Età vittoriana - Charles Dickens e Emily Dickinson

The Victorian Age

In the Age of Queen Victoria is characterized by an economic expansion, social reforms and cultural chages. Britain became the center of Europe and the world economy.
This Age had 3 period:
• The early victorian period (1832- 1848) with industries, reform and conflicts.
• The mid-victorian period (1848-1870) with prosperity and the growth of the middle-class.
• The late victorian period 1870-1901) with a decline due to the contradictions.

Britain was also the first Nation to begin the industrial revolution with many side effects on the landscape and the people: slavery of women and children, social gap, Imperialism, migration and slums/workhouses.

To talk about this complexity of the society and the time was created the novel which was referred to the middle class. In was a realistic and social genre. Main themes were the children’s condition, workers and the dark side of industrialization (C. Dickens)

With the publication of “On the Origin of Species” by Darwin in 1859, the thought of natural selection influenced also the society and the behavior toward the others (Imperialism, Colonialism, Utilitarianism)

Charles Dickens(1812-1870)

Hard Times- themes

- Reason/ lack of imagination (Thomas Gradgrind and Bitzer)
- Utilitarianism: what is useful is also good (FACTS)
- Imagination as an enemy (Sissy Jupe)
- Corrupted city (Coketown)

Coketown

The city of Coketown offers nothing that is not severely workful. The “triumph of facts” is the main focus of Dickens criticism. In the city the people see their life wasted due to the repetition of meaningless action. Also, the landscape represents this lack of imagination.

Emily Dickinson She was born in Boston from a Calvinistic family so her believes were “work, prey and don’t commit sin”. However, religion for her was a private matter due to her readings of Emerson’s poems. She wrote an enormous number of poems in her period of segregation after her father’s death in addition to the previous 681 poems (almost 1200 poems totals). She wrote about death, religion, nature, solitude, love, but never about war. Her way of writing was various with influences from German and the use of riddles, nursery rhymes, symbols, dushes, exclamation marks…

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

In this poem Dickinson seems to celebrate love in its yearning and its consummation. The poet condenses her thoughts in a few images associated with the sea, using an extended metaphor. She associates the stormy sea with tumultuous passion and to suggest the love is worth embracing even though it takes courage to take on such a troublesome voyage. In the end, the journey might lead to a taste of heaven on earth.

Dreams - are well- but Waking’s better

In this poem Emily Dickinson talks about the reality as something that is better than the dreams only in the morning, when the sun is rising and the day is beginning. However, we use to wake up in the darkest hours of the day so it is better to dream about beautiful and imaging thing rather than see the reality and the day that is dying.