BERYL BAINBRIDGE MASTER GEORGIE Family Album: Chronicles of a Victorian Family

HISTORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY  «History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small» Mark Yost  People try to save their memories  Photography - is the way to catch the history in faces and places and freeze the moments forever  Events would go away, but memory would stay with us

 Events take place in 1846, 1850 and 1854 (England, Victorian epoch) follow from Liverpool to Constantinople, then Varna (Bulgarian cost) and Crimean, where main characters observe and participate in the Crimean War MASTER GEORGIE – A HISTORICAL NOVEL

 The book contains plates, instead of chapters, referring to the metal plates on which images were recorded at the beginning of the development of photography PLATES

SIX PLATES MAKE AN ALBUM  Six plates have three first-person narrators who in turn replace each other  Each plate has an indication of time and a name like a real photographic album  Each plate is a new angle of the history of the same family  The book resembles the historical chronicles of Hardy`s family

THE HARDY AS A TYPICAL VICTORIAN FAMILY  Morality was held as the highest virtue  Families were believed to stick to very strict social code of conduct  Still it was only outward appearance  There were still social problems: prostitution, child labour, high crime rates etc.  The Hardy family is a very good example of double standards Queen Victoria

THE FAMILY:  Mr. and Mrs. Hardy and their three children: George, Freddie and Beatrice  Dr. Potter  Mrs. O`Gorman – a servant  Myrtle – an orphan adopted by the Hardy and is in love with George  Pompey Jones

HARDY`S CHRONICLES  Mr. Hardy drinks a lot, visits a prostitute and dies in her house from a heart attack  Mrs. Hardy, is ill and always hysterical, a typical neglected wife  George and Beatrice Hardy later on marry and start their own families, which are as broken as their own

HARDY`S CHRONICLES  George marries Annie Prescott  He dislikes women (because of «the burden of love his mother placed upon him»)  He prefers male company and fancies Pompey Jones  He had sporadic sexual relations with Myrtle, who is a biological mother of the children that are believed to be his and Annie`s  Annie is unable to bear children after few miscarriages

HARDY`S CHRONICLES  Beatrice marries Dr. Potter  Dr. Potter reminisces about their life together when they are separated and he with George and Myrtle set off to the Crimean war  The letter Beatrice sent him while he was far from her, being at the edge of death «nowhere had it said she missed me»

THE BOOK AS CHRONICLES  The book is the chronicles of the Hardy family  It is portrayed in the way of a family album where pictures were taken by three different photographers (Myrtle, Pompey Jones and Dr. Potter)  The history of Victorian epoch and the Crimean war is slipped into the book to provide the atmosphere of the period

THE HISTORY IS SHAPED BY THE MANY ACTS OF THE SMALL In literature the history is often shaped by the history, fates and acts of usual people In Master Georgie the history is shaped by the history, fate and acts of one certain family

THANK YOU! Presentation was made by 401 le group

BERYL BAINBRIDGE MASTER GEORGIE Family Album: Chronicles of a Victorian Family