Intertexual analysis among Arnold Toynbee’s essay The Chief Features of the Industrial Revolution, the second chapter of Jeanette Winterson’s Why be happy when you could be normal?  and the Bellofiore’s article A crisis of capitalism.

The analysis has the purpose to find information about Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in the second chapter of Jeanette Winterson’s book reading.

Just from the beginning the reader can find important information. The biographical references of the novelist are strictly connected to the Industrial Revolution. The writer was born in Manchester; the town is in the south of the north of England. During the process of industrialization people moved into towns in the north of England, where there were a lot of mines which were rich of coal to produce fuel. Indeed factories were built near the mines. In addition if you carry on with reading you can uncover that Manchester is the first industrial city and its un-connection “helped” it to develop in the transport system. Manchester had railways and canals, whose building was increased during the 18^th century.

Manchester inhabitants were oppressed by the introduction of the Corn Laws and the high prices of the Industrial Revolution’s period took people to misery and to look for work. The presence of the river Medlock and the geographical position of Manchester make the reader understand that coal and water are important sources of wealth for a city; in addition the plain is the ideal conditions to build factories or systems of transports. So the reader can notice Manchester is the archetype of industrialization.

If on one side Manchester is so “ideal” on the other it presents a double face like the Industrial Revolution and also Capitalism.  The 18^th century was a period of development, increase of factories’ employees and growth of wealth of mercantile classes but we have to consider the conditions of labourers!  Jeanette Winterson focuses the attention on them. Workforce was constituted by men, women and children, who lived upon the garbage heaps and with the continuous clatter of working looms, which were patented by Cartwright in 1785. In addition the wages were diminishing for the too many employees. Jeanette Winterson testifies it with biographical references: her adoptive father worked ten hours and he cannot permit to buy meat more than twice a week while his birth mother was a machinist. She leaved Jeanette because she was only 17 and she did not keep her. Her mother’s birth town forced into the city, indeed during the Industrial Revolution there was a substitution of factory system for domestic system.

Manchester is in plain but also in mountain, it is reluctant but also beautiful, it is reach but also poor: this is the double face nature of Manchester and of Capitalism.