Author Archives: Michaela

As a final blog post, I wanted to reflect on the projects put together by my classmates to think about some of the major themes we have learned in this course. One central theme that spanned almost every project was … Continue reading →

In class, we discussed Dickens’s performances of his own works, specifically his performance of Nancy’s murder scene in Oliver Twist. An article from the British Library website entitled “Dickens the Performer” gave me more insight into Dickens as a theatrical … Continue reading →

It’s amazing how Charles Dickens has become like Old Saint Nick himself, the father of Christmas. The name Dickens for wider audiences is less associated with some great work like A Tale of Two Cities and more intimately associated with … Continue reading →

In 2011, James Delingpole wrote an article for the Telegraph about the resurgence of Dickens’s popularity through various television interpretations of his novels in the UK. I found this article when looking into the BBC’s version of The Mystery of … Continue reading →

Modern advertising has become somewhat…creepy. When you google something today, it will most certainly come back to haunt you in the form of an advertisement personally tailored to your “interests.” For example, I’ve been thinking about purchasing a new pair … Continue reading →

Humanity has a fascination with death that stems from a fear of the unknown and the inevitable. This fascination is often played out in television and films where characters are subjected to horrible, bloody deaths (as in horror movies) or … Continue reading →

I’m not much of a television consumer, but recently I took the suggestion of a friend and watched the premiere of a new fall show called Scream Queens. Usually I don’t go for this kind of inane teenage drama, but … Continue reading →

Holidays have long been associated with feasting throughout the world. Christmas in particular is thematically a time of abundance and celebration that centers around food. Aside from a central Christmas meal, the giving of food as gifts is a common … Continue reading →

Hard Times deals with divorce in an interesting way in relation to its time period. Victorian marriage laws made divorce next to impossible, as it required an act of Parliament, something extraordinarily expensive to achieve. In 1854, Caroline Norton wrote … Continue reading →

  In Oliver Twist, the relationship between Nancy and Rose Maylie signifies the relationship between prostitution and the middle class in Victorian England. Nancy, a woman seen as “a disgrace to her sex” (Dickens 331), encounters Rose’s initial kindness with … Continue reading →