"The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Essay by stormasterHigh School, 10th grade October 2003

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What Can The Lost World Tell Us About Victorian Attitudes To Race Gender And The Environment?

This book, though written in Victorian times, is still a quite modern type of story, as it can easily be adapted for modern times, for example, Instead of an expedition to a plateau it could be an expedition to another planet. Also the style in which is written is different to today's books, because in the Lost World a lot of the conversations and descriptions are drawn out longer than they would be in today's book, because in Victorian time's books were one of the few entertainments they could enjoy at home, whereas today we can sit down in front of the TV, so they expected it to be longer so it could be enjoyed for longer.

The character of Gladys is stereotypical of women in Victorian times, that men need to do all the hard hero work while their wife basks in the reflected glory, and women should be envied for their man, Gladys is also a very shallow person because she will only marry Ned if he is famous and becomes a hero or something, so this is the reason Ned goes on the expedition in the first place, because he sees this as an opportunity to become a hero to impress Gladys, and that when he returns he could marry her.

But to show how shallow Gladys is, when Ned does come back he finds that she has already married, and her husband is no hero either; he is just a boring solicitor's clerk, so after all that talking of wanting a hero of a husband, she marries a pathetic little solicitor's clerk.

We can see why she is portrayed in such a way because the book was written...