Category: Cultural and Literary 18th-19th Centuries

The opening lines of Charlotte Smith’s “Beachy Head” refer to the speaker “reclin[ing]” on the “stupendous summit” of a “rock sublime” as her “Fancy” went forth. This poem reflects which of the following features common to much Romantic poetry ?

A. An emphasis on the relationship between a natural setting and the imagination as in Wordsworth’s poems
B. A focus on the poet as seer as in some of Keats’s poems
C. A call for social and political reform as in some of Shelley’s works
D. A nod to the poet as outcast as in some of Byron’s poems

How does the following representative quotation from Brontë’s Jane Eyre reflect on Victorian social conventions? “You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands” ?

A. It reiterates the class divisions that kept both men and women from social mobility.
B. It suggests that women were increasingly accepted as professionals.
C. It indicates that British society had become much more egalitarian.
D. It reveals the stern consequences of the Industrial Revolution.