It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times

OXFORDUNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION

Coursework Handbook

‘It was the Best of Times; it was the Worst of Times’

Culture, Crime & Changing Identityin Victorian England

Please pick one of the options below as a coursework exercise. Completed answers should be handed in to me by the end of the course if possible. If you would like to discuss any of the options with me before making your decision, please do.

Here are the options - Please pick A or B:

EITHER

A. Document exercises

Answer 4 exercises, from the 5 shown below. Each answer should be about 250 words long. We will look through documents in class, time permitting.

B. An Essay

Choose 1 essay, from the titles listed below. The essay should be about 1000 words long.

If you pick this option, please prepare a brief one-page plan to hand in and discuss with me before the end of term. Please note too, if you have another essay topic you would like to examine, please discuss with mefirst before the end of the course.

A. Document Exercises

Please pick FOUR out of the five questions, and write about 250 words for each

1. Poverty & Society

Childhood memories

‘In an evil hour for me, as I often bitterly thought... it’s chief manager, James Lambert, the relative who had lived with us in Bayham Street, seeing how I was employed from day to day, and knowing what our domestic circumstances then were, proposed that I... be as useful as I could, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first, and seven afterwards. At any rate the offer was accepted very willingly by my father and mother...

It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough of me - a child of singular abilities: quick eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally - to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar school, and going to Cambridge.’

Dicken’s recollections, as quoted byJohn Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, Book I Chapter II, 1874

Look at the extract above and consider the following points in your answer:

What painful event is Dickens reportedly describing above?
How does heuse language and imagery to make his point?
What overall impressionof Victorian life does the extract leave us with?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Biographies for historians?

2. Politics & Class

‘The Snobs of England, by one of themselves’

Chapter One: The Snob Playfully Dealt With

I once knew a man who committed before me an act as atrocious as that... performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man who, dining in my company at the ‘Europa Coffee-house,’ (opposite the Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining at Naples,) ate peas with the assistance of his knife.

He was a person with whose society I was greatly pleased at first—indeed, we had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held to ransom by brigands in Calabria, which is nothing to the purpose—a man of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information; but I had never before seen him with a dish of pease, and his conduct in regard to them caused me the deepest pain. After having seen him thus publicly comport himself, but one course was open to me—to cut his acquaintance.

Punch, 1846-7

Look at the extract above and consider the following points in your answer:

Who is the author of the text and what was his significance?
How does he use language and imagery to make his point?
What overall impression of Victorian life does the extract leave us with?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Comic Novels as sources for historians?

3. Crime & Policing

Handbill, London, 1888

Look at the image above and consider the following points in your answer:

What event is being depicted in the print?
How does the artist use language and imagery to develop this theme?
What overall impression of Victorian life does the extract leave us with?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Handbillsand Posters as sources for historians?

4. Health & Sanitation

A Visit to the Cholera Districts Of Bermondsey

In the next house, the poor inmate was too glad to meet with any one ready to sympathise with her sufferings. We were taken up into a room, where we were told she had positively lived for nine years. The window was within four feet of a high wall, at the foot of which, until very recently, ran the open common sewer. The room was so dark that it was several minutes before we could see anything within it, and there was a smell of must and dry rot that told of damp and imperfect ventilation, and the unnatural size of the pupils of the wretched woman's eyes convinced us how much too long she had dwelt in this gloomy place.

Here, as usual, we heard stories that made one's blood curdle, of the cruelty of those from whom they rented the sties called dwellings. They had begged for pure water to be laid on, and the rain to be shut out; and the answer for eighteen years had been, that the lease was just out. "They knows its handy for a man's work," said one and all, "and that's the reason why they impose on a body." This, indeed, seems to us to be the great evil. Out of these wretches' health, comfort, and even lives, small capitalists reap a petty independence; and until the poor are rescued from the fangs of these mercenary men, there is but little hope either for their physical or moral welfare...

The Morning Chronicle,September 24, 1849

Look at the extract above and consider the following points in your answer:

Who is the author of this source and what was his significance?
How does he use language and imagery to make his point?
What overall impression of Victorian life does the author leave us with?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Newspaper extracts for historians?

5. Domesticity & Leisure

Suburban Population Growth, Late Victorian & Early Edwardian England
1871 / 1901 / 1911
Greater London / 3, 890, 000 / 6, 856, 000 / 7, 256,000
Lancashire / 1, 386, 000 / 2, 117, 000 / 2, 328, 000
Midlands / 969, 000 / 1, 483, 000 / 1, 634, 000
(figures from census returns)

Look at the above statistical table and consider the following points in your answer:

What isthe significance of the three regions shown on the table?
What does the table show us about changing population levels in these regions?
What overall impression of Victorian life does the extract leave us with?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Statistics for historians?

B. Essay Titles

Please choose ONE title and write about 1000 words:

1. Consider the authorswe have examined through the course and answer the following question:

How far were contemporary authors successful in documenting and expressing the mood of Victorian society?

(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your essay: what kinds of authors have we examined through the course? How did theyaddress the issue of society and culture? How far were their concerns reflected in wider society?)

2. Consider the artists we have examined through the course and answer the following question:

How far were contemporary artists successful in documenting and expressing the mood of Victorian society?

(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your essay: what kinds of artist have we examined through the course? How did they address the issue of society and culture? How far were their concerns reflected in wider society?)

3. Which of the following themes had the greatest impact on Victorian Society in your view and why?

Poverty and Class; Health and Sanitation; Crime and Policing; Empire & Race; Domesticity & Leisure

(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your essay: why was each theme significant in Victorian life? Which events and issues were associated with it? How far were those themes and issues significant over the period as a whole?)