Was born in 1812 died with 58 yo. He said childhood must be happy.

If not, when adults they

weren’t going to be happy. He was very creative. He was a very happy child up to the age of
12. He is very awarded of traumas in childhood. He had a very good father. The father was
always with debts, so they had to move for not paying them, also sell his furniture. His father
was sent to debtors prison. So the family stopped having anything. So they went to prison
with his father. Dickins didn’t go, instead he found a job in a factory dedicated to shoe polish.
The factory was located near river - so it was polluted. Members fainted because of its smell.
He worked there for 10 hours a day. He became aware of the situation of workers who are
being exploited and orphans situation. All this is in their novels. He also became aware of
environmental danger. The father later inherited money from a grandmother so he could go
out. When this happened he wanted to go back to school but his mother wanted him to keep
working. The found job as a journalist in a lawyer’s office. This is where he began learning to
write and write literature. He started with “heak weak papers”. It became very successful.
Some said he was a socialist, so people didn want to buy it at first. He was a continuous
writer, publishing chapter after chapter. So he had the opportunity of knowing what people
think about his novels. Like that he could write the next chapter basing on people demand.
He needed money for his 9 children and in-laws. He also wanted to cause an impact with his
novels, transform society. He wanted to improve and reform the system. He divorced, he
(48) had a lover Ellen (18). They had a train accident where they were saved. He died for a
stroke.
For the moderns his

Round characters are deep ones, where you get inside of them. Complex minds

● Unplausibility: realist novels tend to be plausible, but he introduced improbable

elements. They are criticized from the perspective of realism and modernism. They
justified this unplausible elements because how can you change society if you don’t
believe.
● Sentimentality/ melodrama: situations that make people feel for breaking the
alienation not only seen in workers (Marx) but also power people (dickens). He
wanted them to begin to feel emotions for developing empathy in people. It was
criticized by the perspective of x.
● Flat characters: they don’t evolve from the beginning till the end. He was criticized
because moderns said humans are complex.
● Caricature/exaggeration:realism and modernism was against caricature. it distorts
reality. He did it to exaggerate to be able to show the invisible.
● Closure: the resolution of the conflict. This is not found in modern novels. At the end
of the novel the status quo is restored. This dickens does only to some extent.
Normally he introduces an element of change. The status quo is not restored at all,
there’s something that has changed.
● Manichean. He was accused of seeing only good or bad. He represents the extreme
poles, but his novels at the end suggest a middle point.
 ● Omniscient narrator: He knows everything. In realism he tends to be objective. He
is an omniscient narrator that modifies the novel, this could be for impacting the
reader.
● Ernst Bloch Principle of Hope: he thinks things are what they are. He said the
literature that can be more useful where magical things happen because they give
readers hope.
● Raynord Williams: he said flat characters are realistic because they represent the
alienated society.
● Terry Eagleton: he considered that dickens described the horrors of capitalist
society. He said dickens was naive.
● Fredrick Jameson: the political unconscious. He gave a system of analysis. He
believed Dickens create novels similar to fairy tails.

SUMMARY OF THE PLOT

1. What is Gradgrind's philosophy?

Based on rationality, self-interest (economic growth) and facts (practical mind). This
character represents utilitarianism. Without self interest the capitalist system wouldn’t exist.
2. What kind of school he founds?
A utilitarian school.
3. Summarise the personal features of Tom and Louisa and the main incidents in
which they are involved.
Tom is dissipated, egocentric and a pleasure pursuer (hedonist) due to his utilitarian
education.
● He robs Bounderby’s bank. Utilitarian thoughts agree, no values.
Louisa is inner confused
● Marries bounderby because of his father.
● Not a flat character
● She is going to continue being unhappy. If you don’t have a happy childhood, you
can’t be happy as an adult.
● She separated, and had a relationship with another man.
People who are alienated are flat

4. What kind of person is Josiah Bounderby?

He represents the worst aspects of capitalism. He claims to be abandoned by his mother,
so he is a self made man. But his mother was abandoned by his son, he mistreated her.
Dickens wants his readers to hate this character.
● Bounder: man without principles.

5. Who is Slackbridge?
Is a trade union leader. Dickens believed that trade unions must be a bridge.
● Slack: not tight, weak.
● Bridge: Union, conection.
6. Who is Stephen Blackpool? What is his relationship with Slackbridge and
Bounderby? What happens to him?
Expelled from the trade union. Then he rejected Bounderby’s offer. He doesn’t agree, he
has values. He is accused from robbing the bank. He comes back to defends his honors, he
dies falling in a well. He marries a drunken woman. She disappeared. Named related with
his dead, destiny. He represents dickens ideology. He docents want confrontation. The
reader must be moved by his dead. An adulterous person can’t be the hero, but his features
made people moved by his death.

7. Does Gradgrind change his mind concerning his fanatic utilitarianism?

He changed because of the happiness of his daughter. She told him: you are responsible
for my unhappiness. He had an emotional shock that awakened his capacity of feel.
Dickens considers that even the most alienated individuals have the capacity to feel.

8. Who is Mr. Sleary? What role does he play in the plot?

He is the owner of the circus. He helps Tom escape. The circus is a metaphor of an
alternative society. For the Victorians, the happy ending is the restauration of the status
quo.

9. What do you think about the closure of the novel? Is it a happy ending?
Louisa doesn’t have a happy ending. Because of her unhappy childhood. Hope is
represented in the change of grandgrind. Even if it’s unlikely change is possible

Cece yup. She realizes herself as a woman. She is happy at the end, because she had a
happy childhood. She was raised mid by circus and utilitarianism. So she is balanced, she is
a mix.

TEXT 1
1. What philosophy underlies Gradgrind' s speech? What connotations do you find in
the expression "reasoning animals"?
Utilitarianism, education based on facts. We are animals, the only way of making us
reasonable is learning only facts.
2. Is Gradgrind's description by the narrator objective or subjective? Are there any
connections between the character's physical description and his personality?
Explain the meaning and the connotations of the word "square"? As a reader of
Dickens's novel do you like this way of presenting the characters?
Subjective. It’s connected, he said his aspects were connected with his speaking. He
suggest he is choked by facts. Forehead of a wall, closed not to receive new ideas. Square
means boring, formal, traditional, unable to change mind. I like this way because it lets us
make a more exact image of a person in our minds. There is no freedom for the reader. (This
could be a weakness, because when the character changes, the body can’t change)
3. Can Gradgrind be considered a flat character according to what you have read
about him in the passage?
Yes, because he doesn’t have any type of change.

4. What have you learnt about the typical classroom in a utilitarian school and about
utilitarian pedagogy?
You only learn theory and facts. Not fantasy. No metaphors for understanding new things.
Perfectly arranged in order, lots of students, bear, monotonous, nothing that can distract or
develop the imagination of students. Little basils ready to be full of facts.

5. Describe the narrator's stylistic devices. What is the purpose of Dickens's style?
Anáforas, Repetition, metaphors, caricature, satire.
6. What kind of narrator do you identify in the passage?
Omniscient narrator, subjectivist.
7. Do you find in Dickens's style some strategies similar to those used in the utilitarian
school?
He tries to impose his self interests. The author represents authority. He is not leaving the
reader the freedom to interpret what they want. Also using repetition makes him similar to
the utilitarian school.

TEXT 2
1. What part of the text describes pollution in Coketown? What imagery does the
narrator use and what are its connotations?
The production of the coke determines the life of the people. First paragraph. He uses
Visual, olfactory and auditory imagery. Also taste with the smoke. Touch, everything you
touch is black.

2. How are the citizens of Coketown described? Can you relate such a description
with the concept of alienation explained below? Is there any word in the passage you
can particularly connect with this concept? Can Dickens be considered a socialist
given his criticism of capitalism?
They are described as equals. They are equals because they are alienated due to the time
they work and capitalist system. The word I connect with alienation is “same”. He is not
socialist, but liberal, he thinks both can coexist. Dickens said the system can be reformed
peacefully but not changed.

3. How do you interpret the first and last sentences of the second paragraph?
The people on the first one, do not have a will. Then he explains what happens because of
the decisions that the ones that make decitions (bourgeoisie) They only live for working.
Everything says
4. How does the narrator describe the architecture of Coketown? Is there any word
which summarizes its style? What philosophy is behind such a style?
A town of unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage. He was against wild
capitalism

5. Can you relate the expression "M'choakumchild school" with utilitarian pedagogy?
Yes because the utilitarian pedagogy kind of chokes the students. Not letting then breath
any kind of fantasy or not facts.

6. Can you find a statement in the last paragraph that could be interpreted as a
definition of the capitalist system?

Esto responde a Otra preguntaPeople equally like one another. Capitalism has betrayed the
principles of the enlightenment Dickens said.
The word that represents alienation es “same”. Ha
7. What does the narrator suggest by finishing the passage with the expression
"Amen"?
That he is praying or that the capitalism is in some way related to religion. Is kind of a
religious dogma in capitalism

Working is something that dignifies human beings.

Puritans believe that the wealth of a nation is due to that God had chosen them.

*exam: concept of alienation by dickens or Marx.

*Walter Benjamin: says that we, adquire an aesthetic sensibility and a critical hability in a
state of distraction. When you see the ugliness of the buildings (aesthetic sensibility) you
ask why what happened.

ALIENATION
According to Karl Marx, alienation is a systemic result of capitalism. Marx's theory of
alienation is founded upon the observation that, within the capitalist mode of production,
workers invariably lose determination of their lives and destinies by being deprived of
the right to conceive of themselves as the director of their actions, to determine the
character of their actions, to define their relationship to other actors, to use or own the value
of what is produced by their actions. Workers never become autonomous, self-realized
human beings, but are directed and diverted into goals and activities dictated by the
bourgeoisie, who own the means of production in order to extract form workers the
maximal amount of surplus value possible within the current state of competition between
industrialists. Alienation in Capitalist societies occurs because the worker can only
express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system
that is not collectively, but privately, owned, a privatized asset for which each individual
functions not as a social being, but as an instrument.

TEXT 3
Say if the statements given below are true or false according to the information in the
passage, or according to what you know about Dickens in particular and about literature
in general. Justify your answers.
1. The narrator's inaccuracy concerning the numbers suggests that the omniscient
narrator does not know everything about the plot. False. Suggest no traditional family.
The number is not important to suggest no utilitarianism in the family.

2. The term "omniscient narrator" refers to all third person narrators.

False, it refers to a narrator that knows everything, like he is in everyone's mind. Witness
narrator is the one that refers to a third person narrator. Three indirect speech narrator is
another one.

3. The characters' surnames suggest a close connection between the circus and
childhood.
True, the connection between being a happy child for ever. Childers and kiddermister.

4. The symbolism of surnames is used by Dickens to represent his characters'

personalities.
True, they represent their personalities.

5. If a character's personality is defined by his/her surname he/she is likely to be a flat

character.
True, because if they change their surnames make no sense.

6. The abilities described in the passage are the abilities that a modern, utilitarian
society demands from its citizens.
False, no they are not, for instance flexibility is not demanded by utilitarians but knowledge
is.

7. The omniscient narrator is a narrative device exclusive to the Victorian novel.

Idk

8. The circus women show the characteristic modesty of Victorian women.

True, they show it covering their legs.

9. In spite of their peculiar activity, the circus people lead an orderly life.
True, they were organized in quarter regions and interact in order without raising their
voices.
10. The circus is a good example of a community formed by alienated individuals.
False. The Circus is the only example of not alienated people, the ones that are allowed to
dream, creative, etc.

11. The circus people are particularly fond of literature.

False, they are illiterate.

12. The recurrent allusion to "fathers" and "mothers" implies a comparison with the
conventional middle-class family.
This is a new conception of family. He is suggesting how alternative they are from the
traditional family.

13. The narrator shows the same respect and admiration for the circus as for the
utilitarian school.
False, he shows no admiration for the utilitarian school as he described it with negative
terms.

14. The passage shows some negative aspects in the life style of the circus people.
True, they are untidy, sharp, educated etc.