are more associated with Arnold's work influence. Important Quotes: "Culture is the best which has been thought and said." "The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically." "Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organization which has helped us to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary and to be propograted, even when it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this."

Matthew Arnold Biographical: poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits - on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, seet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanced land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Also wrote: Culture and Anarchy, The Study of Poetry, Literature and Dogma, Essays in Criticism, Friendship's Garland

George Eliot Opening Lines: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. Important names: John Raffles, Caleb Garth, Mr. Featherstone, Mary Garth, Camden Farebrother, Rosamond Vincy, Mr. Bulstrode,Tertius Lydgate,Will Ladislaw,Edward Casaubon,Sir James Chettam,Dorothea Brooke

George Eliot Summary: Details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings growing up at the fictional Dorlcote Mill on the fictional River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St. Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. The story begins when Maggie is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem, a hunchbacked, sensitive, and intellectual friend, and with Stephen Guest, a vivacious young socialite in St. Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane, constitute the most significant narrative threads. Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Maggie languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, her intellectual aptitude wasted in her socially isolated state. Against the wishes of Tom and her father, who both despise the Wakems, Maggie secretly meets with Philip. The relationship they forge is founded partially in Maggie's heartfelt pity for broken and neglected human beings, but it also serves as an outlet for her intellectual romantic desires. Philip manages to coax a pledge of love from Maggie. When Tom discovers the relationship between the two, however, he forces his sister to renounce Philip, and with him her hopes of experiencing the broader, more cultured world he represents. Several more years pass, during which Mr. Tulliver dies. Lucy Deane invites Maggie to come and stay with her and experience the life of cultured leisure that she enjoys. Stephen, Lucy's suitor, and Maggie, against their rational judgments, become attracted to each other. The complication is compounded by Philip Wakem's friendship with Lucy and Stephen; he and Maggie are reintroduced, and Philip's love for her is rekindled, while Maggie, no longer isolated, enjoys the clandestine attentions of Stephen. Lucy intrigues to throw Philip and Maggie together on a short rowing trip down the Floss, but Stephen unwittingly takes a sick Philip's place. When Maggie and Stephen find themselves floating down the river, he proposes they board a passing boat to the next substantial city, Mudport, and get married. Upon arrival in Mudport she rejects Stephen and makes her way back to St. Ogg's, where she lives for a brief period as an outcast. Although she immediately goes to Tom for forgiveness and shelter, he roughly sends her away. Both Lucy and Philip forgive her, in a moving reunion and an eloquent letter, respectively. Maggie's brief exile ends when the river floods. The flood has been criticised as a deus ex machina. Those who do not support this view cite the frequent references to flood as foreshadowing, which makes this natural occurrence less contrived. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph, "In their death they were not divided." Opening Lines: A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships-laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal-are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun.

George Eliot Biographical: Birth name Mary Anne Evans. One of the leading writers of the Victorian era, assistant editor of the Westminster Review. Common-law wife to George Lewes. Summary: The story's plot follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" between beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher. Adam is a local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Arthur, the charming local squire's grandson and heir, and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his militia. After he leaves, Hetty Sorrel agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, discovers she is pregnant. In desperation, she leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find him; unwilling to return to the village on account of the shame and ostracism she would have to endure, she delivers her baby with the assistance of a friendly woman she encounters. Later, the child is killed when she abandons it in a field. Not being able to bear the child's cries she tries to come back but she is too late when she finds out that it dies of exposure. Hetty is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. Dinah enters the prison and pledges to stay with Hetty until the end. Her compassion brings about Hetty's contrite confession. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation. Ultimately, Adam and Dinah, who gradually become aware of their mutual love, marry and live peacefully with his family. Opening Lines: With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799. Also wrote: Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, Scenes from Clerical Life, "Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft," "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"

John Ruskin Biographical: Primarily an art critic. Summary: Originated the term "the pathetic fallacy" in this text, which is the projection of the author's sentiment onto an inanimate object. Happy sunshine, gloomy fog (and cruel shoes?) are examples of the pathetic fallacy. Examples of the pathetic fallacy include: * "The stars will awaken / Though the moon sleep a full hour later" (Percy Bysshe Shelley) * "The fruitful field / Laughs with abundance" (William Cowper) * "Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty" (Walt Whitman) * "Nature abhors a vacuum" (John Ruskin's translation of the well-known Medieval saying natura abhorret a vacuo, in his work Modern Painters.)

A brilliant architectural study of Venice in which John Ruskin "reads" the economic, social, and moral history of Venice through its permanent structures.