شرح جابتر 7
At home with the Victorians: London life
مثلما عرفنا كان من اهتمامات المجتمع الفيكتوري المنزل الآمن الصالح ورواية هنا شرحت بعض المخاوف تجاه هذه القيم وما يمكن أن يدمرها
Creating a safe and morally righteous home was the most important expression of Victorian social values.
The Sign of Four is a detective novel, and also a domestic novel
الرواية رغم أنها رواية تحقيقات الا انها ايضا رواية منزلية وهذه ممكن يكون سؤال
في الاختبار
Domesticity of 221B Baker Street:
باركر ستريت المنزل الاساسي في الرواية تم وصفه بطريقة مألوفة من خلال الأنشطة التي تحدث فهي موجودة في المنازل ذلك الوقت جعلته يبدو كحقيقة وليس مجرد منزل خيالي (وهو فعلا مكان غير موجود)
familiar to many readers in late Victorian Britain.
مثل :
a convivial dinner with fine wines, reading; the newspaper over breakfast, practising the violin, taking afternoon tea
As well as describing a domestic interior familiar to many of its readers, the level of domestic detail in The Sign of Four is designed to 'flesh out' the character of Holmes, and make him a realistic and believable personality.
The descriptions of 221B Baker Street are cluttered with details of a domestic interior that readers grew to think of as real, rather than imaginary.
***221B Baker Street embodies much of the cosiness that Victorian readers would have known from their own homes.
ومع ذلك كما وضحنا فهذا المنزل كان به من الامور غير الودية وغير الاعتيادية ايضا
عدم
وجود عالم خارجي آمن وهو ما يؤثر على المنزل من الداخل وما يؤدي لوجود
الجريمة داخل المنزل وأيضا لدينا البطل هولمز مدمن مخدرات هذه النقاط
موجودة في الملخص
____________________________ Detective fiction
كرواية تحقيق أو بوليسية . ممكن هنا سؤال؟ ما هي رواية التحقيق وشرح الرواية كرواية تحقيق وجريمة؟
Detective fiction is a predominantly modern genre. It a development of the Victorian age; typically, from its beginnings, a single criminal case (almost always a murder or theft, or both) was solved through the concerted action of a consulting detective. Based around the solution of a particular crime that is unravelled through the narrative, detective fiction from the start encouraged the reader to engage with the text in a meticulous way.
خصائص هذا GENRE
الربط
بين المعلومات والتفريق بين المتعلق بالقضية وغير متعلق بها . ما هو مهم
وما هو غير مهم لايجاد حل منطقي للمعضلة او اللغز وبالتالي الوصل لنهاية
صحيحة ومقبولة.
· Central to the plot development of detective fiction is the ability of the detective to amass data from the case, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, eliminate scenarios that are illogical or implausible, and draw the correct conclusion: there can, of course, be only one conclusion.
في الرواية كان هولمز يشرح الطريقة التي يسير على نهجها في التحقيق اذا كان لديك
· 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth' (p. 84).
في هذا النوع من الادب نجد ان هنالك علاقة تعزيز ما بين التفاصيل المهمة وغير المهمة .
فحينما تكون التفاصيل المهمة لتزويدنا بمعلومات خاصة بحالة او حدث لو شخص او قضية.
فإن
التفاصيل غير المهمة تكون لتكوين الرواية من اوصاف واحداث ولا تكون لها
قيمة في عملية التحقيق وتمكن القارئ من ابداء رأيه الخاص حيال اللغز وتشغل
تفكيره.
****** Detective fiction abounds in significant and insignificant detail.
- Significant detail provides valuable information about a case, a sequence of events, or a person. Insignificant detail fleshes out the scene, place, person or event described; it has no first-hand value as evidence, but can help to form our opinions as readers. For detective fiction to work as a satisfying read, some of the significant detail should come across as insignificant, and vice versa.
******Writers of detective fiction use significant and insignificant detail to develop and resolve the plot, but they also manipulate this device to maintain our interest right until the end of the narrative. This tactic relates closely to the ways in which detective fiction was both published and read.
____________________________
Publishing detective fiction
على عكس الرواية الواقعية رواية التحقيق تكون لإيجاد حل للأحداث وليس التطور المتدرج لشخصية معينة.
أي أن الاعتماد الكلي على PLOT .
وهذا
الادب ظهر بعدظهور العالم الصناعي المتمدن من ثورة اقتصادية وعدم المساواة
الاجتماعية نتيجة لذلك مما كان يظهر المخاوف تجاه الجريمة (الفقر – السرقة
وهكذا... )
· Unlike the realist novel, detective fiction is driven by the resolution of the plot, rather than the gradual development of character. The structure is repetitive and predictable, with the narrative always offering a definitive resolution in a preordained trajectory.
· Detective fiction was written for (and often described) readers who inhabited a newly industrialised urban world, stuffed with the new wealth of commerce, wracked with social inequality, and filled with anxiety about crime.
في
اكتيفيتي 3 يشرح لنا اهمية قراءة الصحف في ذلك الوقت ممما وضح الاهتمام
بالصحف كنوع من انواع التزود بالمعلومات وهو ما يعرف وقتها باقتصاد
المعلومات. نتيجة ازدياد أعداد الناس المتعلمين. وهو كان واضحا في الرواية
ان كل الشخصيات ما عدا الشخصيات غير المحلية كالهنود و تونغا هم متعلمين.
· Different types of reading practice are mentioned in The Sign of Four, but it is newspaper reading that is the most prevalent.
· All of the action of the novel takes place over just ninety-six hours, and all the major figures in the story read newspapers regularly, strongly suggesting that Victorian readers depended heavily upon newspapers for up-to-date information.
· Britain in the Victorian era is entering what 'information economy', one in which increasing numbers of people were literate, and had ready access to information, and where information itself had an intrinsic economic value.
· All the characters in the novel, with the notable exception of the Andamanese Tonga, and Small's three Indian co-conspirators in Agra, are presented as literate and engaged in the world of print.
____________________________
The Victorians and abroad
وضحنا ان الاستعمار امتد في الهند وكان في عهد الملكة فيكوتوريا كما اظن (لذلك يطلق على فترة او حقبة ملكها بالعصر الفيكتوري)
India in London
كثير من الكلمات والاحداث والاشخاص كانو يحملون الطابع الهندي مما يدل على انه امر مألوف لدى القارئ ولن يستصعبه. مثالا ثاديوس شولتو كان منزله يحمل الطابع الهندي من الاثاث والزخارف والانسجة. انسة مورسان كانت تعيش هناك قبل ارسالها للندن وكذلك والدها كان يعمل هناك
· References to indian place names: events, objects and people, often in Hindi or Urdu abound throughout the text, and suggest that many of the book's intended readers would have been familiar with these terms.
وهذا يظهر ادراك البطل هولمز في القصة عن اهمية الهند في الحياة البريطانية وعلاقته بالجريمة التي حدثت. ومن بين هذا اهتمامه ايضا في دراسة رماد السجائر كأدلة . وهنا يظهر اهمية معرفته بالسجائر التوباكو القادمة من الهند
****Although he is not an ex-colonial, Holmes is well aware of the importance of India to British life, and, particularly, its relationship to crime committed in the metropolitan centre of London.
*****Among his areas of specialised forensic study is the cigarette ash from various types of prepared tobacco, both British and Indian. For Holmes, the ability to identify a potential culprit by whether he is smoking an Indian cigar is of vital importance. Tobacco was one of the goods central to Britain's imperial trade; India is the world's second largest producer of tobacco.
· Not only is the novel peopled with Britons returned from India and stuffed with Indian goods, but Indian servants are also conspicuous in the London homes depicted in The Sign of Four.
الامر الاخير عن علاقة الهند ليس فقط الانتفاع بالموارد الهندية كالسجائر والانسجة والشاي وغيره وانما ايضا وجود الخدم الهنديوون في المنازل اللندنية
· There are at least three Indian servants in the employ of the Sholtos Working within the domestic sphere, the Indian butlers have information about the crimes committed inside Pondicherry Lodge
· Holmes's knowledge of India is a largely intellectual and theoretical one, derived from his reading, but Watson's experience is altogether more practical: he is another ex-colonial in the novel.
· The recurring cost in blood and treasure of holding on to India as the jewel in the crown of Britain's imperial possessions, Doyle reminds us at the very beginning of the narrative that Dr Watson is a veteran of a war on British India's borders.
فاذا
كاننت لندن تظهر كعالم من الرفاهية المنزلية والمودة والعاطفة وامكانية
الزواج السعيد فان الهند صورت على النقيض تماما كأرض شديدة الفقر والثروات,
كخطر, الـ لا قانون وفرصة الحصول على المال. وكلا من الثروة و الخطر
الهنديين أصبحو تهديدا وزعزة لاستقرار الحياة في لندن. فحينما جلبت الثروة
من الهند الى لندن لتصبح الحياة اكثر راحة كان احتمال وجود وجلب العنف
للمنازل في نفس الوقت خطر مترقب ومتوقع بشكل مستمر.
***If London in The Sign of Four represents, on the surface at least, the comfortable world of domestic interiors, conviviality, emotional order and the prospect of blissful marriage, India is depicted as its polar opposite: a land of extremes of wealth and poverty, danger, lawlessness and, above all, financial opportunity.
****Both the wealth and the danger of India constantly threaten to destabilise London life. While bringing home the wealth of India can make life in London extremely-comfortable, the prospect of retributive violence being brought home at the same time is an ever-present danger.
____________________________
The 'Mutiny'
علاقة الرواية بما حدث من تمرد فعليا في الهند
***Doyle's depiction of the murder of Achmet and the theft of the Agra jewels by Small and his sworn Sikh accomplices (pp. 141—4) during the 'Mutiny' in Agra is entirely plausible, but his trial and conviction is not.
قتل اشميت وسرقة كنز اغرا الذي قام به سمل وعصابته كان اثناء التمرد الذي حصل في اغرا
Literary responses to the 'Mutiny'
الكثير من الكتاب كتبو بمختلف انواع الادب عن هذه الحادثة وتوابعها
وتعتبر هذه الرواية أحد اسباب انشاء وعي تجاه هذا الحدث لدى القراء في المنازل الذين لم يرو ولا يعرفون كثيرا عنها. لذلك كان حديث سمول في الرواية موجها للقراء حتى يأخذوا فكرة في حين نجد ان بقية الشخصيات لم تكن تبدي تعجبا ولا دهشة أي انها تعرف وعلى علم بهذا الحدث بعكس القراء.
· Small's account of the 'Mutiny' is solidly aimed at British readers at home. Small's account describes the rebels in demonic terms: they are 'black fiends', 'dancing and howling', and a 'swarm of bees' (p. 136). His depiction of the atrocities he sees is in graphic, even pictorial terms. Mrs Dawson is described as being 'cut into ribbons', while Dawson is 'lying on his face, quite dead, with an empty revolver in his hand' (p. 136). Small explicitly mentions that he expects the British listeners to his confession (Holmes and Watson) to 'know all about. Implicitly, Doyle is expecting the same from his British readers. This suggests that more than thirty years after the events of 1857, the large number of British readers at home who had never witnessed the 'Mutiny' (as was the case with Doyle) could still be expected to know something about it.
More books were published about the 'Mutiny' in the 1880s and 1890s than at any other time, and Doyle is clearly tapping into his readers' awareness here.
Victorians at home could not have been indifferent to the perceived threat, as well as the real benefits, of empire.
Conclusion IMPORTANT
(أغلب الجمل هنا يمكن تحضيرها في مقدمة الاجابة في الاختبار او الشرح)
(أغلب الجمل هنا يمكن تحضيرها في مقدمة الاجابة في الاختبار او الشرح)
· The Victorian age was Britain's greatest period of imperial expansion abroad, and economic and social development at home.
· The narrative assumes an unproblematic relationship between Britain and India, never questioning the legitimacy of British rule.
· However, the entire plot of this detective novel is dependent upon the chaos brought about by the Indian 'Mutiny' of 1857, as well as the individual greed, treachery and criminality of a range of British colonists — Jonathan Small, Captain Morstan, Major Sholto, the prison guards on the Andaman Islands and Bartholomew Sholto.
· The narrative is driven by the plot rather than by character development, and the texture of reality is provided by Doyle's careful assembly of significant and insignificant recognisable details throughout the text: real places, objects, times, and the geography of London are plausibly referenced.
· As in all detective fiction, the triumphant plot resolution, complete with the prospect of Watson's marriage to Mary Morstan and a new phase of his domestic life, vindicates the investment of the reader in the book; they read detective fiction because they know that the crime will be exposed and the culprit punished.
· Holmes's ability to solve each case is as predictably reliable as the London fog or Watson's bouts of obtuseness. The Sign of Four shows us the Victorians at home at their most comfortable and reassured: living an ordered, secure, domestic life, with threats to their material and physical well-being systematically eliminated through the logical application of Holmes's famous and infallible maxim, 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth' (p. 84).
· For all its interest in home, both literally and metaphorically, The Sign of Four is also a novel about the Victorian abroad. Written by a novelist who had never been to India and was born after the events of 1857, and for a domestic audience whose knowledge of the 'Mutiny' would have been shaped almost entirely books, newspapers and visual images, this detective novel articulates the anxiety about empire felt, but not always expressed, by so many British readers in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
· The Sign of Four clearly illustrates at least one potential blowback of empire — that the effect of crimes committed in India would be felt at home in Britain, even in suburban London.
· Many Victorians were uncomfortable with the increasingly intricate relationship between home and abroad.
- E.G: Dr Watson is only too pleased that the Agra treasure is at the bottom of the Thames, beyond the reach of all who seek to possess it, whether legitimately, or illegitimately. After all, by losing the treasure, he gains a wife.
بالتوفيق للجميع
