For Victorian writer John Ruskin, home “is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home.” The notion of a domestic sanctuary that could and would protect its inhabitants from the anxieties of the outside world was a powerful structuring myth in the Victorian era. However, luckily for the student of nineteenth century literature, the Victorian home was rather more porous than Ruskin’s description would lead us to believe: the worries and struggles of the factory, the poorhouse, the brothel, the public house, the teeming streets, etc., all found their way across the threshold to bask in the glow of the Victorian hearth. The novellas, short stories and essays we will read in this course all meditate on the concept of home just as fervently as Ruskin does, but with one key difference: All of the homes in them will open wide the doors to “terror, doubt and division,” and will give us all the fodder we need to talk about hauntings, ghosts, crypts, prisons, insanity, murder, vampires, and decadence. In order to satisfy the “W” requirement, students will be responsible for one shorter paper response paper (2 pgs), and one longer (11-12 pg) paper, both of which must be revised in response to feedback from the instructor.

Reading List:
Isabella Beeton, Beeton’s Guide to Household Management
Coventry Patmore, selections from “The Angel in the House”
Poe “Fall of the House of Usher”
Thomas Hardy, “Barbara of the House of Grebe”
Brett Harte, “Selina Sedilia”
Marcel Schwob, “Bloody Blanche”
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band,” Hound of the Baskervilles
Louisa May Alcott, Behind a Mask
Sheridan LeFanu, Camilla
Thomas Preskett, Varney the Vampire (excerpts)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (excerpts)
Angela Carter, “Lady of the House of Love”
**critical texts paired with some of these texts