Lecture "How to Read Victorian Literature"

• Why did Elinor and Marianne in "Sense and Sensibility" end up without an inheritance?
• Could Pip from "Great Expectations" actually become a gentleman?
• Why did Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" lock his wife in the attic — couldn't he just get a divorce?

You've probably asked yourself these and similar questions at least once when encountering the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, etc. Or their screen adaptations — which directors regularly treat us to (for better or worse).

We'll try to shed light on the main conflicts of English literature — Victorian, pre- and post-Victorian — conflicts that once needed no explanation but can puzzle today's reader:

• who a "gentleman" is and how to become one
• how inheritance works
• marriage, divorce and the rights of a married woman

Lecturer

Translator of the novels of Anthony Trollope — Evgenia Khuziyatova.

Duration

1 hour 30 minutes, followed by time for questions.