Victoriana

Image from www.divinecaroline.com

I am currently enamoured with all things Victorian. I especially like the twist the Steampunk trend puts on it - Victorian but with a modern edge. Not quite so serious as the original Victorian look, in other words.

This is an original illustration from Dickens' Little Dorrit. Image from www.victorianweb.org

Tying in neatly with that, I am currently watching with considerable joy the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit. Has anyone else seen it? It is beautifully done with an appealling delicacy of touch and just the right tinge of melancholy. It may even persuade me to try Dickens again after my unsuccessful attempts to read Dombey and Son as an English Lit undergrad many years ago.

Would I have wanted to live in the Victorian Age? Probably not, as Little Dorrit very clearly illustrates as the title character lives out in her life in a 'Debtor's Prison' - social decline and disgrace meant far more than having to send the TV to a pawn shop. But I do find this very precise and symbolically rich look very interesting.