Critical Response #1 - Dawn Kelly

For this assignment I read an article from both All the Year Round and Household Words. The experience of reading from these periodicals was very different than any other type of reading I have done before. It was doing research but, not in a conventional way. The room itself has a different feel than the rest of the library. In this room, I was surrounded by books and many other artifacts from all different points in history. The layout, the displays, and even the chairs and tables in the room made me felt like I was going back in history. The books themselves varied in size, color, material, texture, and design. The pages for both of the books had a grainy texture to the pages and the paper was thicker than what a book is like today. These periodicals were also rather large in their size, containing a lot of writing. The feel of reading in a room surrounded by history made it easier to read in context of the Victorian era and try to get into the mindset of the readers who would have been reading Dickens’ work when it was published.

            The excerpt that I read from All the Year Round Volume IX was Dress in Paris. In this selection Dickens touches on a few topics and the overall influence and importance clothing and material items have on people. He mentions dress in the division between the upper class and the lower class. Dickens comments that the lower class work hard to survive in life, and have a want to move up in society. Meanwhile, the upper class is spoiled with what they have and spend their time dining and dancing. He mentions that the dresses that the wealthy women wear are very elaborate, colorful, and expensive, costing their husbands a lot of money. Ultimately, fashions and clothing are very important to the wealthy people are an important symbol of social status.

The article that I read from Household Words was entitled Gibbet Street from volume XIII.  This was about Gibbet Street, a street in London. Dickens describes this street and being the home of bands of thieves. Ironically, Gibbet Street is surrounded by many places that would represent the upper class. He names off a few other streets such as Holy Well Street for clothing vendors, Chancery Lane for lawyers, and Fifth Avenue for the wealthy. Although Dickens does not condone the thievery, he does recognize that as human beings they too need somewhere to live. The information that I gathered from this periodical is very fitting to Bleak House. Although Bleak House is fictional, the periodical brings out the non-fictional elements in the story. Both of the periodicals help to understand the context of Bleak House better especially with the sometimes difficult language of Dickens.