Time & Society in Victorian Lit: Joyce, Wilde, Woolf, Dickens, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Time & Society in Victorian Lit: Joyce, Wilde, Woolf, Dickens e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Lavoro - Charles Dickens - reforms of the nineteenth century - welfare state For this topic, we can easily think about Charles Dickens, an author from the Victorian Age , a very complicated period with an horrible double-faced society, and his analysis of the workhouse. Charles dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and he lived a very unhappy childhood, he had to work from the beginning, when he was very young, in a factory, because his father went to prison. He wrote a lot of novel, where he depicted the Victorian society in all its squalor, and he was on the side of the poor, especially the working class, completely exploited at the time. In particular in his novel Oliver Twist, he tells about the story of this child, Oliver, an innocent boy who worked in a workhouse, that represents what the author lived in his childhood. This children has been through hell from the beginning, his mother died and he was brought up in a workhouse, later he is sold to an horrible man and when he escapes he falls into the hands of a band of pickpockets. The boy remains always incorruptible, and at his first attempt at theft he is caught. But this good man instead of punishing him and at end he adopts him. So finally he had his revenge and is finally happy, and he also discovers that he was part of a rich family and he also inherited a big fortune. In this novel he attacks the social evil of his times, and especially the workhouse, a horrible place, founded by the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness. In here the officials abused of the rights of workers, children were separated by their family, were led to starve, and most of the times they also died because of that and because of the fatigue from hard working that they were obliged to do. When that happened, it was always covered up as an incident. With this novel he wants to let the wealthier classes know about the terrible conditions of the poor, of whom they knew little if not nothing. This classes was completely forgotten by society and exploited from the evils. Although this condition of the poor, the nineteenth century was still an age of important reform, one of them prevented young children from working too much hours, based on their age, but one other created the workhouse, that revealed themselves to be different from what was expected. The first reform act has transferred voting privileges from the small boroughs to the large industrial towns. The factory act prevented children to be employed too much hours. The poor law amendment act created the workhouses. Another example of reforms for the workers happened in the first years of the twentieth century with the foundation of the Welfare state by David Lloyd George. It consisted in a series of measures such as the introduction of old-age pension for people over 70, free meals and regular medical inspections in schools. In 1911 workers were given benefits such as free medical treatment and sickness benefits. It this reforms by George were rejected. After some events there was the Parliament Act, with a system that still operates. In the same years there were mass strike of miners and railway workers, at whom Lloyd responded with unemployment benefits and health insurance for the workers of important industries. Time - dynamism and inertia - The Dubliners James Joyce was an English author who saw time as something subjective that lead to psychological changes. In his main work, “Dubliners”, a series of fifteen stories, he analyzes, from the very beginning, everything through the interiority of the characters and the effects that an outer event has on them, rather than with descriptions. In fact although he described everything in a realistic way, everything was full of symbolism, to take the readers beyond the usual aspect of life, with deeper meanings. The facts are not presented by an omniscient narrator, they are confused and explored from different points of view. In his narration he analyses different stage in people's life, first of all childhood, then youth and last majority and public life. As history progresses, everything becomes more serious, in fact he said that when we are young we don't have very important decision to make, otherwise, the more we get older, the more they become difficult and relevant for our life. He also talked about what he called “paralysis”, a condition common by people a that time, that becomes gradually more powerful. They were stuck in this condition of doubt, where they weren't aware of their condition, or they simply didn't have the courage to do something to change it, and so they accepted everything as it goes. This paralysis can be both physical, resulting from external forces, or moral, linked to religion and culture. Dubliners comes to his choice of this city, described both in a realistic way and through the characters floating mind and their interior monologue. This city was a terrible place where true feeling and compassion did not exist, he seemed to him the center of paralysis, where people even if they want to escape they can't, because they are spiritually weak. The young woman in Eveline is a perfect example, instead of choosing a new life in Buenos Aires, she decide to stay in Dublin. The main theme is the failure to find a way out of paralysis. After that there is the escape, but also that is always a failure. The stream of consciousness was a technique introduced by James Joyce, and was linked to the importance of subjectivity common between writers at the time. The interiority of the character was fundamental, and especially in the “Ulysses” there's a succession of words without punctuation or grammatical connection, exactly as they came to the characters mind they were written. It was the continuous flow of thought and sensation that characterized the human mind, showed with the interior monologue. Inertia is linked to this author because of the “paralysis”, this persistent condition of people, who weren't able to take important decision to change their condition. Limit - The strange case of Dr. JeckyIl and Mr. Hyde In this novel the protagonist goes completely against all the limit. He wanted to discover and show to the world, free the darkest side of our interiority, and so he breaks this limit, and create a potion able to release his evil side. This novel has its origini in a dream. Stevenson wrote down in his diary that he had dreamed of a man in a laboratory who swallowed a drug and turned into a different being. In the novel Mr Utterson, a lawyer friend to the scientist Dr. JekylI, starts noticing odd behaviours in his friend, and he discovers this terrifying story. These two, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, his evil side, are in a perpetual struggle. He only has two choices, live a life of crime, or Jekyll must eliminate Hyde by killing him. The suicide is the final choice. This story more that anything represents the double nature of the London of Victorian society and of all his inhabitants with their hypocrisy. That's reinforced by Jekyll's house, whose two fagades represent the two opposed sides of the same man: the rear side of his house is used by Hyde and is part of a sinister block, with no windows. He wanted to show the darkest side of all people, what the Victorian society hid behind the good fagades of their houses, their second face and personality. AIl the scenes happened at night, wrapped in darkness and fog. Stevenson has always been obsessed, his whole life, with the duality af man's nature, the good and the evil side, and was also inspired from Darwin's studies about man's kinship to the animal world. Crisi dei fondamenti - Modernism After the World War | people were completely disillusioned, soldiers back from the war reacted in different ways: sure war was something that affects you very deeply, some of them came home with a frantic search for pleasure, others where haunted by a sense of guil for the horror of the trenches, or they didn't even have a purpose in life anymore. Nothing seemed to be right or certain, it was a period full of new ideas and theory from scientists and philosopher that completely broke all the certainties of the pre-war society, destroyed the predictable universe on which Victorian society relied. Freud broke every rules with the past with his new ideas. He thought that the unconscious affected our behaviour, and the fact that our actions could be related to irrational forces that he couldn't study and explain was disturbing. But he found also a new method of investigation of our mind through dreams. There was also Einstein with his theory of the relativity: everything was subjective, also time and space. All of that led to the Modernism that was an international movement which involved literature, music, visual art and the cinema. After the horror of the war people were left with disillusionment and fragmentation and a big desire to break with the past and find new fields of investigation such as urbanisation, technology, speed and mass communication. Writers started using elements from both classical and new cultures in their works, in fact past was considered as a modifiable source that they could reshape in their own personal way. Absorbing also contemporary ascendancy coming from abroad, English modern literature was becoming cosmopolitan. There are some features that all artistic form of Modernism had in common for example: ® The intentional distortion of shapes as in the cubist paintings of Picasso ®* The breaking down of of limitation in space and time * The emphasis of subjectivity, the omniscient narrator was completely abandoned and new techniques such as the stream of consciousness arrived. * The importance of the unconscious as well as the conscious life, if not more. The war poets Many man during those years volunteered for military services, war was seen as an adventure taken for noble ends. But what they lived in the war was sure not something you easily forget. They lived through hell, rain and mud, bodies of their friends, bombing. Usually soldiers used to write improvised verses that were rough, genuine and obscene, and did not reach people in England. But this poem that represented modern warfare in a realistic way awoke the conscience of the reader back home. Rupert Brooke was one of them. He said “war is clean and cleansing”. War was idealised, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and death was considered a reward. His poem show a sentimental attitude, inexistent in other war poets, because he died and didn't see enough. He became famous and was seen as the symbol of the “young romantic hero” who inspired patriotism. The soldier ————— Wilfred Owen was an English teacher in France and when he visited a hospital for the wounded he decided to enlist. He assisted to his Firestone action in France and then injured was sent to an hospital. Here he met Siegfried sassoon that encouraged him to continue to write. He was killed in German. His poem are painful with the account of gas casualties, man who are clinically alive but their bodies has been destroyed. With his “pararhymes”, where the consonants are the same in two different words, he create an atmosphere suitable for any situation in which people suffer. Rational and irrational - Charles Dickens - Hard Times: Mr. Grandgrind Mr. Grandgrid is the protagonist of the novel Hard times by Dickens, this character is the exact representation of the rationality that was more and more spreading through Victorian society. That's exactly what Dickens wanted to show with this work, the danger of this attitude, to denounce the gap between the poor and the rich and criticise the materialism and narrow-mindedness of utilitarianism that was spreading at the time. Mr. Grandgrind was a man who founded a school, of which he was the educator, and there he teaches children, even his two children, completely repressing their emotions and their feelings, considering only fact and statistic important. He believed that the human nature can be measured and governed entirely by reasons, and with this philosophy he turned children into little machines, that behaved to such rules. That represented what was doing the society at the time in England. Children had to behave like soldiers, and he created the perfect factory employee, easily exploitable and easy to control. Dickens primary aim was to show the danger of this teaching method called “object lesson”, in fact at the end of the novel, Mr Grandgrind understand the damage he has cause to this children ad give up his philosophy. Personal thoughts about my freedom, my school. Too much rationality is never good, emotion and feelings are a big and important part of human being, and they have to be taken in consideration. Mr Grandgrind for me represent the worst teachers ever, that has no bounding with their students, a toxic teacher that only thinks about notions and fact, with no toleration and consideration of our feelings. Man and nature - Emily Bronté: Wuthering Heights In this novel from Emily Brontè nature is present from the very beginning. In fact the whole story is settled between the moors where there are two houses in contrast: Wuthering heights and Trushcross Grange. The first one is severe and gloomy, based on local tradition and custom, brutal in aspect and atmosphere. The second one of the bourgeois, reflected middle class life, is based on stability, kindness and respectability. The principle of storm and energy opposed to calm and settled assurance. The wild natural landscape represents also the violent passion of the characters, constantly present through the whole novel that we'll see. In fact the story goes around two people, Catherine and Heathcliff, her half-brother, from Wuthering Heights. They got on very well from the beginning, the moors were their safe heaven in the first part of their story, when they were young. It was a place that represented the rejection of the society and all its rule, in fact Catherine was a rebellious woman, with a Wilde and romantic nature. They promised theirselves that they would stay together forever, but that didn't happen. One day Catherine was forced to stay at Trushcross Grange for one night, and she met Edgar and Isabella, and seeing their quiet and refined way of life, she choose to marry Edgar when she proposed to her, breaking the pact with Heathcliff, just because he was socially inferior. Heathcliff heard that, and that changed him completely. He disappeared for three years, and when he came back he was another person, rich, awesome and ready for a revenge. He married Isabella and treated her horribly, like a servant. He got his revenge, becoming owners of both houses, but that didn't make him happy at all. That led him to the acknowledge that he wasn't able to love anyone apart from Catherine, in fact when she died he was broken, he missed her and couldn't think about anything else. After some time also Heathcliff died, and there were rumours between people that there were two human ghosts wondering through the moors, so always in the nature, holding hands, and they though they were Catherine and Heathcliff finally together. Freedom - Charlotte Bronté - Jane Eyre In this novel we can say that freedom is a fundamental concept, and this represent also what the writer thought of that horrible Victorian society where she lived. In fact this is the story of a strong woman, Jane Eyre, who lived a very difficult childhood, with her aunt that treated her like a servant, and also at schools didn't have a great time. When she grows up she becomes a teacher at that school, but then she accept a job as a governess. There the aim of the writer was to criticise the society, that gave so little possibility of work and of improving their position to women, with that social class system so unequal. Moreover although she is refined and with educated manner, she is treated like a servant. There at Thornfield, where she worked, she falls in love with the owners, Mr. Rochester, but when she discover that he already had a mad woman, hidden in the attic, although she really loved him, he refused to marry him, because she lied to him, and she would have not let her moral integrity go away like that. In fact for her marriage was not simply a social compromise, but a relationship between equals. She wanted to be treated well and respectfully, and loved as a human being worth of value. She always act following her conviction. At this point she escape from that house and goes to her cousins house, where another man proposed, but she refused again for the same reasons. She was able his whole life to gain an economic independence and self-respect, she would have not throw that and all his belief on marriage away like that. Time passes and she could not ignore the fact that she missed Mr. Rochester, so she was about to come back to Thornfiel when she ears about the fire, so she goes at his other house, and they finally marry. With the fire he had lost his sight, but when their first child was born it comes back, and they finally live together and happily.