{"id":742,"date":"2022-09-11T02:08:41","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=742"},"modified":"2022-10-26T18:18:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T18:18:02","slug":"how-can-change-be-initiated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2022\/09\/11\/how-can-change-be-initiated\/","title":{"rendered":"How can change be initiated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The passage I chose is from the scene where Mr. Wilson visits the Carson household to seek aid for the Davenports.\u00a0 While sitting in the kitchen as food is prepared around him, \u201cWilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before.\u00a0 If the servants had known this, they would have willingly given him meat and bread in abundance; but they were like the rest of us, and, not feeling hunger themselves, forgot it was possible another might.\u00a0 So Wilson\u2019s craving turned to sickness\u2026\u201d (Gaskell, 67).\u00a0 This excerpt, as well as the repeated use of diction related to desire such as \u201cyearn,\u201d \u201chunger,\u201d and \u201ccraving,\u201d illuminates how the lower class\u2019 income is so poor that it leads to sparsity of basic necessities.\u00a0 The absence of substantial meals is so severe that the hunger it results in for poorer people is a \u201csickness.\u201d\u00a0 Wilson\u2019s silence and the servants\u2019 ignorance means it is also an unacknowledged problem.\u00a0 The rich and those who have submitted to them, like the servants in the Carson household, have such easy access to food that they do not even think of hunger, much less that someone may suffer from it.\u00a0 Gaskell hints that so long as the poor remain silent and respectful and the rich remain uneducated and ignorant, nothing will change and the lower class will remain destitute.\u00a0 The only way to bring about a better life for people in poverty is to either speak up and make the situation heard, work directly in servitude to the rich as the Carson servants have, or remind the rich what it\u2019s like to be hungry.\u00a0 The reason Wilson remains hungry is also the reason why Mary Barton and Harry Carson are a doomed relationship from the start.\u00a0 Mary\u2019s community is struggling, and her and her father\u2019s meals are scant.\u00a0 Harry is thriving, eating enough food to forget about hunger along with his family and the servants in his household.\u00a0 Mary doesn\u2019t dare mention her problems to Harry, and so Harry remains ignorant, and they are stuck at the same impasse as Wilson in the Carson kitchen.\u00a0 On the other hand, John Barton has no qualms making the poverty of the working class known to the rich.\u00a0 However, he travels down a darker path in which he would be satisfied dragging the rich down to his level, reminding them how hunger can result in \u201csickness.\u201d\u00a0 In this way, he is also doomed, forgetting his original purpose to obtain rights in favor of a determination for vengeance that is eating away at him.\u00a0 The real Chartists outside of the novel, by persisting in their goal to change the law and obtain rights for the working class through more peaceful methods, are more successful in initiating change than Wilson, Mary, or John.\u00a0 Reform Acts were passed after their dissolution in the late 1800s.\u00a0 They were neither silent nor malevolent, and so were more successful in their goals for change.\u00a0 Based on Gaskell\u2019s depictions of lower class characters interacting with higher classes, she would be approving of the Chartists efforts and triumphs.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The passage I chose is from the scene where Mr. Wilson visits the Carson household to seek aid for the Davenports.\u00a0 While sitting in the kitchen as food is prepared around him, \u201cWilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before.\u00a0 If the servants had known … Continue reading How can change be initiated?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}