Due Thursday: Patrick Henry responses...paper grade..take your time with this.
Due Friday: vocabulary 5
In Class: Review: Definition of Satire:1. A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. 2. The branch of literature constituting such works.
Satire is, basically, a word used to describe works of art, including (and especially) literature, which is designed to ridicule and, often, parody. It is most often recognised in the political sense of making light of genuinely serious problems and issues. However, since Satire is a formalised subject, one must recognise that like any written genre, it also has its forms and modes and although in ancient times satire was more likely to be presented as poetry, it clearly also is presented as narrative and dramatic text.
Hogarth was a prolific artist from around 1720 to the early 1760′s, and his artworks have an immense amount of detail about the everyday life of people who lived in London in this era.
In the first half of the 1700′s there was a diabolical situation occurring in the lower classes of London. Gin (or geneva, as it was called) was being consumed in massive amounts by the poor, and had reached such catastrophic levels that 9,000 babies had been thought to die because of neglegent mothers forcing the alcohol down their throats.
The process of distilling gin (of Dutch origin) had initially been encouraged in England at the beginning of the 18th century, as the distilling industry propped up grain prices which were very low. However, over the next 50 years the consumption of gin would increase to disproportionate and dangerous levels.
The government of the day recognised the problem in the 1720′s, but there was no act of Parliament addressing the issue until 1729. This first Gin Act introduced high prohibitive taxes and made licenses for the sale of gin compulsory. Despite good intentions, the act was a failure as, by that stage, it was estimated that one in seven houses in the poorer areas of London were gin-sellers. The sheer quantity of sellers meant that the Excise men could not enforced the law or collect the taxes.
In 1736 the second Gin Act was passed, which prohibited the sale of gin in quantities under two gallons. The immediate result of this was violent mob riots, and by the time the act was 2 months old, it was apparent that the real effect of the act was to increase the smuggling and underground selling of the liquor. In the seven years that followed, gin production rose by more than a third.
In 1743 the third Gin Act was passed, but followed a different tack. The duties on gin and the cost of licenses for production were reduced in order to put a stop to the illegal selling of spirits. However, the act had indifferent success. It had stopped the black market trade of gin, but had not reduced the amount of production or the level of consumption, and by 1751 reform was again on the political agenda.
In 1751 was the same year that Hogarth printed his pair of pictures, in an endeavour to bring to the attention of the public the consequences of drinking this vile liquor. Gin Lane [below] depicts some of the effects of excessive gin-drinking on the society of London, mainly the working poor. Before you think that this portrayal is extreme, there were many, many documented cases of citizens drinking large amounts of raw spirits (turpentine) and being found dead the next day.
There was even the case of Judith DeFoe, who murdered her child in order to sell the child’s clothes for money to buy gin. So, whilst we shudder to imagine it, all of Hogarth’s depictions may have had some basis in the contemporary reports of the day.
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