THE INDUSTRIAL NOVEL - SHIRLEY BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1849)

Set in Yorkshire during the time of the Luddite unrest—a workers' movement that began in 1811-1812 in an effort to protect the interests of the working class—the novel consists of two narrative strands woven together, one involving the struggles of workers against mill owners, and the other involving the romantic entanglements of the two heroines.

Plot

Shirley begins as Robert Moore, a Yorkshire mill operator, awaits a shipment of machinery which arrives in pieces, smashed by angry workers protesting the loss of jobs to mechanization. Although he is determined to become successful in order to restore his family's honor and fortune, Robert's business difficulties continue, due in part to the continuing labor unrest, but even more so to the Napoleonic Wars and the accompanying Orders in Council which forbid British merchants from trading in American markets.

MASTERS & WORKERS : MR THORNTON AND NICHOLAS HIGGINS, THE IDEAL RELATIONSHIP ACCORDING TO MRS GASKELL

In  Mary Barton  (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell  started to draw her own tragic picture of the “eternal subject for agitation in the manufacturing districts”: “the differences between the employers and the employees”.  John Barton, after witnessing  the painful death of his only little son helplessly, had tried to fight for better living and better working conditions for himself and his fellow workers as chairman of a Trade Union  . He had also joined a political movement asking for universal male suffrage and the possibility for a man of no property to become member of Parliament:  Chartism . All his attempts resulted  as failures and that made his rage against factory-owners explode into murder.

Desperate workers attack the mill - From BBC North and South (2004)

ELIZABETH GASKELL AND THE INDUSTRIAL NOVEL - MARY BARTON (1848) - POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS, WORKSHEET & VIDEO

In the Flash_Widget Box on the right you'll find two Power Point Presentations related to Mrs Gaskell and her first novel, Mary Barton (1848):

- Gaskell ppt
- Mary Barton ppt
Click on the icons in the box and download them.
With Mrs Gaskell and her "industrial" or "social - problem" novels, 

 we will be able to experience a completely new world as readers, that of Victorian industrial cities with their restless, fierce and troublesome citizens: factory owners and factory workers, "masters" and "hands", the rich and the poor.

Industrialization was radically changing the strictly  conservative Victorian society but the strife to obtain modernity and basic rights was to be long, hard, paved with sufference and tragedy for workers.

US LIT CORNER - EDGAR LEE MASTERS, SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

Edgar Lee Masters 

  Alexander Throckmorton  and George Gray  

Two poems from Spoon River Antholoogy

Links and connections

  Video - Cultbook, Antologia di Spoon River

  Roberto Vecchioni and Spoon River

Spoon River and Fabrizio De Andrè: Non al denaro non all'amore nè al cielo

Fiddlers Jones (original text/ Fernanda Pivano's translation/

De Andrè's Il suonatore Jones)

  Il suonatore Jones (video)