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Essays of ts eliot
T s Eliot's works on modern poetry and society
T s Eliot's works on modern poetry and society
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Childhood Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England
The issue of childhood mortality is written into the works of Gaskell and Dickens with alarming regularity. In Mary Barton, Alice tells Mary and Margaret that before Will was orphaned, his family had buried his six siblings. There is also the death of the Wilson twins, as well as Tom Barton's early death --an event which inspires his father John to fight for labor rights because he's certain his son would have survived if he'd had better food. In Oliver Twist, Dick's early death is typical of workhouse children who never recover from years of chronic malnutrition. And in Dombey and Son, Paul demonstrates that wealth does not guarantee longevity, as we watch him steadily weakened by some mysterious illness. Evidence is everywhere that Gaskell, Dickens, and many of their contemporaries, used fiction to chronicle a sad fact of l9th century life: Many children didn't live to become adults.
At the Newell Historical Burial ground in Attleboro, the stone marking the graves of the Stanley family indicates that three children were either stillborn or died before their first birthdays. If there were any other children who survived childhood, they were probably daughters who were buried in their husbands' family plots.
A typical grave from the mid-19th century is a husband's stone flanked by two or even three wives each but the last having died in her 20s or 30s. Certainly many of these women died in childbirth, because their death dates match the birth dates on the children's stones.
Several children might be named after the father. In one family plot with eight children, three were named John because only the third one survived the first year. ApE time when the death of a toddler was as normal as this practice was quite common in both America and England.
While all of Dombey's money couldn't save his son from dying, little Paul's diet, lifestyle, and medical attention gave him every advantage available. The relationship between poverty and childhood mortality is unmistakable. In Boston's Irish Catholic slums, Lemuel Shattuck found that between 1841 and 1845, 61% of the population died before the age of five. (Woodham-Smith, p. 252) Poor English children didn't fare any particularly in the manufacturing towns of London, Sheffield, Leocester, Manchester, and Liverpool. Statistics from the Sheffield General Infirmary' between 1837 and 1842 reveal that of 11,944 deaths, half were children under age five:
It was times throughout the book the reader would be unsure if the children would even make it. For example, “Lori was lurching around the living room, her eyebrows and bangs all singed off…she had blisters the length of her thighs”(178).Both Lori and Jeannette caught fire trying to do what a parent is supposed to do for their child. Jeannette caught fire at the age of three trying to make hotdogs because her mother did not cook for her leaving Jeannette to spend weeks hospitalized. She was burnt so bad she had to get a skin graft, the doctors even said she was lucky to be alive. The children never had a stable home. They were very nomadic and a child should be brought up to have one stable home. No child should remember their childhood constantly moving. This even led to Maureen not knowing where she come from because all she can remember is her moving. The children had to explain to her why she looked so different is because where she was born. They told Maureen “she was blond because she’d been born in a state where so much gold have been mined, and she had blue eyes the color of the
Compared to people in the twenty-first century, with all their modern conveniences and technological advances, the life of any early-American seems difficult. However, the lives of children were among the most arduous. Linda Pollock states in her book Forgotten Children that between 1660 and 1800 families -and society in general- became more affectionate, child-oriented, and permissive of uniqueness and unstructured time (67). Although this may be true, many other sources depict the lives of children as taxing and oppressive at best. Children of the time were either forced to abandon education for their family contributions, or had to balance school with a full day's work ("Education"). Even when they were not in school or doing manual labor, their day-to-day lives were uncomfortable and harsh (Kids). Social status, as is expected, was a key factor in determining how hard a child's life would be (Murray 9). Although many children at the time had it easier than others they were all asked at an early age to take on adult responsibilities. The lives of all children in 1800 were mundane and difficult due to family and societal expectations for labor, schooling, and maturity.
Antigone is a play about the tension caused when two individuals have conflicting claims regarding law. In this case, the moral superiority of the laws of the city, represented by Creon, and the laws of the gods, represented bt Antigone. In contrast, Oedipus The King is driven by the tensions within Oedipus himself. That play both begins and concludes within the public domain, the plot being driven by the plague that troubles the city, and which is so graphically brought to life by the Priest. In both Antigone (ll179-82) and Oedipus The King (ll29-31) the city is likened to a storm tossed ship, and it cannot be merely coincidence that Oedipus The King was written at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, a time when Athens itself was suffering the effects of plague. Oedipus The King reaches its climax with a now blinded Oedipus daring to show himself to the people of Thebes, forgetting that he is no longer the leader of the state. In Antigone, it is Creons abuse of absolute power that leads to his tragic downfall. Whilst Oedipus determinedly tried to get to the root of his peoples ills, ultimately discovering that he was in fact the cause of them, Creon morphs from a supposedly caring leader into a tyrannical despot, eager to take the law into his own hands. It is the actions of Antigone that helps to bring about Creons fall from grace, as her steadfast refusal to accept th...
In the work of Bradstreet she writes often about infant mortality, which in the modern Western mind seems depressing and antiquated. Though to the mind of a woman of that time and even to this day in many parts of the world pregnancy and childbirth is a life threatening undertaking, with many children passing in their first months of life. Bradstreet addresses the loss of two of her grandchildren in the poems In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and Half Old and On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet Who Died on 16 November, 1669, being but a Month, and One Day Old. In her poem entitled Before the Birth of One of Her Children, Bradstreet laments about the anxiety she feels and the fear she has of losing this child or her own life, it is best illustrated in the final line of the poem, “These O protect from stepdame's injury. And if cha...
Secondly, the foreshadowing of the family's death is the graveyard when they "passed by a cotton field with five or six graves fenced" (383). It is not an accident that the numbers of graves "five or six" matches the exact number of people in the car. Though there are five people and a baby, it is evident that a baby is not a full person. So, it is appropriate to say that the number of graves is five or six.
Every day, 370,000 babies are born into this world- each having the potential to live a prosperous and productive life. Unfortunately, some of these tiny, fragile humans do not live until their first birthday. The death of infants within the first year of life is known as infant mortality. There are many contributing factors as to why infant mortality may be high or low in a specific area. In order to measure the amount of deaths that occur in a particular region, the number of newborns that die before the age of one year old per 1,000 live births are recorded and is known as the infant mortality rate in that society. Generally, the infant mortality rate of a country directly reflects on the health-care system provided. Unfortunately, in today’s world, a child dies every four seconds.
At first glance, Buried Child seems as a typical Middle American family. Dodges one-track alcoholic mind, Halie’s pestering personality and Tilden’s distant relationship with his father all seems relatively typical of an elderly Middle America family. However, this is far from being the truth.
In Victorian Britain deaths caused a great deal of sadness and pain to the person’s family mates and friends. Kids die at a young age so the children are very spoiled. Miners work in mining shafts, at factories, at mines, and more. The death of a loved one caused some people to not come out of there houses for at least two weeks. “Hospitals, rather than being seen as places of healing were more often viewed as the gateway of death (B. Malheiro).” This shows that the hospitals had lots of deaths in the hospitals and it was not a very safe place in Victorian Britain. Lots of accidental deaths happened around that time to with the factories and even farming. With all these deaths happening you can see how sad and tragic these deaths are, from and to see that the deaths are not the places you
Charles Dickens’ (1812-1970) father had great financial difficulties. The boy had a rather miserable childhood, and the lad spent much of his time in poorhouses and workhouses. Did poverty overwhelm Charles Dickens? Was his negative environment to blame for an unproductive and fruitless life? No it wasn’t. Dickens retreated into his imaginary world and incisively wrote about the need for social reform in what later became such literary classics such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
The Victorian Era was a time of social evolution as well as technological and economic advance. A distinct, unique middle class was formed alongside the traditional working class and wealthy aristocracy. However, there were certain individuals that fell outside this model of Victorian society. The “abandoned child” was society’s scapegoat- a person without a past, without connections, without status. They could appear in any class, at any time. The upper and middle classes often had a somewhat romantic perception of them, due to their prevalence in Victorian literature. Novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights made heroines/heroes out of orphans, portraying them as respectable yet troubled (Cunningham,“Orphan Texts”). However, orphans were also often treated with disdain and distrust, due to their reputation as “criminally prone” individuals. They were a victim of classic “Victorian contradictions” that characterized most aspects of Victorian society.
Creon does not learn a lesson from Oedipus' accusatory behavior. Instead he adapts this bad personality trait. Throughout Antigone, he accuses everyone who tries to give him advice of betraying him. Whereas, in Oedipus, he is falsely accused by Oedipus of trying to take over the throne. This paper will compare and contrast his behavior and evaluate if he learned anything from one play to the next.
”To Autumn” is an ode written by John Keats on the 19th of September 1819. While walking near Winchester along a river, Keats became inspired to write the poem. The Rest of his other odes were completed in the spring of 1819. John died on the 23rd of February 1921 at the age of 25, just a year after the release of “To Autumn”. However, throughout his life he inspired many poets, but most notably Percy Shelly. In mourning, he wrote the elegy “Adonais” for Keats.”To Autumn “is his final poem and many have said it is his best. Keats use of imagery takes the reader on an adventure through the scenes and sounds of autumn. He achieves this by his use language, imagery, tone and structure. This is also what creates the mood and consequently allows him to challenge the notion that music is usually associated with spring. Thus, in this essay I will show how he challenges this belief, by looking at his use of imagery, tone and form. In addition I will look at what his influences were and the context in which he wrote the poem.
Charles Dickens' Exploration of the Victorian Society's Awful Treatment Of The Children Of The Poor
Sacrifice, even when it comes to one’s ultimate end, is crucial in order to survive as a productive race. In the book Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, he illustrates the hardships of the early-nineteenth-century lifestyles. With the resurrection of an evicted man, the novel sprouts from a broken family recovering and growing. This novel incorporates many grand gestures and adventures, such as the French Revolution, treason trials, and the sacrifice of one’s own life in the name of love.
In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake, the author attempts to educate the reader about the horrors experienced by young children who are forced into labor at an early age cleaning chimneys for the wealthy. The poem begins with a young boy who has lost his mother but has no time to properly grieve because his father has sold him into a life of filth and despair. The child weeps not only for the loss of his mother and father’s betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and innocence. Blake uses poetry in an attempt to provoke outrage over the inhumane and dangerous practice of exploiting children and attempts to shine a light on the plight of the children by appealing to the reader’s conscience in order to free the children from their nightmare existence. Right away in the first lines of the poem we learn through the child narrator that his life is about to change dramatically for the worse.