NOT Victorian!

It's based on a Victorian era book. That's why it's referred to as Victorian. We're reading it in Victorian lit class

I have a pet peeve about the costumes, too.

I know a renowned director, Mira Nair, who is of Indian decent directed this.

She is critically acclaimed, but this is a film set in England.

Did anyone else notice that she threw in Indian garb for the older women to wear? The brightly colored sashes (Pinks, yellows, bright reds) with gold trim that are obviously traditional Indian garb? I have studied a lot of British literature and history and as far as I know this is not the way women of that time period would have fashioned themselves. India was responsible for trade and strengthening the Brtish economy at the time, but in my studies there was quite a bit of snobbery about India as a country on behalf of proper English families.

It irritated me. I know this is her interpretation, and she wanted to emphasize the realtion between England and its sovereign country, India (overemphasized, if you ask me) but it did not feel correct to the time period.



Amanda

"She was drunk or he was crazy."

What I'm guessing the poster means, is that there is English literature, or Welsh or Scottish literature. But saying British literature is like saying Asian or Soviet literature, it's such a broad term, both politically and geographically, it has little meaning. "Britain" isn't a culture, it's a political state (Great Britain) or an island. Cultures produce literature--Britain's constituent cultures (any one of which could be said to have their own representative body of literature) are England, Scotland and Wales.

(This is a pet peeve of mine, I must say: English != British. The two are often conflated but they are not the same.)

Excuse me but are you calling me a snob?
But one little question. Have you ever seen/heard of a king called Victoria? No? why yes becuase it's a girls name...a Queens name.

The scene where Becky performs the 'sexy dance' it's for THE KING. I don't mean to sound snobbish here, but just incase you didn't know....kings are always males and thus can't be named Victoria! see it's so simple really!

Goodness i mean you must've had trouble with the film, with people talking about the King and your sat thier like 'where is Queen Victoria? is it King Victoria?' I can see where you'd get confused. I hope that i have helped. Any other troubles, i suggest reading a book once in a while.

And for anyone who starts with the well in victorian lit class, yes but this topic was about the period in which the book/film was set.

To end on a nice note Vanity was a great film that was fun to watch.

Actually there was a fairly large disjunction between the Regency and Victorian periods, mainly because Queen Victoria was a bit of a prude and a snob. The major difference is that the Regency period was one of the most hedonistic and pleasure seeking periods in English history and the Victorian period was one of the most staid and prudish periods of all times.

The term Victorian is not limited just to England but it extends to the United States as well. This is the reason we have houses that are VICTORIAN. If you lived somewhere that had a history that went farther back than 25 years when your subdivision was built, then maybe you would know this.
And there WAS a shift in values after the Victorian period. Victorian society was repressive and extremely modest. Not only was there a rejection of the ideals of Classicism that were popular in the Regency period, but the Industrial Revolution greatly shook up the class system.