Canto-3 Rape of Lock

A two-edg'd weapon from her shining case; 

So ladies in romance assist their knight 

Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. 

He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends 

The little engine on his fingers' ends; 

This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 

As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head. 

Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, 

A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair, 

And thrice they twitch'd the diamond in her ear, 

Thrice she look'd back, and thrice the foe drew near. 

Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought 

The close recesses of the virgin's thought; 

As on the nosegay in her breast reclin'd, 

He watch'd th' ideas rising in her mind, 

Sudden he view'd, in spite of all her art, 

An earthly lover lurking at her heart. 

Amaz'd, confus'd, he found his pow'r expir'd, 

Resign'd to fate, and with a sigh retir'd. 

       The peer now spreads the glitt'ring forfex wide, 

T' inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. 

Ev'n then, before the fatal engine clos'd, 

A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd; 

Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain, 

(But airy substance soon unites again). 

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever 

From the fair head, for ever, and for ever! 

       Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes, 

And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies. 

Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast, 

When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last, 

Or when rich China vessels, fall'n from high, 

In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie! 

Rape of Lock by Alexander Pope

Canto 3

Summary

The boat arrives at Hampton Court Palace, and the ladies and gentlemen disembark to their courtly amusements. After a pleasant round of chatting and gossip, Belinda sits down with two of the men to a game of cards. They play ombre, a three-handed game of tricks and trumps, somewhat like bridge, and it is described in terms of a heroic battle: the cards are troops combating on the “velvet plain” of the card-table. Belinda, under the watchful care of the Sylphs, begins favorably. She declares spades as trumps and leads with her highest cards, sure of success. Soon, however, the hand takes a turn for the worse when “to the Baron fate inclines the field”: he catches her king of clubs with his queen and then leads back with his high diamonds. Belinda is in danger of being beaten, but recovers in the last trick so as to just barely win back the amount she bid.

The next ritual amusement is the serving of coffee. The curling vapors of the steaming coffee remind the Baron of his intention to attempt Belinda’s lock. Clarissa draws out her scissors for his use, as a lady would arm a knight in a romance. Taking up the scissors, he tries three times to clip the lock from behind without Belinda seeing. The Sylphs endeavor furiously to intervene, blowing the hair out of harm’s way and tweaking her diamond earring to make her turn around. Ariel, in a last-minute effort, gains access to her brain, where he is surprised to find “an earthly lover lurking at her heart.” He gives up protecting her then; the implication is that she secretly wants to be violated. Finally, the shears close on the curl. A daring sylph jumps in between the blades and is cut in two; but being a supernatural creature, he is quickly restored. The deed is done, and the Baron exults while Belinda’s screams fill the air.

Commentary

This canto is full of classic examples of Pope’s masterful use of the heroic couplet. In introducing Hampton Court Palace, he describes it as the place where Queen Anne “dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.” This line employs a zeugma, a rhetorical device in which a word or phrase modifies two other words or phrases in a parallel construction, but modifies each in a different way or according to a different sense. Here, the modifying word is “take”; it applies to the paralleled terms “counsel” and “tea.” But one does not “take” tea in the same way one takes counsel, and the effect of the zeugma is to show the royal residence as a place that houses both serious matters of state and frivolous social occasions. The reader is asked to contemplate that paradox and to reflect on the relative value and importance of these two different registers of activity. (For another example of this rhetorical technique, see lines 157–8: “Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, / when husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last.”) A similar point is made, in a less compact phrasing, in the second and third verse-paragraphs of this canto. Here, against the gossip and chatter of the young lords and ladies, Pope opens a window onto more serious matters that are occurring “meanwhile” and elsewhere, including criminal trials and executions, and economic exchange.

The rendering of the card game as a battle constitutes an amusing and deft narrative feat. By parodying the battle scenes of the great epic poems, Pope is suggesting that the energy and passion once applied to brave and serious purposes is now expended on such insignificant trials as games and gambling, which often become a mere front for flirtation. The structure of “the three attempts” by which the lock is cut is a convention of heroic challenges, particularly in the romance genre. The romance is further invoked in the image of Clarissa arming the Baron—not with a real weapon, however, but with a pair of sewing scissors. Belinda is not a real adversary, or course, and Pope makes it plain that her resistance—and, by implication, her subsequent distress—is to some degree an affectation. The melodrama of her screams is complemented by the ironic comparison of the Baron’s feat to the conquest of nations.

English Course for Fashion Designing

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura 

Anticipating Consumer Trends

A fashion designer can't sell or profit from her designs if the public isn't interested in buying them. Successful designers make predicting consumer trends a primary objective in their work. Designers study current consumer trends and identify target demographics that are likely to purchase their clothing. For example, some designers create clothing for teenage girls, while others focus on business professionals. Designers use their findings and knowledge of their target demographic to determine which designs are likely to appeal to consumers in the future.

Creating Clothing Designs

Before a dress, suit or sweater can go on display in a store, it starts out as a sketch in a designer's idea book. Designers spend most of their time thinking of themes and design for their clothing collections, and may use computer software to assist them during the design process. Every designer's primary objective is to design clothing that will sell, and designs may undergo multiple revisions before a designer settles on a final design. Some designers are involved in the construction of their designs and may work directly with production teams, while others may simply supervise the production process and trust the sewing to other professionals.

Marketing Clothing and Accessories

A designer can't sell his clothing if the public never sees his creations. Marketing is a huge priority for fashion designers, whether they're self-employed and selling their clothes online or trying to find work at an international fashion retailer. Aspiring designers starting out in their careers spend a considerable amount of time marketing themselves and their products to attract public attention. Established designers continue marketing themselves through advertisements in print and online.

Forming Networking Connections

A fashion designer can never have too many friends, as every professional she meets in the fashion industry could help further her career. Fashion designers make a point to form strong, lasting connections with a variety of other fashion professionals. These include fabric manufacturers and trade show runners, who supply the fabric and embellishments designers, need to see their designs come to life. Designers also aim to form connections with creative directors for magazines and other publications so they can share their creations with a wider audience.

IELTS Reading

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura 

IELTS

General Reading Passage  

Employment in Japan

A.  Every autumn, when recruitment of new graduates and school leavers begins, major cities in Japan are flooded with students hunting for a job. Wearing suits for the first time, they run from one interview to another. The season is crucial for many students, as their whole lives may be determined during this period.

B.  In Japan, lifetime employment is commonly practiced by large companies. While people working in small companies and those working for sub-contractors do not in general enjoy the advantages conferred by the large companies, there is a general expectation that employees will in fact remain more or less permanently in the same job.

C.  Unlike in many Western countries where companies employ people whose skills can be effective immediately, Japanese companies select applicants with potential who can be trained to become suitable employees. For this reason, recruiting employees is an important exercise for companies, as they invest a lot of time and money in training new staff. This is basically true both for factory workers and for professionals. Professionals who have studied subjects which are of immediate use in the workplace, such as industrial engineers, are very often placed in factories and transferred from one section to another. By gaining experience in several different areas and by working in close contact with workers, the engineers are believed, in the long run, to become more effective members of the company. Workers too feel more involved by working with professionals and by being allowed to voice their opinions. Loyalty is believed to be cultivated in this type of egalitarian working environment.

D.  Because of this system of training employees to be all-rounders, mobility between companies is low. Wages are set according to educational background or initial field of employment, ordinary graduates being employed in administration, engineers in engineering and design departments and so on. Both promotions and wage increases tend to be tied to seniority, though some differences may arise later on as a result of ability and business performance. Wages are paid monthly, and the net sum, after the deduction of tax, is usually paid directly into a bank account. As well as salary, a bonus is usually paid twice a year. This is a custom that dates back to the time when employers gave special allowances so that employees could properly celebrate bon, a Buddhist festival held in mid-July in Tokyo, but on other dates in other regions. The festival is held to appease the souls of ancestors. The second bonus is distributed at New Year. Recently, bonuses have also been offered as a way of allowing workers a share in the profits that their hard work has gained.

E.  Many female graduates complain that they are not given equal training and equal opportunity in comparison to male graduates. Japanese companies generally believe that female employees will eventually leave to get married and have children. It is also true that, as well as the still-existing belief among women themselves that nothing should stand in the way of child-rearing, the extended hours of work often do not allow women to continue their careers after marriage.

F.  Disappointed career-minded female graduates often opt to work for foreign firms. Since most male graduates prefer to join Japanese firms with their guaranteed security, foreign firms are often keen to employ female graduates as their potential tends to be greater than that of male applicants.

G.  Some men, however, do leave their companies in spite of future prospects, one reason being to take over the family business. The eldest sons in families that own family companies or businesses such as stores are normally expected to take over the business when their parents retire. It is therefore quite common to see a businessman, on succeeding to his parents' business, completely change his professional direction by becoming, for example, a shopkeeper.

H.  On the job, working relationships tend to be very close because of the long hours of work and years of service in common. Social life in fact is frequently based on the workplace. Restaurants and nomi-ya, "pubs", are always crowded at night with people enjoying an evening out with their colleagues. Many companies organise trips and sports days for their employees. Senior staff often plays the role of mentor. This may mean becoming involved in the lives of junior staff in such things as marriage and the children's education.

I.  The average age of retirement is between 55 and 60. For most Westerners, retirement may be an eagerly awaited time to undertake such things as travel and hobbies. Many Japanese, however, simply cannot get used to the freedom of retirement and they look for ways of constructively using their time. Many look for new jobs, feeling that if they do not work they will be abandoned by society. This has recently led to the development in some municipalities of municipal job centres which advertise casual work such as cleaning and lawn mowing. Given that Japan is facing the problem of an increasingly ageing society, such activities may be vital in the future.

Questions 1-9

The Reading Passage has nine paragraphs A–I.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Phrases

i how new employees are used in a company

ii women and Japanese companies

iii why men sometimes resign from Japanese companies

iv permanency in employment in Japan

v recruiting season: who, when and where

vi the social aspect of work

vii the salary structure

viii the recruitment strategy of foreign firms

ix Japanese people after retirement

IELTS Writing-1

Sample IELTS Bar Graph

This is a model of an IELTS bar graph. The topic is team scores.

Follow this link to learn more about how to respond to a graph over time.

As with all graphs and charts, you will also need to make sure you are comparing and contrasting the data.

Example 7

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The bar chart shows the scores of teams A, B and C over four different seasons.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words.

IELTS Bar Graph - Model Answer

The bar chart shows the scores of three teams, A, B and C, in four consecutive seasons. It is evident from the chart that team B scored far higher than the other two teams over the seasons, though their score decreased as a whole over the period.

In 2002, the score of team B far exceeded that of the other two teams, standing at 82 points compared to only 10 for team C and a very low 5 for team A. Over the next two years, the points for team B decreased quite considerably, dropping by around half to 43 by 2004.

In contrast, team A’s points had increased by 600% to reach 35 points, nearly equal to team B. Team C, meanwhile, had managed only a small increase over this time. In the final year, team B remained ahead of the others as their points increased again to 55, while team A and C saw their points drop to 8 and 5 respectively.

(Words 164) 

IELTS Writing

Aloysius College

22, Jaffna Road, Anuradhapura 

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The bar chart below gives information about the percentage of the population living in urban areas in the world and in different continents.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words.

The bar chart shows the urbanization percentage of the world in 1950 and compares this with the percentage in 2007 and the projected percentage for 2030. Between 1950 and 2030, the proportion of the world's population residing in cities is expected to double, growing from 29% to 60%. However, this rate is less marked in some continents than others. For example, 64% of the population of North America was urban in 1950, increasing to 79% by 2007. By contrast, just 15% of the African population was urban in 1950, but this rose to 37% by 2007. This represents one of the highest urbanization rates in the world, even though the percentage of Africans in urban areas is still smaller than the world average. It is also clear from the graph that, urbanization in Latin America is projected to be higher than Europe in 2030, in spite of being lower in 1950.

Rajarata University of Sri Lanka Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Department of Languages

Impact of other languages on the origin and development of Old English

Introduction

At present, English is considered to be the global language as it is geographically spread all over the world and used by approximately, one billion people of the global population as a first language, second language and foreign language. Today, the English language has become more popular than other languages among many countries in the world. Hence, it is worth to explore and investigate how this prominent language originated and spread throughout the world so rapidly. English is a West Germanic language which was first spoken in early medieval England and presently it is the most widely used language in the world. It is spoken as a native  language by the majority of  the people of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean countries. It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It is also widely learnt as a second language and foreign language all over the world and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many other world organizations. Three Germanic tribes invaded Britain during the 05^th century.  These tribes were Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who came from Denmark and northern Germany. When they arrived in Britain, the inhabitants of Britain spoke Celtic. But, after their arrival, most of the Celtic people were expelled by the invaders to Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Celtic was the first language, which influenced Old English. Other main languages that influenced Old English or Anglo-Saxon were found to be Scandinavian, Latin and Greek languages. So, the objective of the present study is to investigate how those four ancient languages contributed to expand the English language during the Anglo-Saxon period from 450 AD to 1100 AD.

Germanic tribes, who invaded Britain, spoke similar languages, which gradually developed into Old English, which is much more different than modern English. Today, even native English speakers find it difficult to understand Old English. However, half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots.

Celtic Influence on Old English

Old English culture and language spread rapidly across east and central parts of Britain during the 06^th and 07^th centuries while the dominant culture and language of the Celtic people, who captured Britain around 600 BC, remained. Even today, their languages are found to be preserved in the areas, where they had inhabited as a way of protecting their heritage. However, the Celtic people, who invaded Britain, seem to have integrated with the people, who were living there when they came to the island, absorbing elements of the language spoken by this group. The Celts had already spread their influence across the most of central Europe and interacted with the Germanic tribes. Dialects spoken in northern Spain are heavily influenced by Celtic to this day. There is also a noticeable correspondence between northern Italian place names and similar names in Cornwall, starting with tre, a Celtic word for a farm or settlement.

Celtic words in Old English come from identifiable sources from the continent usually words associated with conflict and battle. Celts were often used as armies for hire. Celtic loan words were taken over after their settlement, usually place names, and words from Ireland frequently associated with Christianization of Britain. However, the Anglo-Saxons terrorized Celts rather than integrated with them and so their languages became isolated until the Norman Conquest created a linguistic hierarchy with Celtic languages firmly.

The social stigma on the Celtic languages in British society during the long period of thousand years seems to be responsible for its lack of vocabulary in the English language, which is a language renowned for its borrowing of words from many other languages. Celtic languages were considered as inferior and as a result it did not get ant recognition during that specific period. In general, the words that have survived are the words with geographical significance and place names. Only such names remained and all other words vanished due to less respect towards them. Some adopted words such as bucket, car, crockery, slogan and flannel, truant and geol survived. The survival of the Celtic languages can be seen in the areas, which were densely occupied by the Celts during that period. In many such areas, Celtic influence on the English language is mostly obvious through place names. The Celtic language was also known as the British language, which was the language of Britons, who were the native inhabitants of the land. Some Celtic names survive in the areas, where the Celts occupied for a long time. The names of rivers such as the Thames and the Yare and important Roman towns such as London, York and Lincoln still remain as Celtic words. We also find a number of names, which are the compounds of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon words. ‘bre’ and ‘pen’ are two Celtic words, which appear in a number of names for ‘hill’. For example, Brill in Buckinghamshire is a combination of ‘bre’ and Old English, ‘hyll’. Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire is a combination of ‘bre’ and ‘dun’, both Celtic words, and Brewood in Staffordshire is combined with Old English wudu. It is also found that the use of "Combe" or "Coombe" as part of many place names derives from the Celtic word, kumb, which meant "valley". It was later adopted into Anglo Saxton English. The Celtic word ‘tor’ is mainly used in the south-west of Britain. ‘Tor’ means "rock" in English and it is with the granite peaks on Dartmoor and Bodmin moor, Hay Tor, Hound Tor etc. This was later incorporated into the name of the coastal town, ‘Torquay’.

The contribution of Celtic languages to the English language seems to be much less when compared to that of other languages to the former. However, the place names such as London, York and Lincoln introduced by the Celtic languages remain even today with their own identity.

Scandinavian Influence on Old English

During the 05^th century AD, three Germanic tribes, Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain. After that, with their knowledge of building ships and their skills to navigate, the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, who were collectively known as Vikings, arrived in Britain. The English language as time passed by came into contact with different speech communities such as Celtic, Latin, Greek and Scandinavian. The Germanic tribes of the Jutes, Angles and Saxons laid the foundation for the English language when they invaded England in the fifth and sixth centuries. During the first seven hundred years of the existence of language, three major influences on its development can be observed. First, English had the contact with Celtic and then with the Roman and eventually the Scandinavian language.

Apart from Greek and Latin, only Scandinavian language made substantial contribution to the English vocabulary during the Anglo Saxon period. The contribution of Celtic language was really much less during that period. The Scandinavian colonization of the British Isles had a considerable impact on the English language and its vocabulary and culture. Enormous similarity is found between these two languages, English and Scandinavian,  in nouns like ‘man’, ‘wife’, ‘father’, ‘folk’, ‘mother’, ‘house’, ‘life’, ‘winter’, ‘summer’; verbs like ‘like, ‘will’, ‘can’, ‘meet’, ‘come’, ‘bring’, ‘hear’, ‘see’, ‘think’, ‘smile’, ‘ride’, ‘spin’; and adjectives and adverbs like ‘full’, ‘wise’, ‘better’, ‘best’, ‘mine’, ‘over’ and ‘under’. Due to the Scandinavian influence, there exist a large number of places that bear Scandinavian names. More than 600 places in English have names ending in by. Numerous examples can be cited to prove this fact. Grimsby, Whitby, Derby and Rugby are some of them. Althorp, Bishopsthorpe and Linthrope consist of the Scandinavian word ‘thorp’, which means village. An isolated piece of land in Scandinavian was called thwaite.   We find such endings in Applethwaite and Braithwaite. They are considered as place names. There is another Scandinavian word, ‘toft’, which means a piece of ground. Brimtoft, Eastoft and Nortoft ending in ‘toft’ are also some place names. We also find a number of words relating to law or social and administrative system entering in the English language. The word, ‘law’ itself is of Scandinavian origin and the words such as nioing (criminal), mall (action of law), wapentake (an administrative district), husting (assembly), stefnan (summon) are found to be Scandinavian words. After the Scandinavians had steadily settled down in England, a number of Scandinavian words added to the English vocabulary were much higher. We also find some other common words in English that owe their origin to the language of the Scandinavians such as bank, birth, bull, dirt, egg, gap, kid, link, race, skirt, sister, window, low, meek, rotten, shy, tight, weak, bait, crawl, dig, gape, kindle, lift, screech, thrust, they, their, then, aloft, athwart and many more. Regarding grammar, many of the pronominal forms like ‘they’, ‘them’, ‘their’ etc are of the Scandinavian origin. The use of ‘shall’ and ’will’ and the prepositional use of ‘to’, ‘till’, ‘fro’, are due to Scandinavian influence.

Influence of Latin on Old English

During the Anglo Saxon period, Latin influenced the development of Old English more than any other non-West Germanic language, with which Old English came into contact. Influence of Latin on Old English was chronologically divided into three time periods. The first time period occurred on the continent prior to the arrival of Anglo-Saxons in England. The second period of Latin influence was from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in England up to their Christianization. The last period of Latin influence spans from the time of Christianization up to the arrival of the Normans in 1066

Prior to the Christianization of England, the English language didn’t have a proper alphabet and as a result, runic letters were used. Much less is known how the Runic alphabet originated. The word, rune means 'letter', 'text' or 'inscription' in Old Norse.

The most significant influence that Latin had on Old English was the use of the ancient Latin alphabet. Latin also held the most pervasive influence on Old English in the area of vocabulary. It was found that in total approximately 450 Old English words, mostly nouns were borrowed from Latin (Baugh: 106). Around 170 of these words entered the Old English lexicon during the continental period (Hogg: 302; Williams: 57). They are related mostly to plants, household items, clothing and building materials. Accordingly, they represent the influence of spoken Latin rather than Classical Latin.

The influx of such words clearly reflects the influence of the literate, Classical Latin culture associated with the Church following the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons.

A few words relating to Christianity such as church and bishop were borrowed earlier. The list of such loan words includes abbot, alms, altar, angel, anthem, Arian, ark, candle, canon, chalice, cleric, cowl, deacon, disciple, epistle, hymn, litany, manna, martyr, mass, minster, noon, nun, offer, organ, pall, palm, pope, priest, provost, psalm, relic, rule, shrift, shrine, shrive, stole, synod, temple, and tunic. 

The church also exercised a profound influence on the domestic life of the people during that period. This resulted in the adoption of many new words, such as the names of articles of clothing and household use; cap, sock, silk, purple, chest, mat, sack words denoting foods, such as beet, cabbage, lentil , millet, pear, radish, doe, oyster, lobster, mussel, to which we may add the noun cook; names of trees, plants, and herbs, such as box, pine, aloes, balsam, fennel, hyssop, lily, mallow, marshmallow, myrrh, rue, savory and the general word plant. Some words related   to education and learning reflects another aspect of the church's influence. They are school, master, Latin, verse, meter, gloss, notary. A number of miscellaneous words, like anchor, coulter, fan (for winnowing), fever, place,  sponge, elephant, phoenix, coin, and some more or less learned or literary words, such as circle, legion, giant, consul, and talent. The words cited in these examples are mostly nouns, but Old English borrowed also a number of verbs and adjectives such as  spend, exchange, compose, torture, weigh, prick, to dance, grind, turn; crisp.

Latin also forms a familiar element in English place-names such as Chester, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Gloucester, Worcester, and many others. The words, port (harbor, gate, and town) portus and porta; mûnt (mountain) mons, montem; torr (tower, rock), street, wall, wine were introduced by Latin language.

A lot of medical terms also originated from Latin language such as cancer, paralysis, plaster, and words relating to the animal kingdom, like viper, camel, scorpion, tiger, belong apparently to the same category of learned and literary borrowings.

Greek influence on Old English

Ancient Greek is alien to most modern English speakers, but it remains a foundational source of their language. Modern English is complex and varied due to the influence of other languages including Greek. It is generally referred to as a Germanic language, which is more confusing as there are other equally powerful language influences. Old English was, thus, well-shaped by its own considerable inheritance from Greek.

Greek alphabet was the greatest gift that Old English had inherited from Greek. It is also found that many letters in English have been borrowed from ancient Greek. For instance, the English letters “a” and “b” are variations on the Greek letters “alpha” and “beta."

It has been found that some English words originated directly from Greek or borrowed from other languages like Latin, French or German, which were believed to be formed out of the various elements of common Greek words. The influence of Greek vocabulary on English is most obvious in the fields of technical and academic language. Diagnosis, analysis, synthesis and antithesis derived from some Greek words. Moreover, the names of academic disciplines are often formed by combining the Greek word “logos” with another Greek word. “Logos” means “speech” or “thought” and, in this context, it means the study of something. For instance, geology combines “geo," the Greek word for Earth, with “logos” to mean the study of the Earth.

Greek heavily influenced Latin, which was the dominant language of cultural exchange in Europe for centuries. Approximately half of all English words come from Latin and a substantial portion of those have their ultimate origin in Greek. Much of what English has borrowed from French and German also came from Greek through the medium of Latin. According to "Lingua Franca", the biannual newsletter of the foreign language department at Salem State University, “village," "magnify," “bonus" and “fame” are all words that Latin borrowed from Greek and that English subsequently borrowed from Latin.

English grammar is heavily influenced by Greek and even the term “grammar” originated from Greek. It is also found that the most elemental grammatical concepts in English like noun, subject, predicate, adjective, preposition and pronoun are also found to be basic to Greek. The word, “democracy" dates back to ancient Greece. Also, many conjugations of the word “auto” are all originally Greek: “autocracy,” “autonomy,” “autobiography” and “autograph” are easily recognizable examples.

Rajarata University of Sri Lanka Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Department of Languages

Hard Times

Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer.

As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children.

In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the lowest laborers in Coketown’s factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby.

James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa.

The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city.

Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she miserably confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest.

Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all.

Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy’s family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.