DOMANDE IN CLASSE 31/03/2011

 

1) Fiction is very important during the Victorian age because:

- criticizes the society in an implicit way.

- rich people want to appear better than they are.

- underlines condition of poor people in a parodic way.

- hides defects of the society.

 

2)Middle class and lower middle class were the ideal reading public.

 

3) Victorian novels were published in instalments in order to arouse the public curiosity, they reflected social changes and problems of their age, and also the consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

The relationship between different classes was the most important topic because the poor were usually exploited by the rich in that period.

 

4)Dickens always presents to the reader a symbolic description where the realistic details began metaphoric creating a parodic effect with, also, a significant use of imageries and sounds effect.

 

5) Pathos provides not only a feeling of superiority but, at the same time also a partial identification with the pathetic subject.

 

6) The grotesque is a rhetorical features, it works on size when the narrator deforms a description to obtain caricature or to ridicule someone or something.

 

7) Philanthropy worked as an “alibi” for people as a way to exorcising all the ghost of middle class: fear of poverty.

 

8) The Victorian novel played a fundamental role on legislators and opinion formers because it became a centre of discussion and speculation and it also showed that the city (the novel’s setting) were anonymous, where the identities were lost. 

 

9) Characterization in Victorian fiction is one of the features the intelligent reader can’t forget because he/she knows it makes the difference in contrast with the usual stereotypes.

 

10) The caricature in Victorian novel is used to exaggerate, it describes someone or something with a parodic effect that underlines all the defects.

In the novel is mainly reproduced the contradiction between middle classes because they were the protagonist of the Industrial Revolution.

In contemporary culture the strongest has success while the weakest yields as in the Victorian production in world of the media.

 

11) “Fact” is a key word because for examples in “Oliver Twist”, Oliver’s question for some more food changed his destiny, but also in “Nicholas Nickelby” “fact” takes a negative meaning because students were clearing the school instead of studing.

 

 

 

 

VANITY FAIR cap II

 

1b) The two girls appear satisfied, relaxed and proud (Rebecca); nervous, and defiant worried (Amelia).

 

2a) Rebecca’s feelings are: “I hate the whole house” , “tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my soul” because for two years she only had insults from her and also she spoke French “until she grew sick of her mother tongue” and Miss Pinkerton was too proud to confess she didn’t know a word of French.

 

2b) Amelia was shocked by Rebecca’s act of rebellion against the severe discipline she had been submitted at school.

 

3a) The narrator is a voice outside the story (3^rd person and omniscent)

 

3b) -The episode is about a man who is upset by the memory of a severe doctor called Raine.

-the episode isn’t a justification for Amelia’s reaction because even the “old gentlemen of sixty-eight” is still scared of the Dr. Raine and his rod.

 

3c) Rebecca’s act is “heroical”, this definition is serious from the point of view of the two girls but also ironical for the reader because she just throw a dictionary out off the window.

 

3d) The reader share the narrator’s judgement.