A Geometric Parody of Victorian Society - 1601 Words

Fictitious elements in literature may be more realistic than one thinks and the concept of dystopia is no exception. Within the novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott, there exists a world known as Flatland. Flatland is a quaint world. It is a world where shapes act out the roles of various social classes, a world where everything is geometric. However, despite Flatlands mundane description upon closer inspection, it can be seen that Flatlands social hierarchy starkly resembles that of Victorian England, and with good reason too. In an attempt to bring about the reformation of the Victorian social ladder, Abbott chose to take a more passive approach and thus Flatland was born. Parodying the various downfalls of Victorian society, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an iconoclastic cleverly written satire that spotlights the many underlying flaws in the Victorian society. A rather mathematical society, each of Flatlands inhabitants take the form of a geometric figure. Men are represented as polygons such as triangles, squares, and pentagons. Women however, are represented as straight lines. With these two pieces of information and the fact that Flatland is a satire of Victorian society, one can infer that ones placement in Flatlands social hierarchy is based off the number of sides one has. For men, those in the lowest class would be triangles. Unfortunately for women, who are represented simply by lines, this sort ofShow MoreRelatedEssay Joseph Conrads The Secret Agent4969 Words   |  20 PagesJoseph Conrads The Secret Agent: A Critique of Late-Victorian Gender Roles February 15, 1894, was the most interesting afternoon in the otherwise dreary history of Greenwich Observatory. Earlier in the day, Martial Bourdin, a skinny anarchist, traveled by train from Westminster to Greenwich, concealing a small bomb. As he ominously ambled through Greenwich Park, towards the Observatory, something happened - no one knows exactly what - and he blew most of himself to shreds. The British, who