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This thesis explores, and seeks an historical interpretation of, representations of women both as victims and perpetrators of crime in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Moving beyond how criminal offences were defined, perceived and disciplined, the analysis highlights their broader social and cultural contexts and effects. Focusing primarily on media accounts and literary narratives of "sensational" and serious cases, it argues that the treatment of crimes of spousal murder, sexual violence and infanticide can be read for cultural and political meanings. At a time when the technological and commercial abilities to satisfy the public appetite for crime stories were rapidly expanding, these narratives became a significant arena in which social preoccupations, anxieties, and conflicts were symbolically explored. As forms of cultural production, therefore, crime narratives constituted, communicated and contested social and political values relating, for example, to issues of class and gender, morality and character, public order and the body. At the heart of this study, therefore, lies the opportunity to explore how the female figures of such accounts, whether murdering women or rape victims, related to their wider world. Unlike court proceedings and legal records, which were accessed by a small minority only, many of the sources on which this analysis is based were produced for popular consumption; they were available to an increasing audience. Thus, local newspaper reporting of Assizes cases are examined alongside the national press, the writings of middle class reformers and social commentators, and a range of literary texts including broadsides, melodramas, "respectable" novels and cheap, sensational fiction. Graphic illustration provides an additional site of representation, particularly influential as it could be read by everyone including the wholly illiterate. However, crime narratives cannot be treated as simple windows into the past - they constitute particularly constructed images, fashioned in accordance with journalistic practices, commercial enterprise and literary conventions as well as the cultural and power dynamics of the period. Female criminals and victims of crime in early Victorian society were defined as damaging and damaged; in order to explore the wider social meaning of these representations close textual analysis of primary sources is allied with a detailed identification and contextualisation of the specificities of the different narrative forms.

Victorian society witnessed a transformation in the understanding and treatment of psychological disorders. The expansion of nosologies or classifications of lunacy was one measure hailed by psychological physicians as indicative of their mastery over madness. Yet between the 1840s and the 1870s the introduction of moral insanity and monomania to established classificatory systems undercut the medical authority of physicians and challenged their desired cultural stature as benevolent and authoritative agents of cure. Far from consolidating medical authority, these `partial' forms of lunacy (which were detected in the emotions rather than the intellect) paradoxically heightened anxiety about the ease with which eccentric or sane individuals could be wrongfully incarcerated in lunatic asylums. This dissertation examines the themes, motifs and defining issues of wrongful incarceration as they were discussed in Parliament, national and regional newspapers, medical and literary journals, and novels and short stories. Discussing in detail several infamous `cases' of wrongful confinement, it traces the ways in which anxieties were formulated, expressed and negotiated. The public outcry over cultural representations of wrongful confinement generated heated reactions from physicians and lunacy law reformers. The most contentious discussions centred on the manner in which notions of humanity and benevolence, and tyranny and liberty, were marshalled to influence public opinion. These debates represented not solely a legal conflict centring the claim to treatment and authority over the alleged lunatic, but more dramatically a battle for the public's good opinion. As important as medico-legal trials and their consequent rulings was the contested appropriateness of sentiment; this was manifested in words and images utilised to exacerbate or contain anxiety. The wrongful confinement controversy constitutes an important (though largely overlooked) episode in the history of English nineteenth-century psychiatry; formatively altering perceptions of the profession of mental science in the Victorian period.

This thesis analyses the women characters in four novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, The Mill on the Floss and Sons and Lovers. The first chapter gives information on the historical background of the Victorian period and early 20th century in England in which the novels were written, on the biography of the authors of the novels and clarifies the aim and methodology of the study. The following chapters analyse the women charaters - Helen Huntingdon, Shirley Keeldar, Maggie Tulliver and Clara Dawes - selected for study according to how far they went against social norms, perceptions about women and society&#039 / s morals, and provide a general evaluation of each character. The conclusion presents a comparison of the four women characters&#039 / attitudes, and asserts that each of them display a controversial attitude in at least one of these areas, considering the period in which the novels were written.

This thesis examines female gender nonconformity as a behaviour in response to Victorian patriarchal oppression in the female protagonist of Charlotte Brönte's bildungsroman Jane Eyre. Gender nonconforming behaviour is depicted as behaviour that does not obey gender roles or expectations, linking the responsive quality of such behaviours to the traits of hegemonic masculinity exerted by the male characters who represent and perpetuate a patriarchal system: St John Rivers and Edward Rochester. The investigation concludes that not only Jane but also Bertha endure and suffer the oppression that triggers their gender nonconforming behaviours. This thesis has not examined Bertha as an antagonistic version of Jane, nor as the monster in the angel and monster dichotomy which Gilbert and Gubar have pointed out, but as a future version of her. It is concluded as well that Jane is spared of Bertha's destiny because of Rochester's degraded physical condition which does not allow him to assert his dominance over Jane as he did over Bertha. Jane perpetuates the dehumanisation of Bertha to an extent given Bertha's creole ethnicity and dark traits, which Jane uses to demonize Bertha by characterizing her as a wild creature.

No / Nineteenth-century Britain was one of the birthplaces of modern vegetarianism in the West. In 'Of Victorians and Vegetarians' James Gregory explores the relationship between this newly organized movement and wider culture and society. It evolved with a myriad of meanings and voices: partly for propagandist reasons, but also because of the varied motivations and characteristcs of vegetarians. Teetotallers, animal lovers, mystics, spiritualists and theosophists, as well as those who saw the diet as an effective and democratic medical treatment, all provided the constituents for a movement whose critics associated it with radicalism and faddism. Frequently counter-cultural, in its association with socialism and communitarianism throughout the period, vegetarianism also expressed in heightened form the already well-established values of self-help, philanthropy, thrift, Puritanism, domesticity and a belief in progress.

H. G Wells’s novel The Time Machine is a significant work of science fiction that dramatizes the themes of degeneration and social inequality, themes that were very relevant during the Victorian era in relation to the discovery of evolution. Degeneration was seen as the degradation of society into primitiveness far from the Victorian standards, and the problem of social difference, where the gap between poor and rich was very wide, became the visible proof of the difference between the evolved and civilized and the degenerated and primitive. The purpose of this essay is to analyse how the frame narrative, the story surrounding the main adventure, affects the theme of degeneration in the novel. The framework reveals the reactions of the people present at the dinner parties, where the Time Traveller recounts his journey into a degenerated future. The guests are all representing different factions of Victorian society, such as the Provincial Mayor, the Very Young Man and the Editor who all have their own motives and agendas in relation to degeneration, social differences and time travel. By examining the guests’ individual motives, the essay argues that they do not want to believe in time travel since it would include believing in a degenerated future where all the glory of their present-day Victorian era would crumble into chaos and pandemonium. This essay shows that by denying the relevance of the Time Traveller’s story, despite the evidence presented, the dinner guests are condemning themselves to the degenerated future they are afraid of, hence making the novel a warning example of not accepting new ideas.

Orientador: Maria da Graças Gomes Villa da Silva / Banca: Alcides Cardoso dos Santos / Banca: Nelson Viana / Resumo: Thomas Hardy é um autor cuja produção se assenta no período que compreende o final do século XIX e o começo do século XX, momento que marca não apenas o fim de uma era histórica e o recomeço de novos tempos, mas caracteriza também uma ocasião de mudança na concepção literária. No caso inglês, aquele período apontava para um declínio da literatura vitoriana - com seus temas baseados na moral austera da época, ancorada na figura íntegra da rainha Vitória - e revelava os primeiros indícios de uma tendência literária voltada para o retrato do homem cindido, imerso no processo de crise existencial e destituído de muitas de suas antigas certezas. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise do romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles com vistas a flagrar, segundo o ponto de vista de Thomas Hardy, a crise de valores que se estabelece, quando o modo de produção capitalista avança sobre as antigas instituições feudais na Inglaterra daquele tempo e deflagra um processo de reconsideração dos papéis dos indivíduos na sociedade. O estopim desta efervescência foram os desdobramentos da Revolução Industrial e as inovações nos campos científico e cultural que convulsionaram os padrões de comportamento e colocaram em questionamento a própria conduta humana. Com ironia, a sociedade vitoriana é criticada e, seus costumes, em grande monta, são apresentados como hipócritas no romance de Hardy, que tem um desfecho fatalista e parece retratar a visão desencantada do homem daquele momento sobre o destino de sua própria espécie no mundo em ascendente ebulição. Publicado pela primeira vez em 1891 e concebido sob a forma realista, interessa à pesquisa o romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles justamente pelo seu caráter duplo: pertence ao cânone da literatura vitoriana e, ao mesmo tempo, antecipa a temática modernista do colapso da solidez humana. Para apontar esta crise, adotamos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Thomas Hardy‟s works are set in a time comprehending the end of nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century, a period that not only highlights the end of a historical era and the beginning of a new time, but also characterizes an occasion of change in literary conception. That period in England was representative of the decay of Victorian literature - with moral-based themes inspired in Queen Victoria‟s integrity - and it showed up the first signs of a literary tendency of revealing the image of the divided man, sunk into the process of existential crisis and void of many of his previous certainties. This study presents an examination on Tess of the d‟Urbervilles in order to depict, according to Thomas Hardy‟s point of view, the crisis of values installed in the social order, when capitalism advances over the old feudal institutions in England at that time and sets forth a process of reconsideration of the roles of the individuals in society. The starting point of all this effervescence was the Industrial Revolution and its implications that brought innovation to scientific and cultural realms, disrupting old standards of behaviour and putting human conduct in check. The Victorian society is criticized with irony and many of its habits are taken as hypocrisies in Hardy‟s novel, which ends fatalistically, seeming to portrait man‟s disappointed view about his own destiny in the disturbed world in that time. Tess of the d‟Urbervilles, written under the realist form, was published for the first time in 1891 and it is important to this research because of its double character: it belongs to the canon of Victorian literature and, at the same time, anticipates the modernist theme of the collapse of human solidity. To point out this crisis, we take Raymond Williams‟s position that considers Hardy not simply a regionalist writer exclusively worried with... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Various representations of the figure of Salomé and the Biblical legend have been produced in the European, specifically in the English literature and arts throughout the nineteenth century. Oscar Wilde’s 1891 dramatic version of the legend in many ways epitomizes the full potential of the legend and capitalizes on the period’s fascination with the Orient. The climax of the orientalism of the play, the Dance of the Seven Veils, offers a unique reflection on European fantasies about the harem and invites a comparison to Ottoman representations of this same cultural space. This project seeks to analyze the relation between the Dance of the Seven Veils as presented by Wilde, and the figure of dancing woman in the harem of the Ottoman Empire. It is the slippage between the two which has informed various representations of the Oriental female figure in the West. The gap that emerges between the Western representations and the real practices in the harem, allows for a focused critique of Orientalist practices while recovering, in some ways, the actual experience of Muslim women.The vision of the harem that the Dance of the Seven Veils in Wilde’s Salomé offers is informed not by an actual encounter, but by the image of the harem as understood in nineteenth century English culture. At the same time, it participates in Victorian feminist debates on liberating the oppressed harem woman from her veils, her sexualization, and her objectification. Ultimately the dance functions as a reaffirmation of conventional gender roles as understood in Victorian society. / text

This work deals with the analysis of selected works by the famous Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. For the purpose of zeitgeist illustration the dramas Anatole and Reigen were used. The analysis of the works is preceded by theoretical section with a closer description of the socio-historical situation in Vienna at the turn of the 19th and 20 century. A part of the main section is a short treatise on the importance of one-act plays cycle in the development of the author´s works, dramas analysis and characterization of the characters, on the basis of which the conclusions are drawn about the image of Victorian society, which the author deals with in his works . The last part concludes the analysis and provides an outline description of the image and the zeitgeist as it can be deduced on the basis of both Schnitzler´s dramas compared to socio-historical knowledge of that time.