Addison examines “imagination”

Joseph Addison discusses the attributes of the imagination, in seven essays published in the June 1712, Spectator Issues 412-418. Addison, The pleasures of the imagination result from “greatness, novelty or beauty.”

Greatness could be the the amazement at a magnificant work of nature, such as a spacious horizon. Novelty raises pleasure in the imagination such as waterfalls, when a scene is perpetually changing. Beauty “strikes the mind with an inward joy” such as delight in colours seen at sunrise or sunset. Poets are known to borrow “more of their epithets from colours that from any other topic. Other senses awaken the pleasures of the imagination such as sounds of a waterfall or the music of birds singing.

The essays continue to search the causes of delight, how our imagination is affected by the works of nature, how a scene of imagery can awaken ideas that slept in the imagination. Addison gives the example of Homer whose writing describes sublime persons godlike and terrible. He refers to Ovid, in his Metamorphosis who “has shown us how the imagination may be effected by what is strange … and gives us the sight of some new creature” at the end of each of his stories. He examines other views of the imagination which are disagreeable and questions why we take delight in being terrified or dejected by a hideous description. Addison tells us that our fear does not come from the hideous object but comes from the reflection we make and “the pleasure we feel from the sense of our own safety.” Addison’s essays lead us towards the Gothic imagination where a pleasing kind of horror amuses the mind of the reader, in his reference to ancient times when our forefather’s “looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, in their belief in ghosts, fairies, witchcraft, haunted churches and spirits….ties into  Defoe’s, “TheApparition,”  a Ghost appears…written in journalistic language and set in a highly christian framework…..There has to be some kind of a threat in Gothic…

Class Presentation of Sept 18th on Newgate

Newgate Prison and the Courts

Brief History of Old Bailey:

The first Old Bailey Sessions House was constructed in 1539 adjacent to Newgate Prison.

Destroyed in the Great fire of London 1666, it was rebuilt as an open court in 1674. 

Closed in 1734, led to outbreaks of typhus, and resulted in numerous deaths.  

It was replaced in 1774 and these Sessions, which exercised criminal jurisdiction over the London area and the adjoining counties, were superseded by the Central Criminal Court in 1834.

 

Criminal statistics of the 18C portray a society whose laws were enacted by the landed elite and applied by wealthy magistrates and juries of tradesmen that targeted the offences of the poor, allowing the countless offences of nobles, gentry and shopkeepers to go largely unpunished.

Ninety percent of all crimes were non-violent, petty larceny, which included shoplifting, or pick pocketing.

 

Under English law, any Englishman could prosecute any crime. In practice, the prosecutor was usually the victim. It was up to him to file charges with the local magistrate and present evidence to the grand jury. The death sentence was common even for petty crime but there were ways of reducing this sentence to either branding or transportation by obtaining a PARDON

 

Transportation as a criminal punishment began on a large scale about 1663 by private merchants. A merchant who wished to transport a felon was required to pay the sheriff “a price per head” that included jail fees, the fees of the clerk & the appropriate court fees for drawing up the pardon, and so on.” After transporting the felon to the New World, the merchant could sell him into indentured servitude for a term depending on his offence. (Moll Flanders transportation to a plantation in Virginia)

 

Newgate executions held at Tyburn, about three miles away, where a gallows was built in 1571 and referred to as the Triple Tree. Executions were carried out here until 1759. Tyburn is said to be at the exact location of the well-known Marble Arch in London. It often took three hours for the executions procession to complete the three-mile journey due to the crowds that came out to watch and jeer creating a carnival-like atmosphere.  (The prisoners rode in a wagon sitting on their coffin)

 

The Bells of the church of  St. Sepulchre (built in 1450), (a church on this site since 1137) rang out the morning of a hanging and they were referred to as the “Bells of Old Bailey”…some of you may be familiar with the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons,” where various bells of London churches are mentioned … “When will you pay me said the Bells of Old Bailey.”  . The church of St. Sepulchre still has an” Execution Bell” in a glass case. Newgate got its own bell in 1783.

 

The present Central Criminal Court, referred to as The Old Bailey, part of which stands on Old Bailey and Newgate Street, recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary, which was attended by Queen Elizabeth 11.  It stands on the original site of Newgate Prison.  The normal area of jurisdiction today is Greater London, but some serious cases from outside this domain are also heard here. 

 

Statue on the Dome: Lady Justice – a woman holding in her right hand a sword standing for the power to punish and in her left hand, a balance standing for equity.

 

Inscription above the Old Bailey today:

“Defend the children of the poor and punish the wicked”

“The floodgates of Compassion”

    What a change to meet The Man of Feeling, MacKenzie’s  depiction of a man of effusive compassion. Published in 1771, Man of Feeling fed into the “facination with the relation between emotion and judgement and “captured the imagination of the reading public” (Mackenzie intro 9, 11).

It is interesting to note how the narrator comes by a ‘a bundle of papers’ found in the room of a man, referred to as a ghost, Harley, the man himself! On reading them the narrator describes them as a “bundle of little episodes” without “a single syllogism from beginning to end” which made “excellent wadding” for his hunting gun. (MacKenzie 48-9). Of course, I had to look up the word “Syllogism” which according to my dictionary is loosely defined as Logic or a formulae of argument where one premise furnishes a logical connection between two other terms.

The stories, a series of unrelated incidents that evoke strong emotion in the protagonist, Harley, illuminate the embodied sentiment of the male  in an age of reason. The short stories describe ‘things as they seem’ and reveal ‘things as they are’ to Harley, the feeling man, who seek the underlying truth. In the story of his encounter with an unvirtuous lady, Harley’s empathy and his belief in her story and his respect for the “virtue in those tears” (Mackenzie 85), results with her being reunited with her father who is an officer.

His sensibility is overly developed to his own detriment. In his ‘soap-box’ like sermon about the immoral victories of colonial conquests in India, he advises that “feelings are not yet lost that applaud benevelonce and answer inhumaanity” (Mackenzie 119, should be strengthened.  On the other hand, Harley is emotionally immature when it comes to personal relationships and his benevelonce which overflowes to his own detriment is demonstrated in his inability to seek his own happiness with Miss Walten, with whom he cannot express his own subverted feelings of love. He is so introverted in her presence that “filled with a thousand sentiments” which “gushed so impetuously on his heart, that he could not utter a syllable” in her presence.

This novel was a pleasant change of pace from our Dear “Pamela”

“Reputation is so delicate a thing”

The theme of protecting one’s reputation at all costs is prevelant in the stories of the middle-class women portrayed throughout Millenium Hall , the Utopian novel written by Sarah Scott which was published in 1762.

One of the characters, Miss Melvin is placed in a very difficult situation, and accused of associating with the son of a local farmer, in a devious plot designed by a jealous mother-in-law. The suspicion alone of bad conduct forces her to accept a marriage proposal because “reputation is so delicate a thing” and “the woman who is suspected is disgraced” (Scott, 124). She marries Mr. Morgan out of duty to society and obedience to her parents, in the face of her Christian belief system, and the hereditary knowledge that her mother had also married out of duty, to honour and obey. Forbidden to have her school friend, Miss Mancel visit her, she lives a difficult life until released of this bondage by her husband’s death.

Miss Mancel, in the care of an aunt since infancy, is well educated in a boarding school, by the sponsorship of Mr. Hintman. Referred to as “the handsome lady” (Scott 135), for her striking beauty, she is a victim of a forbidden relationship in her reciprocol love for Mr. Edward Lampton. His grandmother, Lady Lambton’s chief objection, besides that of lack of fortune is “the obscurity of her birth” (Scott 138). This obscurity, which affects Miss Mancel’s reputation in the eyes of Lady Lambton is removed when she is reunited with her real mother, the wealthy, Mrs. Thornby who had inherited forty thousand pounds at her second husband’s death. The match, now acceptable in the eyes of Lady Lampton is doomed when fate plays its unfair hand in the death of Sir Edward. This story is evidence that reputation and appearance mean more than people’s happiness and plays into the class system.
Lady Mary Jones, an orphan at ten years of age, is influenced by her rich, widowed aunt, Lady Sheernes, whose “lightness of conduct” sheds doubt on her reputation, but whose rank and fortune protects her. Lady Mary, “the object of general courtship” (Scott 174) narrowly escapes the shame of an illicit marriage to a Welsh gentleman, who was already married, by the intervention of fate in the form of an accident which keeps her incapacitated for two weeks. Lady Mary almost loses her reputation once more with the seduction of Lord Robert and has to take some lessons in morality from a “modest young lady” who is “well presuaded there is something so respectable in virtue, that no man will dare to insult it” as long as she behaves with propriety (Scott 183). Left penniless at the death of Lady Sheerness, Lady Mary is saved from ruin by a relative, Lady Brumpton. On receipt of ten thousand pounds at her death, Lady Mary’s heart is “so touched with the greatness of divine mercy, “that her mind [takes] a more serious turn that common,”( 194) and she retires to a more quiet way of life.

The stories of these women along with those of Mrs. Selvyn and Mrs. Trentham exposes the extreme difficulties of middle-class women who are restricted by conventions of behaviour in a patriarchal society and who are ruined if their reputation is in question.

PS I loved this book although I agree with the narrator when he says that the reader may “wish we had done it sooner, and may think that [he] has been too prolix in [his] account of this society” (Scott 249).

a letter to “Pamela”

My dear sweet “Pamela,”

I feel compelled to write to you, as you have been my bedtime, albeit somewhat tedious, companion for the past two weeks now, since I have subjugated myself to your letters and journal. I wondered just how many times you could have been “undone” at the hands of the virtue hunter Mr. B____. Your Dear Mother and Dear Father, whom you hold in the highest esteem are, by you accounts, so proud of their dutiful and virtuous daughter who holds the master at bay until there is a virtuous, honest reward in the “awful words” and “the solemn words” of Mr. Williams, the vicar who asks, Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?” (Richardson 363). My poor, wretched Pamela, you protected your honest virtue through so many trials and tribulations and finally attained your freedom to be with your loving parents. Why did you give it up to “obey, serve, love and honour” your persecutor. Where is your fighting spirit now? You now like, and forgive the wretched, Mrs. Jewkes who according to your initial observation is “a broad, squat, pursy , fat thing” (Richardson 116), who beat you and took your shoes. How could you? This wretch who conspired to have you “undone” so many times is now forgiven. Now you are a servant again, although a rich one. My dear Pamela you are too good. You even wish to take Mr. B’s bastard child into your home. You are the sweet, honourable, loving, forgiving, Mrs.Pamela.

My dear Pamela, I will leave you with this thought, just keep a little of that defiance and spunk that paid dividends to you both in virtue and in your subsequent rich life and you will be “true” to the “real” Pamela not the poor or the happy Pamela.

Your most afflicted reader,

Helena 

Well, that is my rant to Pamela. Now a rant at the author’s interference on page 530. It is not enough to give us 529 pages of never ending, moral instruction, you have to go further by explaining it to the reader, as if he/she were total imbeciles . More lectures, I could not bear. If this had to be in the book, it should be as a preface or as an appendix, not in the body of the novel.Richardson has also exalted woman in the name of “Pamela”to the inhuman status of untouchable perfection.

 

Hello world!

Hello Class, I am finally “on board” this new blogging world.

I must say I enjoyed Moll Flanders despite its portrayal of a dark time for women and its long narrative style. Yes, it is repetitious but always with a new creative twist. I think that Defoe had a field day with this story and used all his artistic talents of language and his knowledge of the political, social and judicial system at the time. I did think the husband/brother issue and Moll’s meeting of her mother-in-law who was in fact her actual mother a little bit too far fetched. I found that this pulled me out of the story rather than into it. Moll’s continuous reflections give insight into her thought procerss and her moral judgements about her actions and those of others.

PS Thank you Amber and Destiny for your informative presentation today.