The role of art and literature in political revolutions.
Firstly the role of art holds massive significance in politics for example the execution of Lady Jane Grey. This painting is held in the louvre and is viewed by millions each year. It shows how sir john Brydges the lieutenant of the tower guides LJG, it depicts her being blindfolded and led to her death. It is massively political because she was queen for 9 days. 9 days and then executed for high treason because she was a political threat to Mary 1st.
Secondly she is in white it can signify innocence and purity whereas the rest are in black and dark colour because they are in morning of her death. She is in white could also signify marriage, a silk almost ghostly pale glowing figure. White could signify the raising of a white flag and surrender in the political view. Her executioner looms overhead while she is blindfolded having to be led by someone else to the block.
The executioner is in red, could signify blood that is going to be spilt and how she will inevitably die and her blood will be spilt ruining her dress. There are her two handmaidens behind her fainted and mourning her but she is not yet dead because she knows the political influence of Mary, Queen of Scots. She is glowing an almost ghostly figure. Lady Jane Grey was a protestant whereas Mary Queen of Scots was a catholic their religious views collided resulting in LJGs execution.
LJG was to be believed 16 or 17 and Mary’s cousin, LJGs husband, was also executed for treason. The charges against LJG were high treason and a public trial was held in London where she was found guilty and sentenced to death. LJG was portrayed as a pawn queen, an innocent victim of power-hungry corrupt people which led to her death. The author William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel about the doomed queen called the tower of London, published in 1840. He brought in the famous illustrator George Cruikshank to create a dark, doomy image of the Tower as a place of torture and imprisonment. When Edward fell ill at 15, he wanted the next monarch to be a Protestant king, like him. He ruled out his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth.
But there were no male heirs next in line. The Duke of Northumberland, a top adviser in Edward’s Privy Council, persuaded the king to name Grey as his heir. This was self-serving – the duke then orchestrated a marriage between Jane and his own son. Their political gains outwaited her life; their power-hungry nature went far beyond her own desires to speak out, not that she had any rights back then as a woman. Edward died on 6 July 1553. Grey was taken to Syon House, Hounslow, and told she would be queen. She was reportedly very distressed when she found out. But she eventually agreed and she was taken to the Tower of London to prepare for her coronation. Her reign officially began on 10 July, when she was just 16 years old. She was sentenced to execution just 9 days later when Mary found her guilty of high treason. Before this Mary offered for Grey to convert to Catholicism and she would live, Grey denied and was killed. She inspired many poems, books and paintings. Religion is the main cause of death.
Animal farm by George Orwell. There is a lot to say on this topic because it goes into so much detail and how Orwell uses language to describe capitalism and how some people {the rich} will always be better off, better cared for and more rights. Orwell based the book of what was happening in soviet Russian under Stalin’s control [napoleon]. Old major at the start proposes this wonderful idea of overthrowing the farm and head of hour mr jones the animals agree because in theory it sound like it would work in socialism where the public owns everything.
In theory the animals take over and rule the farm and everything is shared equally and there is no capitalist boss or higher up, old major is based of Karl Marx and Lenin because of his Marxist views and ways of thinking such as the equality. Old major dies 3 days after he give the speech about overthrowing Mr Joans. The animals follow snowballs and napoleons lead in the uprising and they overthrow mr joans who is based of tsar Nicholas 2nd. Meetings are formed to encourage discussion and they go for a political team’s snowballs vs napoleons because the other animals don’t want to compete. Snowball is based off Leon Trotsky who was a political leader and very anti Stalin. Which is why Napoleon based on Stalin and snowball are so very against each other and are always trying to beat each other. Thus, their revelry which leads to snowball being expelled from the farm like Leon was exiled to Siberia.
George Orwell’s book explores the way the Soviet Union failed under Stalin’s rule because of its lack of economic stagnation, political reforms that weakened central control, rising nationalism among republics, and the unsustainable costs of the arms race and foreign conflicts. In concept it should have worked but Stalin became a dictator and he put the people of the Soviet Union through horrors such as starvation, the great purge and the gulag which is camps where “prisoners” were held basically concentration camps but “The purpose of the GULAG was not to kill people,” Payne says. ” It was designed to discipline society . It’s really about social control. Stalin wanted control. He reined with fear and so did Napoleon; he made the animals work harder, especially Boxer {the working class} these people were used to meet quotas and idealized because of the upper class being destroyed in the revolution and that the working people were used. Religion was labelled “opium of the people”, incompatible with socialist values. Churches were closed and atheism was encouraged. Napoleon changed the 10 commandments in the book and Stalin changed laws outlawing abortion and churches with private land. Stalin Cult of Personality. Under Stalin, propaganda cultivated an elaborate cult of personality: Stalin was portrayed as a benevolent, infallible leader. His image appeared in schools, homes, and workplaces. Textbooks were rewritten to glorify Stalin’s role in history and marginalise rivals like Trotsky and this changed a lot of peoples opinions on and about him. Orwell uses character death i.e. boxer. To signify the major betrayal of the working class to the Russian elite and it shows the economical difference between the working and upper classes.
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