FICHE DE COURS : The Industrial & Victorian Society

Transcription

1 FICHE DE COURS : The Industrial & Victorian Society Place dans les programmes du lycée : la révolution industrielle est évidemment un chapitre privilégié en Première du cours de DNL. Objectifs de contenu et linguistique : parmi les multiples possibilités qui s offrent à nous pour l étude de ce chapitre, je propose ici de fonder toute la séquence sur l étude d un extrait (et d un seul) d œuvre littéraire. Il s agit du début du cinquième chapitre de Hard Times, de Charles Dickens (1851), dans lequel l auteur plante le décor de son roman à travers la description de la ville fictive de «Coketown». Cet extrait, très riche, permet d aborder de nombreux thèmes de l histoire industrielle de la Grande Bretagne : la modernisation technique, l économie, les transformations de la société, et les problématiques touchant à l histoire des mentalités. Travailler à partir d œuvres littéraires en DNL offre d immenses possibilités et intérêts : faire varier les approches méthodologiques, et passer du temps sur des types de sources moins explorées par manque de temps en français ; permettre une étroite collaboration avec le professeur de langue par une répartition des thèmes d études sur un extrait commun, ou un choix d extraits différents d une même œuvre ; associer une réflexion historique problématisée à une langue riche, et fournir à cette réflexion parfois abstraite une illustration par la fiction ; enfin, donner accès aux élèves à des références culturelles majeures du patrimoine anglo-saxon. Place dans le plan du cours : une séquence entière de trois à quatre heures (avec ou sans l évaluation finale) est nécessaire. L étude peut soit prendre place dans le chapitre The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, soit constituer à elle seule ce chapitre (et dans ce cas, on pourra passer plus de temps à détailler les réponses aux questions posées sur le texte). L étude proposée se déroule en trois temps : I A 19 th century factory town : general setting and landscape II Social issues in Coketown III The meaning of life in Coketown Note Le niveau linguistique de cette étude étant relativement exigeant, on jugera peut-être nécessaire de retoucher à cet extrait pour le rendre plus accessible aux élèves.

2 Doc. 1 Coketown, «a triumph of fact» It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled 1. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye 2, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. Here, were produced comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made (we will not ask how much of) the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion 3 built a chapel there as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamented examples!) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. [ ] All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town ; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The Mr Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn t state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and salable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen. 1 To coil (something / oneself) : (se) lover. To uncoil : dénouer. 2 To dye : teindre, teinter. A dye : une teinture. 3 A religious persuasion : une confession religieuse

3 A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant, of course got on well? Why no, not quite well. Dear me! No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces 4 like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place was : who belonged to the eighteen religious persuasions? Because, whoever did, the working people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly 5, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. There was an organisation in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements 6 that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement 7, human or Divine, would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn t get drunk, they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing 8 all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low places, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and maybe even joined in it. [ ] Then came Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared in short, it was the only clear thing in the case that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen ; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen ; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted ; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter ; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable : There was an old woman, and what do you think? She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink; Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet, And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet. Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter V The Key Note, Furnace : fourneaux. 5 Listless : nonchalant, apathique. 6 Tabular statements : des tableaux de chiffres, des données chiffrées. 7 To induce : inciter, pousser à. 8 Outdoing : surpassant.

4 Questions : I A 19 th century factory town : general setting and landscape 1 Pick up the words and expressions that identify Coketown as an industrial town of the 19 th century. Explain them and comment on them. 2 Pick up the expressions that refer to economy. Explain the new economic system of the time. 3 Pick up the words describing the landscape of this town : what general feeling does it convey? 4 Pick up the words which characterize people s everyday life in Coketown. Pay particular attention to time in this city. II Social issues 1 Pick up the words depicting the working people. What living condition is theirs? What do they do? Why? 2 What other social class is represented in the excerpt? 3 What does the upper-class think of the working class? What do they advocate? Why? What is Dickens opinion on them? (give arguments and quote from the text). Conclude on the social landscape of Coketown. III The meaning of life 1 Fact, fact, fact [ ]. Everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery : what does Dickens mean when insisting so much on the importance of fact? What kind of a society does he describe here? 2 Why, do you think, does Dickens use the expression world without end, Amen? To which purpose does he bring forth the subject of religion? 3 What is the meaning of the little nursery fable at the end? To whom do you think it applies? What message does it disclose? Do you think that Mr Bounderby really understands its real meaning? Conclusion Draw a conclusion on the author s point of view concerning this town, its inhabitants, and what they all stand for. Justify your ideas.

5 Answers : I A 19 th century factory town : general setting and landscape 1 Coketown means the city of coal. The steam engine : invention by Thomas Newcomen in 1705, improved by James Watt in 1769 ; brief description of how it works : piston. By the time Dickens was writing Hard Times (1851), this piece of machinery was heavily used in the textile industry to produce the elegancies alluded to in the text : the power-loom, first operated by the stream of the river (1770, Arkwright s water-frame), then by the steam engine, had replaced the traditional hand-loom for weaving. The river that ran purple got its colour from mauveine, one of the first industrial dye in England. Dickens got the idea of fictitious Coketown after visiting the town of Preston, Lancashire. 2 to be purchasable in the cheapest market and salable in the dearest : free trade and free market, capitalism, stock exchange, search for profit. 3 Red, black, purple smoke, ashes ill-smelling [sound of] piston : sad, dull, gloomy, choking sensation (directly suggested by one of the character s name, M. Choakumchild ), pollution : an atmosphere of death, mourning and Hell. 4 Everything is set up against nature and man : unnatural, like in a nightmarish jungle (with such animals as serpents and elephants, savage ). This landscape is dehumanized : melancholy madness. Time has stopped, or repeats itself endlessly, like in hell : every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, which reinforces the feeling that man is sentenced to repeating endlessly the same senseless action. All individuals are alike, like robots. There is no place for what is typically human : feelings and thought. This critical state, rendered by repetitions ( same ), is alienation. II Social issues 1 Working class, workers, a bad lot, these people, the same people, they Lower class, very poor, poverty, destitutes, tramps, underdogs, uneducated Live in slums, in seedy places, in unhealthy conditions, with low life expectancy. Lounge listlessly, gaze, get drunk, resort to low places where they hear low singing, and see low dancing, take opium Drunks, drunkards. Addicted to alcohol. Drink beer and gin, spend the little wage they get on booze in pubs. Get high on spirits so to forget the bad condition they live in. Alcohol was generally acknowledged to be a real plague, for not only did it ruin their health, it also prevented them from going to work, and increased poverty : Drinking is the curse of the working classes (which phrase G.B. Shaw turned into : Working is the curse of the drinking classes ). 2 gentlemen, Mr Gradgring & Bounderby, the chemist, the druggist, the chaplain, the Teetotal society Bourgeois(ie), upper-class, upper middle-class, rich, whealthy, well-off, well-to-do, boss, company chairmen, high income, shareholders, landlords, owners. 3 indignant, restless, eternally dissatisfied, unmanagable The rich resent the poor for their being poor, remaining poor, and growing even poorer, which describes pauperism ; they are pointed at for their drinking, and their being too numerous. At the turn of the 19 th century, economist Thomas Malthus had it that there was no room for them at the banquet of Nature, and that they should therefore be left to starve. They also resent them for their being restless, that is, a potential threat to bourgeois order and society : Dickens alludes here to

6 the struggle between classes, the central idea advocated by Marx s socialism. Indeed, The Manifesto of the Communist Party dates from The upper class advocate passing laws to force them to go to church : - so that they don t go to the pub instead. - so that they behave decently : the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Bible). - so to soothe their moral pain by accepting their situation in this painful world, this valley of tears (Bible), and preparing their eternal reward in the after-life. Dickens hints here at the fact that religion was used as a means to control people. The church was very conservative. We can think of what Marx wrote : Religion is the opium of the people. Clearly enough, there is a social gap between classes, with little, if at all, middle-class in-between rich and poor. The middle class developed a few decades later. III The meaning of life 1 Materialistic philosophy : facts, tabular statements. Everything is measured, calculated. Individuals suffer from a loss of meaning in their life : what is the meaning and the value of life in such a world where the soul counts for nothing? 2 Scientific and rational progress turned materialism into a religion : fact in the material, fact in the immaterial. 3 These verses are limmericks. Comfort is not happiness. Which Dickens thinks personnally, but he humourously makes the practical Mr Bounderby say it, which shows that this character doesn t understand the ironical meaning of this nursery fable, but takes it for granted! Conclusion : satire, criticism. A nightmarish world. Humour.

7 Additional documents : [utilisables pour une évaluation] Doc. 2 The Condition of the Working-Class Bradford, but seven miles from Leeds at the junction of several valleys, lies upon the banks of a small, coal-black, foul-smelling stream. On week-days the town is enveloped in a grey cloud of coal smoke, but on a fine Sunday it offers a superb picture, when viewed from the surrounding heights. Yet within reigns the same filth and disconfort as in Leeds. The older portions of the town are built upon steep hillsides, and are narrow and irregular. In the lanes, alleys and courts, lie filth and débris in heaps ; the houses are ruinous, dirty, and miserable, and in the immediate vicinity of the river and the valley bottom I found many a one whose ground floor, half buried in the hillside, was totally abandoned. In general, the portions of the valley bottom in which working men s cottages have crowded between the tall factories, are among the worst built and dirtiest districts of the whole town. In the newer portions of this, as of every other factory town, the cottages are more regular, being built in rows, but they share here too all the evils incident to the customary method of providing working men s dwellings, evils of which we shall have occasions to speak more particularly in discussing Manchester. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845 Doc. 3 Gustave Doré, Over London by Rail, 1860s