victorian age: dickens, stevenson, hardy, wilde, tennyson, browning, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica victorian age: dickens, stevenson, hardy, wilde, tennyson, browning e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! the VICTORIAN AGE The Victorian age was a complicated and eventful age, during which a lot of things that changed even our lives happened. It was an age of lights and shades, of contradictions, as well described in Charles Dickens’ “a tale of two cities”, written in 1859. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 and died in 19O9, she even was the empress of India. She was not the direct heir to the throne, since she was the niece of the previous king William IV, but she seized the throne because he had no children. She came from James I and so she had German origins. She married her cousin Albert on the 1Oth February 184O and they had a lot of children, even if she didn’t like to be pregnant. On the wedding day, she wore a white dress, entirely made by British manufacturers. This influenced fashion a lot, because previously other colors were worn on wedding days and it was a complete novelty. In addition, it was also a way to encourage British manufacturers. Even the current English monarchs descend from her. Queen Victoria restored the reputation of the monarchy, dimmed by her royal uncles and shaped a new role for the royal family, reconnecting with the public through civic duties and a profound understanding of her constitutional role. From the very moment she was crowned in Westminster Abbey, she was regarded as a symbol of her time. The victorian age is a period of: ➢ rapid economic expansion ➢ industrialisation ➢ technological innovation ➢ naval supremacy, which had started with Elizabeth I, yet finds its climax under queen Victoria’s reign ➢ colonial expansion, which reflects the double identity of the age, since colonialism was positive for Britain, that was extremely rich (it had a domestic grace product that was 12 times the ones of Italy, Germany and the american colonies) but on the other hand it was negative for the colonies of course ➢ political development, because the queen reigned but didn’t rule, therefore the parliament and ministers made decisions while she stepped back a little Queen Victoria came to the throne during the early, frenetic phase of the world's first industrial revolution, which brought with it new markets, a consumer boom and greater prosperity for most of the propertied classes. In addition, the old agricultural economy was completely replaced by themanufacturing industry and international trade. As a result, Britain became the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. However, wealth was also the result of material exploitation of its colonies and of the lowly paid workers. The emblem of this teeming and burgeoning (prosperous) economy was the great exhibition held in 1851 in London. Prince Albert believed that free trade would provide universale happiness throughout the world and saw it as a religion. In 1849 an architect shared with him the project for a cathedral of free trade, a temple in the heart of London, to exhibit art and inventions from every nation. The aim of 1 this was to project the majesty of Great Britain across the world and to emphasise the fact that we are all interconnected. Victoria shared his enthusiasm and appointed him president of a world’s commision to organize the first international trade fair. However, some people objected that the exhibition would have brought lots of foreigners to London and that would have meant diseases could have been brought to the city. Secondly, they also attacked the place where the exhibition was to be held because some trees were to be cut down to make room for it. As a matter of fact, the real target of this attack was prince Albert himself because they feared it could represent a threat against the established order. Joseph Packstone was a gardener and was the typical victorian entrepreneur, because he firmly believed in himself and had an imagination beyond the limits. He made a preliminary sketch of a giant greenhouse where the exhibition could be held. Prince Albert appreciated his project because it was quick to be builded and didn’t need the trees to be cut down. In the autumn of 1851, the greenhouse was erected in just 9 weeks. It was opened by the queen and prince Albert on the 1st May of 1851 and immediately became known as the crystal palace. The exhibition convinced people that progress could provide a golden future not only for rich people but for them all and resulted in an increasing sense of patriotism as well as in the belief that the British could now conquer the world. Free trade was a form of Imperialism because it was not possible to oppose it. During this period there were a lot of innovations in technology: ➢ Both industry and transport completely revolutionised. In particular the invention of locomotives and steam engines changed people's outlook on life, because transportation changed the perception of time. ➢ The development of railways was fostered. ➢ Communications improved thanks to a more efficient mail service and towards the end of the century the invention of the telephone. ➢ Printing became cheaper because printing machines were invented. Some of the great inventions of the 19th century were: ➢ Locomotive - the first journey took place on the 21st February 1814 and it took two ours to cover 9,5 miles with an average speed of 2,4 miles per hour ➢ Telegraph - on the 25th July 1837 it was invented the first electrical telegraph and later on also the morse code appeared in the USA ➢ Photograph - in 1826 n France was shot the first permanent photograph of a camera image ➢ Typewriter - invented in 1829 in the USA, also known as typographer, while in 1867 we have the first modern typewriter Also on the political side we have improvements, because Victoria reigned constitutionally and thus she could avoid the storm of revolution which spread all over Europe in 1848. Furthermore, her reign was characterised by great Prime Ministers ➢ some belonging to the Tories (Conservatives) such as Peel and Disraeli (it is thanks to Robert Peele that we have the metropolitan police in London and that’s why they are called the bobbies) ➢ others belonging to theWhigs (now called Liberals) such as Palmerston and Gladstone The two parties had different views and offered different solutions to issues. 2 Novels were made of episodes, each of which ended with an end-cliffer, they had a long plot because of the many subplots and had numerous characters. Many victorian novels can be classified as sensational novels because they stick to certain devices: ➢ suspense ➢ expectation ➢ melodrama ➢ mystery ➢ formulamake them laugh, make them cry, make them wait The most important novel features were: ➢ a lot of public readings, sometimes held by the author himself ➢ people wanted to be amused and entertained but also instructed, therefore novels had a didactic aim and the author hadmoral aim and social responsibility ➢ novels reflected social changes When we talk about victorian novels, we also have to talk about realism: ➢ As a matter of fact, authors depicted society as they saw it, not as it was anyways. ➢ Therefore, even if the story they wrote was a fictional story, it had to be plausible. ➢ On top of that, novels talked about the evils brought about by the industrial revolution but just to create awareness of the vices of society and ask the upper classes to find a solution, not as a harsh criticism. ➢ So we can say novels weremeans to correct the vices and weaknesses of society. The narrator in Victorian novels is an omniscient narrator who is never detached, yet he provides comments and shares the same dominant moral view as his readers. He also underlines what’s right or wrong and highlights which characters are good examples to be followed and which not. On the other hand, the setting in place is usually the city, seen as the symbol of civilization but also of anonymous lives and lost identities. Victorian writers gave a portrait of man in society and of individual motives for human action. Therefore, men were no longer depicted in contact with nature. We find a lot of different types of Victorian novels: ➢ social problem novels (involving the working classes) ➢ domestic novels (upper-middle class) ➢ historical novels ➢ adventure novels ➢ imperialistic novels ➢ naturalistic novels ➢ nonsense novels Victorian poets can be divided into two groups: ➢ early victorians, who shred the same view as their readers and therefore were optimistic (Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bronte sisters - Emily, Anne and Charlotte) ➢ later victorians, who had a pessimistic outlook on society (Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson) 5 Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. He had an unhappy childhood: he had to work in a factory in London to stick labels on bottles of blacking already at the age of 12, because his father went to prison for debts. He continued working even when the whole family was sent to prison. At 15 he became an office boy at a lawyer’s. Later on, he studied shorthand and became firstly a reporter in the House of Common and then a newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz. In 1836 Sketches by ‘Boz’, articles about London people and scenes, were published in installments. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, who was the daughter of one of his editors. After having ten children, Charles and Catherine separated in 1858, because he was in love with an actress. He went to the USA, where he advocated international copyright and fought for a copyright law, because he was really popular yet he didn’t earn any money from the selling of his works. He died in 1870 and was buried in Poets corner in WestMinster Abbey He believed in writing as a mean to fix problems and he wanted to make people interested in serious topics yet in a funny way, through racy plots, happy endings and a chatty style. Long story short, he was a supporter of education via entertainment. He always remembered his suffering and understood the precariousness of life, therefore he wanted to make his readers feel sympathetic as well. On the other hand, he wanted to convey the message that you could still enjoy the comforts of life, even if you minded important issues. In particular, he campaigned against: ➢ the fault of the legal system ➢ the horrors of factory employment ➢ the appalling living conditions in slums ➢ corruption in government However, he didn’t want to encourage discontent, but tomake the ruling classes aware. He understood that to change things, a wide circulation of his works was necessary and as a result he also cared about the economic aspect. Starting with Oliver Twist, Dickens novels increasingly focused on social criticism. Novel after novel, the writer faced issues like the consequences of the Industrial Revolution on the lives of the poor, the living and working conditions of the working classes: education, child labour, the legal system and crime. Dickens' purpose was to denounce the social evils of the time and to make his readers aware of them. He believed in the ethical and political potential of literature and, like other writers of the time who shared in this belief, he challenged the popular Victorian idea that some people were more prone to vice than others, claiming instead that people were forced into prostitution and crime by poverty, hunger and life in a corrupt society. Dickens' social world included people from all walks of life: gentlemen, lawyers, industrialists, tradesmen, teachers, shopkeepers and labourers. Although he was socially involved, personally he was a disaster. Dickens wrote very copiously and quickly generally under pressure both from his publishers and through his own need for money, and the episodic nature of his novels always guaranteed a succession of moments of great tension. The effect of serial publication (a publisher's device to increase sales) on the structure, tone and content of the novels was considerable. Technically, 6 Dickens needed to maintain interest from one episode to another. He did so by ending each episode with a dramatic turn of events that provoked suspense in the reader, who would naturally buy the next issue to learn how the story continued. This accounts for the abundance of characters, of climaxes and of improbable coincidences in the plots and subplots as a whole. Dickens also had to answer his readers' tastes (often inclined to sentimentality) which accounts for Dickens' indulgence inmelodrama in many of his works. He used to hold public readings. Together with Chaucer and Shakespeare he is considered the third father of the English language, since he invented a lot of words. His characters were often depicted as caricatures. That’s to say he exaggerated and ridiculed particular social characteristics of the middle, lower and lowest classes. On the other hand, female characters are usually portrayed as weak characters. On the whole, he was on the side of the poor, the outcast, the working class. The protagonists of his autobiographical novels became the symbols of an exploited childhood and they are all set against the background of social issues: ➢ Oliver Twist (1838) ➢ David Copperfield (1850) ➢ Little Dorrit (1857) ➢ Bleak House (1853) ➢ Hard Times (1854) ➢ Great Expectations (1861) Dickens’ characters usually embody particular vices or virtues rather than as real-life people with psychological depth. This said, Dickens' characters are among the most memorable in English literature. Even without reading his novels, most people know about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge (who gave his name to Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge), or the orphan Oliver Twist. Some of these characters' names have become part of the English language. “Fagin”, from the villain in Oliver Twist, is now synonymous with thief, while a “Micawber”, from a character in David Copperfield, now stands for an irresponsibly optimistic, innocent and good-natured fellow. These and a myriad more make up the unforgettable world of Charles Dickens, all of whose characters effectively reproduced the changing face of Britain in the Victorian Age. Dickens was fascinated by urban life and many of his novels were set in London, depicted at three different social levels: ➢ the parochial world of the workhouses its inhabitants belong to the lower-middle classes; ➢ the criminal world murderers, pickpockets living in squalid slums; ➢ the Victorian middle class respectable people believing in human dignity. However, there were exceptions. Hard Times was set in Coketown, a typical grim town probably inspired by Preston, in the industrial north of England. Oliver Twist's London was described as a maze of foggy, poorly-lit dirty streets abounding in pickpockets and criminals, where the poor lived in appalling conditions. Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel. The 18th-century realistic, upper-middle-class was replaced by one of the lower orders. He depicted Victorian society in all its variety, its richness and its squallor. 7 revealing this information to Rose and Mr Brownlow. Sikes dies as he is trying to escape arrest. Fagin is caught and sentenced to be hanged andMonks dies in prison. Oliver, who now knows his true identity and receives his share of his father's inheritance, is adopted by Mr Brownlow. Oliver (whose name “twist” recalls how he is all the time “twisted around by circumstances or by the people he comes into contact with”) can finally enjoy a peaceful life in the countryside, free from the cruelty of the workhouse and the wickedness of Fagin's criminal gang. Charles Dickens himself had had personal experience of poverty and child labour and through Oliver Twist expressed his anger at the living conditions of the poor and the iniquity of the Poor Law of 1834, which dictated that public charity was to be administered through workhouses. In Victorian England the wealthy aristocratic class did not have to work for a living while the growing middle class saw hard work as a moral virtue. Poverty was seen as a sin and under the terms of the Poor Law, poor people could only receive assistance if they lived and worked in workhouses. Conditions were as harsh as possible in order to discourage the poor from relying on public charity. Families were divided and children forced to do hard physical work and severely undernourished. The only alternative to the suffering and humiliation of life in the workhouse. where the hypocritical class saw themselves as paragons of Christian virtue as they gave charity to the poor, was a life of crime or prostitution. Against this background young Oliver stands out as a child with a pure heart and a determined spirit. His 'rags to riches' story finally leads him to his proper place in society and a comfortable life in a country house. This is not the transformation of a young criminal into a gentleman, and no similar is offered to the other poor characters in the novel, all of whom meet death violently or redemption is through ovil justice. Oliver's happy ending comes as a result of the discovery of his true identity. Dickens' merciless description of the cruelty and hypocrisy of Victorian England does not lead to any reform or change in the Victorian mindset. Oliver simply returns to his rightful status. The misery that surrounds Oliver stands in stark contrast to the examples of individual love and true charity that lead to his salvation. His involvement in crime with Fagin's gang brings him into contact first with Mr Brownlow, who takes him home and looks after him, and then with Mrs Maylie and Rose, who likewise nurse him back to health after he is wounded attempting to burgle their house. Coincidence is stretched to the limits of credibility as both objects of Oliver's criminal activity turn out to be close to him: Mr Brownlow had been Oliver's father's best friend, while Rose, we discover, was Oliver's mother's sister. Writing copiously and rapidly as his work appeared in monthly instalments, Dickens bitterly criticised the conditions of Victorian England but offered his readers a fairy tale happy ending to this story of evil, wickedness, poverty, misery and hypocrisy. I want some more (chapter 2) We are in the dining hall of a workhouse. The atmosphere is solemn and the moment of eating seems to be a mess. Oliver finds the courage to ask for more food than he has been given. He has been chosen to do so by the other children, by casting lots, therefore we have the idea that one’s destiny is based on good or bad luck. The reaction to his request is a general feeling of wonder and astonishment: the master hits him with the ladle and calls the beadle. Everybody thinks Oliver is going to be hanged, while in the end he is offered to anyone who wanted an apprentice, in addition to five pounds. 10 We can consider Oliver a hero, because he goes against the rules of the workhouse. The narrator here is a third-person obtrusive narrator, in fact he interferes and expresses his point of view. For example, he feels pity for the children and there is a net contrast between the way he describes the children and the masters. A very critical moment (chapter 3) The setting here is a law court. As a punishment for his crime, Mr Bumble wants Oliver to become apprentice as a chimney sweeper to Mr Gamfield, a bad, horrible man. To do this, Mr Bumble needs the written approval of a magistrate. The half-blind judge who is about to sign the papers, while looking for his inkstand, happens to notice Oliver's terrified expression. He cannot ignore it, so he sends Oliver back to the workhouse. It is only by chance that Oliver is spared the dreadful fate of becoming a chimney sweeper. The fact that Oliver has the courage to display his point of view in the face of the magistrate’s routine like administration of justice, strengthens the idea of Oliver as a boy who can fight against social authority and injustice and speak for himself. As far as style is concerned, the opening sentence of the passage enhances the feeling of suspense. The passage is also an example of Dickens' irony: ➢ Oliver has to thank the magistrate's blindness for his narrow escape; ➢ The magistrate is half blind; ➢ The idea that children can be traded as goods. He uses irony to criticise the commodification of children and the blindness of magistrates. HARD TIMES The novel is set in a fictional town called “Coketown”, based on Preston in the north of England, where Thomas Gradgrind, an inflexible advocate of “Utilitarianism” brings up his two children, Louisa and Tom, to believe in hard facts and to reject any form of imagination and enjoyment. As a supporter of Utilitarianism, Gradgrind despises the idea that love (another “useless feeling”) should be at the basis of marriage, and has his daughter marry Josiah Bounderby, a factory owner who is 3O years older than her. Louisa accepts, partly to help her brother Tom, who is employed by Bounderby. Louisa's marriage proves to be an extremely unhappy one, and she runs back to her family. Old Mr Gradgrind begins to understand his mistakes and protects Louisa from her husband. Meanwhile Louisa's brother Tom, who has grown into a dishonest, selfish man, steals money from Bounderby's bank. Stephen, an innocent hard-working “hand” in Bounderby's factory, is unjustly accused of the theft and eventually dies as a consequence. Gradgrind and Louisa, realising that Tom is responsible for the theft, finally succeed in getting him out of the country and away from justice. At the end of the story we find Gradgrind a changed man. He has given up his philosophy of facts and devotes himself to helping the poor. Tom repents his actions but dies without managing to see his family again. Bounderby, the real villain of the story, dies alone in the streets of Coketown, while Louisa, who never marries again, finds happiness in the love of her friends and family. Hard Times belongs to the mature period of Dickens’ production in which he turned to sharper criticism of the evils of Victorian England. The two main themes of the novel are the plight of 11 young characters growing up in a hostile adult world on the one hand, and the hard and the hardships of the working class and the terrible contrasts between the conditions of life of rich and poor in industrialised, urban Victorian England on the other. From the point of view of education, Dickens fiercely attacked Utilitarianism, a materialistic philosophy that encouraged reform and struggled to extend education to all, but at the same time seemed to exclude aspects of education, such as imagination and the full development of the individual. Utilitarianism is good because it can grant happiness to the largest number of people, but it has as darkside the exploitation of people. In the new schools, often established by philanthropists such as Gradgrind, pupils were crowded in huge schoolrooms, where they became numbers rather than real people, where they were forced into conformity through harsh discipline, and where they were discouraged from expressing their own personalities. This was in accord with the need to supply skilled but obliging workers to the new factory system that had come about with the Industrial Revolution. It is this kind of uniformity that Dickens attacks, both in education and in the architecture of the new industrial towns. Nothing but facts Mr Gradgrind explains here his firm belief in the power and importance of educating young people using nothing but facts. As a result, the children are just passive learners and they just have to learn what they are taught and develop as machines which do what they are told to. The name of the protagonist (Gradgrind) is an example of a compound wordmade of Grad (-grade, gradient) and Grind (to crush, to pulverise). These two words hint at the fact that he crushes children. As far as I am concerned he is not stimulating at all as a teacher, and makes the students always pervaded with a sense of fear. In the first paragraph the word “facts” is repeated five times. This creates a hammering effect, which makes the listener feel intimidated. In the second paragraph, on the other hand, the most recurring adjective used in the description of the speaker is “square”, which is repeated, again, five times. This obsessive repetition enforces the idea conveyed by the adjective. The narrator here is a third person intrusive narrator. Coketown This passage is the description of Coketown, the fictional name of the town where the novel is set. Coketown is an ugly noisy polluted industrial town, where people never have fun: they all have the same job, go to church and are probably often drunk. Buildings are all alike and the inscriptions in town have all the same font as well. Dickens compares the city to the painted face of a savage and compares with a metaphor the smoke that pollutes the city to interminable serpents, while the steam-engine is compared to an elephant. All these animals belong to the jungle, which gives the idea of chaos, a place where you lose yourself. Through this animal imagery, Dickens wants to convey the idea that the city is alive. The most repeated words in the passage are “fact” and “same”, which convey the idea of lack of imagination and uniformity. Also the bricks of which the city is made, symbolise the efficiency and the monotony of the city. The narrator here is a third person omniscient, explicitly interactive narrator. The definition of a horse Mr Gradgrind considers Sissy Jupe, daughter of a man who belongs to horse riding, not able to give the definition of a horse, just because she doesn’t give the definition she is expected to, as 12 man's psychological and moral nature. He combines Gothic motifs with elements of the emerging genre of detective fiction (unsolved crimes, scattered clues, mystery and suspense). Stevenson was a real craftsman, who showed his ability in creating the story, also because he was really concerned not only for the language and plot, but also for the psychological realism. It presents the features of a typical crime story: ➢ crime ➢ “detective” ➢ scattered clues which lead to the solution ➢ various threads pulled together at the end of the book The title itself hints at the fact that we are in front of a political and medical case. Good and evil civilisation and savagery are presented in the story's protagonist, a man with two identities. The scholar Dr Jekyll escapes from his rational, moral identity with a potion that transforms him into the depraved, irrational, evil Mr Hyde, allowing him to taste the fascination of a world of instinct and sensuality. Jekyll's fascination with the primitive duality of man, leads him to experiment with dividing himself. Hyde is responsible for a series of heinous crimes but escapes detection as a second dose of the potion transforms Jekyll's monstrous other self back into the respectable doctor Jekyll's growing remorse can do little as he finds it increasingly difficult to free himself from his evil other, Mr Hyde. At a certain point, Hyde slowly takes over and Jekyll is not able to repress him anymore. This horror story ends with the suicide of Hyde, who can no longer escape justice, and with the discovery of a letter written by Dr Jekyll to his friend and lawyer, Utterson, which finally reveals the whole mystery of the double identity. At the end of the story, some questions are still unanswered, as typical for later Victorians: ➢ What happened to the good part? ➢ At the moment of birth, is man just good or a mixture of good and evil? ➢ Is Hyde an animalistic trogodill or just the result of instincts? ➢ Is Hyde actually the original authentic nature of man which has been repressed but not destroyed by the weight of civilization and norms? ➢ Is Hyde the result of the oppression of natural impulses and drives? ➢ Banishing evil to the unconscious mind in an attempt to achieve perfect goodness can result in the development of a Mr Hyde-type aspect to one's character. ➢ Is evil stronger than good? Dr Jekyll appears to be the embodiment of the respectable Victorian gentleman, who should: ➢ be reserved, formal and known for his charitable works ➢ have a family, the larger, the better ➢ be hardworking, as according to puritanism and earn his living by working, since success was seen as reward ➢ have a big house, with servants and carriage ➢ go to church on sundays ➢ have good manners ➢ carry out charitable activity ➢ keep up appearances Also physically, he is a handsome and agreeable man. Hyde, on the other hand, is the embodiment of the uncivilised part of humanity that “hides” beneath the formal bands of civilisation. He is: 15 ➢ small, pale, hairy, deformed, smaller, younger and extremely ugly ➢ amoral, beastly, violent, cruel, remorseless and evil Taken alone, the two characters of Jekyll and Hyde do not appear very interesting, but the two are one single character. Hyde is Jekyll's secret alter ego, it is Jekyll who “creates” Mr Hyde because he likes being bad without paying the consequences. Hyde is his secret nature and in the end, it is Hyde who takes over. The character's duality can be interpreted as a critique of Victorian morals, in which appearances were all important and everything was fine as long as corruption and vice remained in the private sphere and unknown to the world outside. Most respectable men had in fact a double life, and prostitution, gambling and drinking were popular passtimes. This is the so-called “Victorian compromise”: the Victorian society, beyond that gold appearance, had a kind of dark side, as well represented by Mr Hyde. On the one hand, we have progress, success, reforms, money and political stability, but on the other hand we also have poverty and injustice. The Victorian compromise can as well be considered as a series of behavioural rules that the Victorians wanted to adopt to represent a life that was the only way they had to achieve perfection. For sure, it was, however, hypocritical. Family life was dominated by bourgeois ideals: man was the one who decided, while women had to obey. The key role for women was taking care of the family and dealing with servants, despite the fact that they could manage some money. Adulterus, prostitutes and separated women were considered to be “fallen women”. The dual relationship between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde seems to be a direct reference to the literary theory of the so-called “doppelgänger”. This German term, literally meaning “look alike” refers to the protagonist's alter ego, who can be good or, more frequently, evil and negative. In Stevenson's novel, which many critics consider the best example of the doppelganger novel. Mr Hyde can be actually considered Dr Jekyll's evil double: the two are perceived as two discrete entities, but belong to the same individual and embody two opposite sides of it. Their relationship is mutually dependent and very ambiguous: even though Jekyll disapproves of Hyde's mischiefs, he is deeply attracted by his 'dark side, which gives visibility to an aspect of the self that Jekyll and the entire Victorian society have always tried to hide or repress. It is true that according to the book man is the one who embodies both good and evil, but at the beginning of the story we know that Dr Jekyll has always been obsessed with the idea of evil inside his soul. He has always tried to repress his instincts and passions, because he is aware of the fact that inside there is the evil part, so even before the transformation, there is the evil part in Dr Jekyll and he has always been obsessed with the idea of separating this evil part. Moreover, this implies the idea that our mind is not a solid, well defined block, but it has many layers, that many times are in contrast with one another. Overall, we can say the most important themes in the novel are: ➢ Doppelgänger ➢ Duality of Human Nature ➢ the problem of evil within man ➢ double life ➢ strike at the core of the Victorian society The duality of human nature, expressed as an inner struggle between good and evil, is not the only contrast expressed in the novel, we also find the dualities between: 16 ➢ human versus animal ➢ civilization versus barbarism ➢ appearance and reality ➢ public and private ➢ failure to accept this tension results in evil, or barbarity, or animal violence, being projected onto others. The structure is quite complicated, also because of the combination of realism and symbolism. We have no real detective but Mr Patterson, who is so interested in the case, that starts to collect clues. We don’t even have a single omniscient narrator, yet a shift of the narrative point of view between four different narrators:The first is Mr Utterson's. We learn that he is suspicious about a certain Mr Hyde, Dr Jekyll's mysterious friend. ➢ His point of view is supplemented by other narrators: ○ a short account written by Dr Lanyon, a friend of Jekyll's who witnesses his transformation into Hyde, ○ the maid's account of Hyde's murder of Sir Carew, a respectable Member of Parliament ○ and finally Jekyll's letter with his own confession. However, for most of the novel we basically follow Mr Utterson's limited point of view and we only learn the full story when he does. The effect is to keep us in the dark, and to make us share Utterson's bewilderment and horror as the story proceeds. Mr Utterson is clearly not a man of strong passions or sensibilities, he speaks very little, and he is also “lovable,” and dull and proper though he may be, he has many friends. Utterson represents the perfect Victorian gentleman. He consistently seeks to preserve order and decorum, does not gossip, and guards his friends’ reputations as though they were his own. The setting is London, its grimy alleys and dark corners in the fog. Most of the action occurs at night because that is the time when Hyde operates. Night and fog are symbols of obscurity, symbolising Dr Jekyll's dark side as embodied by Mr Hyde. Even Dr Jekyll's house has a symbolic meaning, representing the duality of his owner. The front door which Dr Jekyll uses has an elegant façade, while the rear door used by Hyde is in a sinister building with no windows. The passageway leading to Jekyll's laboratory is a passage between two worlds: the world of respectability and the world of evil. A strange accident This excerpt is taken from Chapter 1, 'The Story of the Door".Mr Utterson is taking a walk with his friend Mr Enfield, across London. While walking past a door in a side street, Mr Enfield remembers a strange accident he witnessed some time before and tells Mr Utterson about it. The accident happened at about 3 o’clock on a black winter morning in the suburbs of London and involved a misshapen man, who crashed into a little girl and literally trampled her. Mr Enfield caught the man and did not let him go: he brought him back to the little girl and to the crowd of people who were surrounding her. The crowd saw the captured man: he was so deformed and ugly that they immediately started to hate him. The narrator himself, who here is internal intrusive, as in a witness’ tale, compares the man to a juggernaut, an Indian God symbol of cruelty. 17 ➢ He is a regionalist because his novels are mainly set in Wessex, a partly real and a partly dream country. This ideal setting is without a doubt a unifying element and not only gives a unity of scene, but is also a link between past and present. Furthermore, he underlines the contrast between old agricultural society and modern industrial life, through the description of rural landscapes and natural environment. ➢ He is a romantic as well, because nature plays a key role in his production. Nature is an essential part not only as a background and setting in place, but also as expression of passions. Moreover, it is not seen as a mother and a friend, but as a hostile power, indifferent to man’s destiny, that gives no consolation nor joy. ➢ Hardy is also considered a Victorian realist, who criticised the religious and moral codes of Victorian England, especially questions relating to marriage and education. As the poet Philip Larkin noted, Hardy believed that these produced suffering or sadness. His stories are full of convincing, beautiful descriptions of the English countryside and powerful language. In particular, we find detailed descriptions of natural elements with precise information on: ○ country tasks ○ seasons ○ crops ○ festivity These descriptions give a sense of place and an accurate and affectionate portrait of rural life and the vanishing agricultural world, returning dignity to agricultural labour, which is not seen as idyllic or exotic. Furthermore, the language reflects the different social classes. ➢ Lastly, he is a naturalist. Naturalism was a new form of Realism, born in France and influenced by new scientific discoveries, through which later Victorians attacked superficial optimism and illusory self-confidence. While Realism emphasized the description of life as it is lived and focused on individuals and experiences in social settings. On the other hand Naturalism focused onmore brutal aspects of existence, in particular: ○ the clash between man and environment ○ between dreams and fulfillment ○ between reality and illusion As a result, it had to present “case histories” and not the relationship between man and his inner world, while the one betweenman, and the external reality and environment. According to the principles of naturalism, the poet had to have the detached precision of a scientist and apply scientific methods to literature, record events, photograph reality and be impersonal and objective, avoiding personal intrusion and without passing judgement and commenting. The main principles of naturalism are: ○ Man is alone in an uncaring universe and nature is apathetic ○ The universe is governed by the laws of nature, that’s to say: ■ Natural Selection 20 ■ Cycles of Nature ○ Man is at the whim of forces that he can’t control The main themes of naturalism are: : ○ Survival ■ the difficulty of being alive ■ the attempt to overcome the odds ○ the “brute within” instincts and the conflict to overcome man’s shortcomings ○ Violence ○ Heredity and environment affecting the individual (principles of determinism) As a result, Hardy rejected the idea of a providential father-god and victorian optimism, while he accepted a pessimistic vision of man, seen as an insignificant insect in the hands of a malicious force, a powerless victim of an obscure fate, which shows its presence through accidents and coincidences. Therefore, man has to struggle with impersonal forces both outside and inside him, which control man’s life, because an event or an action sets in motion a whole series of related events and coincidences in which man is inexorably trapped as if in some implacable mechanism. Hardy was deeply influenced by determinism, that’s to say a philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes and man’s destiny is controlled from the beginning by heredity and the environment. These deterministic views, annihilate the power of free will and deprive man of all responsibility for his actions, since human behaviour is the product of predetermined instincts. As a result, all men fulfil their destiny without finding any help in society or in love and they are doomed to failure. Society oppresses and destroys men and frustrates the individual striving for goodness or happiness, while love leads to unhappiness. TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES Tess of the D'Urbervilles, one of Hardy's most popular novels, was published with the subtitle “A Pure Woman”. The story recounts the tragic life of young Tess, who becomes the victim of the men she meets. Tess, daughter of poor peasants, is sent by her family to claim kinship with the rich cousins Stoke-D'Urbervilles. Working for the D'Urberville family, she is raped by Alec D'Urberville in the woods one night. She becomes pregnant and returns home to have her baby, who dies soon after birth. Tess then finds a new job as a milkmaid and meets Angel Clare. She falls in love with Angel and accepts his proposal of marriage. Tess thinks that Angel should know about her past and writes him a note which she slips under his door. Unfortunately, the note finishes under the carpet and Angel never receives it. On their wedding night both Angel and Tess confess the affairs they have had before. While Tess forgives Angel, he cannot forgive her. Angel abandons Tess and leaves to seek his fortune in Brazil. Years later, Angel returns and is ready to forgive Tess. It is too late. Tess has taken Alec as her lover. In desperation Tess stabs and kills Alec and runs off to find Angel. The two desperate lovers try to escape but when they reach Stonehenge Tess is arrested, sent to jail and hanged. 21 An important element in Hardy's novels, short stories and poems is fate and the part it plays in the lives of the people. His characters are often defeated by a series of circumstances which combine to determine a tragic ending. Hardy had a pessimistic view of life, partly derived from Determinism. However, Hardy also believed that man's destiny is controlled by a blind, indifferent and inexplicable force, which he called the Fate of Circumstances. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess is a highly moral being who is defeated by a series of adverse events that have nothing to do with her own will or morals: Victorian class division (the social environment) on the one hand, and a series of tragic coincidences (chance) on the other, combine to bring about her ruin. Whether this force is nature or a God, it is unfair, as the narrator comments towards the end of the novel: “the President of the immortals had ended his sport with Tess”. Determinism is a philosophical idea that holds that man’s destiny is controlled from the beginning by heredity and the environment. It was deeply influenced by the spread of Darwin's theories, according to which human behavior is largely the product of predetermined instincts. Deterministic views annihilate the power of free will and human freedom. Hardy was a realist writer who wrote in the style of the traditional 19-century novel. He continued to use the 3 person omniscient narrator, who often commented on events and expressed his opinions on life. He paid close attention to form, carefully balancing dialogue and description. In the dialogues the register corresponds to the speaker with precise reproduction of the Dorset dialect. Tess' simplicity and sincerity is conveyed by her lack of eloquence in speech, while more educated characters express themselves in a more complex way, showing that they are less sincere than persuasive. Realism and symbolism combine to convey the author's tragic sense of life. There are episodes in Tess of the D'Urbervilles that clearly have a symbolic meaning: ➢ Tess' letter slipped under the carpet is the symbol of how chance contributes to tragedy, ➢ Stonehenge, the place where Te is arrested at the end of the novel, alludes to her role as the innocent sacrificial victim to the Gods ➢ Nature in general also has a symbolic meaning, reflecting the characters' state mind, feelings and situations. Naturalism was an artistic movement which began in 19th-century France. It derived from the idea that the world could be understood in scientific terms, without referring to religion. Naturalist writers were influenced by Darwin and Determinism in their belief that human beings were controlled by two forces beyond their control: biology (heredity) and the environment. One of the main representatives of Naturalism was Emile Zola (1840-1902), who endeavoured to present his characters objectively, and to use his novels to explore and explain their motivations scientifically. Hardy differed from Zola's biological Determinism. He tried to reveal his characters' higher human dignity, as well as their distinct individualism, while they struggled vainly against an indifferent universe. Tess and Alec One evening, after joining the festivities at a nearby village, Tess is walking back home with her workmates, who begin to scorn and tease her. Alec D’Urberville, her wealthy master, offers her to ride her home on his horse and she accepts. She soon understands that he’s not taking her home and he tries to rape her by pulling her closer to his chest. 22 declared the “Oscar of the first period” is damned, he lounged about Paris visiting the a-list celebrities of the day: Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro; and he spent some time writing The Duchess of Padua, a new play he promised for the American actress Mary Anderson. She turns it down flat. This is of course a great disappointment, so he then goes back to London and he starts lecturing and one of the new lectures that he puts into his repertoire is personal impressions of America. In 1884 he married a wealthy English woman, Constance Lloyd, who gave him two sons. He doesn't seem to have any sense of himself being homosexual inclined at the time when he was married. The couple moved into a home on Tight Street in London, where their first son Cyril was born in 1885, followed seventeen months later by their second son Vivian. Wilde was a devoted and fun-loving father, who channeled his own childlike energy into play time with his children. By 1887 the once flamboyant Wilde was bored with conventional Victorian family life, so at 32 he accepted a job as editor of the popular magazine The ladies world. Days at the office were followed by society dinners and parties without Constance. Oscar made some astounding statements when his wife became pregnant: he said that he had became physically revolted by her, he describes having to open the window and breathe fresh air and wipe her kiss off his mouth because the slim beautiful body rather resembling a boy, that he once admired, became swollen and heavy and thick with pregnancy and he could not bear it. Wilde began tutoring a young Cambridge student named Ravi Ross and they would become close friends; by most accounts, the two were more than just friends. Wilde would later write: “I can resist anything but temptation”. His homosexual relationships begin as an experiment, but it's very soon that he discovers that this is for real and it opens up and totally new side to him of his own sexuality and of his own nature. He begins to lead as he necessarily had to this slightly double life. In 1888 he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a set of stories for children. In 1890 Lippincott's magazine published The Picture of Dorian Gray: the story hinted at sin and decadence on every page and its thinly veiled homosexual undertones shocked Victorian society. The protagonist Dorian Gray trades his soul for eternal youth with each immoral deed: a portrait of him grows older and uglier while he stays young. On the heels of Dorian Gray Wilde published a flurry of essays and short stories that secured his reputation as a serious writer but in just four short years the society that had celebrated his public persona would persecute him for his private deeds. Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, was staged in February 1892. It was an immediate success with the public and critics alike and encouraged Wilde to devote himself to the theatre in the following years. His success was confirmed by a series of successful, satirical comedies, not without a vein of social criticism, including pining a strong taste for A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his theatrical masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In 1891 Oscar Wilde fell in love with Lord Douglas, an Oxford student. Douglas was the incarnation of the fictional Dorian Gray: he was blond and beautiful, an aristocrat, an aspiring poet and had a destructive side, a mean streak and an ability to draw people into his life. Wilde spent more and more time living in London hotels with Posey. He explained to his wife Constance that he needed the privacy to write and she had little reason to doubt him. 25 A few months into their relationship, young Lord Douglas introduced Wilde to London's homosexual underworld. Just a few years earlier Parliament had passed the criminal law Amendment making all sexual acts between men illegal and punishable by time in prison. The rush of excitement was addictive and the passion of Oscar’s secret life was only intensified by Bosie. Oscar's tempestuous life with Bosie had little room for Constance and the children. In 1893 Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury, caught his son's relationship with a flamboyant Wilde and he set out on a vicious campaign to end it. In April 1895 40-year old Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensbury for criminal libel. Queensbury was defended by Edward Carson, whom Wilde knew from his time at Trinity College in Dublin. In court, Wilde fended Carson off, putting on a performance as entertaining as anything he had written for the stage. Carson asked Wilde about his drinking habits, questioned Wilde about the morality of Dorian Gray and read aloud a love letter that Wilde had sent to Bosey. Wilde was unaware that Carson was leading him down a specific path and when Carson asked him if he had kissed a young man at Oxford, he replied he didn't kiss him because he was a particularly ugly boy, just to seem irresistible. Carson went on and asked if that really was the reason he hadn't kissed him. Laughter in the courtroom stopped and Wilde soon learned that Queensbury had put together a solid defense, since the waiting room was full of rent boys who were going to give evidence against him. As a result, the whole trial turned from being rather majestic entertainment to being a terrifying event. Queensbury had won and the libel trial was over. On top of that, evidence of Oscar Wilde's double life had been exposed and on April 5th he was arrested and charged with gross indecency under the criminal law Amendment. He was the man of the moment, so when his fall came, it was precipitous, instantaneous and frightening: Oscar's name was removed from playbills, he was shunned by London Society, his belongings auctioned by creditors to satisfy the debt he and Bosey had amassed. Practically he was made into a sort of public urinal, where all the sort of business and sexual frustration and double standards at the time could be vented. Wilde’s friends, his wife Constance and even Bosey, urged him to flee England but he ignored their advice, not wanting to be called a coward or a deserter. The government's trial against Oscar Wilde began on April 26th 1895. This time wilds eloquence with language was no match for the prosecution's graphic evidence against him. Hotel workers testified to the parade of boys going in and out of Oscar’s rooms and soiled bed sheets were dragged into court. No longer is he the sort of gay blade and boulevardier who likes hanging out with exquisite young men. He looks like a slightly fat and slightly puffy guy who enjoys giving money to rather gruesome dirty sordid rent voices: we're in a slum and burglary is happening and people begin to recoil. Wilde's trial ended in a hung jury but his retrial did not. OnMay 25th Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency. “I shall under such circumstances” said the judge “be expected to pass the severe sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it is totally inadequate for a case like this.” Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison. At that point when he was standing at the dock when the man who'd had London in his palm was literally on his knees and being kicked on his head by everyone. The change that came over him in the space of days is one that's impossible to fathom or understand fully. When Wilde came out of prison in 1897, he was physically and psychologically a broken man, saddened further by the fact that he had been abandoned by many friends, including Lord Alfred himself. He lived in exile in France and wrote very little. His one significant production of this 26 period was The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which recounted his terrible prison experience. Wilde died on 30 November 1900, at just 46 years old. Throughout his life, Wilde wrote different types of works: ➢ aphorisms ➢ poetry ➢ fairy tales, written for his children and then published, we find: ○ magic and fantastic elements ○ distinction between good and evil, with good that prevails over evil ○ happy ending ➢ novels ➢ plays After trying his hand at poetry, without any great success, Wilde began to write for the theatre publishing a series of successful plays. The plays owe their appeal to Wilde's gift for brilliant, witty dialogue and social satire. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, first appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. One year later Wilde published a revised edition, adding six chapters and a preface in which he attempted to deal with the criticism it had received. His preface outlines his philosophy of art. Based on the principles of Aestheticism, art is neither moral nor immoral, it has no moral purpose, but beauty in itself is a supreme value. Oscar Wilde was the embodiment of the dandy, a refined and elegant man who combined a strong taste for elegance and an attention to his appearance, clothes and style. The dandy often used wit and spirit to shock other people and to unmask the absurdities of Victorian moralism. Dorian Gray too, appeared as the perfect representation of the “dandy”, a man who sought pleasure and who believed that life should be lived as “a work of art”. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the story of a rich, beautiful young man who has his portrait painted by Basil Habiward. The portrait is a masterpiece. At Basil's studio Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry talks about the transience of youth and beauty. Dorian is struck by this thought and makes a pledge. He will sacrifice his soul if he can maintain his youth and beauty, while the portrait itself will bear all the signs of time. Under Lord Henry's influence, Dorian leads a hedonistic life of pleasure, sin, crime and corruption. His scandalous lifestyle is hidden by the fact that he remains young and beautiful, while the image in the portrait, which is hidden away, becomes old and ugly, bearing all the signs of Dorian's sins, At the end of the story, responsible for the death of an actress and the murder of Blasil, killed in a fit of anger after the artist has seen the disfigured portrait and discovered Gorian's terrible secret, Dorian stabs the portrait. Dorian is found dead, now transformed into a horrible old man beside the portrait, which has returned to its original beauty. When the novel was published in 1890, it came as a shock for most Victorian readers, who believed that the purpose of art was education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in the works by Charles Dickens and other traditional Victorian novels. The Portrait of Dorian Gray overtly 27 earnest”, in the sense of accepting the restrictions and conventions of smug. Oppressive Victorian morality is another central theme and target of Wilde's satire, as we discover that the apparently earnest characters are hypocrites, while the playful male characters in reality have true and honest feelings. False truth and false morality fall victim to events and the beauty of invented lives wins the day. Wilde's plays successfully revived the comedy of manners, a genre that had flourished in England during the Restoration with Congreve (The Way of the World) and in France with Molière. The main features of the comedy of manners were: ➢ upper-class characters and settings ➢ marriage and the relationship between the sexes as a frequent theme ➢ an intricate plot, sudden changes in the protagonists fortunes, changes in identity, puns and misunderstandings ➢ use of witty dialogue. All of these elements are apparent in The importance of Being Earnest, although of course the satire is directed against contemporary Victorian aristocracy. The title itself is a pun between the adjective “earnest”, meaning sincere or honest, and the name Ernest. The problem is that no character in the play cares to tell the truth. An important element which distinguished Wilde's drama was his imaginative comic invention. Invention surpasses reality when Jack Worthing declares that he was abandoned in a handbag at Victoria Station as a baby, or when Lady Bracknell asks him to produce at least one parent before the end of the season. One of the most remarkable traits of modernity of The importance of Being Earnest is the kaleidoscopic quality of its language, which in Wilde's play acquires a number of different functions: ➢ language is used as a tool to criticise the hypocrisy of Victorian society, ➢ but it is also a means to transform reality and to multiply its meanings, ➢ an instrument to create some of the most sparkling comic effects of drama, and a veil of truth about people, that hides the truth, their intentions and their identities. ➢ In Wilde's comedy language is an instrument of social subversion and, as such, not only does it anticipate some of the trends of 20%-century drama, but it also allows Wilde's comedy to transcend the limits of Victorian drama and become one of the best examples of comedies of all times. We can sum up what happened in Wilde's career thus: after he wrote his dark plays, he began to feel oppressed by an unbearable sense of evil and sin. He started to yearn for a return to innocence. The chief product of this reaction was The Importance of Being Earnest. In it, Wilde presented us with a group of adults who behave as children, and succeeded brilliantly in capturing a state of childlike innocence. All the characters, physically adult, are mentally and psychologically still in the paradise of childhood, innocently and joyfully imitating the behaviour of real adults, playing at life. It is Wilde's assertion that a human being can remain as innocent as a child no matter how old he becomes. To achieve this effect, he relied mainly on nonsensical dialogue. The mood of innocence is captured not only by the action of the play but also, and more markedly, by the dialogue. By 30 having his characters say the opposite of what is normal or expected, Wilde reduces the dialogue of his play to hilarious nonsense and introduces us into a paradise of innocence. Thus, The Importance of Being Earnest is a play that takes us into a world of innocence and of nonsense. The Importance of Being Earnest is a nonsense play, since it is full of such nonsensical statements. By turning everything upside down in the dialogue and standing reality on its head, Wilde creates a hilarious nonsensical world that returns us to the innocence of childhood. Sometimes, the effect of nonsense in the dialogue is also achieved in a manner slightly more subtle than simple inversion. The message of The Importance of Being Earnest is that Wilde's earlier works are nonsensical, and that he lives in a childlike world of innocence where evil is a silly, harmless thing. The Importance of Being Earnest earnestly reveals to us Wilde's real world, his true personality, as he saw it at that time. A notable interrogation This passage contains the dialogue between Lady Bracknell and Jack, who has just made his marriage proposal to Gwendolen, her daughter. The woman wants to find out more about Jack to see if he is a suitable husband for her daughter. Lady Bracknell asks Jack about: ➢ smoke ➢ age ➢ education ➢ wealth ➢ location of his house in London ➢ politics ➢ parents ➢ birth Giving much more importance to appearances. Jack is a rich man and he possesses two houses: one in the countryside and the other one in Belgrave square, however he has no parents and this is not acceptable according to Lady Bracknell. Actually, she comments on Jack’s statements in an absurd way, which conveys an effect of both comedy and irony and social critique. Being a piece of drama, the passage contains some stage directions, written in square brackets. SALOME’ It was written in French and designed, as he said, to make his audience shudder by its depiction of unnatural passion, was halted by the censor because it contained biblical characters. It was published in 1893, and an English translation appeared in 1894 with Aubrey Beardsley’s celebrated illustrations. This is Wilde's most terrifying and evil play. It is also a highly symbolic and complex work. The setting is a feast and the time is the period of the coming of Jesus Christ. As the Tetrarch Herod and his sinful wife Herodias eat and drink with their many guests, Herod begins to lust after his wife's daughter, Princess Salomé. Salomé breaks away from the feast and goes out into the pure night air. There she hears the voice of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) predicting the coming of Christ. Jokanaan is imprisoned in a dark 31 underground cistern. Salomé orders the Captain of the Guard, a young Syrian, to release the prophet and bring him to her. At first, the young Syrian refuses because the Tetrarch has absolutely forbidden such a thing. The princess, however, uses her sexual charms on the Syrian captain, and he releases Jokanaan. Princess Salomé finds the prophet very attractive sexually and begins to woo him. Jokanaan, however, calls her a daughter of adultery, rejects her, and returns voluntarily to his prison. Rejected, she becomes intent on destroying the prophet. The young Syrian, realising that Salomé loves Jokanaan and not him, kills himself. Herod emerges from his palace. He continues to woo Salomé and offers her the throne of her mother if she will dance for him. Salomé refuses at first, then agrees to dance after Herod promises to grant her any request she makes. She dances the dance of the seven veils, then asks for the head of Jokanaan as her reward. Herod is shocked and tries to dissuade her, but she insists and he finally yields. Jokanaan is beheaded, and the severed head is brought to Salomé, who proceeds to “feast” on it, biting and kissing it and comparing it to a ripe fruit. Even the lustful and evil Herod is horrified by this. He orders Salomé to be killed, and his soldiers crush her with their shields. In this play, Wilde presents Salomé as a symbol of human nature. Her cruelty and sexual perversity are common to all people, Wilde feels. Jokanaan is also murderous and lustful in the play, but he has repressed his personality. Through the symbolism, the prophet is shown as also lusting for Salomé. His words continually betray his lust through their double meaning. The main points to keep in mind about Salomé are the following: ➢ Salomé rejects Herod's banquet because she wants a sexual feast. She wants to feast on Jokanaan's body, and when she finds that she cannot obtain the prophet alive, she kills him and “feasts” on his severed head. ➢ Jokanaan too is lustful, but he has hidden his lust even from himself. The words he utters, however, often have a double meaning that show him to be strongly attracted to Salomé despite his rejection of her. Salomé's behaviour has often been viewed as the ultimate in evil, for what can possibly be more terrible than requesting the head of a prophet? In his play, the prophet Jokanaan (John the Baptist) is a man who has repressed his murderous sexual nature, while the cruel and lustful Salomé is presented as a symbol of human nature. In Salomé, human nature is not presented as “grey' but as entirely black. Nor is Wilde unhappy about this. He declares that human nature is totally and irrevocably evil, then goes on to say that we should express the evil in ourselves instead of hiding it. Salomé and Jokanaan are portrayed as having an identical nature, but the difference is that Jokanaan hides his nature while Salomé expresses it fully. In this play, Oscar Wilde is preaching the acceptance and expression of inner depravity and denying that there is any goodness in human nature. 32 ULYSSES by Alfred Lord Tennyson → old ulysses describes his present life, not very happy with it → DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE - one actor, one speaking voice - It is dramatic because it reminds us of drama, theatre, not only because it can be considered a part of a play performed by one actor, but also because the speaking voice is caught in a tragic moment of his life. - We have a silent listener. Here, at first we didn’t know who he’s talking to, almost at the end we discover he’s talking to his mariners, which we can define as silent because they don’t speak, they don’t intervene. We know there’s a silent listener because the speaking voice mentions that and because the speaking voice reacts to the mariners’ reactions. - The subject matter here is an unquenched desire for knowledge This type of monologue represents a milestone between shakespearean monolog and interior monolog by Joyce. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, 35 And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Overall, the image we have of Ulysses is the one of an overreacher, a hero → celebrate his life, cautionary tale, anxiety for the time that passes 36 Robert Browning He was born in 1812 and died in 1899. As a child, he received little formal education. Later on, he attended London University, but just for a short period. Anyways, he could count on his father’s library. And he was familiar with museums, art galleries and paintings as well. He is considered to be one of the most learned English artists of his time. He spent some time in Italy, where he first met Elizabeth Barrett (18O6-1861). When they met, she was 39, 6 years older than him. On top of that, she had been invalid for 7 years. They married despite her father’s opposition and they eloped to Italy. If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, "I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"— For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. In her sonnet 14, Elizabeth asks her lover to not love her just because he feels sorry for her because if she is with him she might forget to cry and she’ll lose her love by then. On the contrary, she asks him to love her for love’s sake. Browning was particularly interested in the soul’s study. He understood that the human mind works at different levels, by recognizing the conscious and unconscious workings of the human mind. He also probed the inner motivations governing men’s and women’s actions. In “Porphyria’s lover”, at the beginning he looks like a caring lover, as if he couldn't do it without her, yet later on the situation changes. His characters are usually caught in a moment of crisis or of self revelation, and they are often complex and obscure characters. The image we have of women in his poems is the one of victims not only of their men but also of society: ➢ the duchess because she didn’t confirm to society ➢ porphyria because she couldn’t explicitly manifest her love Browning’s poems are highly obscure. This obscurity is manifested in: ➢ carelessness in grammatical construction elision of pronouns 37 Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! 40 PORPHYRIA’S LOVER by Robert Browning The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me — she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, 41 I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word! 42