Research Questions - Group 4 - Lyndall from The Story of an African Farm

 

1. Research the plot of A Story of An African Farm. What was the story about? What was its significance/social reception?

2. Lyndall seems to hate Middlemarch and George Eliot. What possible reason does she have for feeling this way?

3. Lyndall claims that she is tired of “separate spheres” for men and women. What are the separate spheres she speaks about?

4. How was a young single woman in the late Victorian period supposed to act and behave? How is Lyndall deviating from this? (use the interview and the research from question 1 to answer)

5. Lyndall says that she wants to be a new kind of woman. You’ve heard this term before – New Woman – but can’t quite place it. What exactly is a “New Woman” and why is this a concern in the 1890s?

6. Lyndall is from South Africa, a British colony. What was England's relationship to Africa in the latter decades of the 1800s?What was the extent of the British Empire in 1890?

7. Lyndall seemed pretty upset by how other races (non-Whites) were treated on the farm. Was racism an issue in London at this time?

8. Lyndall is, by Victorian standards, a “fallen” woman. What does that mean? How important is a reputation to a woman in this era?