THE VICTORIAN AGE

Took its name from Queen Victoria; in her period industrialisation had brought a period of rapid
expansion; England colonised many countries and became the most important powerful nation in the
world. Much of the British wealth came from the result of material exploitation like growing numbers
of colonies or lowly paid workers. By 1850’s people had to leave the countryside because they were
attracted to cities by the promise of work in the new factories, but they found bad conditions → they
had to live all together in little workhouses and children also work..
Important social reforms:
- Great Reform Act → the middle class can vote.
- Factory Act → limited the work of children.
- Poor Law Amendment Act → created workhouses.
The poor → were forced into overcrowded slums, cheap materials were often used to construct
new buildings, residents had to pump water to take baths at home, toilets weren’t connected with
drainage pipes and as a result, sewage often overflowed. These unsanitary conditions led to spread
of deadly diseases like cholera and tuberculosis.

The Victorian Compromise is a mental attitude that allowed people to accept inequality between
rich and poor people; as a matter of fact, very rich people could do whatever they wanted and then,
to clear their appearances, they would organize events for the poors. It was a period where
respectability and sense of pudery were very important, but at the same time there was prostitution,
alcoholism and drugs.

People’s Charter (formal petition) → The country wasn't as well represented because votes had to
be declared publicly. This fact gave rise to the Chartist Movement, the goal of the chartists was to
gain political rights for the working classes. The People’s Charter was rejected three times and the
last one collected six million signatures. All the Chartists’ demands became law and gradually
extended the vote to members of the working classes.

The Victorian period saw the expansion of Britain’s empire all over the world, from Asia to Africa to
Central America to Oceania. This expansion need to protect trade routes to and India, the so-called
“jewel in the crown” of the empire.
The Crystal palace was born → a place in which there are exhibitors from all over the world.
- Corn Laws → maintained the price of corn in Britain at an unrealistically high level by taxing
imported corn, making it impossible for the poor to buy bread.
- Poor Law → the law started for anyone who wanted to receive money or other help from the
Poor Law authorities.

Gladstone and Disdraeli → were two important political figures. They both wanted the incorporation
of the working classes through reform and they both supported the Elementary Education Act,
which gave all children the right to a basic education and the Trade Union Act, which made unions
legal.
- Independent Labour Party → the elementary education became free and the school-leaving
age was raised to twelve.

The United States began to grow into the rich and powerful nation it is today, cities were raised and
railroads constructed, this one was a crucial element in the development of the economy transporting
agricultural crops, livestock and wood.
The American Civil War → Abraham Lincoln was elected president and seven southern states
seceded to form the Confederate States of America.
Golden age of the novel → it was the main source of entertainment for the educated middle classes.
Novelists often published their work in instalments in periodicals, creating a certain type of
expectation in readers, who awaited the following instalsment, anxious to find out what happened next
in the story (idea of linearity).
- Bildungsromans → novel of formation, was one of the most popular genres, which traced
the life of the protagonist from infancy to early adulthood. The narrator was typically
omniscient. The individual could find his place in society.

CHARLES DICKENS
Life
- He was born in 1812 in the south of England, Portsmouth, and he is considered the first
urban novelist.
- His father was imprisoned for debt and Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory, an
experience that marked him and his literary production.

Main themes
- criticism towards the middle class, but in the end they had to buy his work so he didn't really
give solutions;
- faith in progress;
- exploitation of child labour;
- ill treatment of pupils in school and workhouses;
- social injustice (due to the penal code → a particular law that established that it you wanted
money you had to go to workhouses);
- appalling living conditions in the slums;
- unsafe factory conditions.

Stylistic features
- lively portrait of universal characters, he described people from all social classes and he
also produced caricatures (describing a person by underlining some things they did, using
sarcasm and irony);
- pile up details using lots of descriptions, full of adjectives and synonyms;
- cliffhanger technique → he interrupted the episode on its crucial moment in order to create
suspense; he had a journalistic way of writing, because at first he was a reporter; he
published in installments so he wrote in a chronological linear order;
- Third-person and quite-omniscient narrator → he deduces some actions that he isn't sure
about.

Autobiographical aspects
- social commitment → unpleasant experience in a shoe-blacking factory;
- strong identification with the poor → his father's arrest for debt.

OLIVER TWIST (1837-1839)

Oliver Twist is an orphan who grows in a workhouse, run by Mr Bumble. When he asks for more
food, he is expelled. One night, he runs away to London, where he falls into the hands of a gang of
pickpockets, led by Fagin. Rescued by Mr Brownlow, Fagin orders him to be kidnapped and he is
obliged to take part in a burglary. Shot by the servants, he is taken care of by the owners of the
house. They also help him find Mr Brownlow, who finally adopts him.
Oliver → is the emblem of good and innocence.
Fagin → is the emblem of evil.
JACOB’S ISLAND
Descriptions of London and its unhealthy living conditions.
- Environment → Folly Ditch is surrounded by a muddy canal very deep and wide. There are
the dirtiest. buildings and the ships on the river are full of dust because of coal.
- Streets → to reach this place, the visitor has to go through many narrow, muddy and crowded
streets. On the path there are the cheapest shops, with all provisions amassed or dangling
from the structure.
- Houses → their windows are broken, rooms are small and dirty, the walls are covered in dirt
and the foundations are falling apart.
- Inhabitants → they're people who probably are escaping from cruel situations and they are
looking for a place to stay and hide.

HARD TIMES (1854)

Thomas Gradgrind is the school headmaster of Coketown's school, he is a "practical man" and
believes only in facts. He brings up his children, Louisa and Tom, in a severe way, crushing any
imaginative impulses; just as he treats the children in his school (like an object).
- Louisa marries a factory owner thirty years older than her. Unhappy in her marriage, Louisa
is distracted by a politician who comes to Coketown. When he tries to seduce her, she goes
to her father for protection; Gradgrind understands that his perfectly ordered world of facts is
very limited and Louisa separates from her husband.
- Tom robs his employers and then tries to divert suspicion onto an innocent craftsman, but he
is discovered and he leaves the country.

A METROPOLITAN WORKHOUSE (1850)

It is an article from Household words, Dickens describes a visit to a workhouse (bad conditions).

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

Life
- She was the third of 6 → Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne.
- 1821 → Charlotte and her sisters were sent away to school, but after her two older sisters
died of tuberculosis.
- 1835 → she began working as a teacher and governess.
- 1847 → she published her first novel, Jane Eyre.

JANE EYRE
Jane Eyre is staying at her aunt's house (Reed) after losing both her parents. Both her aunt and her
cousin hate her and she went to Lowood boarding school run by Mr Brockehurst. She doesn't have
a friend, she only has Helen but she dies of consumption. Jane becomes a teacher at the beginning
for the Lowood school but after she becomes a governess to Adele, who lives with her guardian Mr
Rochester at Thornfield Hall. At Thornfield hall Jane is happy thanks to Adele and Mrs Fairfax
although she hears a strange laugh from the attic of the house. Jane is attracter by Mr Rochester and
one night she saves Mr Rochester from the fire of his room. After some time Mr Rochester says to
Jane that he fell in love with her and he proposes to her. Jane agrees but during the wedding a man
called Richard Mason stops the wedding because he says that Rochester is already married with her
sister Bertha, who is mad and she is closed in the attic. Rochester tells all the story to Jane and she
leaves Thornfield Hall and she becomes a teacher in a small village. One night she returns to
Thornfield and Bertha had set fire to the house and Berta died but Mr Rochester was still alive but he
lost his sight. Mr Rochester and Jane married.
Stylistic features
- Jane Eyre has many autobiographical elements and it is a typical feature of Charlotte
Bronte.
- The narrator is a first person narrator and thanks to this the reader can see the point of view
of Jane.
- Charlotte describes Jane like a woman who has feelings and emotional responses; this
character was against the puritanical tradition.
- Jane Eyre is a mix between the Bildungsroman and gothic fiction.
- The atmosphere was disquiet and the places were described with dark and threatening
shades with mysterious events which takes the reader to have fair and mystery.
- The female figure of the novel is a double figure with two female figures Bertha and Jane;
they are complementary figures → Bertha locked in the attic was the social control and
repression on the female passion and rage; Jane was passionate.

JEAN RHYS

Life
- She was born in Dominica (1894).
- At the age of sixteen she moved to Europe.
- The books of Jean Rhys were unsuccessful because she was ahead of the period and they
treated women, poor class and also she treated the sexuality of the women without moralizing
or stereotyped psychology. Her books were very successful only after her death.

WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Wide Sargasso Sea was about the life of one of the characters of Jane Eyre → it's the first wife of
Rochester, Bertha. The name in this novel is Antoniette. The novel talks about her life, starts from
her youth in Giamaica and about her marriage with Rochester, who renames her Bertha. He drives
her crazy.
The novel is rich of magic and symbolism.
There are tree narrator:
- Young Antoniette → describes the childhood before the marriage.
- Young Mr Rochester → describes the marriage with Antoniette and the terrible
consequence.
- Old Antoniette → describes when she was closed in the attic.
 EMILY BRONTE

Life
- She was born in Yorkshire (1818) and she was the younger sister of Charlotte.
- Emily and her sister published many poems under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton
Bell.
- Emily wrote only one novel: "Wuthering Heights". She completed this novel one year before
her death. At the beginning this novel wasn't appreciated but now it is considered one of the
most romantic, singular, and powerful novels ever written in English literature.
- In 1848 Emily died of tuberculosis.

Themes and style

- The main themes are the mix of love, hate, fear and hope. It's important the meditation and
introspection.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Heathcliff, a foundling, grows up with Catherine in her father's house. They become inseparable,
enjoying the beauty of the wild nature around them. Her brother does his utmost to humiliate
Heathcliff and, when Catherine develops affection for another man, Edgar, Heathcliff leaves in search
of fortune. When he returns seeking revenge, he obliges Catherine’s daughter to marry his son, who
soon dies. Only after Heathcliff’s death is Catherine’s daughter free to marry the man she loves.

Stylistic features
- In this novel we can find gothic elements → there is mystery and suspense in a Gothic
atmosphere.
- Elements of nature rock, wind and rain characterized the history and made the work different
from all the other novels of literary tradition.
- The setting is very important → the action of the story is between the two houses Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange that symbolized the first the romantic world with feelings,
emotion and the second the neoclassic world of civility represses the feelings and so
represented rationality, order and social convention.
- One theme of the novel is the power of money who change the lives of the characters.
- The story is rich of flashback and flash-forwards.

Narrative strutture
- The structure of this novel is a multilevel narrative structure → there is an external
narrator (Lockwood) and internal narrator who tells him the story of Cathy and Heathcliff
and it is Nelly.

Characters
- Heathcliff is an outcast because of his origin and his appearance → he is good and evil at
the same time.
- Catherine is a dreamer and rebel human but she is insecure and she is conformist to the
society.

I Am Heathcliff
This is chapter 9 and it's a conversation between Catherine and Nelly, the servant about the
feelings of Cathy → she is in love with Heathcliff but she prefers to marry Edgar because he's a wild
boy while Heathcliff was a gentleman.
 STEVENSON
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Terrible criminal actions are committed in London by a mysterious man, Mr Hyde.
Meanwhile, the lawyer Mr Utterson is worried about his client Dr Jekyll, who has started leading a
secluded life. When one day he breaks into Jekyll’s laboratory, he finds Mr Hyde lying dead. In a
letter, Dr Jekyll explains how he has succeeded in concentrating his evil side in a different person, Mr
Hyde, and now he intends to kill his evil double.

Features and themes

- It came from under the form of a dream.
- It has a gothic aspect → shadowy places, physical deformities and supernatural elements.
- It has several different points of view → Utterson, Enfield, Dr Lanyon and Dr jekyll.
- The theme of the double → the good and the evil side.

OSCAR WILDE

He was famous for his humorous observations and aphorism.

Preface → is considered a manifesto of the Aesthetic movement and it expresses Wilde’s ideas on
art in general.
- The artist is a creator of beautiful things.
- The artist is art’s aim.

The picture of Dorian Gray

Hallward is an artist and he painted the portrait of a young man, Dorian Gray; but he understands
that the beauty of the portrait will last while he himself will grow old and horrible. Dorian expresses a
wish that the reverse were true and he will kill himself when his youth fades. He meets a brilliant
actress called Sybil Vane, who falls in love with him, but he rejects her when he understands that it
was only on stage that she fascinated him. Sybil kills herself. Years later Dorian was totally corrupt
and evil but still as youthful as ever. Hallward sees the face of the portrait and Dorian kills him to
prevent him from revealing his secret. Dorian realises that the portrait becomes more and more ugly
and he decides to destroy it, but in doing this, he kills himself. The portrait is magically restored to its
original image of Dorian’s youthful perfection, while Dorian becomes an old, disgusting man.

Morals
It has two morals:
- The excess → every excess can be punished in the end.
- The arts → arts never died

Art for Art’s Sake

Wilde believes that only art as the cult of beauty could prevent the murder of the soul. He saw the
artist as an alien in a materialistic world. He wrote only to please himself and wasn’t concerned about
communicating his theories to his fellow-beings. His pursuit of beauty was the tragic act of a superior
being rejected as an outcast.
Motto of Aestheticism → Art can no longer be judged on a moral basis but only on an aesthetic one.
The preface
The Preface, first published as an essay in a literary magazine, appeared in the 1891 final edition of
the novel. It consists of a series of aphorisms, epigrammatic sentences, considered the basic
principles of Aesthetic in England. Since it is a preface, it expresses the author’s intentions and gives
guidelines to the reader. This first part of the novel can be considered as the manifesto of the
English Aesthetic Movement because it expresses Wilde’s idea of art: art doesn’t have a didactic
aim, but it is just for pleasure. The artist, according to Wilde, is nothing more than the figure that
creates beauty through techniques, thoughts and language. He’s the creator of beautiful things and
he’s not interested in communicating his own ideas because he writes only to please himself.

PRE-RAPHAELITE POETS

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The term 'Pre-Raphaelite' came into use when two young painters criticising the style of Raphael and
his followers. They were a group of poets and painters, which include Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The Pre-Raphaelite painters turned their eyes away from
the ugly contemporary industrial and urban world, and conceived the creation of beauty as a duty
owed to society. The main characteristics of the group’s work include fidelity to nature, an excessive
sensuality and a re-evaluation of medieval religion and legend. The group also insisted on the use of
non-industrial materials and manufacturing techniques. They anticipated the Aesthetic movement.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Life and style

- She took part in the Pre-Raphaelite movement → their goal is to achieve beauty.
- Some of her poems appeared under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne.
- She spoke about the cult of beauty and youth and she was horrified by the idea of growing
old. She also thinks that love and death are often seen as inseparable.
- The style of Rossetti’s shorter poems is quite simple.

IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO
For her, love is something which is preserved in remembered images, connected to painting. Rossetti
imagines an artist alone in his studio surrounded by the numerous portraits he has made, all of which
reflect the face of his beloved. Rossetti indicates a fundamental difference between the female self
and her image as it is seen by the artist; female inner self is excluded from love because men can
only love women as idealised images.

REMEMBER
It is like a letter addressed to her beloved, asking him not to be sad when she is gone. She tries to
see her own image as it will be remembered by her beloved when she is dead. She also hopes that
her beloved won’t be sad and it might be better for him to forget her completely.
 20TH CENTURY

In this period there are many social changes, so even in literature the way of seeing reality changes
completely → everything is now subjective and is filtered by our minds. Our thoughts don't follow a
logical way, even punctuation can’t be used because it isn't present in our thoughts.
There is never one reality, it is too complex to be reduced to one point of view.

The first decades of the 20th century

After Queen Victoria's death (1901), Edward VIl became king, then he was succeeded by his son
George V in 1910. After the queen they actually weren't so important, the Parliament made the
decisions. Liberals were split between conservatives and reformists; the liberal government
continued its social reform:
- introduction of free school meals (1907)
- Old Age Pensions Act (1908)
- Labour Exchanges (1909) → unemployers could go there to look for a job
- National Insurance Act (1911) → medical treatments became free for insured workers
- Parliament Act (1911) → the House of Lords couldn't put the veto on new laws

The Irish Question

In Ireland there was a majority of Catholics, they didn't want a protestant State, but independence.
In 1801 the Act of Union abolished the Irish Parliament → birth of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and ireland.
- Easter Monday in 1916 → during the war, some Irish people organized a rebellion against
British rule and Ireland was declared independent. The British Parliament reacted with
cruelty and 450 people were killed, lots of people imprisoned.
After WWI, in 1918 the Sinn Fein party set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish
Republic.
In 1919 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) was created and a civil war began. The war ended in 1921,
and in 1922 with the anglo-irish treaty Ireland was divided into:
- the irish Free State
- the six protestant counties of Ulster
In 1949 the Republic of Ireland was officially announced.

World War I (1914-18)

The event which officially started it was the assassination of the Austrian Ferdinand in Sarajevo in
1914 by Serbian nationalists.
The war was between:
- German Empire and the Austro Hungarian Empire on one side
- Britain and France on the other
However, many other countries were also involved because of alliances.
It was a war without limits, the aim became destroying the competition and gaining total dominance.
Also military technology had advanced greatly.
The USA entered the conflict in 1917, and defeated Germany In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was
made by the Allied powers to prevent Germany from gaining strength again.
Then the League of Nations was created to prevent war from happening again.
Russian Revolution (1917)
Imperial Russia was also involved in the fight with the Allied powers, it exited the conflict because of
a revolution.
The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, led by Lenin, established a communist government. In
the following decades, Lenin's successor Stalin established a reign of terror that led to the death or
imprisonment of millions of Russians.

Suffragettes
In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter founded the Women’s Social and Political Union;
the women who followed the Union and fought for the right to vote were called “suffragettes”. In 1918
women over 30 were granted the right to vote, mostly because of the role they had during WWI. In
1928 suffrage was extended to women over 21.

1920s and 1930s

In Britain it was a period of optimism, many reforms were made to improve society:
- Education Act
- Ministry of Health
In Britain's colonies, especially India, there were rebellions; Gandhi started a protest movement to
gain Indian independence, but it took longer than expected.

Great Depression
The Wall Street stock market collapsed on the 24th October 1929 ("Black Thursday) → beginning of
a worldwide depression. Many people were left unemployed and banks failed.
- Hitter → in Germany, because of war debts, the Nazi party gained popularity. The League of
Nations maintained a policy of appeasement towards the country to avoid war, but Hitter
invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, so Britain and France declared war on
Germany.

World War Il
It was a necessary war to keep fascism away. In 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the war
became global, there were two fronts:
- Europe
- Asia.
Germany conquered territories almost without opposition until 1940 with the Battle of Britain, since
this battle a series of defeats began. Allied powers and Russia succeed to defeat Germany, the war
ends in 1945.
- The holocaust → extermination of the Jews in Europe made by Hitler with the use of
concentration camps.
After the war, many Nazi criminals were arrested, but others escaped or changed identities.
- Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Americans dropped atomic bombs on these Japanese cities in
1945. The USA saw the many victims as a "necessary sacrifice" because, without the attack,
war would have continued for long. They also wanted to reveal their nuclear power to Russia;
this started the Cold War between the two powers.
D-DAY → in june 1944, allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French
coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy.

influences on Modernism
- Sigmund Freud → in his theories he talks about the human consciousness as
multilayered, it has many levels of memories. The most significant is the unconscious,
which contains experiences of our childhood that are hidden and can be accessed only
through dreams. Freud says that childhood experience has a great influence on adult
behavior and because of that we perceive reality in a subjective way.
 - Henri Bergson → the traditional way of ordering time in past, present and future is wrong.
because time is a continuous flow in which individuals identify significant moments.
- William James → stream of consciousness, you have to speak freely in order to understand
your unconscious.
- Ezra Pound → connected to Bergson, all ages are contemporary, there is no past, present
or future. The author can mix all moments of his life because they're all part of him.

The modern novel

- There isn't an omniscient narrator → narrators are now characters of the story, so we know
their thoughts, feelings and memories.
- There isn't a linear plot → the events aren't in a chronological order because of the new
concept of time. Virginia Woolf talks about “time of the clock”and "time of the mind /
moments of being', which is the way we perceive time. A novel could be set in one day while
the narrator gives us his entire life-story.
Interior monologue → narrative technique used to represent the stream of consciousness.
- Direct interior monologue (free direct speech) → presentation of a character's stream of
consciousness without a narrator's introduction and an external point of view.
- Indirect interior monologue (free indirect speech) → there's a guide through the
character's thoughts, easier because there are explanations (ex. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia
Woolf.

JOSEPH CONRAD

Life
He's seen as a pre-modernism writer, he is between the traditional writing and the modern one: he
uses different narrators to get multiple points of view.
He starts to write reality in a subjective way because there are many narrators, so there isn't a
guide through the story and a true version of it.
The story isn't in a linear order, perception of time is distorted by flashbacks and time-shifts.

Characters
- their mental isolation corresponds to a physical isolation → characters are far from their
native country;
- usually described in a moment of strength and life crisis → they're alone in a crucial
moment of their life and they have to be strong to overcome it.

HEART OF DARKNESS
It begins on a boat with Marlow telling the story of a journey he made into the Belgian Congo to
rescue Mr Kurtz → he was reputed to be the best trader but now he forces natives to revere him as a
god. Marlow found Mr Kurtz; he was now a legend and an idol to the natives.
Marlow took the boat again, on the same boat Mr Kurtz was dying → his last words were "the horror,
the horror". When Marlow meets Kurtz's fiancee in Belgium, he decides to tell her that the last word
he spoke was her name.

Themes
- based on a personal experience
- Darkness → Africa is the Dark continent and represent the mystery of human nature
- voyage of discovery into an unknown land → voyage of discovery into the self
Style
- first person narrator (Marlow) but the beginning and the end of the story are told by one of
the man on the boat
- time is complex:
- present → on the boat
- past → Marlow’s voyage

JAMES JOYCE

Life
- 1882 → he was born in Dublin and he studied at University College, in Dublin.
- 1905 → he met the Italian novelist Italo Svevo.
- 1941 → he died at 58 years old.

Literary Production
- 1914 → published his short stories, Dubliners.
- 1916 → published his semi-autobiographical first novel, A portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, in which he explains what he means by epiphany → “By an epiphany he meant a
sudden spiritual manifestation”.
- 1922 → published his masterpiece, Ulysses.

Interior Monologue and Epiphany

The writings of Joyce make frequent use of direct and indirect interior monologue, through this
technique the readers find themselves inside a character’s mind. Another characteristic of Joyce’s
writings is the peaks of intensity in the narrator that the writer calls “epiphanies” → an epiphany is a
sudden revelation of our condition and life; it is a moment in which a spiritual awakening is
experienced. This instant of intensity can be compared to Woolf’s idea of “vision”.

Dubliners
It was Joyce’s first short stories → the stories are arranged in four groups that correspond to four
phases of life:
- childhood
- adolescence
- maturity
- public life → we have the dead
A recurrent theme in all the stories is the feeling of paralysis → He considered Dublin as “the centre
of paralysis”.
He uses a lot of symbolism and the narrator is omniscient.

THE DEAD:
The story begins with an after-Christmas dinner party at the house of the aunts of the protagonist,
Gabriel Conroy. Gabriel goes to the party with his wife Gretta. When they reach their hotel room, he
realises that she is crying: at the end of the party, she had a sad 'epiphany'. Listening to an old Irish
song she remembered her first true love, Michael Furey, and she realises he thinks he died for her.
On hearing this desperate and passionate story, Gabriel has his own epiphany. When Gretta falls
asleep, he looks outside the window where the snow is falling. He realises the insignificance both of
his own life, and of those around him they will all fade and die and be forgotten.
Features and Themes
It combines all the categories of the other stories (childhood, adolescence, mature life, public life,
married life).
Although The Dead can be still considered highly symbolic → Gabriel is the name of the archangel
who sounds the trumpet at the last judgement, and the party takes place around the 6th of January.
The writer gives us a picture of the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters → indirect interior
monologue.
Gretta's epiphany leads to Gabriel's own epiphany. In the final scene, after Gretta tells the story of
Michael Fury, Gabriel looks out the window at the falling snow and reflects on the ultimate
insignificance of even the most intense moments of existence, which fade like all the rest into oblivion.

EVELINE
The day is dying, and the youth woman is watching the world go by under her window. Eveline has
agreed to run away from an oppressive and violent father and a miserable home to follow Frank, a
sailor, to Buenos Aires. In the end, she doesn't have the courage to go aboard the ship that would
take her and Frank to Buenos Aires.
Epiphany → “escape! she must escape!”
Paralysis → “her hands clutched the iron in frenzy”

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Life
- 1882 → she was born in London
- 1895 → the death of the mother and of her step-sister Stella, caused a nervous breakdown.
This marked the beginning of her mental instability, manifested with phantom voices in her
head.
- 1941 → she drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex

Literary Production
- The Voyage Out → her first novel
- Night and Day, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and Between the Acts

Interior Time
She is interested in the impressions of the characters who experience these events in their
subjectivity → she is concerned with female subjectivity, which has made her a heroine to many
feminists. When we read Woolf’s novels, we have the feeling of entering her characters’ inner world.
She used:
- indirect interior monologue → uses in order to represent the gap between chronological
and interior time
- point of view of characters themselves
- occasional presence of a narrator → give some order to the character’s thoughts

Moments of being
It's a moment of intensity, perception or vision which illuminates our lives. It's similar to Joyce's
epiphany.
MRS DALLOWAY (1925)
The whole book takes place in one single day in London. Clarissa Dalloway is married to Richard
Dalloway, a member of parliament. She spends her day preparing a party she is giving in her
house. She invited Peter Walsh → she was in love with him when she was a girl. Peter has just come
back from India and he still loves her.
In that same moment, a man called Septimius Warren Smith, a WWI veteran, commits suicide. At
her party Clarissa meets a psychiatrist, the same doctor had spoken with Septimus, and he tell
Clarissa about Septimius' suicide. Clarissa doesn't know Septimius' life, but she is shaken by the
news. At the end Clarissa approaches Peter Walsh, he is deeply troubled

Themes and Techniques

- at the beginning we have an important example of interior time in contrast with
chronological time
- Clarissa and Septimus become mutually dependent, although they are never directly
connected → like Clarissa, Septimus also moves around London, but unlike Clarissa,
Septimus is unable to hold together all the threads of experience and sensation that invade
his mind. His choice to die is inseparable from her acceptance of life, and his death becomes
the halo that illuminates her life.
- no traditional plot
- interior monologue → reproduce the characters’ minds (interruptions and irregular flux)

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

Is an essay written by Virginia Woolf after she delivered two lectures on the topic of ”women and
fiction“ at Cambridge University in 1928. With this essay the author examines the financial,
educational and social disadvantages women have faced throughout history, and it is also a key work
of feminist literary criticism. Virginia Woolf claims that in order for women to write pure works of
literature they need a space of their own and the same privileges that men are afforded to create the
same work that they do, at the same scale.

THE DYSTOPIAN NOVEL

A dystopian novel is an imaginary futuristic world in which society lives under the oppression and
control of a totalitarian government, a repressive society, a force of technology, or a corrupt business
corporation. Dystopias often start with an illusion of a perfect society, or a Utopia. But as the story
progresses, the reader and characters both realize that this fictional world is the opposite of perfect.

The anti-utopian novel

- Utopia → indicates an ideal perfect political state which is in fact impossible to realize a
perfect world or society in another time and place.
- Dystopia → a dreadful perfection of modern society. It is set in an imaginary future
characterized by a pessimistic vision. The world presented is not a model to be followed, on
the contrary it describes an hypothetical negative alternative.

Several common elements and ideas

- The truth about the world is often kept a secret from most of society.
- Individuals are totally powerless, they live under the control of government, corporation,
technology, religious or philosophical ideas → no freedom.
- We don’t speak about the past, but only about the present or the future.
- People can’t feel love, because it diverts attention from the party.
 GEORGE ORWELL

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
The novel describes a future world divided into three blocks: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.
Oceania is ruled by the Party, which is led by a figure called 'Big Brother’, and is continuously at war
with the other two States. In order to control people's lives, the Party is implementing "Newspeak”, an
invented language with a limited number of words. Free thought, sex and any expression of
individuality are forbidden, but the protagonist, Winston Smith, illegally buys a diary in which he
begins to write his thoughts and memories, addressing them to the future generations.
At the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites historical records to suit the needs of the Party, Winston
notices an attractive dark-haired girl staring at him, and is afraid she might be an informant who will
prove him guilty of 'thoughtcrime’. The girl's name is Julia; she proves to also have a rebellious
attitude, and they begin a secret affair. One day O'Brien, a member of the powerful 'Inner Party',
summons them to his luxury flat and tells them that he too hates the Party and works against it as a
member of the ‘Brotherhood'. He gives Winston a copy of Goldstein's book, the manifesto of the
Brotherhood. Winston is reading it to Julia in their room when some soldiers suddenly break in and
arrest them. He is taken to the Ministry of Love, where he finds out that O'Brien is a Party spy.
O'Brien tortures and brainwashes Winston for months, but he struggles to resist. At last O'Brien sends
him to Room 101, the final destination for those who oppose the Party. Here Winston is forced to
confront his worst fear: rats on his head, ready to eat his face. Winston's will is broken and he is
released to the outside world. He meets Julia, but no longer loves her. He has completely given up his
identity and has learned to love Big Brother.

Characters
- WINSTON SMITH → in him we can see:
- alienation from society
- rebellion against the Party
- search for spiritual and moral integrity
- BIG BROTHER → is the perceived ruler of Oceania he looks like a combination of Hitler and
Stalin. Big Brother’s God-like image is stamped on coins and projected on telescreens.
- JULIA → is Winston’s 25-year-old lover. She is a beautiful dark-haired woman who enjoys
sex and claims she had affairs with many Party members. She is optimistic and her rebellion
is small and personal.
- O'BRIEN → a member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston and Julia. He is a mysterious
character, with little background information revealed to the reader.

Features and theme

- The title is an inversion of the year in which it was written, 1948.
- The language is a ‘newspeak’
- Importance of memory and trust.
- Abolishment of individuality and reality.
- Satire against hierarchical societies.
 T.S. ELIOT

Style and technique

The works of Eliot are characterized by a mixture of different styles and techniques:
- The impersonality of the artist → the artist should always be objective and impersonal. The
author should not be involved in the plot and must stand outside of his work.
- The objective correlatives → the poet does not directly show nis emotions and feelings but
they are shown through metaphors indirectly; he must find a combination of images and
descriptions that evoke an appropriate emotion.
- The mythical method → Eliot went back to the origins of the Western culture, bringing back
the old myths. In modern society, old myths have lost their deep meaning.
- Repetition of words, images and phrases, which give musicality to the poem.

THE WASTE LAND

This poem is fragmentary, there is no plot in the poem and there are sequences of
images. The poem consists in 5 sections:
- The Burial of the Dead → this first part deals with the coming of spring in a sterile land. The
main important thing is the opposition between sterility and fertility, life and death.
- A Game of Chess → deals with the opposition between the sterile present and the past
splendor.
- The Fire Sermon → introduces the character of Tiresias. Here the sterile present is
rendered through the description of a loveless, mechanical and squalid sexual meet.
- Death by Water → the main theme is the idea of a spiritual shipwreck.
- What the thunder said → evokes religions from east and west. A possible solution is found
in a sort of "sympathy" with other human beings.

Themes
- Past opposed to present → the past is superior to the present because the present time is a
time of crisis, which came from the loss of values. It is a time of fragmentation and chaos,
which is reflected in the fragmentary style of the poem itself.
- The emptiness and sterility of modern life: Eliot's sterility can be divided in 3 stages:
1- Nature sterility means that there is no water in the land, there is drought
in the land. In the work, he talks also about the pollution of the land, which
makes it sterile.
2- Social sterility means lack of communication.
3- Spiritual sterility means that people no longer believe in religious values.
- Symbolism → Eliot uses many symbols, used with the objective correlative. Symbols can be
found also in the title itself, "waste land" means in fact “sterile and drought land, where there
is a lack of water".

Style and language

- The style of the work is fragmentary because of the mixture of poetic styles. He uses blank
verse, the ode, the quatrain and the free verse, reproducing the chaos of modern society.
- The language is very complex and difficult, because it is full of quotations from 35 authors
that come from his huge knowledge.