Dr. Clifton Snider
English 250B
California State University, Long Beach

Half of the exam for the Victorian section of this course will consist of a 3-4 page (double-spaced) take-home essay (due the date of the exam) on one of the following titles. You must clear the title with me ahead of time as scheduled on the syllabus.

In an essay that has an introduction (with thesis statement, underlined), body, and conclusion, I would like you to examine the piece in terms of typical Victorian values and/or concerns (such as respectability, optimism, earnestness, utility, duty; the "woman question" and industrialization) or conflicts (e.g., faith versus unbelief; prudery--or traditional moral values-- versus free expression). Does the piece you've chosen reenforce or conflict with these ideas? How? In other words, what does this piece of literature say about Victorian society? If you wish to take the Jungian approach, that is all right too.  

No outside sources are necessary (although for Jung you would need an outside source), but if you use any, you must give credit, using MLA style and provide a photocopy of your source. You lose 10 points if you don’t do this. Remember, using the words of a source without quotation marks, even if you cite the source, is plagiarism and would cause you to fail the entire exam. Also, any use of a source (including your primary source) must be cited, MLA style. As for web sites, I allow only authorized ones: see the MLA Handbook. 

Arnold, Matthew, Tristram and Iseult or Culture and Anarchy.
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights.
Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre or Villette
Browning, Robert, The Ring and the Book.
Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh.
Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist or Great Expectations or Hard Times
Eliot, George, Silas Marner or Middlemarch.
Fitzgerald, Edward, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam.
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure or The Mayor of Casterbridge or Tess of the D'urbervilles.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, A selection of 3-5 poems from The Complete Poems
Lear, Edward, The Complete Nonsense.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord Clive.
Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty or Autobiography or On The Subjection of Women.
Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua.
Pater, Walter, The Renaissance.
Rossetti, Christina, Goblin Market.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Stoker, Bram, Dracula.
Swinburne, A. C., Poems and Ballads, First Series or Atalanta in Calydon or Tristram of Lyonesse.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, Any two of the Idylls of the King.
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair.
Trollop, Anthony, The Warden.
Wilde, Oscar, Any of the major plays (except The Importance of Being Earnest) or De Profundis or The Happy Prince and Other Tales or A House of Pomegranates or Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories.