The Character Development of Louisa Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times: A Statistical Syntactic Analysis of Sentence Type

Suzan Makhloof

Abstract


This paper aims at investigating the character mental and psychological development of Louisa Gradgrind in Dickens’s Hard Times through statistically analyzing the sentential simplicity and complexity used in her dramatic speeches throughout the novel. Her character development can be reflectedin three phases: before change, in the process of change and after change. The statistical analysis is based on Leech et al.’s (1982) binary classificatio of sentences according to the type and number of clauses within a sentence. This statistical syntactic analysis provides the frequencies and percentages of the occurrence of each sentence type in Louisa’s dramatic speeches in these three phases. Then, these percentages are contrasted in order to reach a conclusion.

Keywords


Linguistics, Sentence Type, Development, Hard Times, Gradgrind, Dickens, Louisa

Full Text:

PDF

References


Birch, D. & Hooper, K. (Eds.). (2012). The concise Oxford companion to English literature (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Margaret Drabble and Oxford University Press.

Bodenheimer, R. (1991). The politics of story in Victorian social fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Dickens, C. (2005). Hard Times. San Diego, US: ICON Group International, Inc. (Original work published 1854)

Gerber, H. (1954). Hard Times: an experience in teaching. College English, 15(6), 351-353. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/.

Kearns, K. (1992). A tropology of realism in Hard Times. ELH, 59(4), 857-881. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Ketabgian, T. (2003). "Melancholy mad elephants": Affect and the animal machine in "Hard Times". Victorian Studies, 45(4), 649-676. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Leech, G. N., Deuchar, M. & Hoogenraad, R. (1982). English grammar for today. Hampshir and London, UK: English MACMILAN Press LMT.

Paroissien, D. (Ed.). (2008). A companion to Charles Dickens. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Thoroddsen, A. M. (2011). The theme of facts and fancy in Hard Times by Charles Dickens (B.A. thesis). Iceland: Faculty of Foreign Languages.

Toman, M. (2008). Teaching Dickens's Hard Times in a general education humanities course. In C. C. Irvine (Ed.). Teaching the novel across the curriculum: A handbook for educators (pp. 194-203). Westport, US: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.3p.37

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.