Defoe, Moll Flanders

[pre-departure week 3.] OK. I have bought a new suitcase and new shoes. I have ordered some inexpensive travel guides (just for some additional bits of information), spent time looking at maps, read Hard Times (what a hoot; why did I never read this fully before?--perfect for our class), and checked with this person and that about things Harlaxton and UK (the mother of the boyfriend of my daughter [who will join us from the 16th to the 30th--my daughter, not everyone else] who attended an English dept. Harlaxton trip recently, loved it there, but noted that some of the meals (esp. vegetables) are very institutional (well, I am paraphrasing here; I believe her phrase was not as diplomatic). The good news is: (1) there are great shops food and otherwise at Grantham which are walkable (there is also a shuttle); (2) there is a tv in the basement (don't know what that is apropos of; just thought I'd mention it). She recommends bringing snacks, but I always found food shopping for this and that to be one of the inexpensive pleasures of being in a foreign country. On the note of shopping, I have noted with some trepidation, the falling dollar in the last couple of months. When I began planning this trip, the pound was about 1.75 dollars; now it is 1.87. For your own travelling, etc., whatever you planned to bring, see if you can scrounge up a bit more.

On to Defoe's Moll Flanders (link is to entire text online; not that I would want to read it online) and my last pre-departure question. Those who have responded (5 for the first question, and 2 for the second [Megan put the answer for question one under week 2]) have done a great job. As I have mentioned before the only rule is that you try to answer each question before we depart on the 4th. (Forget the must-be-longer-than-the-last-entry requirement.) Moll begins life in Newgate Prison, is taken by gypsies to Colchester, Essex, adn then the countryside near Colchester, where much of the beginning of the book takes place (indeed, these chapters are the most traditional of an early tragic novel). Eventually, she is in London, travels to Oxford, land in the Mint (part of London where insolvent debtors hide), tries her luck among the ship captains at Redriff (Rotherhithe) near London, then goes to Virginia (York River), before returning to Milford Haven, London again, Bristol, Bath (we will return to this on our Bath week), Gloucester, Reading, Hammersmith, London (Bloomsbury, the Bank), Lancashire (Warrington to Liverpool), Chester (Black Rock), Dunstable (within 30 miles of London), London (St. Jone's near Clerkenwell), etc. So I really should ask a geography question. But, no, let's look at the people with whom she interacts: the Mayoress, the two Brothers (gentry?), the gentleman-tradesman, the sea captain and Virginia planter, her Bath friend, the north-country gentlewoman, Jemmy, Mother Midnight, the gentleman at the Bank. In fact, let's look just at when Moll "at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water thing called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say, I laid for myself" (p. 41, Bantam ed.). What is a "gentleman-tradesman," and what is the problem with the same? Is it just Moll's problem or is it a larger problem?

Additional Information about London leg of program

The following are planned tours/lecturers in London. It is a lot of touring and we want to leave some free time for you in London, so will probably ask you to sign up for 3 of the 5 planned outings.

Tues 4 July

• Tour of West End and the Courts (from Leicester “House,” to the old Royal Stables, to Pall Mall, to St. James Palace, to Buckingham Palace to St. James Gardens, to Whitehall)
• Tour of Westminster government area (Parliament, Whitehall, Downing Street, guest lecturer: Dr. Peter Catterall, Queen Mary College, University of London)
  

Wed 5 July

• Tour of South Kensington/Exhibition Road area (especially V & A British Galleries, with guest lecturer)
• Tour of City of London (especially Museum of London, guest lecturer for both: Dr. Angela McShane Jones, Oxford Brookes University)
  

Thurs 6 July

• Tour of River Thames, Greenwich, and East End (boat trip down Thames from Embankment to Greenwich, Greenwich Observatory, then back via light railway, and London Transport through East End, walk through Smithfield, etc.) [This is a fullish day.]
  

Cannadine, "The Eighteenth Century: Class Without Class Struggle"

[pre-departure week 2.] I wonder. Cannadine's title is an inversion of E. P. Thompson's view of the 18th-century (in a long view, that century dates from the Glorious Revolution, 1688-89 to the Great Reform Act of 1832; in Cannadine's version, it dates to 1776). But in this chapter (as in most of his chapters) he notes that there are 3 models at play of what English and British society looked like (both then and by historians now): a two-class, polarized model ("us" versus "them," "rich" vs. "poor," "patricians" vs. "plebeians"); a three-layer model (elite-middle-lower; "landowning sort," "middling sort," "labouring sort"); and a hiearchical, layered, continuous chain model (from a Great Chain of Being in which people are ranked between and even within a myriad of stations). Your job is to come up with an understanding of which model William Hogarth used and which group or rank or class he valued most.

I ask you to look at Hogarth (a) because his paintings and engravings are easily available on the web; and (b) because Cannadine does not give you too many examples of what happened within the 18th century (and I certainly don't expect that you all have had a class on 18th-Century Britain). Cannadine is correct to note that England was one of the most urbanized countries in 18th-century Europe: London housed perhaps 10% of the English. But, compared to 19th and 20th century Britain, this was a rural, agricultural country. And landed values remained dominant. "A nobleman, a gentleman, a yeoman; the distinctio of these, that is a good interst of the nation, and a great one!": thus said, Oliver Cromwell in a speech in 1654. His 18th-century descendants would understand the values embraced in that. One distinction that Cannadine does not make much of is the contemporary distinction between the landed interest (the gentry, the "acre-ostracracy"--to use the title of a 19th-century book) and the new, monied interest (the latter centered mainly in "the City"--London).

Again, the assignment for this chapter is to read it, decipher what the three models of class are, then examine several paintings or engravings by Hogarth, and tell what model you think he is using in two of them, why you think this is the model, and which group he tends to support. Hogarth prints are available at:

• William Hogarth and 18th-Century Print Culture
• Web Gallery of Art
• William Hogarth--Gallery
  

Cannadine, "Beyond Class--Forward to Class?'

[pre-departure week 1.] Our first pre-departure week's question is about Marx's concepts of class "in itself" and "for itself" (summarized nicely, in Rise and Fall of Class in Britain, 1999, pp. 2-4). What does he mean? Give four examples [no, that is too many: two examples, either "in itself" and "for itself" from either history or private life; or either "in itself" or "for itself" from both history and private life, or....] of what he means: one from history that shows class "in itself" at work or as a factor, one from history that shows class "for itself," one from your own life or that of your family that shows class "in itself," on from your own life/family that shows class "for itself." Those drawn from British history would be nice, but not necessary. Finally, why do you think historians have become less interested in class explanations since 1980?

• This is the first one so I'll start. In history, I might give the example of the sans culottes in the French Revolution. The sans culottes were a group of artisans and small shopkeepers who became briefly influential in the revolution in Paris, during the radical phase, 1792-94. They demanded fixed prices which helped them compete and able to earn a living. Because many of them were of this one social level (lower bourgeoisie?), they (or many of them) were objetively a class "in itself." But they also defined themselves as the sans culottes (or, "without breaches") which means that they saw themselves as without breaches and fine stockings which were the clothes of the nobility. This class consciousness meant they were to some extent a class "for itself." In my own life, my father was a junior officer when I was young, so we lived in fairly small houses. But not only did he save his money a rise through the ranks, he inherited a small ranch and stocks. So, even though I did not attend private prep schools, it was unsuprising that I attended and succeeded at a fairly elite college. Shorthand, I was from upper, or lower upper, middle class "in itself," and so my college career reflected that. As far as class "for itself," while in London in the mid-70s living with my parents, I adopted the phrase "ta" (meaning, "thank you, very much"). A British friend of my father's told him that I probably shouldn't use that slang as it was very lower class ("'kyou," pronounced "kew," was probably a bit more elevated). My father's friend, then, seems to have been aware of his class "for itself."

OK, you aren't going to want to go on at that length (and I haven't answered the question of whyI think there is a decline in interest in class), but that is the sort of thing I am looking for. The rules are you should each do one posting for each question. There is no length specified, but this is a blog, so don't go on for pages. There is no time specified for posting, but the rule is your comment/posting must be at least one line longer than the previous one (an incentive for posting early) [ok, too long; at least as long as previous]. We are on the internet, so preferably no names, dates, places for examples from your own life/family, please.