The portfolio essay is a creative-critical assignment divided into two parts (one creative 2,200-2,400, other critical). Using forms such as a pamphlet /investigative report / journalism / political speech / essay / art exhibition in the style of the Victorian period students should approach a particular theme/issue – i.e. gender, class, thelaw, marriage, industry, science, visual culture, progress, working conditions, political reform, religion.
Use MHRA Style Guide
Portfolio Essay must be divided into 2 parts
1. Creative element (2,200-2,400 words)
- must demonstrate close and deft engagement with Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Lifted Veil by George Eliot as primary source texts
- choice of languag must demonstrate excellent understanding of the appropriate rhetorical and linguistic conventions of the chosen form
- must be written in the Victorian style of
writing, ways of thinking - must unveil the gender dichotomies/constructions in the Victorian Society, approaching the issue of gender and class struggles/inequalities
- must elaborate on how everything is often done through the masculine gaze, use the instances in the books as examples
- must use secondary readings to support the creative element
- must be maded up as it is creative – should be explicit in your critical commentary about what you’ve done and why i.e. that you have changed a detail or element in order to fit with your intentions and that it is a deliberate choice, rather than a mistake/error
- reference text taken from the novels
- m
2. Critical component (800-1000 words)
- reflection on ideas, research, approach
- The critical commentary is an evidenced reflection on what you’ve done and why. You should include – information about the theme or topic you’ve selected, why you have used the forms and approaches you have, why the texts you’ve discussed are relevant to this topic/theme and what research you have undertaken.
I have chosen a journalitic/newspaper report set in the Victorian era addressing a feminist political speech that imaginatively happened during the 1890s. The audience of the speech is a mixed crowd of the general public, feminist advocates for women’s rights, and those who oppose the speech. There are two journalists report sketches on the feminist political speech, Agnes Cavendish and Cecil Fitzroy (I’ve made up the names). Fitzroy provides a critical perspective of the speech, maybe even distorting the speech in the journalistic report. Cavendish reports the complete opposite, she includes the controversial aspects of the speech. There should be an interplay between the two journalistic perspectives.
Think about the register and language they would be likely to draw upon – gender is a more recent theoretical concept which they would not have discussed in these terms though Victorians did speak about ’the woman question’ as seen in Lynn Linton’s essay. W. R Greg’s essay ‘Why Are Women Redundant’ (1862) is valuable for insight into a widespread perspective. Wider reading on Victorian feminisms could help. See Barbara Caine’s good book Victorian Feminists.
Context of the feminist political speech for female rights:
- it occurred when Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Lifted Veil by George Eliot were circulating amongst the Victorian crowd
- the female advocate was drawing upon those texts as examples on approaching the gender constructions in the Victorian era
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The speech is trying to change Victorian society’s views on gender
I have attached a sample portfolio essay below.