VICTORIAN AGE
This period goes from 1837 to 1901 when Queen Victoria reigned.
She became queen when she was only 18. In this period there are difficult conditions for the working class, so the workers grouped together for the first protests and demonstrations. There are two political parties:
the Conservatives, who were the old Tories
the Liberals, who were the old Whigs.
Queen Victoria with Benjamin Disraeli created a lot of reforms, important even nowadays. Some of them are:
the second reform bill, where everybody could vote, but not miners, agricultural workers, and women
with the third reform bill everybody could vote, but not women
trade becomes free, so there is no more protectionism, and as a consequence there is improvement in industries
she created also some social reforms, for example the 10 hours act, with the limited working time at 10 hours every day
the miners act where no women and children had to work in the mines
the emancipation of religious sects, where also the catholics could study at Oxford and Cambridge Universities
the education act with the reorganization of the school system.
For the first time the working class created a political party, the Labour Party.
In Ireland the Irish Question was going on, in fact Irish people had a lot of difficulties. They asked for the independence, but the Houses of Parliament rejected it.
In this period there is also an expansion in the English colonies. Some countries became part of England. For example India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, witch was partly French.
The most important invention was the steam engine, witch produces a development in industry and in the means of transport. Other important inventions and innovations were electricity, telegraph, and gas lighten in the streets. The ship-building industry became famous.
In the most important towns and cities there was the creations of the urban slums, witch were areas created only for poor people who were forced to live far from the city centres.
At the end of 19th century women started to fight for the equality of sexes, but only in 1918 women could vote.
For sports there were written rules recognized everywhere, for example soccer, tennis and golf.
He was not the 1st serial killer, but he appeared in a period of terrible political confusion, and every political party tried to use his crimes for political aim.
The victims are generally prostitutes. The prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper and now recognized are 5, but there are a lot of other women killed ripped as Jack had done.
The 5 victims were killed between August 1888 and November 1888. The last victim not recognized as a victim of Jack the Ripper, was killed in 1891.
All the 5 victims were killed following the same “modus operandi”, while the others have something different.
Nowadays nobody knows who Jack the Ripper was.
There are 3 main suspects:
Prince Albert Victor, who was called by his friends Eddy
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carol)
Walter Sickert, who is found after Patricia Cornwell investigation.
The victims of Jack the Ripper were killed at Withechapel in London, and the investigator was George Lusk.
After killing his victims, Jack used to send letters to Mr Lusk. The most famous letter was “From Hell”, received in October 1888, together with a box with a human kidney cooked in wine. The errors in the letter are intentional. This is the letter:
From hell
Mr Lusk
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
Signed
Catch me when
You can
Mishter Lusk
Prince Eddy was born in 1864 and he was the grandson of Queen Victoria: in fact his father was Prince Albert Edward, also called Prince Bertie; his mother was Princess Alexandra. He was married secretly with Annie Cook, a poor and Catholic girl, and they had a baby daughter.
Queen Victoria was completely against this marriage, and with the help of her loyal physician, Sir William Gull, stopped the matter. Annie was kidnapped and she was sent to a hospital where Sir Gull performed a brain operation to Annie, and she was silenced.
The baby daughter was given to Mary Kelly, who at that time worked for Annie: she was the waitress. Mary become unemployed, so she needed money to survive, and she became a prostitute.
When Mary received the little girl, she blackmailed the royal family, and she was killed, but nobody knows if the killer was Dr Gull or Eddy forced by grandmother. In fact Mary Kelly is one of the 5 victims of Jack the Ripper.
Eddy died in 1892 of influenza.
At the age 14 he was sent to a Rugby School. He was unhappy because of sexual abuses.
Just when he was young he was brilliant as mathematician, but his passions were theatre and photography.
At 29 years old he became a deacon of the Anglican Church, but he refused to became a priest, so he abandoned his vocation.
He started writing novels using the pen-name Lewis Carol.
Alice is the 2nd of the 3 daughters of his friend Henry Liddell. He had a strong relationship with Alice, stopped by her father because of rumors.
The theory of Lewis Carol as Jack the Ripper: there are some anagrams as in “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, witch rises the suspects against he and his college-friend Thomas Vere Bayne. There are 3 anagrams repeated in the novel about:
“Dodgson, Bayne and the fat little whore”
From “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carol
So she wondered away, through the wood, carrying the ugly little thing with her. And a great job it was to keep hold of it, it wriggled about so. But at last she found out that the proper way was to keep tight hold of itself foot and its right ear.
Walter Sickert is the 3rd suspect found by Patricia Cornwell.
He was born in Germany in 1860, but then he moved to London. He married Ellen, a politician's daughter, but he divorced and he moved to Venice in Italy for 6 years. He started painting while he was in Venice, and his main subject was about naked prostitutes. He returned to England and died in London in 1942.
Patricia Cornwell considered Walter Sickert as Jack the Ripper because:
Since 1902 he painted a series of pictures, with naked prostitutes with the title of “The murder of Zanden”, with dead whores and a man, never identified. Some elements are the same as the crime scenes of Jack the Ripper.
She found inspiration in a red head-kerchief. A waitress noticed the same head-kerchief in the hands of the last man seen with Mary Kelly.
The paper of the letters by Jack the Ripper was the same as the one found in Sickert's house.
Sickert used the stage-name “Nemo” (“no one” in Latin) when he was young and played as actor. Jack called himself “Nemo” in some letters.
Suddenly, probably at the beginning of the 20th century, the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper stopped, and there are 4 hypothesis:
Jack died. In this cases like this one, often the serial killer kills himself.
He was arrested for another crime.
He changed city or town, so he changed his “modus operandi”. This probably happened because someone discovered or suspected him.
The strength forcing him to kill stopped because something in his life changed, so he lived the crimes only in his imagination (this one is by Scotland Yard).
The serial killer is a person showing some characteristics:
he commits crimes, a series (so “serial”) using the same “modus operandi”
he generally acts alone
he shows a multiple personality, so he is mentally disturbed. Very often he looks like an ordinary person
at the beginning he commits crimes at long intervals, then they are shorter. Very often the date has a particular importance for him
he has sexual problems. Ex: W. Sickert was impotent, Prince Eddy was retarded and suffered from syphilis, C.L. Dodgson suffered from sexual abuses.
Poetry was not very important in Victorian period, because novel was much more important than poetry and drama. Poetry was influenced by novel, because novel was the most common genre in this period, so poetry showed long narrative poems. Very often poetry was based on a dramatic monologue of the poet, so in 1st person, with 3 basic components. They are:
the reader
the speaker: who tells his experience in 1st person; the speaker is also called “persona”: a Latin term to mean “mask”
the poet, who very often was the same as the speaker. In this case the speaker speaks about himself or herself revealing the inner thoughts.
Poetry showed a live speech with the rhythm of everyday language.
Poetry was based on psychology when it was in 1st person, but there was also love poetry, often in 1st person, but it was different from the love poetry in romanticism, because it was influenced by the strong sexual morality imposed by Queen Victoria.
Nature was present in poetry as a background for an idealized love and as a reference of beauty.
Victorian novel is divided in 2 periods: early and late Victorian novel.
Early Victorian Novel started the age of fiction, because novel was the basic genre of the period.
Novels were very long and there was for the first time the public reading. This means that novels were divided in different parts read in front of an audience. Each part of a novel ended in a climax, so people were involved to return and listen to the following part.
The audience was involved in public reading for two reasons:
people wanted to be instructed about ordinary events in life
people wanted to be entertained, so they wanted to have fun.
Novels were a combination of amuzing and poetic elements. Novels were also realistic, so they showed life as it is, not easier or better.
Late Victorian Novel was different because the novelists were not entertainers, but they were as psychologists, so they read the characters mind. The language was simple even if the novels were about psychology. Sometimes there was the use of dialects as a means of characterization.
There is also realism, but it is seen as the influence of social environment.
Connected to Jack the Riper case, detective stories became very famous for two reasons:
an interest of people in crimes because there was a lot of criminality in particular in London, so newspapers reported about a lot of gangs of criminals who acted in cities or towns
there was an interest of people in explaining strange facts apparently unexplainable.
Connected to mysterious events there is also the importance of ghost stories coming from Gothic novel.
In romantic period there was a decline of drama witch went on in Victorian period. This happened for two reasons:
popularity of novel, witch gave much more profit than theatre
poor quality of the production.
For the first time there is the figure of the “actor manager” present also nowadays: he is an actor who is the leader of a theatre or a company of actors.
The production of plays in this period had some foreign influences, for example from Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, or French writers for Light Company.
The only important kind of theatre was the Irish theatre witch was famous as: Irish Revival, or Celtic Revival, or Irish Renaissance. In fact in this period there was the study and re-evolution of the Irish traditions due to the fight for Irish independence, so there is the creation of the national theatre. The Irish traditional theatre was considered scandalous by Queen Victoria and generally by aristocracy.
One of the plays censured by Queen Victoria was “The playboy of the western world” where the protagonist was a playboy, and this was considered immoral by the Queen. The most famous scandal was the playboy by George Bernard's show named “Mrs Warren's profession”. The protagonist was a prostitute who became very rich. For this plays there was no performances up to the beginning of 20th century in private theatres.
They are similar to today's theatres with semicircular form of the stage and the curtain to separate the stage and the audience.
There are particular scenes to give the optical illusion of the setting where the actions takes place; there is gas light, and later electricity.
Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. When he was a child he suffered from ill-health and tuberculosis. He had to became a lawyer, but his great passion was writing. He had to travel a lot to look for relief from his illness. In fact he went to France, California, Belgium and England. He died in Samoa, an island in the Pacific Ocean in 1894. There he was known as the “story-teller”.
His parents were fervent catholics while he was agnostic, because of his pessimistic vision of life. In fact he said that “evil is everywhere”. His being agnostic come from his nurse when he was a child, Alison Cunningham, called Cummy, his “second mother and first wife”.
When he was 22 he met Francis Sitwell, a divorced women who was 34. She became like a wife for him. He had a nervous background witch, together with tuberculosis, forced Stevenson to have opium to improve his sufferance.
When Francis left him, he married with Fanny Osbourne, who was 36, while he was 26. She became his source of inspiration, in fact he considered her his mother, wife and nurse. Fanny had a son and a daughter during her previous marriage, and she also had a son with Stevenson: his name was Austin.
Stevenson wrote “Treasure Island” to enjoy the children. Stevenson and his family went to live to the Island of Samoa and there Stevenson died, when he was 44.
The story:
The protagonist is Dr. Henry Jekyll, who is obsessed by the idea that evil tendencies can be separated from his good side, giving birth to two beings, a good and an evil one. Dr Jekyll created a potion to separate the two sides, but for fear to be trapped in Mr Hyde body, Jekyll gave order to be at Hyde's disposal.
At the end of the novel Jekyll cannot control Mr Hyde, and so he commit suicide, writing a letter with his confessions.
Differences between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Dr Henry Jekyll | Mr Hyde |
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All the novel is based on the dramatic conflict between the two sides.
The main themes are:
there is a variety of crimes witch creates suspense, that's why this novel can be considered a thriller
the main theme is psychology, because the two sides are separated and they are present in everybody
dramatic conflict between the good and the evil side.
There are 3 different narrators in the novel.
Generally there is a 3rd person non-omnicent narrator (when the narrator uses 3rd person but the story is told by the point of view of one character). In this case he is Mr Utterson, a character who realizes about the problem in Jekyll's life.
The second narrator is Dr Lanyon, who is a Dr Jekyll friend, and one day he was the witness of the transformation from Dr Jekyll in Mr Hyde.
The third narrator is Dr Jekyll, who in the last chapter confesses his transformation and his fault.
The most important thing in the narrators is that they write the versions of the facts by their point of view without knowing what is happening to the other narrators.
The setting in the novel is different according to the two sides: when there is Dr Jekyll the setting is London in the morning along beautiful streets; when there is Mr Hyde the setting is London at night in dark alleys.
The genesis of the novel can be divided in 2 hypothesis:
Robert Stevenson had a nightmare about monsters, and when he was woken up by his wife, he worked out his terrible dream
he had probably some dreams under the effect of drug (opium).
The novel we know nowadays is the 2nd version, in fact he wrote a 1st version with much more bloody events, but it was burnt by his wife after a quarrel.
The fight between the good and the evil is present all along the literature. The most important scientists are Dr Jekyll, Dr Victor Frankenstein and Dr Faustus.
Connected do Dr Jekyll there are elements of crime story. In fact in the title there is the word “case” and this word is important because the novel is based on the case for psychology about the fight between the good and the evil, and the conflict between them. It is also a case for the police, because of the crimes committed by Mr Hyde.
The setting connected to the case is London at night generally with a foggy weather.
Connected to the case for the police, there are a lot of clues witch lead to Jekyll's house.
All the novel is based on the dualism between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In fact Stevenson said that “everyone is a potential murder”.
The novel by Stevenson underlined some alarming questions suggested by the novelist:
is the evil side stronger in everyone?
is man's goodness only the result of the society's impositions and rules?
without imposition and rules could be “beast”?
The answers for these questions arrive some year later, with the analysis by Freud.
We can connect the recent film Shining to “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, so to the Victorian period.
Shining is directed by Stanley Kubrick (1980) from the novel “The shining” by Steven King. The characters are: Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers. Everything is based on the damnation at the Overlook Hotel.
Jack, the protagonist, is the caretaker for a period of time of the Hotel with his wife and their 5 years old child. The hotel is haunted. The paranormal power of Danny can save him and his mum. There is no end because the plot is circular: in fact there will always be a new caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.
There is the obsessive representation of mountain landscapes with particular camera movements using extreme long shots from the sky, and long shots with a closer view of the landscapes.
The mountain road is seen like an endless snake.
Medium-long shots with the hotel outside, then inside.
These is also the obsessive representation of geometrical figures, often with perspective, for example the labyrinth and the hotel floor.
The mirrors are very important in the film, with camera movements very often starting or ending a scene using the image reflected in it. The mirror is the element creating the dualism.
In the film there are flash-backs and flash-forwards. The flashbacks are the representation of bloody events of the past in the form of premonition. These premonitions are only seen by Denny. They are shown by his imaginary friend “Tony”.
The music is obsessive, without melody, but with regular rhythm. The music is interpretative because it is used to interpret a scene anticipating crucial scenes.
All the film is based on the “oral phase”. It can be seen in the sentence chosen by Kubrick for the Italian script, with “il mattino ha l'oro in bocca”; in English it is “all work and no play make Jack a dull boy”.
Other examples to support the oral phase are:
When Danny says “Tony is the boy in my mouth”.
The red lipstick used to write “murder”.
Halloran when he shows the family all the types of foods, or when he offers Danny some ice-cream.
The oral phase and the mouth are also connected to Jack when the family is in the car and he explains about the events happened at Danner Pass about cannibalism among old pioneers.
The film is presented under three points of view:
Danny, who has a paranormal power, the “shining”: in fact he can sense messages and sensations coming from the past, in particular from Halloran.
Jack, who suffers from auto-isolation: in fact he tries to write a novel, and he has a very complex psychology.
Wendy, who is the wife. She shows a way to brake the family: in fact she is stronger than her husband. She is an example of the destruction of the family.
Shining is the sample of the anti-horror film, because generally a horror film has dark scenes in the climax, very often the setting is at night with no light, while Shining has a lot of well-lit scenes in the climax. There is light in the room 237 with the ghosts. There is light with the flux of blood from the lift. There is light when there are the twin girls. At the end is night, but there is light in the labyrinth garden.
Comparison between the film “Shining” and the novel “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”:
Shining | Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
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Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a surgeon and his mother was a minor poet.
After his school he won a scholarship to go and study at Oxford University. In Oxford he got in touch to Aesthetic Movement, in particular with his teacher John Ruskin. In Oxford Oscar became famous for his being extravagance, in fact he considered the beauty in dressing as important as beauty in art and literature.
After graduating, he moved to London and even there he became famous for his strange behaviours. In fact he loved wearing bright colours (ex: orange, pink), while man in the period used to wear dark colours.
He was considered a “Dandy”. A Dandy is a man for whom the perfection in dressing or in dress was as important as the perfection in art.
Wilde was also famous for his way of said or aphorism (ex: “My life must be my masterpiece”, or when he was at the New York Customs he said “I have nothing to declare but my genius”).
He went to the USA for a series of lectures and when he returned to England he married Lady Constance Lloyd. After a few years he was tired of his marriage.
In 1895 his fall started, because he had a homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. He was the son of a very important aristocratic man. Alfred's father provoked him until Wilde reacted by taking him to court for slander. In front of the court he had to admit his love affair and was sent to prison because homosexuality was a serious criminal affair.
He remained in prison for 2 years. When he left the prison he was aged and broken, and he went to Paris under the name Sebastian Melmoth. Sebastian comes from St Sebastian, who was killed by some arrows, and Wilde had arrows on his uniform in prison.
In Paris he lived exiled alone, and died alone in a small hotel. He is buried in a cemetery of Paris as Charles Baudelaire .
Oscar Wilde wrote some fairy tales modelled on Andersen's fairy tales, for example “The happy prince and other tales” and “The House of Pomegranates”.
The only and most famous novel is “The picture of Dorian Gray”. The protagonist is Dorian, who impressed by his own beauty represented in his portrait by the painter Basil Hallward, doesn't want to grow old. His dissolute and immoral life caused the death of his fiancé and the death of his friend Basil. But it leaves no signs on him: instead, it disfigures the painting witch is the symbol of his decay. Dorian, disgusted by the portrait, tries to destroy it, but he dies. After his death the portrait resumes its beauty, while Dorian's body shows the signs of his corruption.
Oscar Wilde also wrote an essay titled “The Portrait of Mr W.H.”. W.H. are the initials of a young man to whom Shakespeare dedicate some sonnets, so it's a study on Shakespeare's homosexual love affair.
Oscar Wilde was more famous for his comedies, for example “An ideal Husband” and “The importance of Being Earnest”. Oscar Wilde wrote also a play in French: “Salomè”, witch later formed the “Libretto” of Richard Strauss.
In prison he wrote two works. One is “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” written just in prison, and “De Profundis”, a long letter to Alfred written in prison and during his exile in France. The translation in English of “De Profundis” is “From Hell”, because Oscar Wilde lived before a beautiful and rich life, while at that time he was in prison and then in Paris having an ugly life.