Infanzia: specchio della società

I.T.C. “R. Molari”

Santarcangelo di Romagna

Esame di Stato

2010-2011

L’infanzia che guarda alla società

Khadim Diop

5°E

Indice

• Premessa
• Introduzione – L’infanzia nell’Età Vittoriana e nel Novecento
• Il fanciullo, nella letteratura e nell’arte
• Dickens, Oliver Twist (Inglese)
• Charles Pascoli - La poetica del Fanciullino (Letteratura)
• Giovanni Picasso – L’infantilismo nell’arte, Guernica (Arte)
• Pablo De Saint-Exupéry – Le Petit Prince (Francese)
• Antoine
• I diritti del fanciullo
• Dichiarazione dei diritti del fanciullo di Ginevra (1924) (Storia)
• Plan Espagna – Le ONG – Lo sfruttamento in America Latina (Spanolo)

Premessa alla tesina

“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.” (Brian Aldiss)

“Quando l’infanzia muore, i suoi cadaveri vengono chiamati adulti ed entrano nella società, uno dei nomi più garbati dell’inferno. Per questo abbiamo paura dei bambini, anche se li amiamo: sono il metro del nostro sfacelo.”

Etimologia infans

Il termine “infanzia” deriva dal latino che significa muto, incapace di parlare.

Tale termine, per estensione, assumerà il significato di bambino che non può parlare.

Mentre in passato tale parola si riferiva esclusivamente al periodo tra la nascita di un bambino e il momento in cui questi inizia ad esprimersi attraverso le parole, successivamente viene inteso come periodo della vita di un individuo compreso tra la nascita e l’insorgenza dei primi segni di pubertà.

Tesi

La tesi si prepone l’obbiettivo di sviluppare, rapportare ed approfondire la tematica dell’infanzia, da non intendersi unicamente come periodo iniziale della vita umana ma come fase della vita non ancora, o diversamente, soggetta agli influssi della società.

Lo spunto nasce dalla riflessione secondo cui, in ogni epoca, l’infanzia rappresenti il periodo più fragile e sensibile della vita umana. La visione di un bambino, non ancora influenzata dal senso comune della società, è spesso la più veritiera e fedele rappresentazione della società stessa.

Si vuole quindi dimostrare come lo studio dell’infanzia, anche in disparati contesti storici, possa rivelarsi un metro di riferimento e di analisi di diverse società o periodi storici.

Introduzione agli argomenti trattati

Nell’arte e nella letteratura, infanzia è spesso sinonimo di innocenza, bellezza, bontà, candore e fiducia nel mondo.

Secondo Charles Dickens, l’infanzia è vittima della povertà e del degrado della stessa società Vittoriana che promuoveva valori quali il patriottismo e la carità.

La visione infantile del mondo diventa quindi un legittimo mezzo di critica e satira nei confronti delle istituzioni.

Giovanni Pascoli, poeta decadentista, vede nel proprio fanciullo interiore il nido non distrutto. Ovvero la vita prima della tragedia della morte del padre, avvenimento simbolo della malvagità degli uomini e della violenza della storia.

Lo stesso autore romagnolo cita in più componimenti le parole “chi non accoglie il Regno di Dio come un fanciullo, non vi accederà” di Gesù nel passo evangelico di Luca.

Il tema del poeta-fanciullo trova riscontro in molti altri scrittori del Novecento italiano, per primo il crepuscolare Sergio Corazzini ma successivamente viene ripreso anche da autori stranieri. Primo fra tutti, il francese Antoine de Saint-Exupéry che esalta, ne “Il piccolo principe”, la bontà e la creatività del bambino ponendola spesso in contrapposizione alla vita della maggior parte degli adulti.

Del tema si occupa anche la psicanalisi di Freud, il quale, come Eric Berne sosteneva la coesistenza di un lato adulto, modellato dal genitore, e di un lato infantile, che non deve soffocare la ragione sfociando nell’irresponsabilità né essere soffocata dalla razionalità stessa. “Infine l’artista Pablo Picasso, che aspirava a tornare a disegnare come un bambino”, rappresenta l’indubbio fascino che il fanciullo esercita, in genere, in chi si trova a disagio nella propria realtà.

Di tale fascino approfittarono anche correnti politiche, soprattutto i nazionalisti. Facendo leva sulla “massa giovane”, con l’istituzione della Gioventù Hitleriana e dei Balilla, i dittatori Hitler e Mussolini consolidarono il loro potere ricevendo l’approvazione del popolo ormai esasperato e consumato dal sentimento di rivalsa.

La denuncia da parte di letterati e artisti è fondamentale, insieme alla dura esperienza delle Guerre mondiali, per stabilire principi come quelli espressi nella Dichiarazione dei Diritti del Fanciullo.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is the second, and probably most famous, novel by the English author Charles Dickens. It was published in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany between 1837 and 1839.

The story is about Oliver Twist, an orphan who spends a miserable existence in a workhouse before being “property” of an undertaker from which he escapes and travels to London. Here, he is led to the elderly criminal trainer Fagin by a pickpocket. Completely unaware of their unlawful activities, the only hope for Oliver to escape from this illegal life is represented by the presence of his father’s old friend Mr. Brownlow and the aid of Nancy.

Plot summary

From the workhouse to his first job.

Oliver is an orphan because his mother has died in childbirth. Until the age of nine, he lives and raises in a workhouse where he suffers from hunger and maltreatments by the director Bumble who uses the Poor Laws for his own advantage, as the same as the other officers. After his famous request “Please, Sir, I want some more”, Oliver is handed to an undertaker, where he is treated as bad as at the workhouse.

When a bossy and rude apprentice named as Noah insults the orphan’s late mother, Oliver becomes enraged and attacks him. As a result, he is beaten by the whole family and for the first time in his life he breaks down and weeps. That same night, he finally decides to run away towards London.

London: The Artful Dodger and Fagin

Once in London, Oliver is rescued by a pickpocket named as “Artful Dodger”, telling him about a gentleman who offers accommodation for nothing. Grateful for the unexpected assistance, the young orphan follows Dodger to the “old gentleman’s” residence, completely unaware of their unlawful activities: the gentleman turns out to be a Jewish criminal “trainer” known as Fagin. So Oliver is forced to live with him and his gang.

During a “mission”, Oliver finally realises that their real intention is to rob but it’s too late: the boy is chased and captured as guilty.

Thanks to the intervention of the robbed gentleman, named as Mr. Brownlow, and the bookseller who saw Dodger commit the crime, Oliver is released. Finally, Mr. Brownlow decides to take the orphan at home and to care for him.

Oliver’s bliss is immediately interrupted by Fagin’s fears of a tip by him: when Mr. Brownlow sends Oliver to pay for some books, he is stopped and brought back by a young girl Nancy, of the gang, and her brutal “lover” Bill Sikes.

Once back at Fagin’s, the thieves take his new clothes and the five pound note Mr. Brownlow had entrusted to him.

Nancy, however, is sympathetic towards Oliver and saves him from beatings by Fagin and Sikes, when the boy attempted to complain them to the authorities.

In order to bring back the boy into a crime life, Fagin and Sikes force him to take part in a burglary. As he is threatened to be killed if he does not participate, Oliver has to accept.

However, the robbery goes wrong, and the boy is shot and wounded at his left arm. After being abandoned by Sikes, Oliver ends up under the care of the people he was supposed to rob: Miss Rose and her guardian Mrs. Maylie.

The mystery of Monks and Nancy’s death

Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Monks is plotting with Fagin to destroy Oliver’s reputation to make sure that he does not find out about his past.

The mysterious man secretly meets Mr. Bumble, who is in an unhappy marriage, asking him about Oliver Twist. Later, at a meeting with the man’s family, Monks knows about a locket and a ring which had once belonged to Oliver’s mother, and which had been secretly kept by Mr. Bumble and then tossed into a nearby river.

As Monks mentions this as part of the plot to destroy Oliver, Nancy, who was overhearing their conversation, decides to inform Oliver’s current family.

One night Nancy tries to leave for one of the meetings with Oliver’s benefactors but Sikes refuses permission when she does not state exactly where she’s going. Fagin starts to suspect the girl, so he orders Noah, who has recently joined the gang, to spy her.

They discover her secret: she has been meeting secretly with Rose and Mr. Brownlow to discuss how to save Oliver from Fagin and Monks.

Believing her to be a traitor, Sikes beats Nancy to death in a fit of rage. He initially flees to the countryside but he turns back to London to find a hiding place. He finally dies, when he accidentally hangs himself while fleeing across a rooftop from an angry crowd.

Resolution and ending

Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to reveal his secrets. His real name is Edward Leeford and he is Oliver’s paternal half-brother as the orphan’s mother was their father’s true love.

Oliver accepts Mr. Brownlow’s suggestion to give Monks half of his inheritance, but his half-brother moves to America and dies after he wastes his money in unlawful activities, finally at a prison.

On the eve of his hanging, in a very emotional scene, Oliver visits a nearly mad Fagin at the prison. As the boy leaves him, the old man starts screaming owing to the terror of being hanged.

Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Oliver’s mother Agnes, Noah becomes a police informer, the Bumbles lose their job and Oliver lives happily with his saviour, Brownslow.

Themes, symbolism and techniques

Oliver Twist is considered as a classic of universal literature, as well as one of the most famous and satirical portraits of the Victorian Age.

As many other works by C. Dickens, the novel points out several social problems of the mid 1900’s like child labour and recruitment for crimes, education and the decay conditions in Victorian cities: poverty and misery are prominent concerns in Oliver Twist as well as in other Dickens works like A Christmas Carol.

Dickens’s greatest ability consists in combining realism, symbolism and a strong satire to describe the effects of industrialism on 19th-century England, and towards the hypocrisy of Poor Laws.

Sarcasm and dark humour are used to portray the hypocrisy behind institutions, like the workhouses, supposed to help the poor.

Injustice is symbolized by food: when the half-starved children dare to ask for more, the men who punish them are fat.

The dark and suffocating cities are opposed to the calm and peace of the countryside. The link between these two worlds is represented by the London Bridge where Nancy meets Mr. Brownlow. She is given the chance to cross over to a better way of life, but as she refuses it, she loses this opportunity forever.

Many characters are the reflection of their conditions: Sikes, Fagin, Artful Dodger and Noah seem to be born for a crime life, but some aristocratic figures like Bumble, the undertaker and the gentlemen in workhouses are likely to be worse.

Nevertheless, Dickens’ main purpose is to educate, not only to criticize, the Victorian society.

That’s why the novel may be considered as a fairy tale: although it is surrounded by corruption and degradation, the pure-hearted noble character of Oliver remains and, according to the author, as the entire society should be, regardless of social class.

About the author: Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812.

At the age of twelve his father was imprisoned for debt, so he had to move to a workhouse. He started working as an office boy in a firm; later, his first experiences as a journalist and reporter gave him material for his first work: Sketches by Boz (1836-37).

In 1936 Dickens married and began publishing his first novel: The Pickwick Papers.

Other great works by the author are Oliver Twist (1837-39), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849-50), Hard Times (1854) and Great Expectations (1860-61). The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He died in 1870, leaving an unfinished novel.

Achievement

By accepting the publishing conventions of his days, Dickens specialized in keeping the reader’s interest through the use of climaxes. However, his greatest ability was to create stereotypes and caricatures which best described the Victorian society.

Social criticism was the main matter of his works: child labour, industrialism, legal system and crime, were treated by the use of pathos as probably the author’s main concerns.

From David Copperfield on, rather than the entertainment, Dickens focused on the education of the heart.

Historical background: the Victorian Age and the birth of the Welfare State

The Welfare State is a system in which the government provides free social services such as health and education, and gives an economic support to people if old, unemployed, sick or disabled.

However, the system, as we know it today, is simply the evolution of the New Poor Law of 1834.

The Victorian Age (1837-1901) was a period of technological and social innovations, characterized by the colonial expansion as well as the birth of manufacturing industries and based on principles like duty, hard work, patriotism and chastity.

On the other hand, Queen Victoria’s reign was also the time of overcrowded slums, diseases, the spread of deadly diseases, the high cost of living, corruption, hypocrisy and poverty.

The introduction of the workhouses as an instrument to discourage requests for assistance, rather than a real help to poor people, is based on the theories of T. Malthus who claimed that charity was useless as it encouraged people to work less.

The “passage” to the Welfare State was suggested by the Second World War and the need to stand and fight together against a common enemy, fascism, without any distinction between wealthy and poor.

The Liberals first and the Labour later were given the task of planning for a post-war social security.

Starting from the principle of fighting poverty, ignorance, diseases, idleness, and squalor, the National Health Service, the National Insurance, which grants pension to everybody, and the Housing were created, between 1945 and 1949, by the name of Welfare State.

Giovanni Pascoli, la poetica del fanciullino