Vizzer wrote:

nordmann wrote:

pointed attacks on the rapid industrialisation of society, an issue which Eliot was probably one of the first to raise alarms about in this way. She also has a go at another issue which was prevalent in her day, the inordinate and often totally unjust effect of the power some individuals held over others purely because they happened to belong to the "upper" class.

The Mill on the Floss (1860) being a case in point. The miller Mr Tulliver is unable to achieved redress when his mill loses power after water is diverted for irrigation by people upstream (blow-ins no less). This is compounded when the legal costs of those irrigating are borne by local wealthy bigwig Mr Wakem thus leaving Tulliver economically, legally and socially impotent. Tulliver takes it all personally, whereas George Eliot suggests that it’s not personal, it’s just business. In fact she goes further and writes:

'Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbours without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year’s crop.'

In other words the irrigators and even Mr Wakem are not deliberately seeking to do harm to Tulliver or even plotting against him. They are merely looking out for their own interests and the law supports them in this. The accumulative effect, however, is devastating on the livelihood of Tulliver and his family.

Despite the book's rural setting, the hardships which befall the Tullivers in the story and the pace of change are seen as metaphors for rapid industrialisation. Eliot suggests that the phenomenon of industrialisation has 2 faces – 1 for the winners and 1 for the losers. She compares castles on the banks of the river Rhine (i.e. history’s winners) with abandoned villages on the banks of the Rhone (i.e. history’s losers):  

'Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry; they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an echo. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life - very much of it - is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.'

This bleak analysis of Eliot’s is reflected in the novel through the fate of Tulliver’s offspring. Each responds differently to the trials and tribulations following the collapse in their father’s fortunes. His good-natured and outgoing daughter Maggie is ever-ready to forgive. Her brother Tom, on the other hand, becomes resentful, stubborn and driven. Neither response makes a difference, however, as they are both swept away to their deaths when the river floods - i.e. by great forces way beyond the control of any individual.

Vizzer,

I looked first to the wiki (excuse the continental who had not heard of "George Eliot")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot
What a woman...and "open marriage"and all that...who spoke of those Victorians...

And then the work that you mentioned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mill_on_the_Floss

And now I had difficulties with the word "floss", first read dental floss...but after some research I at the end saw that in the novel it was the "river Floss"...first I thought that it was the English word for the German "Fluss" (river)...thus in German: Die Mühle an dem Fluss Floss...LiR mentioned it yet: how difficult it is to make an exact translation even if you are embedded in the two languages to translate...

But now my comments:
First from all what I read this evening about that novel, I don't know if we here in that time in Belgium had met that high level or it had to be the Belgians writing in French.

And yes the Victorian age or even the whole contemporaneous industrialized Europe was in my opinion the raw Capitalistic view and I think it was not accidentally that the Socialist movement came around seeking for redistribution of the wealth. And again in my opinion they have played a great role together with the Social Liberals to make this possible and after WWII with the Beveridge report there was a start for a welfare state, which was nearly followed by most countries in Europe.
But that welfare state has to be payed and how far have they have to go in that welfare state...how much will the Capitalists let go from their earnings, how much will the state be able to tolerate as they are in competition on the worldmarket which works on a capitalistic system (as I understand it), even in Europe they have to look to each other, look at Italy lately...
As I think to know now the Swiss social system I guess that there are not that much ill people in Switzerland...private health insurance...500 or more Euro a month and a francise of 1500 Euro, that means first spent that money from your own purse before you receive the first cent insurance...but that means also that the government has to spent less money for health than in for instance the UK...
And the US is even more rigid in that field than Switzerland...

Excuses Vizzer, I am again on my hobbyhorse and wandering off...tomorrow I will stick again to the novel...

Kind regards from Paul.

Most decent science fiction is precisely of this nature (not space opera twaddle like Statwerp, obs).

It's just a story about Rabbits

Richard Adams' daughters say people are reading too much into the story:

Watership Down

Hazel is not Jesus and General Woundwort is not Stalin.

Not that that prevents people:
Wiki:
Watership Down's universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have led to the tendency of minority groups to read their own narrative into the novel, despite the author's assurance (in 2005) that it "was never intended to become some sort of allegory or parable." The author Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto Watership Down, has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book...some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism...a protest against materialism, against the corporate state. Watership Down can be Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the massacres." Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and Watership Down for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture...all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype."

From your first link, Trike, I see there's a new BBC/netfix animated version of 'Watership Down'coming out this Christmas. It still looks suitably quite dark, as was the 1978 cartoon version ... and indeed was the book. And I daresay I'll blub at the end, yet again.

It seems to have been toned down a bit:

Watership Down II

it's a real place of course, in Hampshire:



I'll probably end up watching The Great Escape and Guns of Navarone, same as I usually do.

Didn't some parents complain about an airing of Watership Down a few years ago because they thought it was too rough for children?  Was that the original film? I can remember when the 1978 version came out though that a couple I was then quite friendly with complained that the rabbits were too "Disney bunny".

I liked The Mill on the Floss when I read it though I think I was more involved with Maggie's dealing with the aftermath of the botched elopement (it was the young man who tried to elope with her - not her with him, though she did like  him) and I remember having a certain sympathy for Wakeham's son who also liked Maggie.  So I took that aspect on board rather than the economic problems of the age.  I saw an adaptation of Daniel Deronda - I wasn't that struck on it.  With all her faults I much preferred Gwendoline to Mira and I was annoyed with Daniel for preferring Mira - but I suppose one can't expect stories to end how one would like.  The book I liked least of George Eliot's was Felix Holt the Radical although it was about serious matter - voting reform - but I couldn't take to it.  Actually I didn't mind Middlemarch.  I felt sorry for Dorothea when she made such a mistake in her first marriage (though her first husband did die off rather conveniently - a bit like "true romance" there).  I like Jane Austen also though her books are maybe of a more gentle persuasion.  I did read the unfinished book Sanderson which was written as an exchange of letters.  That was perhaps of a harsher mold than the usual J.A. book though of course it was never finished - and the harshness was not really of an economic type but the fact that the central female character was not very pleasant. In 6th form we studied Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey which is to some extent a parody of Jane Austen but not a nasty parody.  Some of Mrs Gaskell's books reflected some of the harder aspects of Manchester life at the time.  I don't THINK I mentioned Emile Zola upthread though I've probably mentioned him on this thread at some time or other.  Some of his Rougon-Maquart novels explore the lives of the poor - in Paris (e.g. L'Assommoir) and in the French countryside (e.g. La Terre) and I think the one about miners Germinal was set in French Flanders.  When I was younger I read a lot of his books and there was a radio adaptation of the Rougon-Macquart books a few years ago (with Glenda Jackson playing Tante Dide) but I didn't manage to hear all of them.

Meles meles wrote:

From your first link, Trike, I see there's a new BBC/netfix animated version of 'Watership Down'coming out this Christmas. It still looks suitably quite dark, as was the 1978 cartoon version ... and indeed was the book.

The Christmas & New Year Radio Times is on sal, Meles, and Watership Down is showing at the weekend, Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd in the evening.

Quote :

And I daresay I'll blub at the end, yet again

Riiiiight, while tucking into this:

Lapin a la Cocotte

Lapin à la cocotte eh? ... I thought you were going to link to that scene from 'Fatal Attraction':



PS:
And I was amused by the author of that rabbit recipe when they said, "Rabbit can be difficult to find in stores, but I recently found some at the local market and quickly snapped it up. The shocked look on the face of the checkout clerk was priceless!" ... Here rabbit is widely sold even in Lidl and Leader Price: it usually comes whole and with the head still on! Doggy-Dog always claims that bit as his special perk, to eat raw ... crunch, crunch, crunch!

I'd completely forgotten that.

Bunny boiler as an expression has now entered the language.................the power of cinema.

The original cartoon bunny:

And further to that French rabbit stew, lapin à la cocotte, and bunny boilers generally ... from today's Guardian online (17 Dec 2018):

The Guardian - Serial rabbit-killer terrorises picturesque Brittany village

But we're digressing again ... unless it's a case of factual life mirroring fictional art.

Triceratops wrote:

It's just a story about Rabbits

Richard Adams' daughters say people are reading too much into the story:

Watership Down

Hazel is not Jesus and General Woundwort is not Stalin.

Not that that prevents people:
Wiki:
Watership Down's universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have led to the tendency of minority groups to read their own narrative into the novel, despite the author's assurance (in 2005) that it "was never intended to become some sort of allegory or parable." The author Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto Watership Down, has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book...some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism...a protest against materialism, against the corporate state. Watership Down can be Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the massacres." Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and Watership Down for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture...all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype."

Triceratops,

had already looked for it, but only this evening time to present my search from two days ago on the omnipresent wiki, because I had never heard about it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

And yes the Victorian age or even the whole contemporaneous industrialized Europe was in my opinion the raw Capitalistic view and I think it was not accidentally that the Socialist movement came around seeking for redistribution of the wealth. And again in my opinion they have played a great role together with the Social Liberals to make this possible and after WWII with the Beveridge report there was a start for a welfare state, which was nearly followed by most countries in Europe.
But that welfare state has to be payed and how far have they have to go in that welfare state...how much will the Capitalists let go from their earnings, how much will the state be able to tolerate as they are in competition on the worldmarket which works on a capitalistic system (as I understand it), even in Europe they have to look to each other, look at Italy lately...
As I think to know now the Swiss social system I guess that there are not that much ill people in Switzerland...private health insurance...500 or more Euro a month and a francise of 1500 Euro, that means first spent that money from your own purse before you receive the first cent insurance...but that means also that the government has to spent less money for health than in for instance the UK...
And the US is even more rigid in that field than Switzerland...

It's believed that Johanna Spyri’s 1881 novel Heidi was a reaction against the industrialisation and urbanisation of Switzerland and the social upheaving stemming from the industrial revolution there. In particular, the changing role of women saw family structures disrupted with significant numbers of women from rural areas becoming employed in factories or else in domestic service in towns. For instance, it’s estimated that there were proportionally more women in Switzerland working away from home in the second half of the 19th Century than there were a hundred years later in the second half of the 20th Century. This was seen by some as detrimental to the welfare of children with a perceived rise in the levels of child neglect and delinquency.

The children’s book could conceivably have been entitled ‘Dete’ after the maternal aunt of the orphaned Heidi as a critique of the adult aunt. Spyri obviously saw Dete as emblematic of so much of Swiss womanhood at the time whereby on the instant of her mother’s death (Heidi’s widowed grandmother), Dete offloads her toddler niece onto her sister’s widowed father-in-law Alm-Uncle. This Dete does despite him being known as a cantankerous loner living in a hut high the mountains. The reason Dete gives for this is that she can’t take Heidi with her to her new job as a household servant in Frankfurt and besides Heidi is not her own offspring but is the progeny of Alm-Uncle being his granddaughter.

In this Dete is legally correct, yet Spyri sees her action as an abdication of feminine responsibility in the sphere of child-rearing. The novel then sees Heidi’s grandfather forced to come out of his shell by having to care for the child and become increasingly less cantankerous and more caring towards Heidi and also towards others in the locality namely the boy goatherd Peter and his family.

Meanwhile Dete does relatively well for herself in Frankfurt and returns in a ‘fine feathered hat on her head, and a long trailing skirt’. She claims that she had always meant to take Heidi back. The reality, however, is that she has been charged by a senior housekeeper in Frankfurt with finding a young companion for Klara Seseman, the child of well-to-do parents. Heidi, no longer a toddler but an eight-year-old child, is reluctant to leave her grandfather and Alpine lifestyle which is all she has ever really known. Grandfather concurs which causes Dete to respond, without any sense of irony or hypocrisy, by playing the child welfare card:

"Das Kind ist jetzt acht Jahre alt und kann nichts und weiß nichts, und Ihr wollt es nichts lernen lassen; Ihr wollt es in keine Schule und in keine Kirche schicken, das haben sie mir gesagt unten im Dörfli, und es ist meiner einzigen Schwester Kind; ich hab es zu verantworten, wie's mit ihm geht"

"The child is now eight years old and knows nothing, and you will not let her learn. You will not send her to church or school, as I was told down in Dorfli, and she is my own sister's child. I am responsible for what happens to her"

Dete then threatens Alm-Uncle with blackening his name in the family courts if he dares to challenge her before (irony upon irony) kidnapping Heidi and forcibly dragging her down the mountain, thru the village and onto the train to Frankfurt. On arrival in the city, Heidi discovers that the Seseman household is not the same household as the one in which Dete works. The senior housekeeper of the Seseman house, Fraulein Rottenmeier, suggests to Dete that Heidi is perhaps a few years too young as a suitable companion for the 12-year-old Klara to which Dete replies with a casual shrug saying that she’s “lost count of her exact age” before abandoning Heidi for a second time.

There is a view that Spyri was influenced by an earlier novel Adelaide, das Mädchen vom Alpengebirge (Adelheid the Girl from the Alps) by Hermann Adam von Kamp a writer from the Rhineland. Written 50 years earlier, it’s the story of a Swiss girl who emigrates with her family to an unnamed city in Pennsylvania before later returning home to the mountains of Switzerland. The main theme of that book, however, is homesickness which is also a theme in Heidi although, perhaps, secondary to the themes of child-rearing and adult responsibility which don’t really feature in the earlier novel.

I tried to post something about Johanna Spyri yesterday but my post didn't "take" - or maybe I hit the wrong button.  A few years I did some background reading about her.  She lost her husband and son in the same year and devoted herself to charitable works much of the time after that.  I recall that her first story treated the subject of domestic violence though in the UK 'Heidi' is the story that became really famous.  Frau Spyri's other stories may be better known in her native Switzerland of course.

I'm not familiar with many Swiss authors.  There's Johann David Wyss of course.  Suffice to say many years ago there was a dramatisation of 'The Swiss Family Robinson' on the TV I took the opportunity to prove that I wasn't a telly-addict whilst the show was being broadcast.

Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies' brought up the subject of child labour though it would be over-simplifying to say that is the entire matter of the novel.