#victorian classics

[lizziestudieshistory]

I've accidentally started a book club at school... A couple of the girls in my form asked me for a classic book recommendation for their English homework and I suggested Jane Eyre because they usually read a lot of YA fantasy romance and I remember being hooked by it when I was a similar age.

Fast forward a week or so and I'm now getting daily updates from their group of friends because they're so into it! They've taken over my classroom at lunchtime to have a chat about what's going on at Thornfield and are giving me some truly WILD predictions about what's going to happen. I've never seen a group of 13 year olds so mad about a classic and it's heartwarming to watch them experience the story for the first time. They're only about half way through the book and they're already looking for similar classics to read afterwards.

[luxet0bscuritas-blog]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge - June - 09/06/25 - Favourite Character Archetype

The femme fatale has always captivated me - there’s something endlessly fascinating about this archetype, and honestly, she’s hands down the character type I love exploring most in literature.

Take Carmilla, for example. She’s one of the most notorious and compelling femmes fatales of Victorian Gothic fiction. A vampire who blurs the lines between predator and seductress, Carmilla embodies a haunting, otherworldly allure that’s as dangerous as it is seductive. She sits alongside other unforgettable Victorian femmes fatales like Rebecca Sharp from Vanity Fair, whose ruthless ambition and sharp wit cut through the hypocrisy of high society; Lydia Gwilt from Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, a master manipulator with a dark past; and of course, Lady Audley, whose secret identity and chilling duplicity make her one of the most famous characters in sensation fiction.

I guess what draws me the most to these women is how they expose the tensions beneath Victorian society’s polished exterior - how they wield their intelligence, charm, and often times deceit to seize control and subvert patriarchal power dynamics. They’re all products of their time and a rebellion against it, making them endlessly fascinating figures to dissect and re-imagine.

~ lux ⋆˙⟡♡

[harriet-the-hobbit]

i’m sorry, but why does every adaptation of Dracula feel the need to make Lucy the modern stereotypical “popular girl” or “boy crazy party girl”, when in the book she just happens to get three proposals and then remains friends with the two dudes she rejected; and Mina as either Dracula’s love interest or just unimportant to the story, when this bitch is the reason the guy crew knew that Dracula was going back to his castle and was also a self proclaimed Train Fiend.

Both these women loved the men in their lives for being there for them, both as friends and with their fiancés/husbands. And for this love, and I admit blatant Victorian era sexism, every adaptation writes them into modern stereotypes that strip away all that makes them who they are, and what makes me love them so much.

And I’m not saying that all the adaptations are bad for this reason, it’s just a shame that no adaptation I’ve seen has actually captured the things that made me love these characters so much when I read the book for the first time.

[coffeeacademia]

my coping mechanism for everything is reading victorian poetry and listening to los angeles by the midnight, there is no second method.

[sillythoughtsthathauntme]

Violet Evergarden: a love letter to the Victorian age of Literature

After finally getting caught up in the talk of the anime season, all the more I was convinced that the series ‘Violet Evergarden’ alludes so much to the Victorian age of literature.

And when I mean by this age of literature, I was referring to the most iconic heroine classics from Heidi; Anne of Green Gables; Daddy-long-legs; Pollyanna; etc. Perhaps, Kyoto Animation had the means of reviving the wave of anime adaptations of said classics, or perhaps adapted the light novel series as a love letter to that era.

The tale of Violet Evergarden is of a simple one; a tale of an orphan girl who was once a soldier for the war wants to understand the meaning behind her superior’s parting words. In pursuit of her quest, she decides to become an Auto memories Doll, a stenographer in charge of typewriting records, letters or ghostwriting for clients. Every client that she encounters she learns more about emotions within her, along with understanding the meaning behind her superior’s words “I love you”.

The tale’s structure somewhat feels rather reminiscent to ‘Daddy long Legs’ where the orphan girl Jerusha “Judy” Abbot was suddenly granted the chance to go to college by one of the orphanage’s trustees, under the condition that she should never know the identity of her benefactor. Other elements of Violet Evergarden also allude to ‘the little princess’, as well as the level of mystery surrounding her superior’s disappearance that is loosely reminiscent of the mysterious atmosphere of ‘The secret garden’.

Though I must admit that there are only a few of the titles I mentioned that I have actually read, but the atmospheric nature of Violet Evergarden holds a similar vibe to those said titles. By no means do I mean that the series is likened to those titles, but the series itself felt like it was inspired by these said classics.

[lizziestudieshistory]

I don't know whether to read Lady Audley's Secret or The Custom of the Country... Someone tell me what to do!

[seancecafe]

1907 Gothic Victorian Home, Inman Park, Atlanta, GA