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Scarica Appunti slides Letteratura inglese De Rinaldis e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! 7 ottobre Revolution in women’s education in Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), feminist thinker Idee principali in A Vindication of the rights of woman (1792): - Donne non sono inferiori agli uomini per predisposizione naturale, ma solo per mancanza di adeguata istruzione ed educazione - “who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?” - “but if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason” - Uomini e donne dovrebbero essere trattati come esseri razionali - Desiderio di un ordine sociale fondato sulla ragione: “in the true style of Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings and not as a part of the human species” 1) A favore di adeguata istruzione /educazione femminile: per essere buone educatrici (future generazioni) Per essere buone compagne e favorire il progresso sociale “if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue” 2) Contro visione “ornamentale” e “infantile” della donna: “my own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone” Pregiudizi comuni – classe, genere, razza: - Inferiorità fisica e intellettiva - Incapacità di gestire istinti ed emotività - Tendenza innata al vizio - Maggiore animalità, vicinanza alla specie “inferiori” nella catena dell’essere - Contro idea di eccessiva sensibilità/emotività femminile, nonché contro idea di “debolezza” femminile (fisica e mentale) - “I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt” - She describes domestic life - Is not the following portrait the portrait of a house slave? - Quoting for Dr James Fordyce who published addresses to women concerning their nature and conduct in 1765 and 1776 - “I am astonished at the folly of many women, who are still reproaching their husbands for leaving them alone… for treating them with this and the other mark of disregard or indifference; when, to speak the truth, they have themselves in great measure to blame… - Had you behaved to them with more respectful observance, and a more equal tenderness; studying their humours, overlooking their mistakes… - I doubt not but you would have maintained and even increased their esteem… and your house might at this day have been the abode of domestic bliss” - Such a woman ought to be an angel ---- or she is an ass – for I discern not a trace of the human character, neither reason nor passion in this domestic drudge, whose being is absorbed in that of a tyrant’s. 9 ottobre Tim Fulford, Slavery and superstition in the supernatural poems (Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, ed. Newlyn, 2006) - Cambridge Companion to Coleridge - Youngest of ten children - Father dies when he is 8 - He tries to articulate a philosophy of unity given the political and social context he was experiencing There were strong external pressures in the period he was living - And he had to negotiate, as an entire generation, moves from radical to conservative Vulnerable but with an astonishing capacity for reading and speaking He claimed to have read the Bible by the age of three He was sent to a boarding school in London, Christ’s Hospital and left to its harsh regime far from home in Devonshire - Solitude - bookish intensity - seen as a prodigy - part of a literary discussion group - He wins a prize for “Greek Sapphic ode” on the slave trade - 1793 France declared war on Britain - To support France meant treason - His life becomes a chaos - This duality radical/orthodox represents the contradictions in the social experience of his class and generation - Meets Wordsworth in 1795 - Friendship deepens in 1796 - Period of intimacy with the Wordsworths - Reciprocal influence - To Germany in 1798 - Unhappy marriage with Sara Fricker - Dependency on opium - Accuses of plagiarism - Literary criticism: imagination and fancy (BL, ch. 13) The rime of the ancient mariner Argument How a ship having passed the line was driven by storms to the cold country towards the South Pole; and how from hence she made her course to the tropical latitude of the great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the ancient mariner came back to his own country William Wales - Christ’s Hospital (Edward VI, 1552): the school was a supplier of boys trained in navigation and seamanship to the Royal Navy, the East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company - Useful to merchants History of England by Oliver Goldmisth 1764 The castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole 1764 E. Gibbon, The decline and fall of the roman empire (1776-1788) Pre-romanticism - Looking back to an “originary” condition - Search for natural, simple life: primitivism, childhood - Myth of the middle age, a wonderful and savage era - Gothic architecture and old texts are the remains of a lost world - Progress is a threat - Revalued after Tzvetan Todorov 1970 - When the protagonist hesitates between reality and dream, when he is not sure of what he is perceiving or experiencing we have the fantastic In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. One must opt for two possible solutions, either the event is an illusion of senses or it is reality The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty - The Gothic reflects the collective consciousness of English society in the second half of the 18th century - The sense of guilt deriving from the desire of the bourgeois individual to exert control over nature, reality - Back to the idea of Doctor Faustus – the Fall of Man from Paradise – Shakespeare’s Macbeth (who commits crimes in order to get the “crown”) - In England there had been a civil war leading to the killing of the king Charles I (1649) - Many tales of horror in this period - For Todorov the gothic novel is about the “repressed” (psychoanalytic approach); it is a mirror of the bourgeois consciousness and it has been considered perhaps exactly for this a minor, inferior genre - Also important is the idea of the sublime as it was expressed by Edmund Burke 1759 A philosophical enquiry into the origin of the beautiful and the sublime What is the effect produced by a work of art? Sublime: the emotion linked to what causes attraction and repulsion, what is imperceptible, too big or too small, what produces astonishment. - Characteristics of Gothic novels: flat characters - Special (Mediterranean) and temporal dislocation (Middle Age) - Atmosphere - Ambivalent boundary between the visible and the invisible - Different stylistic features from those of the novel A lost manuscript The frame mediates between the real and the fantastic Action must be situated in a barbarous/superstitious setting that allows cruel actions - HENRI FUSELI 1778-79 L’artista sconvolto di fronte alla grandezza delle rovine antiche - L’incubo PLOT - The helmet is the oniric, surrealistic (psychoanalytic sense) equivalent of the punishment of the original sin against the natural order - Manfred is the ambitious man who causes a series of crimes ending with the re-establishing of order. 23 ottobre Salvator Rosa (1615-73) - Male gothic - Charles Maturin and James Hogg - Maturin: Melmoth the wanderer (1820) associated with Faustus, Cain - The protagonist tries to escape form the consequences of his own pact with the devil trying to find somebody else to involve. A series of potential substitutes: narratives within narratives create a sense of isolation and despair - Evil will never stop - Jacobin novels: written in the period 1790-1805 Accusations of promoting the ideals of the French Revolution Among the most famous are: Desmond 1792 by Charlotte Smith Anna St Ives 1792 by Thomas Holcroft Caleb Williams 1794 by William Godwin A simple story 1796 by Elizabeth Inchbald Memoirs of Emma Courtney 1796 by Mary Hays The wrongs of woman; or Maria, a fragment 1798 by Mary Wollstonecraft - Jacobine: enemy of the government, critical of the government - In reality these writers had various opinions and supported peaceful changes rather than violent revolutions - Godwin in the Preface to CW: “a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecordered despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man” - He is also the writer on Enquiry concerning political justice (1793) - Godwin, Caleb Williams: two protagonists Caleb and Falkland, love-hate each other (theme of the double) - Inchbald: actress and playwright as well, A simple Story: the story of two generations; social pressures - Mary Wollstonecraft: A vindication of the rights of woman 1792, revolution in the education of women; The wrongs of woman: the story of a woman abandoned by her husband and by her lover, imprisoned in a mental hospital. It shows the abuses committed by the oppressors. In these novels characters are important as they express the ideas of the authors Androgynous characters Women have culture, courage Men are sensitive Political intent was not associated with artistic value but they have got aesthetic value STYLE Epistolary form and diary to express the isolation of women, that is first person narratives in which the only voice we “hear” is that of the female character that tells, repeats her own story Torment of the heroines (interior conflict) Individualism is attacked as it is denies the true instinct of love Here the creature is isolated, alone, no relations Reaction of a female writer living in a difficult “male” environment Reaction against male narcissism (romantic ego) - Hogg The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner (1824) Published anonymously Confession of a sinner who has committed a series of murders inspired by an alter ego who is indeed the Devil Two narrative voices: that of Wringhim and that of the editor, divided self (instinct/reason) Literature of the double, interiorization of the gothic in Victorian novels like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by R.L. Stevenson - Romance: proposes an ideal world- honour linked with aristocracy - The gothic novel rediscusses this; rank and individual merit - Roles and people do not correspond - False friars, false princes, false peasants - Gothic uses the supernatural to destabilize the certainties of a rationalistic vision of the world - Introduces magic, the diabolical, the supernatural to express doubts about the possibility for man to conquer the natural world - Interpretations of the gothic: the genre is related to revolutionary feelings, anxieties linked to the French revolution, to the process of industrialization, or to solipsistic dreams - In the gothic novel split individuality: victim and villain - The gothic expresses anxieties about the relationship between past and present, and the relationship between classes, sexes, and individuals within society - Characters are entrapped in labyrinths: punishment by a furious God - “broken” psychic life - Alienation (separation, division) - Villain and romantic hero Matilda and Hippolita are visited by Friar Jerome who says that Isabella is safe in the church. Theodore is Jerome’s son, and belongs to a noble Sicilian family. Matilda frees Theodore from prison: they fall in love Theodore hides in the woods Isabella hides in the cave Theodore wounds a knight, who is Isabella’s father, trying to rescue her 28 ott Nella parte inferiore del castello si apriva una serie intricata di volte dove non era facile per una persona in preda all’ansia trovare la porta che conduceva al cunicolo. Un silenzio impressionante regnava in quelle regioni sotterranee, a eccezione di qualche corrente d’aria che di tanto in tanto scuoteva le porte davanti alle quali era appena passata, facendole cigolare sui cardini arrugginiti, e suscitando ogni sorta di echi nell’oscurità di quell’interminabile labirinto. Ogni fruscio la riempiva di nuovo terrore, ma ancora più grande era la paura di udire la voce irosa di Manfredi che incitava i domestici all’inseguimento. Procedeva a passi felpati per quanto le permetteva l’impazienza, ma si fermava spesso ad ascoltare se era inseguita. Durante una di queste pause le parve di sentire un sospiro. Rabbrividì e fece un balzo indietro. Dopo un attimo le sembrò di udire un passo. Il sangue le si gelò nelle vene: doveva trattarsi di Manfredi. Tutte le immagini che l’orrore può ispirare le sfilarono rapidamente davanti. Si rimproverò per la sua fuga precipitosa, che l’aveva ora esposta all’ira del principe in un luogo dove probabilmente le sue grida non avrebbero richiamato l’attenzione di nessuno. Eppure, quel suono non sembrava provenire dalle sue spalle – se Manfredi sapeva dove cercarla, l’aveva certo seguita. Ma lei era ancora in uno dei corridoi e il rumore dei passi che aveva appena udito era troppo distinto per venire da lontano. Un poco sollevata da queste riflessioni e sperando di trovare un amico in chiunque non fosse il principe, stava per riprendere il cammino quando una porta appena accostata un poco più avanti sulla sinistra cominciò a schiudersi lentamente. Ma prima che la sua lampada, sollevata in alto, le mostrasse l’essere che l’aveva aperta, questi, vedendo la luce, si tirò precipitosamente indietro. Nor, perchance If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me, here, upon the banks Of this fair river; thou, my dearest friend, My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and I read my Former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! Yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear sister! And this prayer I make, knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her |…| (Tintern Abbey, V, 112-24) William Wordsworth Her eyes are wild, her head is bare, The sun has burnt her coal-black hair, Her eye-brows have a rusty stain, And she came far from over the main. She has a baby on her arm, Or else she were alone: And underneath the hay-stack warm, And on the green-wood stone, She talked and sung the woods among; And it was in the English tongue. (from The mad mother) Gli occhi sbarrati, scoperto il capo, bruciati dal sole i capelli nero carbone, sporche le ciglia di fuliggine, giunse qui da lontano solcando gli oceani. Stringe un bimbo tra le braccia, nessun altro è con lei; all’ombra del tiepido pagliaio, o seduta su un sasso nel bosco, parlava e cantava in mezzo agli alberi, ed il suo canto era in inglese. Ann K. Mellor Romanticism and gender (1993) Rarely allowed to speak for themselves, the female figures in Wordsworth’s early poems exist only as embodiments of an undifferentiated life cycle that moves inexorably from birth to death. They do not exist as independent, self-conscious human beings with minds as capable as the poet’s. In this sense almost all of Wordsworth’s women are dead, either literally (as in the cases of Lucy, Margaret and Martha Ray) or figuratively (they are mad, or allowed to live only vicariously through the words and experiences of male narrators). I sate a long time upon a stone at the margin of the lake, and after a flood of tears my heart was easier. The lake looked to me I knew not why dull and melancholy. I resolved to write a journal of the time till W. and J. return, and I set about keeping my resolve because I will not quarrel with myself and because I shall give Wm pleasure by it when he comes home again. The Grasmere journals Sinking and surviving (Meena Alexander) Private/public sphere genre content: a tiny fragment of land provides nourishment to a variety of creatures and plants - It is minute - It is swalled up in water - Lost fragments may remain Dorothy Wordsworth, Floating island (at Hawkshead: an incident in the schemes of nature) Harmonious Powers with Nature work On sky, earth, river, lake, and sea: Sunshine and storm, whirlwind and breeze All in one duteous task agree. Once did I see a slip of earth, By throbbing waves long undermined, Loosed from its hold; — how no one knew But all might see it float, obedient to the wind. Might see it, from the mossy shore Dissevered float upon the Lake, Float, with its crest of trees adorned On which the warbling birds their pastime take. Food, shelter, safety there they find There berries ripen, flowerets bloom; There insects live their lives — and die: A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room. And thus through many seasons’ space This little Island may survive But Nature, though we mark her not, Will take away — may cease to give. Perchance when you are wandering forth Upon some vacant sunny day Without an object, hope, or fear, Thither your eyes may turn — the Isle is passed away. Buried beneath the glittering Lake! Its place no longer to be found, Yet the lost fragments shall remain, To fertilize some other ground. D.W., from Address to a child (during a Boisterous winter evening) Hark! over the roof he makes a pause, And growls as if he would fix his claws Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle Drive them down, like men in a battle: – But let him range round; he does us no harm, We build up the fire, we’re snug and warm; Untouched by his breath see the candle shines bright, And burns with a clear and steady light. Books have we to read, |…| He may work his own will, and what shall we care? He may knock at the door — we’ll not let him in; May drive at the windows — we’ll laugh at his din; Let him seek his own home wherever it be; Here’s a cozie warm house for Edward and me. - Dwelling/shelter - Fragility - Psychological marginality: places of instability “I gave him the ring-with how deep a blessing! I took it from my finger where I have worn it the whole of the night before – he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently” D. W., Diary, October 4, 1802 “when I think of winter I hasten to furnish our little Parlour, I close the Shutters, set out the Tea-table, brighten the fire. When our refreshment is ended I produce our work, and William brings his book to our table and contributes at once to our instruction and amusement |…|. We talk over past days, we do not sigh for any pleasures beyond our humble habitation the central point of all our joys” D.W., Letter to Jane Pollard, February 16, 1793 24 May 1800. Walked in the morning to Ambleside. I found a letter from Wm and from Mary Hutchinson and Douglass. Returned on the other side of the lakes- wrote to William after dinner, nailed up the beds, worked in the garden, sate in the evening under the trees. I went to bed soon with a bad head-ache. A fine day. D.W. Thomas de Quincey Her face was Egyptian brown, rarely in a woman of English birth. Her eyes were not soft, as mrs Wordsworth’s, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm and even ardent; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep; and some subtle fire of impassionate intellect apparently burned within her; which being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irreprensible instincts of her temperament, and then immediately checked, in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age, and her maidenly condition, gave to her whole conversation, an air of embarrassment, and even of self-conflict, that was most distressing to witness’ L.M. Crisafulli, C. Pietropoli, a cura di, Le poetesse romantiche inglesi, Carocci, Roma 2002 Virginia Woolf “Dorothy Wordsworth” Whatever Mary saw served to start her mind upon some theory, upon the effect of government, upon the state of the people, upon the mystery of her own soul. |…| Dorothy never confused her own soul with the sky. - What is the relationship between rank and merit? Between titles and social roles? Who are the gentlemen? - 3 daughters: Elizabeth Anne Mary. For one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up anything which he had not been very much tempted to do. Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother’s rights and consequence; and being very handsome and very like himself, her influence had always been great and they had gone on together most happily. His two other children were of very inferior value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs. Charles Musgrove; but Anne with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way - She was only Anne. CHANGE - His father was growing distressed for money - He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had the power, but he would never condescend to sell - Quit Kellynch Hall rather than live in disgrace there 3 alternatives: London, Bath, house in the country - She (Anne) disliked Bath and did not think it agreed with her and Bath was to be her home - “He might there be important at comparatively little expense” - The lawyer: “…the present juncture is so much in our favour. This peace will be turning all our rich Navy Officers ashore. They will be all wanting a home…” - Letting the house “I am not particularly disposed to favour a tenant… I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable… I am very little disposed to grant a tenant of Kellynch Hall any extraordinary favour, I assure you, be he sailor or soldier” - Anne: “the navy I think who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must allow.” - “Bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of” OBSTACLE - Elliot and Lady Russell - Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty and mind, to throw herself away at 19, involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession… would be, indeed, a throwing away… - Anne Elliot to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune. Captain Wentworth had no fortune He had spended his money gentry model alternatives: Englishness is not fixed or stable it is negotiated. Wentworth: embodies maritime virtues of the English character Competing: characters are not monolithic The navy Contributes to the defeat of Napoleon. War brings new values Shift from English ruling class to the navy Persuasion implies authority, moral power (of family, of the clergy, of social classes) Here there is no longer a centre Estate, property of the gentry, is a lost paradise. The heroine moves from place to place, isolated, the first “alienated” heroine in English novel Chapter 5 The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps of improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had more modern minds and manners. There was a numerous family, but the only two grown up, excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa, young ladies of 19 and 20, who had brought from a school at Exeter all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now, like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy and merry. Anne… would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated minds for all their enjoyments It is over! It is over! Embarrassment Chapter VII 13 novembre Hard Times • it was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. Hard times 1854 Dickens is already a well-known writer Career started in the 1830s Most novels written between 1837 and 1854 In 1853 the idea of writing a new novel After looking at the desolate industrial landscape • Need for products was stimulated by the war until 1815 • Smoke across contiguous landscape and all society • Cloud- black become symbols of the condition of modem man, choked and blackened by the industrial system • cotton was the largest export • Christal Palace or Great Exhibition of the Works of industry of All Nations • Joseph Paxton, Hyde Park, inaugurated by Queen Victoria • 1 May 1851 • iron and glass • Robert Owen industrialist, a cotton master • Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System 1815 • The general diffusion of manufacturers throughout a country generates a new character in its inhabitants; and as this character is formed upon a principle quite unfavourable to the individual or general happiness, it will produce the most lamentable and permanent evils, unless its tendency is counteracted by legislative interference and direction. The manufacturing system has already so far extended its influence over the British Empire as to effect an essential change in the general character of the mass of the people. Thomas Carlyle • 1829 Signs of the Times in which he writes his response to the England of his time Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not a Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the age of machinery, in e very outward and inward sense of that word. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and the spiritual also. • Men are grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand. • Not for internal perfection but for external combinations and arrangements, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Convinced that what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be investigated and understood at all. • Capital and Labour, drawn by Robert Jacob Hamerton, who sometimes used the penname Shallaballa, seen near the lower righthand corner (12 August 1843), Vol. 5: 4.8-49. Punch; or, The London Charivari 17.7 cm high by 24.3 cm wide. • Original Editorial Commentary for "Capital and Labour. Cartoon No. V." • It is gratifying to know that though there is much misery in the coalmines, where the "labourers are obliged to go on all-fours like dogs*," there is a great deal of luxury results from it. The public mind has been a good deal shocked by very offensive representations of certain underground operations, carried on by an inferior race of human beings, employed in working the mines, but Punch's artist has endeavoured to do away with the disagreeable impression, by showing the very refined and elegant result that happify results from the labours of these inferior creatures. The works being performed wholly underground, ought never to have been intruded on the notice of the public. They are not intended for the light of day, and it is therefore unfair to make them the subject of illustration. When taken in conjunction with the very pleasing picture of aristocratic ease to which they give rise, the labours in the mines must have a very different aspect from that which some injudicious writers have endeavoured to attach them. * Vide Mr. Horne's Report. [48] • He campaigns for the poor in his philanthropic activity • Obsession with the idea of the prison • after 22 years he separates from tin site • 1857 lui 45 Ellen Ternan 18 • era famosissimo sfida regole sociali • Prostitutes • poor law the toglie a parishcon workhouses • Legal reforms • Reads at home travel, accounts, novels • Frustration of working together with people from lower classes who call him 'the young gentleman' • His novels deal with material and cultural conditions of his age. • The Gentleman: middle class single individual vs proletariat, mass society • His own family: from lower class to middle class • The gentleman is a model separated from the idea of belonging to a definite social class • It embodies a process of democratization • It mediates Failure of the upper class to guide society-those who possess moral qualities play a fundamental role in society • Great Expectations (1860-61): • it is a principle |…| that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. • Samuel Smiles • Self-help 1859 • True gentleman is not the man who inherits a title or wealth, but the man who has got integrity, self- culture based on observation • Carlyle • The French Revolution 1837 • Chartism 1839 on the condition of the working classes although ambivalent • Wealth of the nation based on strong/weak • Darwin: evolutionism new vision of the world • Fear that society would destroy itself without religious basis • Disharmony • Certainties become doubts • Queen Victoria young but conservative politics • Utilitarianism • Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill • Utility is the greatest happiness principle • Reason is the factor that favours happiness but also necessity of individual modes of inner happiness • 1854 goes to Preston • where workers went on a strike against reduction of salary • article on Household Words 11 February 'On Strike' • Meets Snapper on the train; he wants punishment for workers • He wants to mediate between Capital and labour • Dickens opposes those who produce statistics and data without considering anything else. Against doctrines • Book dedicated to Carlyle who was critical of the materialism of the age • Of the 'mechanical age' • The age of machinery • Men are growing mechanical in head and in heart (Signs of the Time, 1829) • Chartism was the effect of political failure • Hard Times denounces the effects of industrialization in England • Industrial novels in the 1840s • Conflict: servants/masters, upper classes/working classes, country/city, north/south, rich/poor, men/women Crystal Palace/poverty - Working class potentially revolutionary - Considered as a primitive power, instinctual and violent - Progress celebrated however • Bible as a place of hermeneutical instability • Title first chapter The one thing needful • Gospel Luke, one thing is needed • Irony, inversion of values • 'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!' • The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in the dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. • The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry and dictatorial. • The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders ...all helped the emphasis. • 'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!' • The speaker and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. • School is bare, monotonous • As only what is useful matters • The man is like the place where he is • Square finger square forehead square legs... • The emphasis was helped by repetition, satiric tone • Mouth and voice suggest coldness and insensitivity • A person more like an animal who wants to impose on others through violence (darwinistic perspective) rather than through reason • In the end Facts acquire the status of dogma • Character like a priest • Gradgrind • The hero • At the center economy, to divide, order, measure • Men are growing mechanical Sowing SEMINA Reaping MIETITURA Garnering RACCOLTO Chapter 3 • A very regular feature on the face of the country, Styone Lodge was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master's heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing: four and twenty carried over to the back wings. • .... Gas and ventilation, drainage and water service, all of the primest quality.... • The little Gradgrinds had their cabinets in various departments of science too. The had a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled… 20 novembre • Chapter 2 • Girl number 20 is asked to give the definition of a horse • 1. Linked to personal experience • 2. Dictionary definition • Necessity to control language and redefine things • Against variations, imagination, abstract The Circus • The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base [...]. They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private Chapter 15 • Father and Daughter • She realizes failure of Gradgrind’s theories • Individual vs crowd/system • Sissy: gives voices to women who cannot express themselves. Rachel and Louisa • Last chapter Final • Bounderby • Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street…? • Gradgrind Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man no longer trying to grind that heavenly trio in his dusty little mills? • Louisa a gentler and humbler face herself again a wife— Such a thing was never to be • Tom he died in hospital, of fever… • Little hope • Failure of political representatives • What we see is the ruin of the individual What is the relationship between happiness and wealth? What are the advantages of technology with respect to man's needs? What is life without imagination? • Dickens Adapted • What does it mean to adapt Hard Times? • 1988 adaptation by Joao Botelho • Set in Portugal, in the present times • Black and white • Silences • Metaphysical, poetic atmosphere Reality is mysterious, unintelligible • He does not read society but writes it • Dickens proposes recognitions, unveils hidden relationships between people, makes us see the Invisible, humanity • The Ladies's Association for the benefit of Gentlewomen of good family, reduced in Fortune below the state of Comfort to which they had been accustomed • The Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows and Single Women of Good Character who have seen better days • The Guardian Society for the preservation of Public Morals by providing Temporary Asylums for Prostitutes • The London Orphan Asylum, for the reception and Education of Destitute Orphans, particularly those descended from Respectable parents. 25 novembre REALIST TRADITION dual impulse: multitude of characters and interiority of a single character Psychological depth and social expansiveness Characters grow up through interaction with other people: in Greta Expectation we have a character that is central but passive, who encounters the powerful but distorted minor characters. Division of labour crucial to 19th century novel, both in Austen and Dickens Minor characters are reduced to restricted roles. Narrative subordination is linked to social subordination Asymmetry reflects on the one hand structures of inequal distribution but also claims Minor characters’ claims are generated by democratic impulse Look at distribution of attention in a novel Minor characters: minorness and alienation They are the proletariat of the novel Stephen Blackpool-proletariat Social victim Drunken wife Ostracized at work Suspected of robbery Breaks his back Martyr • Among the multitude of Coketown, generically called ‘the Hands’, a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen it fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs- lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age - Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody's else thorns in addition to his own. (Chapter 10) divorce • 'Now, I'll tell you what!' said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets. 'There is such a law'. • Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his attention, gave a nod. • 'But. It costs money. It costs a mint of money'. • 'How much mightit's not for you at all that be?' Stephen calmly asked. 'Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Commons with a suit, and you'd have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you'd have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was the case of very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound', said Mr. Bounderby. 'Perhaps twice the money'. • `tis a muddle. `Tis just a muddle a'toogether, an' the sooner I am dead, the better'. • 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act • He realizes that burocracy and laws are a muddle (imbroglio) for poor people • Different behaviour of Bounderby, he just goes on with his life 27 novembre • Talent of both father and mother • Death of her mother • School hard conditions • Death of two brothers • Teacher • 1839 Governess Novelist Pen name Currer Bell • From Haworth to London • Her father tries to bridge the gap • Father curate • Enlightened • Rousseau • Freedom • Culture • Library Bunyan (life as a progress from sin to salvation) Milton, history • Isaac Watts, Doctrine of the Passions • Journals Blackwood's Magazine • Romantic poetry • Byron (myth of romantic individualism in Jane Eyre) • She reads Life of Byron • Transgression in a small centre, cosmopolitism • Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon • Waterloo 1815 • Enthusiasm for military and literary heroes • Angria Gondal tales • Africa is the imaginary space • Love passions, alternation of grief and happiness 1833 letter to Southey • 1837 Letter from Southey, Poet laureate • Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. • To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be the less eager for celebrity. You will not seek in imagination for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this life, and the anxieties from which you must not hope to be exempted, …will bring with them but too much.... • Write poetry for its own sake; not in a spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally to obtain it. discouraged • Challenge • She writes again and explains what she does etc... • This has been considered her first public performance of a rote she was to make her own: hiding creative fire under the mask of perfect docility (Lyndall Gordon, in Marroni) childless, a young woman whose marriage prospects were restricted, and a family member who was sometimes mistaken for a servant. • "I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade;' replied Jane; "governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with something that would do." • "Something that would do!" repeated Mrs. Elton. "Aye, that may suit your humble ideas of yourself; —I know what a modest creature you are; but it will not satisfy your friends to have you taking up with anything that may offer, any inferior commonplace situation, in a family not moving in a certain circle, or able to command the elegancies of life • "You are very obliging; but as to all that, I am very indifferent; it would be no object to me to be with the rich; my mortifications, I think, would on be the greater; I should suffer more from comparison. A gentleman’s family is all that I should condition for” • "I know you, I know you; you would take up with any thing; but I shall be a little more nice, and I am sure the good Campbells will be quite on my side; with your superior talents, you have a right to move in the first circle. • There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. • l was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. • The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were— she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children!” • Beginning • Biographical novel? • My name is.... • No subjectivity • Negation of space, freedom • We is family from which she is excluded • Negation cold atmosphere • Opposition between herself and others • Unhappiness turned into happiness • relationship with physical reality • I chapter: drama of void isolation solitude not yet a room of own's own • A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close. I was shrined in double retirement. • Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. • liminal space • Unstable • Window is a possibility of escape, of a psychological and then physical escape • I returned to my book—Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape— • Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vast n sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space —that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking • The book is what saves her • A book she read at home • With engravings • Geological dimension • Humanity • Small place-infinite space no difference between herself and the world happy condition • She is part of a scenario that is all the world • Happy in my way • With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. • Discovered by John, hit and sent from the window to the dark red room • From happiness to unhappiness 4 dicembre STYLE - Point of view The rhythm of prose - Rhythm in metrical sense: pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables In prose: regular pattern? Punctuation? Sequence of units, length, separateness of bits of information Subordination implies ‘importance’ Final position tends to be that of major importance in a sentence - Anticipatory constituens: sentences have dramatic power They build up tension Loose structure: informality, easiness - Realism Conversation: coordination; hesitation pauses, false starts (normal non fluency) - Chronological sequencing Presentational sequencing - Objective/subjective description - Psychological sequence: textual order reflects the order in which impressions occur in the mind (stream of consciousness prose) Repetition: adds emotive heightening to the repeated meaning - Point of view The relationship between the implied author or some other addresser and the fiction - Irony Tone Distance: the authorial address to the reader may be distant, formal or intimate, private, colloquial - The author may direct a reader’s response to characters and events Irony: double significance arising from contrast between two points of view - Point of view The author can vary it (reducing omniscience, external view of a character) - The author assumes that he shares with his readers a common fund of knowledge and experience. Implied reader: someone who shares with the author not just background knowledge but also a set of presuppotions, sympathies, ideas about good/wrong, pleasant/unpleasant. Implied author: between the author and the text (what we read is to be ascribed to an “implied author” not to the author himself) Umberto Eco, lector in fabula Lettore modello collabora allo sviluppo della fabula Lettore empirico usa testo per contenere le proprie passioni First person narrator when the I is the main character Effect: personal relationship with the reader and bias in favour of the character Free director thought: does she still love me? Direct thought: he wondered “does she still love me?” Free indirect thought: did she still love him? Indirect thought: he wondered if she still loved him Narrative report of a thought act: he wondered about her love for him 9 dicembre Chapter 26 - I was in my own room as usual – just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, …… me or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday? - Where was her life’- Wh…… prospects? she made. Sometimes I saw her: she would come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic reply usually cut short every effort of that sort. Chapter 15 • Just then it seemed my chamber door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said “who is there?” nothing answered. I was chilled with fear. • All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down. Silence composes the nerves, and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house. I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my eat, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough. • This was a demoniac laugh—low. suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at of my bedside—or rather, crouched by my pillow: but l rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated; and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next again to cry out “Who is there?” Ch 20 • Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals, —a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan. • Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner? —what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey? Chapter 25 - “I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble heart, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child. I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms – however much its weight impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last, I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge: I hushed the scared infant in my lap; you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke” - “Now, Jane, that is all.” - “All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On walking, a gleam dazzled my eyes; I thought – oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken; it was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had to come in. there was a light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where before going to bed I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard a rustling there. I asked ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’ No one answered but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie, it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was not- no, I was sure of it and am still- it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole” - “It must have been one of them” interrupted my master. - “No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me” - “Describe it, Jane” - “it seemed, sir” - “did you see her face?” a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet or shroud I cannot tell • Jane. I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once Intemperate and unchaste. • "My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now — yet poor to hideous indigence: — a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad, her excesses had prematurely developed the germs insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick —shall I defer the rest to another day?' • 'No, sir, finish it now; I pity you — I do earnestly pity you’ • ‘Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment – with which your eyes are now almost overflowing- with which your heart is heaving- with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love, its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane, let the daughter have free advent- my arms wait to receive her”. • “My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too – a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this, but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me” • “These were vile discoveries, but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my……, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger--when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort: that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders- even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remostrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret, I repressed the deep antipathy I felt. 11 dicembre Marriage ch 23 (p. 281) Do you think I can stay to become nothing to yoy? Do you think I am an automaton? -a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup’ Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? - … - I have as much soul as you - …equal as we are! Do you doubt me Jane? Entirely You have no faith in me? Not a whit Am I a liar in your eyes? He asked passionately …you, Jane, I must have you for my own-entirely my own… Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife? I do, and if an oath is necessary to satisfy, I swear it. Then, sir, I will marry you Edward- my little wife…. Marriage ch 37 Cross-examination “You had a little cottage near the school, you say; did he ever come there to see you? Now and then Of an evening? Once or twice” A pause “How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?” Chapter 2 I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved in my desperation to go all lengths. ‘Hold her arms, Miss abbot: she’s like a mad cat’ …your young master… • it Is In vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel Just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. it Is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. Chapter 33 • “Very well” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won't ask the governess's name. I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white. • And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off: I recognized in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting the words "Jane Eyre” —the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction. •'Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre' her said "the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott. — I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias?” • “Yes—yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do.” • “Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you." • “You think so now” rejoined St. John "because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you: of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot-“ • “And you” I interrupted "cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are your?” • “Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters-- without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights." • “Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes; slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy-gorged with gold I never earned and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternization! Close union! Intimate attachment!" • “But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may be realized otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may marry” • "Nonsense, again! Marry! I don't want to marry, and never shall marry” • “That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the excitement under which you labour" • "It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money speculation. And I do not want a stranger - unsympathizing, alien, different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full fellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, If you can, repeat them sincerely. ‘Well, what did he want?’ ‘Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property and that you are now rich-merely that- nothing more.’ ‘I!-rich?’ ‘Yes, you, rich-quite an heiress’ Silence succeeded. ‘Well’ said he ‘if you had committed a murder and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast’. It is a large sum. 34 A missionary’s wife you must-shall be. You shall be mine. I claim you-not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service. (p. 428) Chapter 38 conclusion • Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said • “Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning” The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one's ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up and she did stare at me: the ladle with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire up, did for some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of time John’s knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending again over the roast, said only — • “Have you. Miss? Well. for sure!” • A short time after she pursued— “I seed you go out with the master, but I didn't know you were gone to church to be wed” and she basted away. John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear. • “I telled Mary how it would be” he said: "I knew what Mr. Edward" (John sues an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)— “I knew what M. Edward would do: and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and he's done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!” and he politely pulled his forelock. • “Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this." I put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after, I caught the words— Quotes: Pilgrim's Progress; Gospel of Mark, letter —St John- Bible • As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm, faithful and devoted, full of energy, and zeal and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern: he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me”. His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth - who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful. • St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the "good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this— • “My Master” he says "has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, —'Surely I come quickly!” and hourly I more eagerly respond, “Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!" ch.11 'Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?’ 'Not particularly so: but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.' 'Do you like him? Is he generally liked?" 'Oh, yes, the family have always been respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as far as I belonged to the Rochesters time out of mind’ ‘Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is he liked for himself?’ ‘I have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and l believe he is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never lived much amongst them’ ‘But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?’ ‘Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar, perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the world. I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much conversation with him.' 'In what way is he peculiar?’ ‘I don't know—it Is not easy to describe--nothing striking, but you feel it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary: you don't thoroughly understand him, in short—at least I don’t: but it is of no consequence, he is a very good master’ This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and mine. 16 dicembre Silas Marner Inspiration: from childish recollections of a man with a face that led her to think he was alien from the people around him. The man was a weaver like Silas. She intensifies his strangeness by adding short- sightedness and cataleptic fits. The theme of the novel is this outsider’s difficult integration into society. Silas is a member of an illiberal religious sect, at Lantern Yard. Here human relations are of secondary importance, as they rely on divine intervention. People sit on separate benches. When the weaver is falsely accused of having stolen the money church (pocketknife and bag) he loses his faith in God and humanity and moves to the small parish of Raveloe. Sarah, his fiancée marries William Dane.