Abstract
This paper explains that Queen Victoria became Queen of England at the time when the monarchy was weak and unpopular; but, under her leadership, England underwent massive transformation culturally, socially, and politically. The author states that her death in 1910 marked the end of a very successful, challenging, and dynamic period in the history of England. The paper stresses that Queen Victoria's reign became synonymous with revolution and change because she defied traditions and conventions to infuse a new spirit in the empire and the monarchy.

From the Paper
"The country Queen Victoria lovingly called jewel in her crown had turned into a battlefield where Indian mutineers were being killed everyday and British forces had resorted to harsher tactics to control the situation. The Queen on the other hand wanted peace in the Indian region and wanted Lord Cannings, the then Viceroy of India to listen to the grievances of Indian mutineers. She rejected the idea of harsher punishment for captured rebels for Queen Victoria believed this could lead to endless bloodshed and even greater resentment. It was a very tough time for British Crown as a little mistake on the part of the monarch could lead to numerous problems."

Tags:albert, melbourne, indian, crimean, jewel

Abstract
This paper on Queen Victoria discusses a number of events during her life and reign, including her significant role as a mother-figure to working-class Britons and her presiding over the expansion of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution.

From the Paper
"The reign of Queen Victoria endured for almost sixty-four years, from ... to ..., longer than any other British monarch in history. When Victoria ascended to the throne, the United Kingdom of Britain already had a constitutional monarchy in place that significantly limited the political power of the ruler. However, during her reign that would come to be known as the Victorian era, Victoria served as a powerful figurehead of the U.K. during a period of massive growth due to the rise of the Industrial Revolution..."

Tags:Prince Albert, Europe, war, peace, constitutional monarchy, political elites, widow. Jubilee

Abstract
This paper will argue that the depiction of Eleanor of Aquitaine (as played by Katharine Hepburn) in "The Lion in Winter" is of a much more assertive figure than the Queen Victoria (as played by Judi Dench) of "Mrs. Brown". The latter queen, for all her power, is characterized as a repressed emotional woman, while Eleanor is defined by her unconventional social and political assertiveness.

From the Paper
"Only two British monarchs have made such an impression that their given names have become synonymous with their eras. Both, it happens, were women: Elizabeth I and Victoria. Several British kings do have historical periods associated with their names .. "Jacobian" for James I and "Edwardian" for Edward VII .. but neither approaches the everyday familiarity and resonance of "Elizabethan" and "Victorian," their ability to evoke an era with a word. No doubt two factors that they had in common were the sheer length of their reigns, and the association of those reigns with distinctly marked historical periods. But the individual qualities of these two women also played a part in making them personifications of their eras.


In some ways, Victoria's achievement in becoming the..."

Abstract
This paper looks at how Jerrold Packard's "Victoria's Daughters", examines the lives of the five daughters of Victoria, Queen of England: Vicky, Alice, Louise, Lenchen, and Beatrice. It examines how the book tells about each daughter and their families and concludes that it is a good book to read for learning more about the royal family in the 1800s, and the tragedies that can befall anyone, even the royal family.

From the Paper
"Packard focused on how even a royal family cannot escape tragedy. Tragedy will strike even the Queen of England, the most powerful woman in the world in the late 1800's. Her husband was taken from her on December 14, 1861, and then her third child, and second daughter was taken from her on December 14, 1878. Once Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria lived the rest of her life in a state of mourning, and allowed her days to be consumed with self-pity. Her sometimes aloof ways in raising her children would lead to her eldest daughter raising her children in the same aloof manner. This action would lead to Vicky's eldest son, Willy, to become quite harsh with his parents. "

Tags:Vicky, Alice, Louise, Lenchen, and, Beatrice

Abstract
This paper examines these poems and shows how they represent the different themes that Tennyson wrote about during his lifetime, and yet they all contain similarities. They are all well written works, that convey thoughts and themes that were very important to Tennyson, like how critical people can be of your work, and Queen Victoria and her reign. He often uses references to the natural world in his poems, and these are no exception. The paper examines how Tennyson also uses many references to love and women.

From the Paper
"Tennyson often writes of women in his poems, and one of the greatest themes he uses surrounding women is their capacity for love, and motherhood. He felt one of the greatest things in the world was love, and this comes through clearly when he writes about women. "but when he wrote of Victoria, in whom "a thousand claims to reverence closed... as mother, wife and queen," or of his own mother as he did in "Isabel," he wrote with a power not evinced in the descriptive analysis of the women of his imagination. The women of his brain are pretty girls. The noblest women whom he knew were strong in character and life and love" (Gordon 73)."

Tags:poem, faith, poems, critics, jubilee, queen, victoria

Abstract
This paper takes a look at the life and rule of Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). The paper asserts that, like her contemporary, Queen Victoria of England, she was able to wield power and insisted on doing so. But unlike Queen Victoria, the paper points out that she had risen from a concubine of the lowest rank at the Beijing court and is popularly remembered as a ruthless woman. The paper concludes that Cixi's rigid and backward views let the Western powers take advantage, quite easily, of China's low development and that she was a human disaster for China and for the Chinese.

Outline:
Introduction
Ordinary Origins
The End of Emperor Xianfeng
A Narcissist at Court
An Empress of Early Warlords
Rumours and Observations
A Revised Empress
Last Remarks

From the Paper
"In 1861, Xianfeng died and as the mother of his heir, Tongzhi, Cixi was given the title of Empress. Several other regents were appointed to run the Chinese empire and before long there was intrigue. Two of the other regents were accused of crime against the state and were permitted to commit suicide to avoid execution. A third regent was beheaded and his property went to Cixi as a virtual civil war raged in five provinces where millions died in the fighting or of starvation, large parts of the interior laid waste and several cities destroyed. Rather than responding to the crisis, the empress continued to meet with the previous emperor's uncle, Prince Kung (q.v), an experienced courtier in order to learn the arts of politics."

Tags:China, ruler, woman

Abstract
This paper links the dark vision of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to the fripperies of Jane Austen by showing that these writers can be seen as important bookmarks to the era of the modern novel. We cannot understand Conrad's work without understanding its connections to his time. The paper shows that by looking back to a writer like Austen, we can see how much has changed in the world at large and in the world of the novel during the Victorian era and the ways in which authors had begun to lose faith in the power of language to represent, to contain and to describe language. The paper argues that we cannot understand Conrad's relationship to language without understanding the larger context within which literature was created and consumed. The era from the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 until her death in 1901, was an era of a number of key social changes that would force writers to take clear positions on issues of immediate importance to the rest of society. The paper shows, therefore, that we see very little social criticism in Austen - whose "Pride and Prejudice" was written 20 years before Victoria ascended the throne - and almost exclusively social comment in Conrad's story, published in 1902, the year after Victoria died. But even as writers began to become engaged more and more in the world at large, they became increasingly aware of the fact that language is of limited use in effecting change. The paper shows that for a writer like Austen, the power of language had only to carry a plot and characters; for Conrad language had to have to have the ability to transform the world. It is thus hardly surprising that Austen should find language adequate to her desires and her needs and that Conrad should find it inadequate.

From the Paper
"Conrad throughout this book implies that civilizations are created by the setting of laws and codes that encourage people to achieve higher standards that civilization and social bonds compel us to act out our better selves. The institutions of communal and civilized life act as dams, as bulwarks to prevent humans from reverting back to their darker tendencies, which they will do as soon as they are left alone or loosed from the constraints of their own societies, an element essential to much of colonial thought, as Back and Solomos (2000) suggest. Conrad suggests, through his insistence on the primacy of metaphor, that language cannot be counted on to be one of those civilizing bonds. When a writer can no longer count on language to provide an anchor in the world, we recognize that we are entering the rocky waters of modernism."

Tags:imperialism, colonialization, Kurtz, Marlow

Abstract
This paper looks at how, between the years 1839 and 1841, the British Empire, then under the rule of the very young Queen Victoria, commenced what has come to be called the "Opium Wars" against China, which, prior to 1842, was a closed and self-isolated nation. It looks at how the war caused many negative consequences, some being the destruction of China's false sense of superiority over the West, as well as the collapse of its social, economic, and political structures, which brought about social chaos and insurrection.

From the Paper
"The "Opium Wars" touched off many explosive matters with far-reaching consequences, all of which contributed to its failure. Politically, the cession of Hong Kong gave Great Britain a powerful foothold in China for further advancement; the opening of numerous Chinese ports, such as Shanghai, Macao and Chinkiang, extended foreign, particularly British, influence to the entire eastern coast of China and the loss of numerous national rights relegated China to a semi-colonial state. Socially, the continuation of the illicit traffic deepened the opium problem and the growth of foreign trade in the prominent ports introduced "a new class of business entrepreneurs who came to wield an increasing influence upon Chinese society" (La Fleur 268)."

Tags:china, great, britain, hong, kong

Abstract
It emphasizes the influence of Queen Victoria's 40-year mourning period for Prince Albert, and goes into the social psychology of the veil, as well as the color black. The paper concentrates on women's mourning garb, but also mentions the fact that men's mourning clothing was not that different from their usual formal attire.