The Victorian Age is remembered for a lot of things. There was an extreme growth in many of the arts but the one that is the most memorable is its literature. The authors of that time questioned many of the issues going on and influenced our society, as we know it today. The authors such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy spoke out against certain issues during that age and are very memorable for that. There were also many philosophers that changed the way we look at the world today. Philosophers such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Malthus brought up many issues that were very controversial. Dickens and Hardy were very different in their writing styles but wrote about common Victorian themes such as; the subjection of women, Darwin's theory of evolution and survival of the fittest, and the oppression of the poor. These people put themselves in the public eye and boldly spoke out on many controversial issues that had not been questioned for thousands of years.
             Women's rights are sometimes taken for granted today. Many people, men especially, forget that women just recently gained the right to vote and are still slightly discriminated against because of their gender. In the 1700s women's right was unheard of. The authors during this time addressed this issue a lot. An excellent example of this is in Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles. The main character is a young woman named Tess. Tess has many first-hand experiences with the unjust treatment and discrimination of women during this time. Tess rebels against the discrimination and thereby stands up for women's rights. The main theme of this book is that women were commonly abused and treated as inferior beings. Hardy used Tess to show how bad it was. For example, Hardy states, "I was a child when I left this house for months ago. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?"(Pg.80). Hardy is illustrating how women are taken advantage of often even at a young age. Tess was a...