QUINTA INTERROGAZIONE INGLESE

City life in Victorian Britain

Early Victorian City Life: In the middle of 19th century, half of the population lived in towns. Most of them
lived in unhealthy slum districts and they were working in terrible conditions. In order to clean up the city,
two Housing Acts were passed.

Abandoned children, disabled and elderly started to live in workhouses in return for their labour.

Victorian workhouses: Workhouses became famous for their poor conditions. Poverty was considered a
consequence of laziness and the terrible conditions were meant to motivate the poor to self improvement.

The Victorian frame of mind

The Victorian compromise: Victorian age was an era of progress because of the Industrial Revolution, but, in
the other hand, it was also characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest.

The victorians promoted a code of values based on duties, hard work, responsibility and charity.

Respectability was a privilege of middle classes: in fact, only people with good manners, a comfortable
house and a life based on the religion had the privilege of being respectable.

Also philanthropy was a widespread phenomenon towards poor people.

Victoria family life: In the Victorian family, the husband represented the authority while the wife had to look
after the education of children.

Sexuality was repressed in its public and private forms.

The age of fiction

The most popular form of literature was the Victorian novel. The novelist's aim was to make the readers
aware of social injustices, in fact, their criticism was not radical. The omniscient narrator erected a barrier
between 'right' and 'wrong' and the plot is long and often complicated. The setting chosen was the city,
symbol of the industrial revolution. At last, the characters were realistic so that the reader could identified
with them.1

Charles Dickens

Setting: London was the setting for most of Dickens's novels. This city is shown in three different social level:
1. The parochial world of the workhouse. 2. The criminal world. 3. The world of the middle class.

Characters: One of the most important character are the children. He was always on the side of the poor.
His aim was to arouse the rider's interest by e exaggerating his characters' habit.

Didactic aim: He wanted to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems without offending the
middle-class readers.

Style: His style is detailed and descriptive.

Oliver Twist

Plot: Oliver is an abandoned poor boy that was sent to work in a workhouse. When he was sold to an
undertaker, he run away to London but he became a pickpocket of a young gang. Then he was found by Mr
Brownlow and, when he was wounded during a burglary, he decided to adopted him.

At last, they found the origin of Oliver and it was discovered that he had nobile origins.

Themes: The novel's aim is to attack the cruelty of institution like workhouse and of individuals towards
poor children. Crime is also at the centre of the novel.

Hard Times

Plot: In a school of Coketown, some kids are being indoctrinated by Thomas Gradgrind, who believes that
facts are the key to good education. In the school there are also his two children, Tom and Louisa. The
daughter married the father's old friend Mr Bounderby that is 30 years older than her because his
apprentice is his brother Tom.

Tom decide to rob to his employer and when he is captured he had to leave the country.

At last, Bounderby dies and Gradgrind decides to give up his materialistic philosophy.

Structure: It is divides in three sections: 'Sowing' introduced us tho Gradgrind's children. 'Reaping' reveals
the consequences of Gradgring's education. 'Garnering' narrate the last part of the story.

Coketown: The novel is set in a fictional city where is hard to live due to the soot coming from the coal-
burning factories. The inhabitants seems to be proud of the pollution of their city.

Caricatures: The personality of the character is hidden in their names: Gradgrind destroy his pupils'
imagination and creativity. Bounderby treat without emotions his workers in his factory. M'Choakumchild
suffocates the children's minds and imagination.

Themes: He denounces industrialisation that caused the gap between rich and poor. He also criticises
materialism.

The later years of Queen Victoria's reign

Politics and reform in late Victorian Britain:

The scene was dominated by two parties: the Liberal party led by Gladstone and the Conservative party led
by Disraeli.

The nation was changinf. The self-confidence of the early Victorian decades was being replaced by
uncertainty.

The Artisans's and Labourers's Dweilling Act provided houses for poor while the Public Health Act and the
Factory Act provided sanitation and limited working hours. At last, the Education Act established a national
system of primary education.

The British Empire and the end of the Victorian Age:

Aestheticism

This movement had nothing to do with morality and it had to deal with the pursuit of beauty because it was
the only important value. The motto 'Art for Art's sake' meant admiration of the sensual qualities of art. The
artist's task was to feel sensations and to express detachment from contemporary society.

The main theorist of the Aesthetic Movement in England was Walter Pater, who had a deep influence on
Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde

He was born in Dublin. He studied in Oxford and became a disciple of Walter Peter. He soon became a
dandy for his extraordinary wit and his extravagant way of dressing. He published his first and last novel
'The picture of Dorian Gray' and then he developed an interest in drama, writing 'The importance of Being
Ernest'. Both damaged the writer's reputation since they were considered immoral and obscene.

He was found guilty of homosexuality and was sentenced to two years of hard labour. He died of meningitis.

Romanticism

It was a reaction to the Enlightenment ideals. It valued emotions, imagination, introspection and the
relationship between men and nature. In England, it was anticipated by Thomas Gray and William Blake.
Then it started from the publication of 'Lyrical Ballads' by Wordsworth and Coleridge and finished with che
coronation of Victoria.

The poets are divided into two generations: the first one included Wordsworth and Coleridge while the
second was represented by Byron, Shelley and Keats.

Romantic interests

Nature: nature is a pantheistic and is is a manifestation of a divine power on Earth. Man is part of nature.

The individual: The atypical, the outcast and the rebel were exalted. This attitude led to the desire to
abandon the habits, values, rules and standard imposed by society.

The exotic: admiration for what is far away because is strange and unpredictable.

Imagination and childhood: imagination was used as a means to give expression to the emotional
experiences and it was like an inward eye. Exploring the less conscious aspects of feeling led to an interest
in the experience of childhood.

William Wordsworth

Man and nature: he was interested in the relationship between man and nature. When men enter in
contact with nature. it creates emotions and sensations. They are inseparable and nature helps men in
sorrow by comforting them because it's a source of pleasure and joy.

Importance of memory: memory gives life to poetry through the process of recollection.
Importance of senses: he has great sensibility of the eye and ear. Sensations lead to simple though which
combine into complex ideas.

Who is the poet?: The poet us a man speaking to other men. He become a teacher that explain how to
understand the feelings.

Gothic fiction

This movement was marked by a taste for the strange and mysterious and it had the aim of arouse fear in
the reader. The settings were castles, abbeys or convents during night time. The plot was complex and che
characters where supernatural beings like monsters, ghosts or vampires.

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein

Plot: Robert Walton went on an expedition to the North Pole and rescued a man named Victor Frankenstein
that decided to tell his story. He was a scientist who succeeded in creating a human being, but when the
creature came to life, the scientist was horrified by him. That creature took away everything that Victor
loved. At the end, Victori died and the creature decided to kill himself.

Levels of narration: The story is not told chronologically because it is composed of three narratives, with
three different narrators and three different points of view.

Literature influences: This story is inspired by Rousseau's ideals and also by the myth of Prometheus.

The role of science: Shelley was fascinated by experiments with electricity, in fact she was aware of the
latest scientific theories. Frankenstein was the first story that told about science and its moral
responsibilities.

Themes: The boundary between life and death; The usurpation of the female role; education and social
prejudices.