50 Active Vs Passive Voice Topics for English Literature Students

Choosing between active and passive voice in literary analysis is not just a grammatical choice but a decision about agency and narrative power. This list provides specific research angles to help students analyze how syntactic structures shape character development and authorial intent.

48 topics organized by theme, with difficulty levels and suggested sources.

Agency and Victimhood in Gothic Fiction

Exploration of how passive constructions reflect the helplessness of Gothic protagonists against supernatural or patriarchal forces.

The Passive Heroine in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho

Analyze how passive voice is used to emphasize Emily St. Aubert’s lack of agency in the face of architectural and male atmospheric dominance.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: The Female Gothic by Juliann Fleenor; PMLA Journal

Syntactic Entrapment in The Yellow Wallpaper

Argue that Gilman’s shift from active to passive voice mirrors the narrator's descent into madness and her physical confinement by the rest cure.

Advanced · Research-Based — Sources: The Madwoman in the Attic by Gilbert and Gubar; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Frankenstein’s Creature and the Passive Voice of Creation

Investigate how Mary Shelley uses the passive voice during the animation scene to obscure the ethical responsibility of Victor Frankenstein.

Intermediate · Argumentative — Sources: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (Norton Critical Edition); Studies in Romanticism

Passive Victimhood in Dracula’s Lucy Westenra

Examine the grammatical transition from active to passive as Lucy transforms from a suitor-seeker to a victim of the vampire’s predation.

Beginner · Case-Study — Sources: Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis and the Gothic by William Hughes

The Agency of the House in The Fall of the House of Usher

Discuss how Poe attributes active verbs to the setting while relegating the Usher siblings to passive recipients of environmental decay.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: The Poe Studies Journal; Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn

Agency and the Uncanny in Shirley Jackson’s Prose

Evaluate how Jackson uses the passive voice to suggest that the house itself is the primary actor in The Haunting of Hill House.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: Shirley Jackson's American Gothic by Darryl Hattenhauer

Grammatical Erasure in Rebecca

Analyze how the unnamed narrator’s use of the passive voice reflects her erasure by the memory of the first Mrs. de Winter.

Intermediate · Compare-Contrast — Sources: Daphne du Maurier and the Gothic; Journal of Narrative Theory

Passive Resistance in Bartleby, the Scrivener

Argue that Bartleby’s 'preferring not to' functions as a passive grammatical strike against the active capitalist demands of Wall Street.

Advanced · Argumentative — Sources: Melville’s Short Novels (Norton); American Literature Journal

Modernist Fragmentation and Subjectivity

Analyzing the breakdown of the active subject in 20th-century experimental literature.

The Dissolution of the 'I' in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy

Explore how the shift to passive voice signals the disintegration of the self and the futility of action in Beckett’s Molloy.

Advanced · Research-Based — Sources: Beckett and Language by Edith Kern; Journal of Beckett Studies

Stream of Consciousness and Passive Receptivity in Ulysses

Examine how Joyce uses passive constructions to represent the sensory bombardment of Leopold Bloom’s psyche.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: James Joyce Quarterly; The Cambridge Companion to Ulysses

Virginia Woolf and the Passive Impression

Analyze the 'Time Passes' section of To the Lighthouse to see how passive voice removes human agency to focus on environmental entropy.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo

T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and the Passive State

Discuss how the passive voice in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' reinforces the protagonist’s inability to 'force the moment to its crisis.'

Beginner · Analytical — Sources: The Waste Land and Other Poems (Norton); T.S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry by Elizabeth Drew

Hemingway’s Subversive Passivity in A Farewell to Arms

Contrast Hemingway’s reputation for 'active' prose with the passive descriptions of injury and medical treatment in his war novels.

Intermediate · Compare-Contrast — Sources: Hemingway's Language by Ronald G. Walker; The Hemingway Review

The Passive Observer in The Great Gatsby

Argue that Nick Carraway’s frequent use of the passive voice positions him as a complicit rather than active participant in the tragedy.

Beginner · Argumentative — Sources: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference; ELH Journal

Fragmentation and Passive Voice in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Examine how Antoinette’s loss of legal and social status is mirrored by the grammatical shift from active to passive voice in Part Two.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966; Postcolonial Studies Journal

The Passive Resistance of Katherine Mansfield’s Protagonists

Analyze how Mansfield uses passive constructions to depict the internal lives of women constrained by Edwardian social codes.

Intermediate · Case-Study — Sources: The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield; Journal of Modern Literature

Postcolonial Perspectives and Linguistic Power

How colonizer and colonized are represented through active and passive grammatical structures.

The Passive Construction of the 'Other' in Heart of Darkness

Investigate how Conrad uses passive voice to dehumanize African characters by treating them as objects acted upon by colonial forces.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: Cultures of Empire by Catherine Hall; Conradiana

Reclaiming the Active Voice in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Compare the active voice used for Igbo traditions with the passive voice used by colonial district officers to describe native history.

Intermediate · Compare-Contrast — Sources: Achebe and Friends at Seventy; Research in African Literatures

Grammatical Subversion in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Decolonising the Mind

Analyze the essayist’s argument regarding how the English passive voice is used to obscure the violence of colonial history.

Advanced · Argumentative — Sources: Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o; Third World Quarterly

The Passive Subject in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Examine how David Lurie’s transition from an active professor to a passive recipient of violence reflects post-apartheid power shifts.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual; Contemporary Literature

Passive Voice and the Erasure of History in Midnight’s Children

Discuss how Rushdie uses passive voice to critique the way official history 'is written' by those in power to silence dissent.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Salman Rushdie (Contemporary World Writers); Modern Fiction Studies

Agency and Translation in Brian Friel’s Translations

Analyze the struggle between active Irish naming and passive English mapping in the context of linguistic colonization.

Intermediate · Case-Study — Sources: Brian Friel: A Casebook; Irish University Review

The Passive Voice of Bureaucracy in A Passage to India

Evaluate how Forster uses the passive voice to characterize the British Raj as an impersonal, faceless machine rather than a group of individuals.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: E.M. Forster: A Life by P.N. Furbank; Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Post-Colonial Trauma and Passive Narrative in Beloved

Explore how Toni Morrison uses passive constructions to articulate the unspeakable nature of traumatic memory and enslavement.

Advanced · Research-Based — Sources: Toni Morrison's Beloved (Routledge Guides); African American Review

Victorian Morality and Social Constraints

Examining how the passive voice reflects the rigid class and gender hierarchies of the 19th century.

Passive Propriety in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Analyze how the use of the passive voice in social introductions reflects the lack of individual agency in the Regency marriage market.

Beginner · Analytical — Sources: Jane Austen and the War of Ideas by Marilyn Butler; Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal

The Passive Voice of Law in Bleak House

Investigate how Dickens uses passive constructions to depict the Court of Chancery as an entity where things happen but no one is responsible.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Dickens and the Law by Edith Hall; Dickens Quarterly

Hardy’s Tess and the Passive Voice of Fate

Argue that Thomas Hardy uses passive voice to frame Tess as a 'pure woman' whose tragic end is caused by external social forces rather than her own choices.

Intermediate · Argumentative — Sources: Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited; Victorian Studies

The Passive Resistance of Jane Eyre

Contrast Jane’s active internal monologue with her passive external speech when addressing her social superiors at Lowood.

Beginner · Compare-Contrast — Sources: The Brontës by Juliet Barker; Nineteenth-Century Literature

Passive Voice and Class Subservience in Great Expectations

Examine how Pip’s descriptions of Satis House utilize the passive voice to show his intimidation by Miss Havisham’s wealth.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (Routledge Guides); The Dickensian

George Eliot and the Passive Voice of Moral Consequence

Analyze how Eliot uses the passive voice in Middlemarch to describe the slow, inevitable social pressures that shape individual lives.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: George Eliot and the Politics of National Inheritance; ELH

The Passive Language of Victorian Mourning in Tennyson’s Poetry

Discuss how In Memoriam A.H.H. uses passive voice to convey the speaker’s helplessness in the face of death and grief.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Tennyson's Poetry (Norton Critical Edition); Victorian Poetry Journal

Agency and Industry in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

Compare the active voice of the industrial masters with the passive voice used to describe the striking workers' conditions.

Intermediate · Compare-Contrast — Sources: The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell; Gaskell Society Journal

Shakespearean Drama and Rhetorical Agency

Analyzing the strategic use of passive versus active voice in Early Modern drama and political rhetoric.

The Passive Voice of Guilt in Macbeth

Examine the shift from active to passive voice in Macbeth’s speech as he attempts to distance himself from his regicidal actions.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Shakespeare's Language by Frank Kermode; Shakespeare Quarterly

Hamlet’s Passive Procrastination

Argue that the passive voice in Hamlet’s soliloquies reflects his existential crisis and his inability to take definitive action.

Intermediate · Argumentative — Sources: Hamlet (Arden Shakespeare); Shakespeare Survey

The Passive Feminine in Othello

Analyze how Desdemona’s use of the passive voice in the final act emphasizes her status as a victim of Iago’s active manipulations.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare; Shakespeare Studies

Active Power and Passive Obedience in King Lear

Investigate how Cordelia’s refusal to speak actively in the opening scene leads to her passive dispossession by her father.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: Lear before Lyly by Richard Dutton; Renaissance Drama Journal

The Rhetoric of the Passive Voice in Julius Caesar

Analyze Mark Antony’s funeral oration to see how he uses passive constructions to incite the crowd without taking direct responsibility for the violence.

Advanced · Research-Based — Sources: Shakespeare and the Arts of Language by Russ McDonald; Rhetoric Review

Prospero’s Active Magic and Passive Subjects

Examine the grammatical hierarchy in The Tempest, where Prospero commands with active verbs while Caliban is described through passive states.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: The Tempest (Norton Critical Edition); Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Passive Suffering in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Discuss how the speaker in the Dark Lady sonnets uses passive voice to depict himself as a victim of his own desire.

Beginner · Analytical — Sources: The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Helen Vendler

Gendered Passivity in The Taming of the Shrew

Evaluate how Katherine’s final speech uses passive constructions to signal her supposed submission to Petruchio’s active authority.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Shakespeare and Gender by Stephen Orgel; Early Modern Women Journal

Dystopian Control and Linguistic Manipulation

How totalitarian regimes in literature use passive voice to obscure responsibility and control thought.

Newspeak and the Elimination of the Active Subject in 1984

Analyze how Orwell’s Newspeak aims to eliminate active verbs to prevent the conceptualization of rebellion.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Texts, Contexts, Criticism; Language and Literature Journal

The Passive Voice of the Handmaids in Atwood’s Gilead

Examine how Offred’s narrative uses passive voice to describe her biological functions, reflecting the state’s view of her as an object.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library); Contemporary Women's Writing

Passive Complicity in Brave New World

Discuss how the use of passive voice in the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre reflects the lack of individual will in the World State.

Beginner · Analytical — Sources: Aldous Huxley: A Biography by Nicholas Murray; Utopian Studies

The Passive Voice of History in Fahrenheit 451

Analyze how Bradbury uses passive voice to describe the burning of books, suggesting an impersonal social trend rather than individual choice.

Intermediate · Analytical — Sources: Ray Bradbury (Modern Critical Views); Extrapolation

Linguistic Determinism and Passive Voice in Arrival (Story of Your Life)

Examine how Ted Chiang uses passive vs active voice to distinguish between linear human time and non-linear alien perception.

Advanced · Research-Based — Sources: The Stories of Ted Chiang: A Critical Companion; Science Fiction Studies

Passive Erasure in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Analyze how the clones use passive voice to describe their own 'completion,' reflecting their internalisation of their status as medical resources.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: Kazuo Ishiguro (Contemporary Critical Perspectives); Novel: A Forum on Fiction

The Active Violence and Passive Victimhood of A Clockwork Orange

Contrast Alex’s active, aggressive 'Nadsat' narration with the passive voice used during his Ludovico Technique conditioning.

Intermediate · Compare-Contrast — Sources: Anthony Burgess: A Life by Andrew Biswell; Journal of Modern Literature

Bureaucracy and Passive Voice in Kafka’s The Trial

Investigate how the passive voice creates an atmosphere of 'Kafkaesque' helplessness where the Law acts upon the individual without explanation.

Advanced · Analytical — Sources: The Cambridge Companion to Kafka; German Life and Letters

Pro Tips for Choosing Your Topic

• Look for 'syntactic patterns' rather than isolated sentences; a recurring use of the passive voice often signals a character's lack of agency.
• Check the 'agent' of the passive sentence; if the author omits the agent (e.g., 'the decision was made'), ask who is being protected from responsibility.
• Compare dialogue with narration; characters who use active voice in their heads but passive voice when speaking may be hiding their true intentions.
• Use a 'concordance' tool to find the frequency of passive helping verbs like 'was' or 'been' in specific chapters to track shifts in narrative tone.
• Relate grammatical choices to the historical context; for example, Victorian passive voice often correlates with strict etiquette and social class constraints.

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