“The Duchess and the Jeweller - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

“The Duchess and the Jeweller”

Modernism and Virginia WoolfSlide2

Modernization

New means of transportation, such as the steamship, the railroad, the automobile, and the airplane.

Other technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone.

People were living in large cities, and the world population more than tripled. Slide3

World War ISlide4

World War I

World War I took place mainly in Europe

It was the most mechanized war to date

It killed

fifteen million

people.

After the United States joined the war in 1917 the Allies (France, Britain, Italy) repelled Germany from the Western Front (in Belgium and France).

In the East, Germany and Austria-Hungary drove into Russian territory, which led to the establishment of a Communist dictatorship under Lenin. Slide5

Communist Russia

Russia’s near-defeat contributed to the Revolution of 1917, with Lenin establishing a Communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.”Slide6

Nazis

Nazism arose as a National Socialist Movement and came to power under Adolf Hitler in 1933

The Nazis’ agenda included national rearmament and authoritarian politics held together by the glue of anti-Semitism. Slide7

The Final Solution

Starting in 1941, Hitler authorized the Final Solution, aimed at destroying the Jewish people, exterminating six million Jews and several million Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazis. Slide8

Great DepressionSlide9

Great Depression

Beginning on October 24, 1929, the stock market crash heralded the Great Depression.

Within a few years,

a third of American workers were unemployed

; hunger and joblessness spread throughout the industrialized world.

Franklin Roosevelt was able to reverse the worst effects of the Depression in the United States with the New Deal, which included public works spending and the introduction of Social Security. Slide10

World War II

World War II began after Hitler’s military force invaded Poland in 1939. Germany allied itself with Fascist Italy and authoritarian Japan, which had earlier conquered Korea and occupied China. The United States entered the war after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Slide11

Modernism

Linked political crises with the crisis of representation.

break with literary conventions

including plots, verse forms, narrative techniques, and the boundaries of genre

Charles Darwin - the animal nature of human existence is explored

Karl Marx - the struggle between social classes is the main drive of history

Friedrich Nietzsche - attacked a belief in God and the conviction that humans are fundamentally rational

Sigmund Freud - stress on the unconscious and power of sexual and destructive instincts

Writers had significant mobility, often studying or working away from their native residences. Slide12

Scientific Advances

Scientists found that the natural world does not necessarily function in the way it appears to. Albert Einstein’s

theory of relativity

and other discoveries, such as

radioactivity

,

X-rays

, and

quantum theory

, presented counterintuitive understanding of the physical universe that conflicted with classical

Netwonian

physics and even common sense.Slide13

Novelists

The great modern novelists, including Conrad, Proust, Joyce, and Woolf wrote realistic works in the manner of Flaubert or Tolstoy.

However, they shifted toward

interiority

and focused on the

limited perspective of an individual

, often idiosyncratic character. Slide14

Asia

Asian writers embraced Communist or Socialist politics and a related style of

politically engaged fiction

. Their works—as in

Ryunosuke

,

Jun’ichiro

,

Fusako

and Man-

sik

, often

blend modern techniques with old folklore

or cultural practices of earlier Japan to make a political statement. Slide15

Negritude

During the 1930s, a group of African and Caribbean intellectuals, led by Léopold Senghor and

Aimé

Césaire, met in Paris (where they were pursuing higher education) and formed the Negritude movement, which

celebrated the culture of Africa and the African Diaspora to provide leadership for decolonized states

. Slide16

Test Your Knowledge

Which event had arguably the greatest impact on the early twentieth century?

the Russian Revolution of 1917

the Great Depression

the Second World War

the First World War

While each of these events was world changing, nothing compared to the destabilizing impact of the First World War. Death and destruction on that scale had previously been unknown—even unimaginable—for most people.Slide17

Test Your Knowledge

Modernist artists depended primarily on which of the following?

Reason

Experimentation

Science

tradition

Literature across the globe responded to world-changing events (world wars, revolutions, financial collapse) with an unprecedented wave of artistic experimentation, as though the previous modes and forms of art were simply no longer able to capture, recreate, or express the shocking realities of the modern world.Slide18

Test Your Knowledge

Fiction that includes references to itself is called: __________ .

Metafiction

Hyperfiction

stream of consciousness fiction

experiential fiction

A story or novel, for example, might address the reader as he or she is in the act of reading. Thus the very act of consuming art (whether reading, listening, or watching) becomes part of the art being consumed. (This technique is also known as self-

referentiality

.)Slide19

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, a notable historian, author,

and

critic and Julia Stephen, a

renowned beauty

.

Was raised

in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes,

and

James Russell

Lowell

were among the visitors to the house

. She was taught the classics and literature.

The

sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns.

The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly

institutionalized.

Virginia Stephen married writer Leonard Woolf on 10 August

1912. They were closely bonded in their marriage and professionally (founders of Hogarth Press).

The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work

.

On 28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River

Ouse

near her home, and drowned herself.Slide20

Feminism and her work

Woolf is known for her precise

evocations of states of mind and body

.

She explored (directly in her essays and indirectly in her novels and short stories) the situation of

women in society

, the construction of gender identity and the predicament of the woman writer.

Though

unmarried,

she lived

with several men (some of them openly homosexuals),

challenging the social conventions

.

Her poetic use of language brings to life the concrete, sensuous details of everyday experience.

She explores the

structures of consciousness

. Her focus was not on the object under observation, but on the observer’s perception of it.Slide21

The Duchess and the JewellerSlide22

A mirror of English soceity

It was an age of transition.

The

high-ups

(Duchess) were

coming down because of their moral decadence and the commoners

(Jeweler) were

taking lead in spite of their

obsessions.

Oliver Bacon had

become so important that each day he received invitation cards from the aristocracy of the English society. Even the Duchess of

Lambourne

waited for his pleasure outside his private office

.

The

Duchess

was

always in financial difficulties because of her moral decadence. She gambled. To arrange for the money she sold fake pearls to Oliver twice but this was not all. She had so much moral decadence that she used Diana, her daughter, to entrap Oliver Bacon.Slide23

How did the Duchess induce Oliver Bacon into buying fake pearls

?

Friendly address - she

started

calling

him ‘dear Mr. Bacon’.

Then, she called him an ‘old friend’ four times. Then she addressed him by his first name.

Using her daughters - she

mentioned the name of her daughters and told him that she was selling the pearl only for them. She knew that Oliver loved Diana.

Taking advantage of his inferiority complex - She

invited him to a party at her estate. She induced him by telling him that the Prime Minister, his Minister, his Royal Highness, and Diana would be there.

She cries.Slide24

What obsession did

Oliver Bacon have in spite of becoming one of the richest jewelers of England?

We

find that the jeweler had two obsessions. Firstly, he wanted more and more wealth. It appears that his

greed

did not have an end. Secondly, he had

inferiority complex

and wanted to move among aristocratic circles to satisfy this complex.Slide25

“They were friends, yet enemies; he was master, she was mistress; each cheated the other, each needed the other, each feared the other

.”

Oliver Bacon was a commoner. Later, he became the richest jeweler of England. On the other hand, the duchess was the member of the aristocracy by birth. Therefore, there was a great

class difference

between the two. These two classes could never be friends. However, the duchess was forced to call him an ‘old friend’ because

of

her moral decadence and financial problems.

Oliver

became the richest jeweler of England by using fair and unfair means. Therefore, he was a master in the sense that

he was

a great cheat

. On the other hand, the Duchess

was

a cheat too. She induced the jeweler into buying the fake

pearls.

Both

needed each other

. She needed him for money and he needed her to go the party

to be with

her daughter. In spite of that, both feared each other because each knew the secrets of the other. Slide26

Group discussion

Group 1: Morality

Group 2: Class struggles

Group 3: Women’s rights