Social Problem Novel

Question 1

Evidence of the conditions for the poor in Hard Times (3)

Answer 1

• “the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel”
• “Killing airs and gases”
• “Narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets”

Question 2

Evidence of good conditions for the rich in Hard Times (2)

Answer 2

• “in the formal drawing room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr Bounderby”
• “Serene floor clothed apartment”

Question 3

Evidence of Barton’s disdain for the rich in Mary Barton (2)

Answer 3

Barton stands before a shop window filled with “haunches of venison, Stilton cheeses, moulds of jelly”
BUT
“returned home with a bitter spirit of wrath in his heart, to see his only boy a corpse”

Question 4

Opposing descriptions of money between rich & poor in Mary Barton (2)

Answer 4

“He went upstairs for his better coat, and his one, gay red-and-yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, his jewels, his plate, his valuables, these were. He went to the pawn shop; he pawned them for five shillings”

VS

“The younger Mr. Carson […] got up and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the poor fellow”

Question 5

Evidence of difficulties for the poor in Jude the Obscure

Answer 5

“Many of the thatched and dormered dwellinghouses had been pulled down of late years, and many trees felled on the green”

Question 6

Evidence of regional dialect in Mary Barton and implications (2 + 1)

Answer 6

• “I were patient wi’her. I tried to wean her fra’t ower and ower agen”
• “The more fool you, I think”

–> Displays the limiting of the working class voice, and thus the necessity for Gaskell to try to interpret and translate it (and the struggles of the poor) to a literate readership

Question 7

Evidence of the limitation of the working class voice in Hard Times (3)

Answer 7

-Crony Union representatives speak on behalf of the “hands” in Hard Times
→ Continuously interrupts and opposes what Stephen has to say

“Oh my friends, the down-trodden friends of Coketown” - spoken by the delegate
VS
“Not a word was spoken, not a sound audible in the building” from the hands

Question 8

Quotes on education in Hard Times (1)

Answer 8

“Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.”

Question 9

Quotes on prohibition of education and professions in Jude the Obscure (3)

Answer 9

• “Intellect at Christminster is new wine in old bottles”
• “New doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across Jude’s vision like inaccessible plants across and object glass”
• Biblioll College: “Sir, I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from your description of yourself as a workingman, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade”

Question 10

Quotes on Mary Barton on the lack of discourse between classes (1)

Answer 10

John Barton: “As long as I live I shall curse them as so cruelly refused to hear us; but I’ll speak of it no more”

Question 11

Evidence of alternative education in Jude the Obscure (1)

Answer 11

Tinker Taylor: “I always saw there was more to be learnt outside a book than in”

Question 12

Evidence of the failure of education in Hard Times (1)

Answer 12

“I had proved my - my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear responsibility of its failures”

Question 13

Difference in morality between rich & poor in Hard Times (2 vs 1)

Answer 13

Mr. Sleary: “The thquire (A) thtood (B) by you (C), Thethelia, and I’ll (C) thtand (B) by the thquire (A)

Stephen:“I were patient wi’her.”
B: (“The more fool you, I think” Said Mr. Bounderby, in confidence to his wine-glass.)
S: “I were very patient wi’her. I tried to wean her fra ‘t ower and ower agen.”

VS

Bounderby to Bitzer: “Have you a heart?”
Bitzer: “The circulation, Sir […] couldn’t be carried without one”

Question 14

Equalising force of death in Jude the Obscure (1 + significance)

Answer 14

Little Father Time’s murder-suicide of the other two children because “we are too menny”
–> Damningly signifies the equalising force of death

Question 15

Metafiction in Hard Times (1)

Answer 15

” ‘Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll show you a man that’s fit for anything bad, I dont care it it is’
Another of the popular fictions of Coketown which some pains had been taken to disseminate - and which some people really believed”

Question 16

Evidence of limitation of imagination in Hard Times (2)

Answer 16

“Sissy is not a name. Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.”

“No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are!”

Question 17

Emphasis upon reality in Hard Times (4)

Answer 17

Gradgrind: “Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality - in fact? Do you?”

“board of fact […] commissioners of fact […] people of fact”

Question 18

Description of town people in capitalist terms (4)

Answer 18

Bounderby had a “metallic laugh”
and
“made out of a coarse material”

Tom->Loo: “That’s a capital girl”

“His [Bounderby’s] perplexity augmented at compound interest”

Question 19

Town’s dismissal of the circus in Hard Times (2)

Answer 19

Gradgrind: “no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses”

Gradgrind: “An idle imagination”

Question 20

Evidence of superiority of the Circus & the hands (2 vs 1)

Answer 20

“catch knives and balls, twirl handbasins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing”

Bounderby to Bitzer: “Have you a heart?”
Bitzer: “The circulation, Sir […] couldn’t be carried without one”

VS

Mr. Sleary: “The thquire (A) thtood (B) by you (C), Thethelia, and I’ll (C) thtand (B) by the thquire (A)

&

“He [Stephen] was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor picturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of expressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield* could not have taught his son in a century”

Chesterfield embarked on the Grand Tour of the Continent, to complete his education as a nobleman, by exposure to the cultural legacies of Classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to become acquainted with his aristocratic counterparts and the polite society of Continental Europe

Question 21

Circus dismissal of the town in Hard Times (1)

Answer 21

Sleary: “They can’t be alwyath a working, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning

Question 22

Sociopolitical critique in Hard Times (5)

Answer 22

Sissy: “I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine”

Narrator: “I entertain a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any people upon whom the sun shines […] I would give them a little more play”

“The good samaritan was a bad economist”

“deaf honourable gentlemen, dumb honourable gentleman, blind honourable gentlemen, lame honourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen”

“He professes morality. Well; all sorts of humbugs profess. From the house of Commons to the House of Correction”

Question 23

Conflation between reality and fantasy in Hard Times (4)

Answer 23

“Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact everywhere in the immaterial”

“Dream or reality, he [Stephen] had no voice, nor had he power to stir.”

“fictions of Coketown” repeated throughout the novel

“dreaming smoke vanishing into the air”

Question 24

Arguing over the voice in Hard Times & Significance (Link to truth & meaning) (5 + 3)

Answer 24

(Same page)
Gradgrind -> Bounderby: “I hoped you would have taken a different tone”
B -> G: “you have had your say, I believe. I heard you out; hear me out”
B -> G: “That’s plain speaking”
G -> B: “Hear me out”

-> Confusion between what is said & what is truth, conflation between appearance & reality

(Next page from above ^)
B -> G: “Till I have said all I mean to say”
G -> B: “What do I mean, Bounderby”
B -> G: “I mean…”

Question 25

Significance of questioning Stephen’s guilt in Hard Times (1 + significance + link to Mary Barton)

Answer 25

Rachael: “I misdoubt if there is as many as twenty left in all this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now”

• -> Questioning of Stephen’s guilt is a metaphor for unfair treatment and judgement of the working classes by the ruling classes
• -> Link to Jem’s arrest in Mary Barton (arresting the working class man) and subsequent trial against him

Question 26

Importance of emotion/morality rather than education in Mary Barton (3)

Answer 26

“When she saw Mary cry (for Mary can’t abide words in a house)”
–> Crying saying more than words can

“Words not for immediate use in conveying sense, but to be laid by, in the store house of memory, for a more convenient season”
–> “store house”, “season” and working jargon overpower the use of “words”

John Barton: “Mocking words!”
–> The futility of words/education in comparison to the life & death situations faced by the poor

Question 27

Evidence of dislike of the rich from the poor in Mary Barton (1)

Answer 27

John Barton: “And what good have they ever done me that I should like them? If I am sick, do they come and nurse me? If my child lies dying does the rich man bring the wine or broth that might save his life”

Question 28

Evidence of Mary Barton educating middle class readership on working class world (2 + Barton’s aims)

Answer 28

“The place seemed almost crammed with furniture (sure sign of good times among the mills)”

“Such are the tastes and pursuits of some of the thoughtful, little understood, working men of Manchester”

–> Barton aimed to “translate” and mediate between the rich and poor of England

Question 29

Elizabeth Gaskell emphasising the importance of education for the working classes (2)

Answer 29

On the grandfather: “He’s gone back to his books, and he’ll be happy as a king”

–> “Margaret had said he [grandather] was not a fortune-teller, but she did not know whether to believe her”

Question 30

Critical quotes on importance of Mary Barton in displaying social divide (1)

Answer 30

Raymond Williams - Culture & Society - Mary Barton the “most moving response in literature to the industrial sufferings of the 1840s”

Question 31

Significance of Manchester in displaying social tensions (Mary Barton) (1)

Answer 31

Marcus Engels - Manchester was unique in its “systematic way in which the working classes have been barred from the main streets”

Question 32

Statistics on the disadvantages faced by the working class in the 19th century (2)

Answer 32

• A labourer’s average wage was between 20 and 30 shillings a week in London, probably less in the provinces. This would just cover his rent, and a very sparse diet for him and his family.
• In 1848 an estimated 30,000 homeless, filthy children lived on the streets of London.

Question 33

Information on the reform act (3)

Answer 33

• 1832 reform act and calls for expanding the voice of the working class
• increasing the electorate from roughly 500,000 to 813,000
• about 1 in 5 adult males allowed to vote

Question 34

Critical quotes on harm of education in Hard Times (1)

Answer 34

Myron Magnet - “The education whilst not utterly negligent, is rather stifling

Question 35

Facts on university admissions in the 19th century (2)

Answer 35

• Oxford University refused entry to working class students from 1870 onwards in attempts to maintain the education of the elite only to limit the impact of social change
• Ruskin College 1899 specialised in education for men with few or no qualifications

Question 36

Biographical context on fear of the elite of working class uprising (1)

Answer 36

French Revolution 1789-1799 inflamed fears of social upheaval

Question 37

Biographical context on Elizabeth Gaskell and her reasoning for writing Mary Barton (2)

Answer 37

• Gaskell’s own son died at 10 months of age, and she wrote to a friend that this ”wound will never heal on Earth”
• Gaskell claimed that some of the inspiration for the novel came from being asked, when in a labourer’s house, “Ay, ma’am, but have ye ever seen a child clemmed to death”? → She had (see above) and so then felt a connection with the working man, and perhaps highlighted the similarity between them

Question 38

Literacy rates in the mid 19th century (1)

Answer 38

By 1840, approximately 65% of men and 50% of women were literate

Question 39

Negative criticism of Jude the Obscure (2)

Answer 39

• Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield burned a copy
• Many critics argue that criticism of Jude was largely the cause of Hardys decision to stop writing novels altogether and instead solely write poetry

Question 40

Critical quotes on Dicken’s thoughts on art & the novel (2)

Answer 40

Myron Magnet - “Dickens makes no rarefied, Pater-like claims for art. For him, art is a pre-eminently social, even popular, matter, a realm of shared emotion and shared significance, and consequently it had to keep both feet on the ground. In becoming too refined or arcane, it becomes pointless; and Dickens emphasises the necessary communal rootedness of art by habitually embodying it not in lieder recitals but in circuses or Punch and Judy shows.”
–> Dickens viewed novels as “low art”, and something to be brought to the working classes

Myron Magnet - “interpretative categories and beliefs that human culture has devised to make sense out of reality’s apparent disorder”

Question 41

Statistics on novel production in the 19th century (2)

Answer 41

1837-1901: 60,000 novels produced

Only 20% of book production in this period went towards novel

Question 42

Role of the novel in early 19th century (4)

Answer 42

• The popular novel can be read as a socialist tool, appealing to an increasingly literate middle and working class
• Novel reading was not reputable (only 20% of book production went towards novels 1837) and poetry, plays etc were better thought of
• Conflict between high and low art: the novel marked a lower form of art (?)

–> Elite thought novels could encourage radical thinking amongst the working classes

Question 43

Role of Moodies Library in Victorian England (2)

Answer 43

• They would guarantee the publication of novels as long as they came in triple deckers and the library could edit them
• Library membership was far cheaper than buying individual novels: led to a poorer section of society having access to novels

Question 44

Description of Bitzer in animalistic terms (1)

Answer 44

At the end, Bitzer described as “nostrils distended […] colourless face […] white heat […] panting and heaving”