DICKENS AND THE INDUSTRIAL NOVEL: HARD TIMES (1854)

THE PLOT

BBC Hard Times - 1994

Thomas Gradgrind is an educator and a riter on political questions. He has founded a school where his education theories are put into practice: children are taught nothing but facts, and he educates his own children, Louisa and Tom, in the same way, neglecting their imagination and their affections. He also adopts Sissy Jupe, whose father worked  in a circus.

Mr Gradgrind suggests his daughter should marry Josiah Bounderby, a  rich factory owner and banker of the city some thirty years older than she is. Louisa, desiring to help her brother Tom in his career, consents to the marriage, which naturally proves to be very unhappy.

JOHN STUART MILL, ON LIBERTY

JOHN STUART MILL
Worsheet 
THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY (Excerpt + questions)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS AND ITS BYRONIC HERO

A scandalous novel by a clergyman's daughter

Emily Brontë  was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England, in Howarth, a tiny village in Yorkshire.  She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry.

Wuthering Heights was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published in 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called “one of the most repellent book ever published”. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and, instead of a proper Victorian heroine,  she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film  adaptations. 

PLOT

THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN THE VICTORIAN AGE - JANE EYRE - PUNISHMENT

Kindness

Jane Eyre - Power Point Presentation

The Exploitation of Children in the Victorian Age

The Woman Question

Ask Jane Eyre

Further videos:  Arrival at Thornfield Hall - Horse scene - Teaching Adele - Do you ever laugh, Miss Eyre? -  I would do anything for you - Return to Thornfield Hall - Proposal

  Interrupted Marriage   

SOCIAL ISSUES IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN - THE WOMAN QUESTION

"Conventionality is not morality"
(Charlotte Bronte , Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre")

Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre - 2011

(see also THE WOMAN QUESTION  ppt in the widget box on the right  

We already discussed "The Woman Question" studying Jane Austen's novels. Unfortunately, things hadn't changed in time and Victorian women still had to bear a subordinate social role.

Queen Victoria, "the mother of the nation", personified 19th century middle-class femininity and domesticity perfectly. Supported by her beloved husband Albert and surrounded by her nine children, she presented a kind of femininity which was centred on the family, motherhood and respectability.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS BY EMILY BRONTE

Emily Bronte was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England. She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry. It was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called one of the most repellent book ever published. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and instead of a proper Victorian heroine she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film/ TV adaptations:  WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

CHARLES DICKENS (1812 - 1870)

Dickens (1812 -1870) was a great prolific writer and entertainer who portrayed a vivid picture of Victorian England. He created a vast range of characters, especially eccentrics, vagabonds, criminals and orphans. In his own life Dickens was extraordinarily popular and he is still the best-known English novelist. He profoundly influenced many of his contemporaries and successors, even abroad (Dostoyevsky and Kafka for instance). Earlier critics tended to regard him as a great comic writer and entertainer, whose plots were implausible and whose characterization was superficial. Contemporary critics now tend to see his works - especially the later ones - as combining social realism with the poetical devices of metaphor and symbolism. These allowed him to explore the depths of the human psyche and to represent social conflict and evil.

If you want to know more about Charles Dickens, download 

the Power Point Presentation from the Widget_Box on the right. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE VICTORIAN AGE - POWER POINT PRESENTATION

Queen Victoria's family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

You can download the

 POWER POINT PRESENTATION,   THE VICTORIAN AGE
  (HISTORICAL/SOCIAL/CULTURAL BACKGROUND )
from the Flash_ Widget Box on the right sidebar (The Victorian Age 2011)

MY STUDENTS GIVE THEIR LESSONS: JANE EYRE

Federica, Valeria e Veronica read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in the summer and prepared a very interesting lesson  about the author and the novel.

They presented their points and analysis with power point slides that you can download from the widget_box on the right (Jane Eyre 2012) and they also proposed us a scene from the latest movie adaptation of the story with Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester and Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre. 

They said they liked reading this novel  and I hope they will also like studying Victorian literature from January on.

For now, in our lessons,  we are working on the different genres of fiction between the end of 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century (Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Walter Scott)

Tomorrow we'll work on Pride and Prejudice. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that ..." a teacher fond of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and great classic literature is having and will have great fun.

 Will her students ever share her passion?

ULYSSES BY ALFRED TENNYSON

Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson (1833) is a dramatic monologue, a kind of narrative poem in which a single character may address one or more listeners. It is related to the soliloquy used in the Elizabethan plays.
It is usually written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameters).

In a dramatic monologue the character is different from the poet himself and is caught in a crucial moment of crisis. 

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 

SOCIAL ISSUES IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN - CHILDREN AT WORK

Children's working conditions

Children had an unhappy childhood. They worked hard to satisfy the needs of their parents because families were very poor and they didn't have enough money, so children worked. They underwent very difficult conditions of employment. Days were long for them : eight or twelve hours a day, six days a week. Children worked in manufactories.

At that time, there was no insurance and when children had accidents or were ill they didn't have any help. Many children often worked with adults : they worked under the same conditions. Children were small, they could go into narrow spaces, children were clever too and employers appreciated these qualities. Nowadays , in poor countries, many children often work to help their parents but the conditions of employment may be better than the industrial revolution in England.

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.

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.