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VICTORIAN AGE
Queen Victoria
Victoria was born on 24th May 1819 in the middle of a succession crisis. Queen Victoria ruled Britain for more than 63 years, from 1837 to 1901.Her reign was the longest in British history.Her reign was a period of contradictions and contrasts. Her mother was convinced that Victoria would become queen. So she started the ‘Kensington System’, a cruel regime of control. 20 June 1837 King William the IV died: the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor knelt to her and told her that she was Queen. When Victoria became so visibly pregnant that she could not appear in official ceremonies, Albert took on her functions. He was her main advisor.
Positive and negative characteristics of the age
On the one hand the Victorian Age was characterized by progress in many fields, for example technology, science, medicine. With economic progress, technological advances and industrial revolution. Hospitals were built, a railway system connected all parts of England, a sewage system improved sanitary conditions in the capital. Progress led to better conditions of life. On the other hand it was a society characterized by many problems: There was a great disparity between the different social classes. Society was divided into the Haves and the Have-nots, people who were very rich and people who lived in terrible conditions. Workers had low wages, dangerous jobs and lived in slums. In the slums the hygienic conditions were dreadful: houses were overcrowded and epidemics, like cholera and typhoid, caused a high mortality. Industrial towns were polluted because of the factories.
The British Empire
Secondly, it was the period of greatest extension of the British Empire. The British Empire included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, Kenya, and India. That’s why they said that “The sun never sets on England”. Great Britain imported raw materials such as cotton and silk and exported finished goods to countries around the world. England had become an industrial country. It was the wealthiest country in the world. By the mid-1800s, Great Britain was the largest exporter and importer of goods in the world. It was the primary manufacturer of goods and the wealthiest country in the world. Because of England’s success, the British felt it was their duty to bring English values, laws, customs, and religion to the “savage” races around the world.
The Victorian Compromise
The Victorian Compromise was a strict moral code based on respectability, they were great moralisers, they supported personal duty, hard work, decorum (the family unit was based around the authoritarian father, with the mother in a submissive role), respectability and chastity. The morals, beliefs and values of the Victorians were not reflected in the reality of the society around them. An example of this contradditions, is the Queen that gives a sense of strong political and of an independent and respectable women, but Victorian’s women didn't have the right to vote until 1918, to study because they were subject to male authority and had to stay at home with the kids. Another example is that it was an age of technological advances, but the factory's workers were exploited and had to work in terrible conditions. On the other hand, many reformers fought to improve and change conditions for the working and lower classes, particularly in areas such as health and education. The commercial art to mask negative and dark sides of society was that many reformers fought to improve and change conditions for the working and lower classes, particularly in areas such as health and education.
Crystal Palace and Great Exhibition
To celebrate Britain’s power Crystal Palace was built to host the Great Exhibition of 1851; it was destroyed by fire in 1936. Designed by Joseph Paxton (architect and gardener) It was made of iron and glass. It exhibited hydraulic presses, locomotives, machine tools, power looms, power reapers and steamboat engines. It had a political purpose: it showed British economic supremacy in the world. It attracted huge crowds. The profits were used for the establishment of the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Main characteristics:
- It has a glass an iron structure;
- Paxton used a combination of prefabricated iron, laminated wood and standard sized glass sheets;
- Paxton created the ridge-and-furrow roof design;
- The basic units of the structure were extremely light, strong and easy to erect;
- It was an economic solution: each element was designed to have more than one function;
- The glass cover enabled daylight;
- The span of the central vaulted aisle was achieved by iron and timber semi-circular ribs.
Works: → Oliver Twist (1837-1839): the novel tells the story of an orphaned boy. → A Christmas Carol (1843): it is a ghost story. → Dombey and Son (1846-1848): It is an attack against greed and money. → David Copperfield (1849-1850): It is both an autobiographical novel and a ‘coming-of-age’ novel. → Bleak House (1852-1853): It is a novel representing the evils of the Industrial Revolution. → Hard Times (1854): It is a satire on English justice. → Great Expectations (1860-1861): It is a 'coming-of-age' novel. → The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837): It is a lively and entertaining novel.It was published in installments and had great success. It tells the adventures of Mr Pickwick and his friends on a scientific journey to discover England. In this period the novel was the most important literary genre: ● It reflected the Victorian society and it conformed to the Victorian moral standards; ● It was read in public and by different social classes; ● It was published in installments; ● Its aim was to instruct and to entertain; ● It was often set in the town; ● The most representative novelist of the early Victorian period is Charles Dickens. His main themes are poverty, social injustice, and political corruption; ● Although he deals with social issues, he doesn’t question the system of social relations and the organization of work; ● He divides the characters into good and bad, a typical Victorian compromise.
Hard Times (plot)
Hard Times is the story of Thomas Gradgrind and his family. The setting is the imaginary Coketown, an industrial town inspired by Preston in the north of England. Gradgrind is a wealthy, retired merchant who puts his faith in facts, statistics, rationality and practicality. He treats his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to these utilitarian values and opens a school in the town to be run in the same way. He makes Louisa marry his friend, Josiah Bounderby, who is much older than her but a successful businessman and banker. James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career but he immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce and corrupt her. He asks Louisa to run away with him - she seems to agree but instead returns to her father to tell him how she feels and how he has destroyed her lite. Gradgrind is filled with self-reproach and begins to reform. He gives up his 'philosophy of fact' and devotes his political power to helping the poor.
Coketown (extract)
This is an extract from the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens written in 1854. He describes Coketown, an imaginary industrial city. Because of the Industrial Revolution, the city has changed its colors (from red to black due to pollution). We know it is an industrial city because there are machinery and chimneys and because of its name (Coketown). The themes that Dickens wants to underline are the negative aspects from the industrialization on the environment, like the pollution, oppression, terrible working conditions and poor houses. The author uses several repetitions to underline/ to express the monotony and repetitions of daily life in this town, for example “it was a town”; “like one another”; “the same...”. The author uses words referring to different senses to express/describe the effects of industrialization on the town and its daily life (pollution, machinery etc); sight: red/black (colors), purple; smell: smoke, ashes, ill-smelling dye and sound: rattling and trembling. Dickens uses some metaphors and images to describe Coketown. For example he compares the unnatural color of the buildings to a painted face of a savage; the smoke coming from factories to a serpent; and the movement of the piston to an elephant head (a mad and melancholic elephant). These references to animals and wilderness convey an idea of the city as a wild and irrational place. The inhabitants of this town look like each other, they go out at the same time, they do the same job; their life is characterized by repetition and monotony. These aspects are reflected also in the town’s buildings and streets (all like one another...). In fact the people of coketown are in a way similar to its environment, that are monotonous, described as anonymous factory workers whose lives revolve around a dull and repetitive routine. Dickens tries to show us the reality of the industrial city during The Victorian Age. He doesn’t criticize industrialization in an explicit way, but from his text we can understand he hasn’t got a positive opinion about its effects on the city and its inhabitants. Personal opinion
EARTHRISE BY AMANDA GORMAN (Our Purpose in Poetry: Or, Earthrise)
Amanda’s biography Amanda is an American poet and activist known for works that address Black identity, feminism and climate change. Gorman and her siblings were raised by a single mother. She feels terrified about public speaking and she overcomes her fear by repeating the words of a mantra, so she kind of strengthens herself. She sought out poetry as an inexpensive means of expressing herself, because she understood that if she chooses not to speak for herself there will be no one to do it for her and therefore no one will stand by her, supporting her silence. Amandas gained international fame when she read her poem The Hill We Climb at the 2021 inauguration of the U.S. President Joe Biden. She won at 16 the Youth Poet Laureate in LA in 2014. In 2016 her writings won her an invitation to the Obama White House. Introduction Amanda Gorman wrote this poem in 2018 (she was 16) She read this poem at an event for the Los Angeles Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Former vice president Al Gore is involved with this group, which helps young people get involved in activism about climate change. Earthrise gained its title from the iconic photograph of the Earth rising above the Moon taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8. Formal analysis There are 13 stanzas, a different number of lines. She makes great use of rhymes: The sound “-ize” is the most common rhyme in the poem. Sometimes she uses rhymes or similar sounds, in the middle of the word (ize). Several stanzas include two or three rhyming lines. Another rhyming device she uses is to put rhyming words in the middle of the line also. We can find allusions to people and historical events: (Allusion = a reference to something outside the poem) Allusions to Al Gore and his film: “inconvenient fact” (stanza 6), “You don’t need to be a politician” (stanza 8), “inconvenient truth” (stanza 9); Allusions to president Kennedy’s famous speech: “as we chose to go to the moon” and “Not because it’s very easy” (stanza 12); Allusions to Apollo 8 and two famous photos taken by astronauts: Earthrise and The Blue Marble (stanzas 1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 13) Gorman starts the poem with this information because Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return, giving us our first picture of Earth from space. Gorman starts the poem with this information because it was the first time we saw Earth from space, showing that we all share the planet and are all responsible for keeping it clean and safe to live on.
She uses some significant metaphors/similes like in:
- stanza 8: She compares the earth to a riddled blue marble
- stanza 11: pale blue dot
- stanza 13 to describe a spacecraft: floating like a silver raft We can also notice that there is, in the text, some significant lines like: “It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait”(stanza 6) In stanzas 6, 7 and 8 she underlines that it is important to know the facts about climate change. When people are informed, they are prepared with knowledge, can take action, and help others, you can have important conversations and share facts and ideas respectfully. Only with facts we can help change, so she is showing the facts because if people don’t think there is a problem we wouldn’t do anything to change it. “Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time” (stanza 5). Stanza 5 is only one line. The author gives this line its own stanza to show how important it is. How important it is for our generation to preserve and conserve our world to let it understand that it’s our home, to keep it clean and safe it’s our responsibility. In stanza 10 the word ‘now’ repeated to show we must address climate change today, because we don't have more time. Poets sometimes repeat words and phrases to place emphasis on their importance. Overall message : The themes that Amanda wants to achieve are climate change, importance to act now to save our planet, youth generation’s challenge and responsibility. In fact the purpose of this poem is to make people aware about climatic change. She calls our generation to act, to make a change and to know the facts and share them, because to make a difference, the more you know and the more you are informed, the better it is. Personal opinion:
Politicians would not listen to the Suffragette’s requests so they started using militant tactics. They organized huge demonstrations, chained themselves to the railings surrounding the Houses of Parliament. They smashed shop windows and set fire to property. The Government dealt with the protests harshly and sent many suffragettes to prison. In prison some women went on hunger strike to draw attention to their campaign. Prison authorities began force-feeding them. In 1913 Emily Davidson was killed as she tried to put a Suffragette scarf onto the King's horse at the Derby. This period of militancy ended in 1940 when World War I broke out. During the war women took on many of the traditional male roles. At the end of the war, in 1918 the Representation of People Act granted voting rights to women over 30. Personal opinion:
Mary Woolstonecraft
Mary Woolstonecraft is considered one of the first feminist writers. She wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” in 1792. It is a pamphlet about women’s rights. She underlines the need for the education of women. She fights Rousseau’s idea of how women should be educated. Rousseau thought that education should teach women to obey and please. Woolstonecraft emphasizes that women must be educated in the use of reason.
Virginia woolf
Virginia was born in London in 1882. Virginia and her sister were educated at home using their father's library. Her mother died in 1895 and she was to experience her first nervous breakdown as a result. Periods of serious depression and mental illness were to plague her for the rest of her life and also cause her death. In 1905 she started work as a reviewer for the “Times Literary Supplement”. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf who would support her during her frequent illnesses.
Woolf’s own work continued to develop her ideas of portraying the human psyche. She was both a pacifist and a feminist. In 1941 she found herself fighting for her sanity, in March she put stones in her pockets and drowned herself in the river near her home in Sussex. She left a suicide note addressed to Leonard.
shakespeare’s sister (a room of one’s own)
This is an extract from A room of one’s own : a long essay based on a series of lectures by the writer Virginia Woolf. She shows her deep concern for the role and status of women. She says that women need financial independence and intellectual freedom. She observes that women had no existence in literature. In this passage Virginia Woolf imagines the story of Shakespeare’s sister, Judith. She is as talented as her brother, but her family wants her to get married, because they knew the conditions of life for a woman. She reads and writes in secret and she hides or burns every page, because women weren't allowed to read or write. Her parents, who love her, want her to get married. When she refuses to marry, her father beats her. Then he changes reaction and starts begging her and giving her some gifts (chain of beads, fine petticoat). She runs away to London, guided by “the force of her own gift alone”, she finds the strength to leave in her talent. In front of the theatre she expresses the desire to act. Men laugh at her. In the end, she finds a theatre-manager, she becomes pregnant by him and commits suicide. With this story Virginia Woolf wanted to emphasize how difficult it was for women to be free to make their own choices. Personal opinion:
We know that men and women have different biological abilities , they are physically stronger than women. Most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men, even if there’s slightly more women than men in the world (52%). The late Wangari Maathai put it simply when she said “the higher you go, the fewer women there are”, this all made sense a thousand years ago because human beings lived in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute, so in a literal way, men rule the world. But today we are evolved and we have an awareness that there are some characteristics, to be a great leader, that have nothing to do with hormones: like creativity, intelligence and innovation. Every time she walks into a Nigerian restaurant the waiter welcomes only the guy that she is with and not her. She said that waiters are products of a society that has taught them that men are more important than women. Every time she arrive in a hotel the receptionist think that she is a sex worker. During her first day of teaching in a University , she was worried not for the lesson that she had to teach but for what she would wear. Firstly she wanted to wear a shirt but wore a suit because she didn't want all her students to focus on how she was dressed up. A man doesn’t have those problems because they can wear whatever they want. Criticize education on daughters and sons :She says that we do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them, we define masculinity in a very narrow way, masculinity becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity with money? What if the attitude was not "the boy has to pay" but rather "whoever has more should pay? But then society does a much greater disservice to girls because they teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller, we say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much." "You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man." We don’t have the same equality in education, in fact, why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don't teach boys the same? Because she is a female, she is expected to aspire to marriage; expected to make her life choices, always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. A marriage can be a good thing; it can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But for our society a woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep, personal failure. And a man at a certain age who is unmarried, we just think he hasn't come around to making his pick. The society police girls, praise girls for virginity, but they don't praise boys for virginity, even if it’s a process that involves at least two people. Gender roles, she suggests to change this problem, it recognizes what we are not what we should be. Because boys and girls are undeniably different biologically, but socialization exaggerates the differences and then it becomes a self-fulfilling
process. We would be so much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. What if in raising children we focus on ability instead of gender? What if in raising children we focus on interest instead of gender? Because what matters even more is our attitude, our mindset, what we believe and what we value about gender. Gender is not an easy conversation to have. For both men and women, to bring up gender is sometimes to encounter almost immediate resistance. In fact, many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender is part of the problem of gender. And that many men do nothing to change it. Because gender can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, there are very easy ways to close it, to close the conversation. Everyone thinks that women have the “Bottom Power” , an expression meaning a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But bottom power is not power at all, it’s actually somebody else’s power. Because women have to wonder what happens when somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick or impotent. A feminist is a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. Her own definition is: a man or a woman who says “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better.” Personal opinion + favorite quote WAR POETS: TWO ATTITUDES TO WAR We can divide War (soldiers) poets in two groups: → realistic/harsh - Owen; → war is sweet and honorable - Brooke. When the First World War breaks out, thousands of young men volunteer, because they see the war as an adventure, undertaken for noble principles.
- 1916 Battle of Somme → slaughter of thousands of British soldiers;
- The sense of pride is replaced by doubt and disillusionment;
- Western front → lines of trenches;
- Life in the trenches = is hell, because of the rain, the mud, the death bodies, bombings and the use of poison gas;
- A group of soldier, who actually experienced the fighting, represents war in a realistic and unconventional way to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war;
DULCE ET DECORUM EST by WILFRED OWEN This is a poem written by Wilfred Owen in 1920. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD. In the first stanza the soldiers are coming back to the trenches. They are exhausted, demoralized blind and drunk with fatigue, that didn’t even hear the hoots anymore. In the second stanza there is a description of a gas attack. Everyone tries to put their masks on but a friend of the poet is wounded. The soldier who cannot fit his gas mask in time chokes in front of the speaker who cannot do anything for him. They put his dead body on a wagon and they can see him dying. In the third stanza the poet says that he dreams every night of his dying friend. The image of his dying friend haunts the poet. He sees the dying soldier plunging at him in his dreams (line 15-16). In the fourth stanza the poet describes his friend’s horrible death with realistic and cruel adjectives. At the end of the fourth stanza we also find the message of the poem. In the last stanza the poet is addressing the people that are doing propaganda of the War, it may also be addressed to everybody who encouraged young men to enlist. Owen, however, also refers the last stanza to a person in particular: Jesse Pope, an English writer and journalist who is remembered for her patriotic poetry during World War I; her works were intended to encourage men to enlist. In fact, this poem Dulce et Decorum Est was originally intended to be dedicated to her. Children → Very young men who enlisted are pressured by patriotic propaganda to receive glory. In line 26 the speaker is talking to the children who aspire and have an intense desire to fight for their country in war, to honor their country. In the end he uses the expression THE OLD LIE → The poet wants to underline that there is nothing noble or decorous in war; it just means degradation and death. The message that the poet wants to give it's that war isn't sweet and honorable to die for, because like he says, this is an old lie used to call more children to fight for their country and not to scare them. The poet uses some alliterations, like in line 1 the letter B, in line 2 the letters Kn, C, to create sounds in his poem. He also makes uses of onomatopoeia: guttering, choking, drowning, gargling, he uses the figures of speech of the sound. Some similes and metaphors are: “devil’s sick of sin”, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”, “incurable sores on innocent tongues”, “drowning”, “smothering”, “gargling,froth-corrupted lungs” → words connected to the semantic area of suffering and sadness. Personal opinion:
WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN Alden was born in York in 1907. He started to experiment in writing poetry as a teenager. In 1925 he went to study English Literature at Oxford University, where he met and formed strong friendships with other young poets who were to form the group later known as the “Thirties poets”. They were politically committed and aligned themselves with the left and the far-left as a response to the economic crisis, social injustice and the rise of fascism in Europe. In 1935 he married Erika Mann who needed to obtain a British passport to escape from Nazi Germany (marriage of convenience as Auden was homosexual). In 1937 he went to Spain and it affected him profoundly as he found the reality of the war. In 1938 he spent six months in China observing the Sino-Japanese war. In 1939 he moved to the USA (the war started and he was homosexual and it was a crime, he could be arrested), and was criticized because it felt like he was betraying what he previously stood for. Auden died on 29th September 1973. He was a writer of Literature of Commitment → expresses an opinion that criticizes the happenings of that time, voice against what is happening. REFUGEE BLUES by W.H. AUDEN It is a blues poem published in 1939 by the American-English writer W.H. Auden, describing the experiences and struggles of a German-Jewish refugee. (blues → it expresses emotions of sadness and despair. It is also a slow, sad song, traditionally with 3-line stanza, usually takes a single main theme and makes variations on it leading to a powerful finale). It is written from the perspective of a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi Germany. It is a powerful protest poem and it has a strong political message and it is very relevant today. It is composed of twelve tercets (stanzas with 3 lines). It follows an AAB rhyme scheme. The last line of each stanza, in which there is always a repetition, tends to be longer than the others. These stylistic features contribute to creating a slow rhythm suitable to the melancholy tone of the poem. The poem is built upon contrasting images: ● (line 2) mansion / holes = it refers to the gap between the rich and the poor. ● (lines 11–12) officially dead / still alive = the refugees are considered dead by the government of their country but they are alive in body. ● (lines 22–24) = the contrast between the love shown towards pets and the hostility felt towards the refugees. ● (lines 25–27 and 28–30)= the contrast between the freedom of fish and birds and the persecution against the refugees.
Summary
This poem talks about how German-Jewish refugees are treated and welcomed (in this case in England). And for that he also criticizes the British people for their attitude against these people. Stanza 1 → The refugees are homeless, and still there are so many houses. Stanza 2 → They have no country to go to, there is still their country but they can’t go there anymore. Stanza 3 → They have no passport (the tree and nature blossoms every spring, there is always hope in nature, because they are reborn every time. However, there is no hope for refugees who have lost their passports and can’t have it back, they can't be reborn like nature). Stanza 4 → They are officially dead for the State but they are still alive. Stanza 5 → They are refused help by any committee. The government asked for them to try again next year, but they didn’t say anything about today. Stanza 6 → There is a public meeting and people are accusing refugees of being thieves (daily bread → Christian words to describe a non-Christian way of behaving). Stanza 7 → With a metaphor the speaker compares Hitler’s angry speeches to a thunder (it also reminds us of the aircraft and bombing that will soon dominate the sky of Europe during the war). Stanza 8 → Pets are treated better than they are. The love towards animals and the hostility towards the German Jewish people. Stanzas 9 and 10 → Similar animal imagery, the fish are swimming freely and the birds are singing in the trees → contrast between the free natural world and the human world of prejudice. Animals have more liberty than human beings. Liberty of the animals against the persecution of the humans. Stanzas 11 → They have got no place to stay. There is a huge building but there is no space for them. Stanza 12 → They are persecuted (the description of a snow-covered land. Many soldiers are searching for Jewish people). Sort of prophetic of what's going to happen in World War II. This poem was written BEFORE the beginning of WWII, however it is a fairly accurate prediction of what happened. Personal opinion:
HOME by WARSAN SHIRE Home is a poem published in 2015 by the writer Warsan Shire. It talks about migration, with its traumas and complexities. It explores the forces that drive people to leave their homes. It explores the pain that defines many migrant experiences. It also explores the ways that migrants received in the countries in which they are seeking refuge. Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet Shire was inspired to write Home after visiting a shelter for Somali refugees in London. Themes ● Displacement (exile, migration) ● Violence ● Bigotry (prejudice, intolerance) ● Homesickness / looking for a safe place to call home Summary Stanzas 1-4 → the speaker details the violence and trauma that often lead migrants to leave their homes , making it clear that migration is not a choice for the migrants who escape from war-torn countries. They are leaving home because home is forcing them. Stanza 5 → the speaker begins to address the reader , to make him understand that no one would put themselves and their family into the dangerous and humiliating situation of becoming a refugee unless the alternative was far worse. The speaker then goes on to describe the cruel and harrowing experience of escaping and traveling to a seemingly safer place, only to be welcomed with hatred , bigotry, and ignorance. They traveled under trains, beneath carriage, in the stomach of a truck. In their journey they were beaten and went through full body checks. They are greeted with insults and dirty looks, but this is better than violence. Stanza 9 → the speaker begins to look to the future , stating that only her wish to survive is driving her onwards. The last two stanzas → the speaker repeats the sentiment that no one would leave their home unless home itself drove them away. Home is personified, she is speaking to them, telling to run away from her because she had become dangerous. The author wants to emphasize how difficult it was for the refugees to be welcomed everywhere. Refugees get rid of their identity, because they were aware that they wouldn’t be going back. Personal opinion:
