What could you say about the style of his prose based upon the passage we read?
How was Strachey able to make explicit the private mourning of Queen Victoria?
Mister Wu Steven Deon Wu English High School
Considering the excerpt we went over in class, how might Lytton Strachey's portrait of Queen Victoria at the end of her life be read as a reaction against the immediate past? In what ways is his attitude "modern"? What could you say about the style of his prose based upon the passage we read? How was Strachey able to make explicit the private mourning of Queen Victoria?
Kevin Xuan
9/10/2012 10:28:23 pm
In the passage, Stachey discusses about the conflict between science and religion. In the past, the people believe strongly in religion. “The educated classes of England believed that they had the answers to everything… It was an age of certainty and faith only paralleled by the great cathedral-building epoch of the Middle Ages.” (Paragraph 6 sentence 1) People during that time thought the god (Catholic) can help them solve all the answers. However during Victorian period, this transition happened. They started having “industrial and political preeminence”. In this period, people tended to see the conflicts between science and religion. Religious people perceived science as a subject that’s against the religion beliefs. Because of this, “They (people) suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too of being displaced persons in a world made alien by techpowers of human psyche.” (Paragraph 6 sentence 3) Even though the country became industrialized, more conflicts between the two increased, causing the country to go downward.
Danniel Yang
9/10/2012 10:32:45 pm
Queen Victoria At the End of Her Life depicts Queen Victoria's desire to retain her memories, by keeping her belongings and decorations and also those of her busband, Prince Albert. She is trying to grasp the last morel of her reminisence. The last sentence of the article expresses her eagerness to stop time by the amplitude of her might.
Hao-Yi_Wang
9/10/2012 10:33:19 pm
Lytton Strachey talks about how Queen Victoria was trying to keep all the things to remember her husband, Albert which i think it's kind of morbid in a sense. If the things were broken or old, she would just buy a new one to replace the old one. This not only shows Queen Victoria loves her husband but also shows how materialistic she is in a way. During Queen Victoria's reign, people were prosperous and the technologies were like riding a roller coaster suddenly ride on to the top. Therefore, Strachey is trying to convey the idea of materialism due to the highly developed society.
Clarence Gan
9/11/2012 12:08:00 am
Lytton Strachey's piece Queen Victoria At the End of Her Life is a criticism to the Victorians, specifically Queen Victoria. When King Albert died at a young age, she start collecting things that he left behind. A desperate attempt to stop time, and keep his memory fresh in her head, an act of reminiscence. It seems normal for a Queen to mourn for her lost love one, and other than the overwhelming amount of facts presented, the passage seems to be a very normal, sympathetic passage. The twist did not come until the very end, "And Victoria, with a gigantic volume or two of the endless catalogue always beside her, to look through, to ponder upon, to expatiate over, could feed, with a double contentment, that the transitoriness of this world had been arrested by the amplitude of her might.(Sentence 22)" this last sentence literally threw the "mourning, sympathetic thoughts" out the window. Strachey presents to us readers the real intention of this passage, to show the absurd materialism of the Victorians through this example of Queen Victoria.
Maria Cho :)
9/11/2012 04:46:37 am
It is interesting how you stated that Starchey is ridiculing his own parent's life style through Queen Victoria, and as I was reasearching about Starchey's biography briefly, I found out that he was greatly affected by Lady Starchey, his mother, who was interested in Politics and Literature, thus was visited by many leading writers and thinkers of that time. I assume that this early exposure to new thoughts enabled Starchey to develop his unique view, so that he could write about the "private" aspects of Queen Victoria and could draw a contrasting portrait of her compared to the previous ones. It was also interesting that one of Starchey's acquaintances was Virginia Woolf, who shared critical view of the Victorian Age, as well.
James Kim
9/11/2012 01:00:49 am
Queen Victoria at the end of her life describes Queen Victoria's futile endeavors to preserve her past and memories by collecting dresses, accessories, and other objects. She collects and labels everything in her house and places an album composed of photographs of her collections for her to "look through, to ponder upon, to expatiate over, could feel, with a double contentment" (Strachey) As it goes through this process, Strachey comments, each objects is 'irrevocably sealed'. Through this meaningless (I would say) efforts, Victoria tries to hold on to the reminiscence of the past; she locks herself in a time-stopped room. "the transition of this world had been arrested by the amplitude of her might" (Strachey)
Aaron Tang
9/11/2012 01:21:23 am
Lytton Stratchey, as the author of the prose "Queen Victoria at the End of Her Life", gives an overly detailed, even verbose description of the room that was meticulously kept by Queen Victoria. "Drawer after drawer" (Sentence 2), "dresses", "subsidiary frills", "all were arranged in chronological order" (Sentence 3)...; the depiction of nearly every object shows an obsession of the Queen's personality and her unconditional care for all the objects. In the age in which Stratchey wrote this poem, their country was in a state of great prosperity. Economy flourished and the people under Queen Victoria's reign were content. In this case, Stratchey's prose could also show his veneration towards the Queen and could also be extolling the Queen's outstanding brilliance.
In Young. Hwang
9/11/2012 08:55:15 am
Her obsession with objects, such as her certain, carpet and everything else, shows her sorrow and longing toward her husband, Albert's death. By remaining everything at the original location, if it breaks, replacing the exact same one show her desire: to arrest the time, so Albert would not die, even though the time can't be controlled by her.
Brian Yu
9/11/2012 09:25:35 pm
Queen Victoria’s reluctance to change portrays two main ideas developed by Lytton Strachey. Her desire to preserve even the needless belongings around her suggests that she is fearful to encounter the change in her life, caused by the death of Albert. Therefore, she insists to preserve every bits of memory in order to avoid the feelings of loneliness and melancholy. Also, her sensitive behavior depicts her ambition to solidify her current power by preserving the moment when her influence was dominant all over the globe.
Jon Guo
9/13/2012 12:06:15 am
Strachey saw the materialistic nature of the Victorian era and used examples from Queen Victoria's life to show that nature to an extent. He went on to express Victoria’s fondness of the past, and through that fondness, he revealed her selfish nature. Through the description of progressively bizarre orders ushered by Queen Victoria, Strachey illustrated the insecurity Victoria possesses. Orders Victoria made to "[give] the stability of metal or of marble" to all things important to her exemplified her will to protect her cherished memories.
Jeffrey Shawn Zhao
9/15/2012 12:04:27 am
In class, we've read many poems and commentaries on Queen Victoria and her reign. Some were explicitly written to praise Victoria and her glorious era; Tennyson's 'On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria" is a typical example. Strachey's story, in contrast, brings light to a whole different aspect of her life. It shows her sense of remorse and reminiscence just at the end of her life. Strachey 's style is fraught with literary devices that are very descriptive. His various indirect descriptions of her room allows the reader to form an image of Victoria's life before her death. Most of the descriptions are implicit. "In every room the tables were powdered thick with the photographs of relatives...Her favorite horses and dogs, endowed with a new durability, crowded round her footstep." (Line 9, 15) His writing is very poetic and forces the reader to really think and extrapolate the meaning of each line. He did not tell us how Victoria felt, but described the way in which she arranged her room. But why is Victoria so captured by the past? What does she reminisce and wish to change? Is it simply because she is getting old?
Elli Kim
9/19/2012 06:29:06 pm
In the excerpt Queen Victoria at the End of Her Life, Lytton Strachey depicts the later life of Queen Victoria to show she wanted to stop time (to be eternal) and the history. It also describes one of the important factors during the Victorian Age, materialism. In the excerpt, it is clear that Queen Victoria’s love toward her husband, Prince Albert, is very strong. Instead of answering directly to the questions given, I researched about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Joanne Yang
9/19/2012 07:56:51 pm
(delete the other comment)
MATTHEW CHANG
9/21/2012 09:42:25 pm
Lytton Strachey is a writer who inherits a unique style of prose. This is made obvious through his frequent use of the scheme parenthesis, the insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactical flow of the sentence. There are, in total, three instances of parenthetical construction in this piece of excerpt: “She gave orders that nothing should be thrown away---and nothing was.”; “But not only the dresses---the furs and the mantles and subsidiary frills and the muffs and the parasols and the bonnets---all were ranged in chronological order, dated and complete.”; “The dead, in every shape---in miniatures, in porcelain, in enormous life-size oil-paintings---were perpetually about her.” In fact, Strachey’s propensity to use the scheme parenthesis not only adds style to his writing, but also helps to convey an important notion in his writing. That is, Queen Victoria’s private mourning. The interruption of the normal syntactical flow of the passage caused by the multiple uses of parenthesis naturally evokes a fragmented feeling, which corresponds to Queen Victoria’s reluctance to let go and her attempt to stop time and preserve Albert. Therefore, by inserting parenthetical structures within this passage, Strachey effectively delivers this sense of fragmentation, reminiscence and sentimentalism. Comments are closed.
|
Discussion Board
Keep the dialogue going by responding to the questions of the week. You may choose to respond to the question directly, comment on one of your classmates' responses, or introduce a related issue of concern. Do not feel the need to respond to every prompt: you can respond to more than one in a separate post; again, you can also comment on other posts. Posts of quality will be considered in the calculation of your PARTICIPATION grade for the quarter. You must have at least five per quarter.
Archives
April 2013
Categories |