AP English Part 2

Passage 2   Questions 14-25

“Carsons’ mill! Ay, there is a mill on fire somewhere, sure enough by the light, and it will be a rare blaze, for there’s not a drop o’water to be got. And much Carsons will care, for they’re well insured, and the machines are a’ th’ oud-fashioned kind. See if they don’t think it a fine thing for themselves. They’ll not thank them as tries to put it out.” He gave way for the impatient girls to pass. Guided by the ruddy light more than by any exact knowledge of the streets that led to the mill, they scampered along with bent heads, facing the terrible east wind as best they might.

Carsons’ mill ran lengthways from east to west. Along it went one of the oldest thoroughfares in Manchester. Indeed, all that part of the town was comparatively old; it was there that the first cotton mills were built, and the crowded alleys and back streets of the neighbourhood made a fire there particularly to be dreaded. The staircase of the mill ascended from the entrance at the western end, which faced into a wide, dingy-looking street, consisting principally of public-houses, pawnbrokers’ shops, rag and bone warehouses, and dirty provision shops. The other, the east end of the factory, fronted into a very narrow back street, not twenty feet wide, and miserably lighted and paved. Right against this end of the factory were the gable ends of the last house in the principal street—a house which from its size, its handsome stone facings, and the attempt at ornament in the front, had probably been once a gentleman’s house; but now the light which streamed from its enlarged front windows made clear the interior of the splendidly fitted-up room, with its painted walls, its pillared recesses, its gilded and gorgeous fittings-up, its miserable squalid inmates. It was a gin palace.

Mary almost wished herself away, so fearful (as Margaret had said) was the sight when they joined the crowd assembled to witness the fire. There was a murmur of many voices whenever the roaring of the flames ceased for an instant. It was easy to perceive the mass were deeply interested. “What do they say?” asked Margaret of a neighbour in the crowd, as she caught a few words clear and distinct from the general murmur. “There never is any one in the mill, surely!” exclaimed Mary, as the sea of upward-turned faces moved with one accord to the eastern end, looking into Dunham Street, the narrow back lane already mentioned.Â

Line 40 The western end of the mill, whither the raging flames were driven by the wind, was crowned and turreted with triumphant fire. It sent forth its infernal tongues from every window hole, licking the black walls with amorous fierceness; it was swayed or fell before the mighty gale, only to rise higher and yet higher, to ravage and roar yet more wildly.

Line 46 This part of the roof fell in with an astounding crash, while the crowd struggled more and more to press into Dunham Street, for what were magnificent terrible flames—what were falling timbers or tottering walls, in comparison with human life?

There, where the devouring flames had been repelled by the yet more powerful wind, but where yet black smoke gushed out from every aperture—there, at one of the windows on the fourth story, or rather a doorway where a crane was fixed to hoist up goods, might occasionally be seen, when the thick gusts of smoke cleared partially away for an instant, the imploring figures of two men.

They had remained after the rest of the workmen for some reason or other, and, owing to the wind having driven the fire in the opposite direction, had perceived no sight or sound of alarm, till long after (if anything could be called long in that throng of terrors which passed by in less than half-an-hour) the fire had consumed the oldÂ

Line 60  wooden staircase at the other end of the building. I am not sure whether it was not the first sound of the rushing crowd below that made them fully aware of their awful position. (1848)

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Passage 3          Questions 26-38

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I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church

and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean

themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and

do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not

5          absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to

be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do

preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that

living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as

vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being

10         sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on

the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man

as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,

God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself,

kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a

15         burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of

a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life

beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps

there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover

the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations

20         fare the worse.

We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against

the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life

of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of

homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it

25         extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the

execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes

at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself,

slays an immortality rather than a life. But lest I should be

condemned of introducing license, while I oppose licensing, I

30         refuse not the pains to be so much historical, as will serve to

show what hath been done by ancient and famous commonwealths

against this disorder, till the very time that this project of

licensing crept out of the Inquisition, was catched up by our

prelates, and hath caught some of our presbyters.

(1644)

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Passage 4   Questions 39-50        

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Thus there has opened before the mass of men a vast new sphere

of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. In every direction the change

which material civilisation has wrought, while it has militated against

            that comparatively small section of males who have nothing to offer society

5          but the expenditure of their untrained muscular energy (inflicting much and

often completely unmerited suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended

the field of male labour as a whole. Never before in the history of the

earth has the man’s field of remunerative toil been so wide, so

10         interesting, so complex, and in its results so all-important to society;

never before has the male sex, taken as a whole, been so fully and

strenuously employed.

So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of

society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important

15         physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern

civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, an

unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That

almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous

system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised

20         societies, which is vulgarly known as “overwork” or “nervous breakdown,” is

but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving upon

the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to maintaining

himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or smaller number of

entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result of the changes of

25         modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, he certainly cannot

complain that they have as a whole robbed him of his fields of labour,

diminished his share in the conduct of life, or reduced him to a condition

of morbid inactivity.

In our woman’s field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves

30         wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last

centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term “modern

civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost

wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social

labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance

35         on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and

compensatory fields.

It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.”

Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam-

driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of

40         men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say,

proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples.

Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman

and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of

the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our

45         bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door—it may be by a man-

driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no longer;

we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day machine-

prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger place in the

dietary of rich and poor, till the working man’s wife places before her

50         household little that is of her own preparation; while among the wealthier

classes, so far has domestic change gone that men are not unfrequently

found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and even standing behind our

chairs ready to do all but actually place the morsels of food between our

feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids has passed away for ever, to

55         give place to the cream-separator and the, largely, male-and-machinery

manipulated butter pat. In every direction the ancient saw, that it was

exclusively the woman’s sphere to prepare the viands for her household, has

become, in proportion as civilisation has perfected itself, an antiquated

lie.

60         Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle of

woman’s labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows

cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often

male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking from us

of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is formed.

65         Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost entirely

the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines

driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband

and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from

vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer

70         with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to

explode the ancient myth, that it is woman’s exclusive sphere, and a part

of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household

wear.

Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined

75         tendency for the sphere of woman’s domestic labours to contract itself; and

the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex condition

which we term “modern civilisation” is advanced.

(1911)

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