Victorian Studies Journal

         Victorian Studies is a quarterly journal published by Indiana University Press (Bloomington). Founded in 1958, Victorian Studies is “one of the first interdisciplinary journals in the humanities,” and “is the journal North American Victorian Studies Association”; there is an issue dedicated to the association’s annual conference each year (“Victorian Studies”). Issues of Victorian Studies from 1974 to 1993 are available to students in print at the Angelo & Jennette Volpe Library, and issues from 1983 to present can be accessed through the Humanities Full Text database. This journal caters to professors and scholars as well as individuals wanting to learn more about “Victorian literature, social and political history, fine arts, science, philosophy, economics, and law” (“Victorian Studies”). Editors are Andrew H. Miller, Ivan Kreikamp, and D. Rae Greitner, professors of Indiana University. The current editorial board is an equal amount of men and women, which is a vast difference from the male dominated board in 1974; the current members are primarily American, unlike the British and American board of 1974. Victorian Studies advises submissions be between 7,000 and 9,000 words, as well as a works cited page, adhering to MLA format.  Articles tend to be from 9 to 13 pages, which is significantly less than it had been in 1974, with articles ranging from 20 to 26 pages.

            Issues of Victorian Studies typically have five to seven in-depth reviews of Victorian short stories and poetry, such as “Of Mothers and Merchants: Female Economics in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’” and “Can You Forgive Him? Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? and the Myth of Realism”. There are four or five literary criticisms. Many of the criticisms deal with the new or advancing technology. “The Medium is the Media: Fictions of the Telephone in the 1890s,” deals with the prominence and the misconception of telephones in several books and short stories; “Authenticity and Charm: The Revival of Victorian Photography,” displays several different photographs taken in the Victorian era and explains how pictures were taken, archived, and the artistic approach to photography. The goal of Victorian Studies is to educate people about Victorian times and give some insight into the literature and life of the era. There are an abundance of book reviews in each journal mainly concerning works about the Victorian era published within the last five years. There are about 35 reviews in the current issue—a significant decrease from 1990, which had 70 book reviews.

            Advertisements for books that are new or back in print, journals, and collections are often found within the pages of Victorian Studies, as well as photographs depicting historical events, famous images, or the day to day lives of those living in the Victorian era. Although the 1974 issue of Victorian Studies has an entire article dedicated to photography, photographs were not an avid part of the journal until 2000.

All in all, Victorian Studies is a journal used to understand and analyze all aspects of the Victorian era. The journal has an abundant amount of information, but it is directed primarily toward professors and scholars wishing to learn about the time.

Works Cited

Campbell, Elizabeth. “Of Mothers and Merchants: Female Economics in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”” Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 393-410. Web.

Levine, George. “Can You Forgive Him? Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? an the Myth of Realism.” Victorian Studies 18 (1974): 5-30. Web.

Menke, Richard. “The Medium Is The Media: Fictions Of The Telephone In The 1890S.” Victorian Studies 55.2 (2013): 212-221. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Thomas, Alan. “Authenticity and Charm: The Revival of Victorian Photography.” Victorian Studies 18 (1974): 103-12. Web.

“Victorian Studies.” Indiana.edu. Indiana University, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. <http://www.indiana.edu/~victstu/victorianStudies.shtml&gt;.

Victorian Web

Currently accessible from its website victorianweb.org, the Victorian web originally began back in 1987 in hypermedia environments that existed long before the World Wide Web and is one of the oldest academic and scholarly websites. Its original purpose was to help scholars differentiate and make connections between different fields and has extended its reach.

Although there are many contributing editors listed on the site, George P. Landow, the founder and current webmaster and editor-in-chief of The Victorian Web, is a Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. Though the Victorian Web has never received support from Brown University, it was first housed by the High Energy Physics Group at Brown University, then by Brown’s Scholarly Technology Group.

The Victorian Web takes a fundamentally different method to finding and using information than search-based Internet projects. Internet archives and tools, such as Google, treat bodies of information as a chaotic swamp that users search with a “laser-like tool that penetrates the fog and darkness.” They relate differently to hypertexts like the Victorian Web, which consists of information existing within a complex set of connections. In the Victorian Web, they encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which they can examine when and if they wish to do so.

The Victorian Web also differs fundamentally from websites like Wikipedia and many reference works, such as Britannica, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Each of these sites aims to present a single authoritative view of its subject. In contrast, the Victorian Web encourages multiple points of view and debate, partly because contemporary issues seldom generate overall agreement.

With over 60,000 documents as recent as last year and steadily increasing, the site receives 1.5 million page views every month. Even their less updated Japanese server receives several hundred thousand views.

The main page of the website has a graphic design with several links that you may click that details what you may find there, such as authors, political history, religion, philosophy, places, and technology, just to name a few. Upon clicking any of those links, it directs you to several subtopics in bold with bullet points for each that link to pictures, timelines, or articles, depending on the subject matter.

The site discusses a wide variety of topics, including primary and secondary in British Victorian economics, literature, philosophy, political and social history, science, technology, and visual arts. Although the site concentrates on Great Britain in the age of Victoria (1837-1901), it contains considerable material before and after those years, particularly in sculpture and architecture, and the site also has a good deal of comparative material. For example, one can find railroad stations and other forms of iron-and-glass architecture not only from England but also from various parts all over the world. In addition, there is a section on Aesthetes, Decadents, and Symbolists that include European literature and art.

This resource would be useful for any student or scholar who is interested in learning more about the Victorian era and what life and culture was like during this time period.

Works Cited

Victorian Web. Web. 19 October 2013.

Selected Annotated Bibliography of Victorian Literature

Selected Annotated Bibliography of Victorian Literature

Battan, Jesse F. “”You Cannot Fix the Scarlet Letter on My Breast!”: Women Reading,

Writing, and Reshaping the Sexual Culture of Victorian America.” Journal of

            Social History 37.3 (2004): 601-24. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

This article covers the influence of such works as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter on women of the nineteenth century to step out and defend what Victorian society condemned them for; such things as prostitution, adultery, and unwed mothers.  The author discusses such groups that sprung up around this movement, such as the Free Lovers, who spread their message through literature published in newspapers like The Word, Lucifer, and Nichols’ Monthly.  The sixteen-page article is divided into four sections, including an introduction and a conclusion.  With over eight pages of endnotes, this article provides extensive background information, but given its short length, it gets bogged down with all of the facts the author alludes to.

Danson, Lawrence. “Oscar Wilde, W.H., and the Unspoken Name of Love.” ELH 50.4

(1991): 979-1000. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

The author in this article deliberates the meaning of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W. H” and what its sexual implications are.  He later discusses other of Wilde’s works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and Wilde’s not so subtle hints on homosexuality.  The twenty-one-page article contains three unnamed sections and is riddled with quotes from Wilde and other’s works to help the author prove his point.  There are over thirty endnotes that provide both important information on the article and leads for the inquisitive reader.  The article reads easily and could benefit students.  It could benefit from some updating though.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie. “Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal

Fantasies in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 2.3

(1977): 04-13. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

The author of this article discusses the rampant sex allusions in Dracula, pulling from both the novel itself and from other scholarly articles.  She also discusses some newer ideas that previous scholars do not, such as the idea of group sex that Stoker presents on more than one occasion in the novel.  The author also discusses the feminism that appears in the novel when Stoker places a female in a positive leading role.  At the beginning of the article, the author provides a brief summary of the article for readers who are unfamiliar with it.  This article is a good starting point for research into the sex in Dracula, but it does not go into enough depth in nine pages to be much more than that.  The author also repeatedly refers to the novel as tedious, potentially turning off much of her intended audience.

Gitter, Elisabeth G. “The Power of Women’s Hair in the Victorian

Imagination.” PMLA99.5 (1984): 936-54. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

This article explores the obsession Victorian writers had with women’s hair.  The author asserts that this obsession stemmed from ancient preoccupations with it that grew as time went on and long, traditionally golden hair symbolized both wealth and sex to the Victorian male.  Used in literature to both garner lovers and to strangle them, females’ hair played a large role in fiction.  This nineteen-page article includes three full-page paintings of women where their hair is a central theme.  There is an extensive list of works cited at the bottom that could be used for further research.  While a good source, this article is dense with block texts that make reading slow.

Langland, Elizabeth. “Nobody’s Angels: Domestic Ideology and Middle-Class Women in             the Victorian Novel.” PMLA 107.2 (1992): 290-304. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

In this article, the author asserts that Victorian literature saw women step out from the roles that had been placed on them in the eighteenth century.  In the Victorian era, authors such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell created female characters who rejected the idea that women should be passive creatures of the house and became active heroines in their novels.  This fifteen-page article is a little bit dense to read, but provides a refreshing take on women in literature during the Victorian age.  It contains a plethora of sources that help the reader contextualize information and aid in further research.

May, Leila S. “”Foul Things of the Night”: Dread in the Victorian Body.” The Modern

            Language Review 93.1 (1998): 16-22. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

This article explores the Victorian obsession not of cleanliness, but instead the opposite, of filth – namely a dirty body.  The author associates the dirty body with that of a prostitute and thus monsters of Victorian fiction as sexually diseased beings that prey on women who in turn come to symbolize prostitutes. The author of this eight-page article uses Dracula as his main basis of information and the article is limited because of its narrow range of references.  Other than that, this article provides an insight into the Victorian frame of mind and adds color to the monster myths of the era.

Nelson, Claudia. “Sex and the Single Boy: Ideals of Manliness and Sexuality in Victorian

Literature for Boys.” Victorian Studies 32.Summer (1989): 525-50. Humanities

            Full Text. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.

The essay does not go into the stereotype of the Victorian manliness and his sexuality, but rather it explores the change in how a young man is portrayed as a man in Victorian literature.  Nelson does not focus on all of Victorian literature, but instead focuses on male sexuality in children’s literature of the time.  The twenty-six-page document is split into four sections and an introduction of the topic.  It contains footnotes for an easy reference to certain terms and phrases that are not common knowledge.   This document is an excellent source that dispels many popular myths about Victorian sexuality.

Psomiades, Kathy A. “Heterosexual Exchange and Other Victorian Fiction: “The Eustace

Diamonds” and Victorian Anthropology.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 33.1

(1999): 93-118. JSTOR. Web.

In this article, the author asserts that Victorian novelists portray women as a something of a form of currency, given that they are passed from father to suitor, in exchange for a dowry.  Using this argument, the author claims that sex is used as a currency and uses the term “heterosexual exchange” to describe the transactions.  The article is composed in five sections, with three focusing on novels dealing with this idea, by such authors as Anthony Trollope, John McLennan, and Henry Summer Maine.  While the authors and their works are separate, the article pulls contents from all of the novels into each argument, so that they are all interrelated.  While good, the article would benefit from more citations.

Renner, Karen J. “Seduction, Prostitution, and the Control of Female Desire in Popular

Antebellum Fiction.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.2 (2010): 166-91. JSTOR.

Web. 2 Oct. 2013.

This article discusses the idea of the prostitute in American literature during the Victorian era.  The article argues that during a period of passionless women, the prostitute stood out as an object of outright sexual desire.  The authors who used prostitutes often portrayed them as victims.  This negative portrayal of sexual desire was a way of pushing the passionless ideology onto women of the period.  The twenty-seven-page article has lengthy footnotes on every page that assist the reader and come in handy when the author makes references to specific pieces of literature.

Schaffer, Talia. “”A Wilde Desire Took Me”: The Homoerotic History of

Dracula.” ELH61.2 (1994): 381-425. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

The author of this article discusses the theory that Oscar Wilde’s relationship with Bram Stoker influenced the novel Dracula.  The author asserts that Stoker was a closeted homosexual who felt confined after his friend Wilde was arrested for sodomy.  The landscape of Dracula is set up to mirror a homosexual’s feelings of confinement and the sexual nature of the vampire is set up to be ambiguous as Dracula bites both males and females.  This forty-one-page article provides an interesting perspective on a classic novel, but it is very dense with citations, making it slow to read.  There are over one hundred in text references so this source provides a good place for readers to begin research.

Seidman, Steven. “The Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure: Victorian Sexuality

Reconsidered.” Journal of Social History 21.1 (1990): 47-27. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct.

2013.

This article confronts the stereotypical notions of sexuality in the Victorian era.  It discusses the origins of these beliefs and how Victorian sexuality differed from those beliefs.   This eighteen page document is split into different subheadings that include, “True Love as Spiritual Union,” “Marriage, Sex and Love: The Antinomy of Sensuality and Love,” and “The Dialectic of Sex: The Pleasures and Dangers of the Sex Instinct.”  This document sheds new light on the stereotypical views of Victorians as a prudish people.

Simek, Lauren. “Feminist “Cant” and Narrative Selflessness in Sarah Grand’s New

Woman Trilogy.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 67.3 (2012): 337-65. JSTOR.

Web. 23 Oct. 2013

In this article, the author discusses Sarah Grand’s New Woman Trilogy and the manner in which she portrays female characters and at times attempts to moralize in the novels.  The author asserts that Grand wants females to articulate better and uses the novels as a means to convey that message.  The Trilogy Grand writes is Grand’s cry for women to not be seen as the passive characters they have been portrayed as in literature.  This twenty-nine-page article contains helpful footnotes dealing with the historical aspects of the article or trivial occurrences in Grand’s life.  This article has page breaks, but it reads like a monster block of text.

Stetz, Margaret D. “The Bi-Social Oscar Wilde and “Modern” Women.” Nineteenth-

            Century Literature 55.4 (2001): 515-37. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

This article discusses Oscar Wilde’s influence on the writer’s, namely female, at the end of the nineteenth century.  The article mentions some of the men Wilde influenced, but is dedicated primarily to the women influenced by Wilde.  Wilde’s approach to literature showed signs of feminism and women after him ran with it.  While the article deals with his influence, it is mainly about Wilde’s own life and writing.  The twenty-four-page article feels rather lengthy, as there are no separations to break up the reading.  This is still a good source to see the influence of a writer in the late Victorian era.

Stevensons, John A. “A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula.” PMLA 103.2

(1988): 139-49. JSTOR. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

In this article, the author explores the sex in Dracula in a manner different than what has been conventionally explored.  While many scholars speculate that the fear of Dracula’s sexual appetite is that of incest, Stevenson suggests that while Dracula has had an incestuous relationship with his own women, during the novel he only desires the foreign women who belong to other men.  Stevenson claims that this is the true fear of Dracula.  This short ten-page article is littered with citations from the novel that serve to reinforce the author’s opinion.  It also includes a lengthy works cited page that could lead to further research. While the plethora of citations helps provide context, it can bog down the article at times.