[Hardy-l] RE: Father Time

[Rosemarie Morgan]

The "August" poem is on TTHA's POTM, Roy

There are 2 different TTHA discussion groups and the Poem of the Month (and 
the "August"poem operates on    ttha-potm at coyote.csusm.edu
not on the Forum! (hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu)

I sense that modern responses to little Jude are exclusively modern 
responses.  It's perhaps worth being reminded of the fact that children not 
only had no rights (mimimal ones only and more particularly regarding their 
factory working hours according to the first Factory Act ) but  also no 
effective "childhood" as we understand the term (this makes Jude, himself, 
a humanitarian and  a  prophet of a singular kind) .

It's significant that the phases of childhood -- from infancy through 
pre-puberty to adolescence and so on are twentieth-century designated 
phases. For Victorians an infant was one phase -- and if the infant 
survived its first 5-7 years it was a potential adult. By 7 years old it 
should be ready to earn a living (working classes) -- and maybe even 
earlier in some communities. Certainly by puberty it should be helping to 
bring in the bread:the upper-middle and upper classes were of course exempt 
from these conventions but then they were not responsible for the national 
welfare -- economically speaking.

You could count on 1 child in 5 surviving into adulthood and thereafter 
taking care of the parents.

This is a very rough outline and demographic changes altered rapidly from 
1850 to 1950, but it does give some indication of the rather different 
values of this rather different age. As Roy points out -- a child starving 
to death was not uncommon and for those of you who might remember that 
remarkably great British movie,  " Kes,"  the picture of a little Jude 
figure might readily spring to mind -- that thin, pock-marked, 
prematurely-aged face of a little emaciated boy who possessed enough joy in 
life (unlike Little Father Time ) to see him through it!    He was possibly 
representative of thousands of children who grew to maturity in the 
post-industrial-revolution age.

But I witter and will desist!

  Cheers
Rosemarie
(quite
>leading away from considerations of Augusts, wet or dry,) I am reminded of
>the poem about the little sheep boy who becomes enveloped in "a shroud of
>white" sea-fog.

>, one wonders also if this is the
>memory underlying the ghost of Froom-vale Vale in "Wessex Heights".
>Just a thought..
>
>R.