"What I Don't Understand is...."

Here are the responses to Monday's 'gimmie-quiz' question:

"What I don’t understand here is…"

• Why I bother coming to lecture?
• Why the quizzes are at the beginning of class.
• Why it is expected of me that I do not understand the course material or some small part of it.
• Why anyone would have a difficult time understanding the course material in this class (not to be a jerk.)
• If the Victorian Age was so prosperous and magnificent as it seems, why did it end? Or, what caused it to appear like it ended?
• The cultural impact Victorian England has on the 20th Century.
• What is Succubus? I didn’t catch the definition in lecture or its significance to the material in the week we looked at Cranford.
• How to read poems like Childe Roland.
• The significance of Childe Roland
• The reoccurring significance of Arnold’s quote “sweetness and light”. Why is it brought up so often? Why does it hold such important connotations?
• The significance of Ruskin in the course. What was the importance of talking about him?
• John Ruskin, Gothic-ness
• The significance of ‘gothic’ architecture in Ruskin’s work
• Ruskin’s 5-rows exercise
• The importance of architecture in the work of Ruskin
• The concepts of via media and Ruskin. What is via media? I thought Ruskin’s ideas were of things being flawed, imperfect but apparently they are not? How did the in class “game” relate to Ruskin?
• What I should focus on – in terms of the readings- that will pertain to the final exam. Will we have to know ALL the readings?
• Why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is so dumb in your eyes?
• Nothing’ everything has been clear and straight forward, to my understanding.
• How domestic power was considered more powerful than non-domestic.
• Via Media is a middle way of. It is a middle way between Roman Catholicism and what?
• The concept of via media. If it is very important I would love to have it more precisely examined.
• Victorian Sexuality. Is it or isn’t it present. (Pre-Gissing)
• The importance and role of domestic powering Victorian England. What are the strong points and weak points of domestic power?
• Is the “Sherlock Holmes” studying method mainly finding data before making a theory? Or is there more to it that I’m missing?
• We’re supposed to let “the text talk to us” without incorporating our previously learned information.
• Ruskin’s oppositional anatomy. Specific south vs. north what that represents
• Need to further clarity the distinction between dialogic and didactic
• Thomas Hardy’s “The Withered Arm”
• The representation of gothic in John Ruskin’s work we have looked at.
• Dialogic / dialectic’s relationship. Are these the same? Is one a necessary component of the other?
• The whole Darwin and capitalism thing and the “sweetness and light” concept.
• The connection between Darwinism and capitalism
• How colonialism ties in to other Victorian principles like natural selection and industrialism.
• The Capitalism / Darwinism connection
• Why we cannot question Darwin. Please don’t tell any one that. I don’t want to get kicked out of SFU!
• Gissing and Darwinism, what’s he think about it?
• Who is a Darwinist of the authors we have read?
• Why Darwin and his ideals were the beliefs of the majority of people in the time we’re studying.
• Why you don’t like Mr. Darwin ?!?
• The application of ‘social Darwinism in a capitalistic society.
• Why Charles Darwin is the do all and end all, when there are so many opposing views.
• The difference between John Henry Cardinal Newman’s theory and Darwin’s
• Cardinal Newman’s points in both his essays.
• Where did George Gissing think women fit in Victorian society?
• What was the social position in Aurora Leigh?
• The dialectic, didactic, dialogic -vs- polemic is still a little blurry
• Dialectic and Didactic in the readings and how it is important.
• How to determine if a piece is dialogic or didactic.
• Why is didactic literature denigrated as being “lower brow”? For merely stylistic reasons?
• Enough about the nature of the didactic vs. dialectic argument.
• Dialogistic vs didactic.
• What exactly Gissing wants to get across with the novel. And mainly, what’s the deal with the novel’s ending? I feel like it just ended and I am still wondering what he is really trying to get across with the novel and the way he left it.
• The plot in the book In the Year of Jubilee.
• The Pedagogical fallacy with respect to Matthew Arnold
• How Elizabeth Gaskell’s view on domestic power applies to other aspects of Victorian Literature. I understand how it applies to Sherlock Holmes but not how it applies to other texts.
• The Cranford / Holmes connection. [Dr.] Ogden showed that the women in Cranford observed small details, and then showed that Holmes also observed small details. This was said to show that Holmes was a male with a female mind. I don’t understand why male brains cannot observe small details.
• How Hardy’s presentation of women can be seen as proof of domestic power being stronger than public power.
• How paying attention to detail in the domestic sphere constitutes “real power” for women. You’re not powerful unless you have equal rights.
• What exactly is the Woman Question?
• What Nancy Lord represents in relation to the portrayal of Victorian women.
• "The Woman Question” – what exactly does it encompass? Is it just about class? Domestic power? etc. Is there more I’m missing?
• How the woman question pertains to every text. Was it really that big a deal?
• The woman question. It’s very broad.
• Why we have such strong preconceptions about lack of women’s power in the 19th century.
• "our society” in Cranford
• I didn’t really get the women issue we talked about in lecture
• Class systems, the limits of each class and any overlapping or inter-mingling characteristics - generally and women’s roles
• Why it is domestic power that has the greatest influence on society, how does it bring about change
• Why is being interested in the Queen a lower class thing?
• How we should get rid of an beliefs in order to understand a piece of literature.