English 345—Ladies and
Gentlemen: Gender in Victorian
Literature
Spring 2026
Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 1-2:15
pm
Professor Richard Ruppel
Office: Smith Hall, 07
Office
Hours: Monday 2-4pm and by appointment.
Phone: (714)
997-6754 (office)
Email: ruppel@chapman.edu
Updated January 7, 2026
Assignments
Useful
Links
Canvas
Course Description &
Objectives:
Though Victorian connotes staid, conventional, and repressed to the
popular imagination, the rich, lively, and often irreverent literature of the
British Victorian period (1832-1900) contradicts this misperception. The
British Victorians had more in common with 21st century Americans
than you might imagine. Our semester
will be built around its greatest literary form, the novel, but we will also
study representative essays, plays, and poetry. We will focus on gender
this semester, on Victorian expectations of women and of men.
This course involves significant reading and writing, both informal (on our
discussion board) and formal (essays and essay exams). Through our
reading, discussion, and writing, we will develop a clearer understanding of
the period - its tensions, enthusiasms, hopes, fears, sometimes contradictory
moral and intellectual principles, and, especially, what it meant to be a man
or a woman in the Age of Victoria.
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of
English Literature: Volume E, The Victorian Age (11th Edition)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Norton Critical)
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Norton Critical)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (Norton Critical)
Course Requirements:
Attendance: Please make every effort to attend our class sessions. Let me know when you can’t attend. If you miss more than three classes, your grade will suffer, and if you miss six or more, you will not pass.
Communication: Please be courteous and constructive in
class. I receive a large number of emails, so
when emailing, please identify the course (345), your last name, and the
subject in the subject line. I will respond promptly to your emails;
please respond promptly to mine.
Grades:
Participation *: 15%
Minutes: 10% (with a partner, due twice)
Exam
1: 20% March 5
Essay: 25%
Due April 16 – 5-7 pages (1750-2450 words)
Final: 30% Wednesday, May 20, 1:30-4pm
**Students who do not submit both essays will fail the course.
*The
“Participation” grade is primarily your grade on responses to the Canvas
Discussion assignments. Here are my criteria for evaluating your
responses:
1. The response should respond as
specifically as possible to the prompt (or you should indicate why you’re
modifying the prompt).
2. The response should reveal close engagement with the work(s) under
discussion.
3. The posting should contribute to the
discussion, so later postings should not simply repeat earlier postings, and
they should reflect some engagement with earlier postings.
4. Responses should be substantive.
English Literature Program Learning
Objectives: English
345 is one of the electives you may take to fulfill the English literature,
creative writing, or journalism majors. In the discussion board
responses, formal essays, and essay exams, you will have the opportunity to
develop and demonstrate the English Literature Program Learning Objectives
listed below:
1. Skill in critical
reading, or the practice of identifying and interpreting the formal,
rhetorical, and stylistic features of a text
2. Ability to identify
and compare key literary movements and genres
3. Ability to explain and
apply significant theoretical and critical approaches in the field of English
studies
4. Skill
in writing grammatically, coherently, and persuasively
5. Skill
in finding, analyzing, and utilizing secondary sources (including the
appropriate methods of citation)
6. Skill
in crafting a compelling thesis-driven essay, with substantiating evidence
Course Student Learning Outcomes:
On
completion of this course, students will
1.
Demonstrate
insight and awareness into the tensions, enthusiasms,
hopes, fears, sometimes contradictory moral and intellectual principles
expressed in Victorian literature through discussion in oral and written
communication
2.
Demonstrate
understanding of the historical, cultural, and aesthetic contexts of a range of
English Victorian literature in oral and written communication
3.
Recognize
and apply significant theoretical and critical approaches in the field of
English studies
4.
Engage
in literary critical analysis (oral and written)
Essay: We will discuss criteria for the essay,
and I will provide an essay description with suggested topics several weeks
before the due date. This essay should be submitted electronically, sent
directly to my email address: ruppel@chapman.edu.
It must include citations to at least two, authoritative secondary sources.
Do not send me a link to a Google doc. Send your essay as text, not
as a pdf. (Use Microsoft Word, if you can. If you don’t
have access to Word, use another text editor. If necessary, you can
simply paste the whole paper into an email message to me.)
Late essays
will receive reduced grades, and I will not accept papers submitted more than a
week late unless you provide a convincing explanation.
I will
accept a revision of your essay, but you must schedule a conference with me
to discuss that revision before you submit it. I will average the
grade of the original paper and the revision.
Chapman University Academic Integrity Policy:
Chapman
University is a community of scholars that emphasizes the mutual responsibility
of all members to seek knowledge honestly and in good faith. Students are
responsible for doing their own work, and academic dishonesty of any kind will
be subject to sanction by the instructor and referral to the university's
Academic Integrity Committee, which may impose additional sanctions up to and
including dismissal. (See the "Undergraduate Catalog" for the
full policy.) We will discuss the proper way to incorporate sources into
your writing as you prepare the first essay. Though I am not requiring
you to submit your essays via Turnitin, I am an expert at finding online
sources, online and otherwise, and I will also detect work written by an LLM. In short, I will notice if you make
unacknowledged use of someone else’s work.
If I have doubts, I will submit your work to Turnitin myself. So please save both of us from trauma and
write your Canvas Discussion posts and essay yourself.
ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM)
chatbots:
1. Typing
a prompt into an LLM chatbot, copying the response, and then submitting that
response for an assignment is an obvious form of academic
misconduct. Don’t do it.
2. Chatbots
are often inaccurate. Two years ago, when I asked ChatGPT for a
biography of Richard Ruppel, a Chapman English professor, I found that I was
born in Fairview (false), had been an expert on the Holocaust (mostly false),
had graduated from Yale and Harvard (false), and was now dead (demonstrably, I
hope, false). ChatGPT has improved – a more recent search provided
more accurate information, but all LLMs continue to hallucinate. If
I suspect that you have pasted in a response
produced by an LLM, I will check the various services designed to detect
this. If those services confirm my suspicion, I will call you in for
a conference. If I am convinced you made improper use of an LLM, I am
required to report the case to our Academic Integrity Committee.
3. Chatbots
can be inaccurate, but they do offer clear, useful information which users
should check. These are early times, but through this semester (and
through your academic career) we will all discover ways to help you use them to
enhance your learning.
The following discussion of the use of LLMs in
academic settings was developed by Dr. Nora Rivera, a professor in Chapman’s
English department:
|
Acceptable Uses of
LLMs |
Not Acceptable Uses
of LLMs |
|
·
To improve your work ·
To brainstorm ·
To explore potential counterarguments ·
To fine-tune research questions ·
To draft an outline to organize your thoughts ·
To check grammar and style ·
To check format ·
To translate words and phrases |
·
To replace your work ·
To cheat on the writing & research process ·
To obtain answers to assessments ·
To generate a full draft of your work ·
To generate large chunks of text with little or no input
from you as an author |
·
Students must cite AI
technologies when appropriate (e.g., when using images generated by AI
technologies, when referencing an answer provided by AI technologies, et
cetera)
·
Copying works entirely
generated by AI technologies and submitting them as original content is
considered an academic
integrity violation
·
Always revise your work
before submitting it. You are responsible for any inaccurate, biased,
offensive, or otherwise unethical content you submit regardless of whether it
originally comes from you or an AI model.
In-Class use of laptops, tablets, and phones:
You may use a laptop to take class notes only when
you are one of the week’s note-takers. Otherwise, laptops and
tablets must remain closed, and you may not consult your phone during
class. If you have a reason to consult one of these devices during
class, you must receive my permission to do so beforehand. If I see
you consulting your phone during class, I will mark you absent.
Chapman's Students with Disabilities Policy:
In compliance with ADA guidelines,
students who have any condition, either permanent or temporary, that might
affect their ability to perform in this class are encouraged to inform the
instructor at the beginning of the term. The University, through the Disability Services Office, will work with the
appropriate faculty member who is asked to provide the accommodations for a
student in determining what accommodations are suitable based on the
documentation and the individual student needs. The granting of any
accommodation will not be retroactive and cannot jeopardize the academic
standards or integrity of the course.
Please see me if you have ANY concerns about completing any of the requirements
of this course.
Chapman Equity and Diversity Policy:
Chapman University is committed to
ensuring equality and valuing diversity. Students and professors are
reminded to show respect at all times as outlined in Chapman’s Harassment and Discrimination Policy. Any violations of this policy should be discussed with the
professor, the Dean of Students and/or otherwise reported in accordance with
this policy.
Course Outline*:
Week 1: February
3-5 - Introductions, course business, and period
overview.
Week 2: February 10-12 - John Henry Cardinal Newman, “The Idea of a
University.” John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women.
Week 3: February 17-19 – Charlotte
Brontë, Jane Eyre.
Week 4: February 24-26 – Jane Eyre.
Week 5: March 3-5 – Jane Eyre. Exam 1.
Week 6: March 10-12 – Alfred Tennyson. Robert Browning.
Week 7: March 17-19 – Robert
Browning, Charles Dickens, Bleak House.
Spring Break!
Week
8: March 31-April 2 – Bleak House.
Week 9: April 7-9 – Bleak House.
Week 10: April 14-16 Bleak House Exam 2.
Week 11: April 21-23 – George Eliot, Middlemarch.
Week 12: April 21-23 – Middlemarch.
Week 13: April 28-30 – Middlemarch.
George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
Week 14: December 6-8 – Course wrap-up and preparation for the final.
Week 15: Final: Wednesday, May 20, 1:30-4pm.
*We may decide to alter this schedule. I will make any changes online and give you plenty of notice.
·
UNC
Chapel Hill's extended definition of a poetry
explication - from the UNC Writing Center.
·
The Victorian Web: A rich
collection of pages devoted to all things Victorian, sponsored by Brown
University.
·
Timeline
of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
·
British
Women’s History Timeline
·
“Victorians’ Secret” A celebration of Victorian poems devoted to
love and religion, with music and art history.
·
Representative
Poetry Online: A useful compendium of information on poetry in
English, including innumerable poems, a timeline, calendar, criticism, and
glossary.
·
Gresham
College Victorian Age lectures: Gender & Sexuality; Religion and Science; Art and Culture; Life and Death; Empire and Race -
Professor Richard J. Evans.
·
Billy
Joel’s “She’s Always a
Woman.” From his 1977 album, The
Stranger. Lyrical evidence that some
Victorian attitudes haven’t changed very much.
·
“Did
Victorians Really Get Brain Fever?”
Erin Blakemore’s description of brain fever, the diagnosis both
Catherine, in Wuthering Heights, and Jonathon Harker, in Dracula,
receive. And see “Brain
Fever in Nineteenth Century Literature: Fact and Fiction,” by Audrey
Peterson.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
· 2010 BBC production on Newman, nearing sainthood. (Quite dramatic.)
John Stuart
Mill
·
Yale lecture
by Iván Szelényi on Mill’s political philosophy, which he suggests
influences contemporary libertarians.
·
A much less formal introduction to Mill’s
conception of liberty.
Alfred,
Lord Tennyson
· Loreena
McKennitt’s musical version of “The Lady of Shalott.”
· Tennyson
himself reciting “The
Charge of the Light Brigade.” (Kind of weird since the YouTube animates a
photograph.)
· “Locksley
Hall 60 Years After” (published 1886).
Robert Browning
· Reading of "My Last Duchess" by Julian Glover.
· “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” acted by R P Jones.
· Letters to and from Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.
George
Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
· Middlemarch,
online.
· The
interesting serial publication
history of Middlemarch.
· Trailer
from the BBC
miniseries adaptation of Middlemarch.
· George
Eliot’s “Silly
Essays by Lady Novelists” (1856)
· Virginia
Woolf’s essay
on George Eliot, later compiled in her book of essays, The Common
Reader (1925).
· “George
Eliot’s Ugly Beauty,” Rebecca Meade, The
New Yorker. And a video
of Meade from the New Yorker Festival, 2011, just before she wrote My
Life in Middlemarch (2014).
· Ruth
Livesey’s video
introduction to the novel.
· George Eliot, A Scandalous Life. BBC, 2002. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
· Bernini’s The
Ecstasy of St. Theresa.
George
Bernard Shaw
·
Scenes
between Kitty and Vivie
in Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
·
The whole play, by the
Pear Avenue Theatre. Another production, from the NBP
YT.
