Flashcards on Socio-Economic Class in 19th-Century English Literature
Socio-Economic Class in 19th-Century English Literature Analysis
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Victorian literature
38 cards
Card 1
Question: What social changes in the late 1840s prompted writers, artists and preachers to address new social issues?
Answer: The expansion of industrialization and urbanization created social problems that writers, artists and preachers addressed.
Card 2
Question: What events brought the 'Condition of England Question' to a head in the 1840s?
Answer: The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the Chartist uprisings of 1848.
Card 3
Question: When were the most influential social-problem novels of the century written, and why did their urgency decline after that period?
Answer: They were written between 1845 and 1855; by then much of the worst poverty from the Hungry Forties had been at least partially relieved during a perio
Card 4
Question: Which novelists are cited as illuminating contemporary social problems through depictions of poverty and inequality?
Answer: Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë.
Card 5
Question: What did Elizabeth Gaskell claim was the purpose of her 1848 novel Mary Barton?
Answer: To highlight divisions between employers and the employed, to speak for factory workers in appalling conditions who struggled to feed their families a
Card 6
Question: How did Mary Barton pioneer subject and style for novels about the industrial North?
Answer: By focusing on the industrial North of England and using regional dialect to portray working-class life.
Card 7
Question: In what sense did the Victorian 'condition-of-England' novel function as an 'appeal'?
Answer: It demanded a response—such as a change of attitude or behaviour—by educating readers about social problems.
Card 8
Question: What was the immediate purpose of mid-century social-problem novelists regarding their readership?
Answer: To educate the middle and upper classes about the realities of working-class life.
Card 9
Question: How is authorial presence characterized in Victorian fiction, especially in social-problem novels?
Answer: A strong authorial presence is typical, with novelists writing as teachers, guides, and even prophets.
Card 10
Question: What social issues did industrialization and urbanization make more publicly prominent?
Answer: Pauperism and the proletariat and its discontents.