This blog is written as a response to a task assigned by Dilip Barad, Department of English MKBU. In this blog there is a discussion about the activities done on the project CLiC Dickens Project. For further info visit CLiC Dickens project.
There is a project that can help in research work. On the project one can search words or phrases in the works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. In the research one does not have to go through all the works to find the particular words or phrases used in one or another way, one can search it in an easier way. There are two activities that has done and learning outcomes are mentioned here.
Activity 15: Education, women and governesses in the 19th century
Governess is a woman probably young but not necessarily middle aged who lives with a family and is responsible for the teaching of the girl. She is employed as a home teacher who teaches 5 to 18 years old children at home. In the video Katheryn Hughes(speaker) is a historian who explains the qualities that are expected from the governess. She should play the piano, have a book in her hand, know dancing and have moral education.She is supposed to belong to a middle class family, and has financial troubles. The governess is assigned by the upper class family to show off in the society that they also can afford a governess.
Through the activity one can do deep research on any concept that belonged in the 19th century. For instance a governance, how the term is described and represented in the novel as well as in the society represented in the 19th that can be learned through the project. One does not have to read the whole text by merely finding the word one can do the research.
The governess mostly looks after a girl child, in the novel Bleak House(Ch-30) by Charles Dickens there is a reference of a governess who is very kind to a child and tries to be a friend of them. In many other examples mostly the governess takes care of a girl child rather than a boy child.
It also has a feature that shows how many times the words are used in the work that goes into the in depth analysis of the research work. And for further reading we get the direct reference in the text that saves lots of our time. Through this activity I learnt to find the context of any particular word in the novels or literary work, through this activity and doing everything practically taught me to think in this manner to do any further research work.
9. Body language and characterisation
In this activity there is discussion of portraying the character with different body parts. There are many body parts that are used to describe the character and his/her nature. While searching for the word “chin” in three ways we get various results. The word “chin" occurs 317 times in Dickens’ Novels, which contains 15 books, it only occurs 1 time in Austen, which contains 7 books. This shows how and why the authors use the word to describe the character.
The description also symbolises the character with his/her body parts. That can be studied in this manner. It also gives us an in depth analysis of the usage of body parts to describe the character. It helps to analyse what character traits are associated with any particular body parts and its description. When I search with the ‘lips’ in Dickens’ novel it occurs 797 times and in Austen's novels it occurs 42 times. One can also read it in various contexts why and how the lips are mentioned easily through the project.
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