Britain in the 18th century

One thing that I learned about 18th century Britain was how strict the laws around stealing were. Collarbone, for instance, was caught with bladders worth over 40 shillings and was going to unquestionably be hanged for this robbery. There is no prior robbery done by Collarbone known to the authorities, but he was still given the maximum punishment. After doing research on how much a shilling is, it is around a day’s work for a minimum wage worker. So, after stealing around $4800, assuming someone is making $15 an hour and working 8 hours a day. I could never imagine this rule being implemented today. The law shows how much death was accepted in the 18th century especially compared to today.


Another interesting thing I learned was in class about the difference between churches now and churches in 18th century Britain. Churches nowadays are viewed as helpers for the poor. They give money to poor communities and house homeless people. In 18th century Britain though, specifically through William’s point of view, readers see that the church looks like a place for the rich man, as it was so big it made his eyes water and it had complicated carvings. Also, the church would not let a parson say a prayer for William’s mom’s death because they could not pay the parson to do so. One thing I remembered about the catholic church during this time period was that a person could pay the priest for their sins to be forgiven, which further advances the idea that churches were for the rich during this time period in Britain.


Comments

  1. Noah English 11H BlogJanuary 16, 2023 at 7:44 PM

    Both of these effectively show where society's priorities lay: in money. They never questioned why people needed to steal as often as they did, instead elites just made it legal to have absurd punishments. As we see with William, he stole out of necessity not greed or cynicism. Then the church will only accept you if you can make monetary donations and payments. The church prioritized profits over morality. I wonder if William will see a different value systems in the rest of the book?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Critical Thinkers and WritersJanuary 17, 2023 at 1:08 PM

      An excellent final question--will Will challenge or reproduce this system?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Things I did not Expect

  The most unexpected thing we covered in class was reading Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. I found the story to be unique compared to the other readings we did and quite interesting. Most of the readings we covered in class had topics like racism, sexism, or other types of discrimination/colonization as a pretty big theme, such as in Home Fire discrimination against Muslims, The Secret River discrimination against the Aboriginals, or in There There the impacts of colonization on Native Americans. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan could not have these themes as he is a boy who grew up outside of society. He could not be impacted by societal issues such as racism. I did not expect to read a novel like this, when I joined the course. Something that was unexpected to me specifically in a novel, rather than the plot of a novel in general, was in Pachinko, Noa. I know I talked about Noa a lot in my blog posts and that is because I find him so interesting. Noa’s identity crisis was completely unexpected to me. I never...
Read more

Noa's Character

  One character I am pretty interested in is Noa. Noa grew up hating Koreans because he wanted to integrate as much as possible into the community. His classmates probably hated Koreans, as did the rest of the Japanese community, so he was probably constantly flooded with comments on how Japanese people were better than Korean people. While many Koreans in the story were treated poorly by the Japanese, Noa’ reaction was the only time we saw someone who completely assimilated into Japanese culture and dropped their entire culture.  Noa was so indoctrinated by his classmates and school that he decided to run away from home when he found out his blood had the blood of a yakuza. Noa dropped all his dreams and desires of going into Waseda just because he found out that he had yakuza blood, that was how deep his hatred of Koreans went. When he found out he was the son of “the worst type of Korean”, he acted like he did not deserve to live life anymore.  Another part of Noa’s ch...
Read more

Discrimination in Pachinko

I think one of the more important meanings in Pachinko is the effect of oppression against the oppressed. Throughout Pachinko, the Koreans are oppressed by the Japanese, whether it is by being forced in ghettos, in the workplace, or just through their hate. The main characters of the novel continuously get discriminated against by being Korean and we can see the impacts, especially in a character like Noa. Noa was continuously bullied by the Japanese in school to the point of forsaking his identity and hating the fact he was Korean. He did not associate himself with anything Korean and hated his blood. When he finds out his dad is the “worst type of Korean”, he runs away from home and hates himself for his blood. When his parents eventually find him, he kills himself. The discrimination and hate of Koreans that his classmates had impacted him so much that he would rather kill himself than potentially let his new family of his wife and kids know he had a yakuza father. Another impact is...
Read more