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English Context
Cards in this deck (35)
- 1Context Religion The language of the ChurchNineteenth Century writers were strongly influenced by the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Hearing readings and sermons week by week in church, they absorbed the language and rhythms of the Bible.
- 2The centrality of Christian observanceChurches were built in the new industrial cities and about half the population attended regularly. In villages and older towns and cities, parishes continued to be centres of the life of the community, as they had been for centuries.
- 3Darwin and geologyIn 1859, Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species, in which he laid out the theory of evolution. Many saw this as being contrary to the teachings of the Bible, though there were others who saw no necessary contradiction at all.
There had been earlier challenges to biblical truth, especially when its interpretation was taken very literally. - 4Context Women The predominance of male authorsUntil recently, the majority of published writers were men and the portrayal of women in literature was inevitably one-sided. Women in Dickens have been seen as stereotypes: the harridans, the silly little wives, the femme fatales. In Our Mutual Friend, Lizzie Hexham is a rounded, psychologically believable character.
- 5The rise of the novel WomenTwo of Mrs Gaskell's novels, Ruth and Mary Barton, focus on the economic realities of women within society.
George Eliot believed that duty supplied personal purpose and meaning, which is reflected in many of the female characters in her novels, who are notable for their psychological complexity. - 6LiteracyUniversal education did not come about in Britain till 1870. Literacy rates for women were the same for men among middle- and upper-class women, but the majority of the population was classified as working-class.
- 7Working class girlsLiteracy rates for girls were low among the working classes, though it gradually increased through the century.
After 1870, girls could expect to be given a Primary School education (initially to age 11, then to 13). Tess in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, gets up to the sixth standard, which would have enabled her to attend a Teacher Training College, as Hardy's two sisters and cousin did. - 8Middle and Upper class girlsMiddle- and upper-class girls would probably be taught at home, but there were small private schools, some of charitable foundation. Charlotte Brontë depicts her own experience of such a charity school in Jane Eyre. Lowood School is shown as cruel, unsafe and deeply patronising, like the unsanitary school at which two of her sisters had died.
- 9The prevalence of death Context PovertyIn Victorian times death was more of an integral part of the fabric of everyday life compared to modern western society. Deaths usually occurred at home and the mortality rate, especially amongst the poor, was much higher than it is nowadays.
- 10The irony of fateIn Tess of the d'Urbervilles, for example, Tess is undecided whether to tell her fiancé, Angel, of her past. She decides to write a letter, delivers it, but unbeknown to her, the letter slips under a carpet and is never found. We are left to decide whether:It is an unlucky accident
Some sort of malevolent Fate
A moral failure on her part not to tell Angel face to face. - 11A moral forceIn the novels of George Eliot, there is a more obvious moral pattern. For example, in Middlemarch, the religious hypocrite Bulstrode finds that however much he tries to hide his past, an apparent series of coincidences actually reveal it. His actions help to achieve the opposite of what he wishes. But here, unlike with Tess or Oedipus, we feel fate, or destiny, is a moral force.
- 12Context Industrial RevolutionThe social pyramid.By 1803 it was reckoned there existed around:
27,000 upper class families
630,000 middle-class households
Two million working class ones.
The Industrial Revolution changed population patterns enormously, creating many new towns and cities, with the need for more workers. - 13Social mobilityIt had always been possible for a rich merchant or lawyer to buy property, educate his children and marry them into some impoverished upper class family. In a generation or two, the family would be considered upper class. Similarly, working class children, if showing sufficient talent and lucky with a benefactor, might rise to be teachers, lawyers or merchants.
- 14Context Class in 19th century fictionThomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles shows the villain, Alec d'Urberville, inheriting his money from a wealthy merchant father who had bought up an aristocratic name, property and lifestyle. Meanwhile, he helps destroy Tess, whose family used to be aristocratic but now have fallen to be landless labourers.
- 15GentilityOne dominating theme in the nineteenth century novel has to do with what constitutes a ‘gentleman'. The status of gentleman was traditionally shared between the lower ranks of the upper classes and the educated and upwardly mobile middle class. The term 'Esquire', often used of a gentleman, was derived from the term 'squire', a small landowner often serving as Justice of the Peace for his community and representing it politically.
- 16ExamplesLiterary examples
In Mrs. Gaskell's North and South, Margaret Hale, the middle-class heroine, sees her clergyman father as a gentleman, but finds it difficult to see the industrialist Thornton as one because he still works for his living. In the end she has to admit he behaves like a gentleman, and so is one. - 17Victorian definition of classThis redefinition of a gentleman was enormously important for the Victorians. It shifted the concept from wealth and status, plus education and manners, to a moral basis. In other words, anyone could become a gentleman, and a good education was redefined as a moral one.
- 18Victorian attitudes to classMiddle class perspectives
Victorian writers were nearly all from the middle classes and many had quite ambivalent attitudes to the working classes. The Victorians also tended to distinguish between the 'deserving poor' and the 'indigent' when it came to charity and the administration of Poor Law relief, the only social security system there was. - 19Working class aspirationsAttempts by working-class characters to 'get on' socially are portrayed:
In Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Jude is unsuccessful. The latter novel created a furore over Jude's radical ideas.
Both novels show how impossible it was for working class men to gain access to higher education. - 20Living conditionsMany working class people in the nineteenth century were marked by grinding poverty, slave-like labour conditions, overcrowding, disease, alcoholism and few opportunities to gain an education.
Jo Gargery in Great Expectations is another example, though his family life only becomes happy with his second marriage. - 21The bourgeoisieAbove the lower middles-class were the bourgeoisie, the solid middle-class. The term is another nineteenth century invention. The best portrayal of these is given by the novelist George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss portrays provincial middle class manners and values exactly.
- 22The breakdown of class divisionsMany of these characteristics of class and hierarchy continued in England till after World War II. It must be said that in Scotland, and to a lesser extent, Wales, the democratic urge and the access to higher education were stronger, modifying the strength of division of class feeling.
- 23Context IndustrializationIn 1750, there were, in fact, only two cities with a population above 50,000. By 1801, there were eight. New industries were developing, such as Manchester, or where new trade was entering and leaving the country, as at Liverpool. Between 1800-1840 cotton and wool mills were set up in the north of England as the clothing industry became industrialised.
- 24Housing concernsCharles Dickens is probably the best known writer of the period to depict such conditions, in his novel Hard Times
Mrs Gaskell lived in Manchester, where her husband was a church minister. She wrote about urban conditions in Mary Barton and North and South - 25Literary portrayals of town and countryPoetry in the nineteenth century remained firmly grounded in the Romantic tradition and engaged mostly with the countryside as Nature:
Wordsworth's poetry on the whole deals with the wilder and grander aspects of Nature, as is befitting a native of the Lake District - 26The Great ExhibitionThe Great Exhibition of 1851 marked a time when Britain was one of the richest nations of the world, with a supportive Empire behind her, protected by the world's strongest navy. Britain was reaping the benefits of being the first country to industrialise.
- 27Textile manufactureThe development of steam power enabled the use of power looms and spinning frames in cotton mills.
Since owners ran their mills for profit and there were very few laws protecting workers from exploitation.
In her 1855 novel, North and South, realist writer Elizabeth Gaskell set out to highlight the atrocities. - 28First industrial revolutionThe First Industrial Revolution, started with the mechanisation of the textile industry.
An increase in production
The replacement of skilled weavers and spinners working from home with unskilled operatives working machines in a factory and mills - 29The second revolutionThe second phase of the Industrial Revolution, often termed the Second Industrial Revolution, ran from the mid to the late nineteenth century. This saw:
Further advances in mechanisation
A greater development in international trade,Increased urbanisation. - 30The railwaysThe 1830s saw the rapid spread of the railway. The construction of railway lines:
Radically transformed both the rural and urban landscape
Challenged traditional conceptions of time, space, and distance
Gave rise to new opportunities for trade, commerce, and technology. - 31Context The British empireThe period spanning from late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century has been described as one of ‘high empire.' During this time, Britain took over a huge amount of territory and colonized a massive proportion of the world's inhabitants.
- 32Cultural ImperialismCultural Imperialism is the process whereby one nation dominates another.
Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella, Heart of Darkness, describes the European colonial exploitation of Africa in the late nineteenth century. - 33Nineteenth century novelsSome of these slow, tiresome journeys were actually quite significant: Jane Eyre's journey of escape from Rochester leaves her symbolically stranded and lost, but she is then divinely guided in her ramble over the moors to her unknown cousins.
- 34Nineteenth century novelsThomas Hardy's novels also start with coach travel, but end with railway travel in Jude the Obscure. Hardy uses railway speed to symbolise the rapid disintegration of stable traditional communities into anonymous personal isolation and fracture.
- 35An age of optimismThe benefits of wealth created through industrial development
Greater political stability than in the rest of Europe.
Deference to class and authority
Respect for the law
The conviction that work is a duty which is good for the soul.
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- Detailed notes on context, the Victorian era!
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- Freya Pottow
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