Thank F**k for today- FINALLY I realise a MA was for me!!

Okay, you know I said I didn't really do any reading for my class?

Well, I didn't need to. I harked back to literature and painting for all things!! LOL as always.

We were talking about social observation and the popularisation of this as a form of media entertainment (like newspapers and books)- it kinda hit the spot for me. We were talking about Dickens (who I am not overly fond of) instead I went off into the world of Elizabeth Gaskell and her way of observing the manufacturing classes in the North and writing about in things like North and South (a very good BBC production of it if your prefer the short-hand version as it were- mind you I can read the book in two days- albeit not doing much else!!) She characterises the manufacturing part of the middle-class as barbarous in the beginning but by the end she realises there is an inherent nobility to earn money honesty by labour. Margaret says "I'd prefer to earn money honestly" rather then let it accumulate. Her aunt calls her "revolutionary" for thinking like this. I was wondering how Elizabeth Gaskell related to the poor- did she? I would like to think she did. She really gets to grip with the working-class issues yet maintains a sense of dignity, albeit of a feminine variety- Nicholas a labourer in Milton cotton mills is effeminised during the course of the book as the unions fail and Boucher dies- in effect he becomes a mother of sorts. Either way she shows a compassion that is masked in Dickens for example. Dickens is preoccupied with satirising and although shows plight of the poor in Hard Times, A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist sensitively, there is an undercurrent of criticism that takes away the Victorian sentimentality that contributes to the pathos of the books. Then we moved onto Engels as a social observer and what his motives and perspective was on the situation.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Engels was a Flaneur(??)- a single man dressing down into a typical working-class person and walking the streets taking in all the information of what life was like in Manchester: "a living hell" as he had called it before writing his book The Conditions of the Working-Class. He was a social observer, but the question rose: were people like him, Mayhew and Booth (all social observers of the time) doing it for the improvement of mankind? For self-gratifing voyeurism? Morbid curiosity? To improve the plight of the working-class? Did they see themselves apart from the working-class? Was that a class apart or a race apart? The "Residuum" as the working-classes were called by Malthus I think were a "race" apart. This is what I am hoping to be looking at for my MA dissertation- what language women feminists used to describe the working-classes.

I love the beard, Engels.

Anyhow we came to the conclusion that Engels had a genuine interest other than an economic agenda to walking the streets. It was a good class... I may add to this post another time with some extra thoughts from the class... I have literally only just got back in... I shall ponder it a while whilst reading primary sources for my class on Monday morning on Women in the Crusades 1000-1300> I have never studied this period of history before!! It should be interesting.

Anyways in short I enjoyed today's class. The cuppa afterwards was also enjoyable. Summary: good day at the office. Rock on more days like this!!

PS. Alex the lecturer is such a dude!! he has a wicked laugh- his face creases up and he curls inwards. Really infectious!! It makes me feel better- I can have a real barking laugh when I want!! lol!! He is, in summary, a dude.