Two Gentlemen of Verona Essay Example for Free

Two Gentlemen of Verona Essay William Shakespeare is an interesting character that just happened to be one of the best play writes of not only his time, but even today. He was born in the year 1564 and died in 1616. Though there are not many records of his personal life, from what there is, he lived a sort of scandalize life. Moving to London and leaving his wife, Anne Hathaway, behind to write plays, act, and, it is said, have affairs with men and women. He is often called Englands national poet and the Bard of Avon. Some people say that his earlier works were not so well written as his later plays, but he wrote about 38 plays in total and is said to have changed not only theater by his influences in other authors, but the English language as well. Though he wrote many good plays, one of his earlier plays, â€Å"Two Gentlemen of Verona† will be discussed in greater detail in this essay. Shakespeare, did many things for the first time in theater and his plays that no other other had done before him. One of his most obvious achievements include language. It is said that he had created about over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and making up words that are completely original. Language is a big part of theater. In many plays, as well as life, people play with worlds and sentence structures to portray many different types of emotions. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, many scenes were funnier because of the wordplay they used. For example, in Act III scene i. Speed, the servant of the main character Valentine, had asked Launce, the servant of Proteus, â€Å"How now Signior Launce, what news with your mastership? † Launce replied with, â€Å"With my mastership? Why, it is at sea. † Like many other parts in the book, this dialogue shows Shakespeare creativeness and wordplay. When Valentine asks about the â€Å"mastership† what he really is talking about is Proteus because he is Launces â€Å"master†. Proteus is â€Å"set out to see† because he left Verona, but it is also referring to the â€Å"ship† that Speed was joking about. Many other examples of this are in all of William Shakespeares plays; because it is in old English, it can sometimes be seen when acted easier than just read. In addition, all plays must have a character that has inner conflicts; Shakespeare figured out how to make soliloquies explore a characters inner motivations and conflict. Up until Shakespeare, soliloquies were often used by playwrights to introduce (characters), convey information, provide an exposition or reveal plans. This can probably be more more apparent in plays such as Hamlet, hi the big, and famous â€Å"To be, or not to be† soliloquy. Though, in Act I scene ii Julia, Proteus first love, has a soliloquy where shes does just that. It occurs right after she receives a love letter from her servant that Proteus had sent with his servant, Speed. Right before her soliloquy she had tared up the letter into pieces and kicked her servant out of the room. The first line in her soliloquy, â€Å"Oh hateful hands, to tear such loving words! † demonstrates how Shakespeares characters can show their inner motivations within their soliloquies. Though she had destroyed the letter, and acted as though she was annoyed by it and by her servant, her true motives, and inner feelings are revealed. Another influence William Shakespeare had in the culture of theater is the way that Shakespeare mixed tragedy and comedy together to create a new romantic tragedy genre. Before Shakespeare, romance had not been considered a worthy topic for tragedy. While this can be more easily seen in a play like Romeo and Juliet. Two Gentlemen of Verona is also a comedy that involves some romanticism and tragic events. For example, Proteus, character almost like Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, is young and falls in love too easily. Like Romeo, Proteus falls in and out of love by the beauty of a woman versus her intellect, or thoughts. Though it is a comedy, some traumatic events occur towards the end cause by love and the betrayal. Proteus falls out of love with Julia, and in love with Sylvia. The flip to this story is that Sylvia was supposed to get married to Valentine, which is Proteus best friend. Proteus betrays Valentine and gets him kicked out of the city. He then attempts to rape Sylvia because she refused to give in to someone that will betray their own best friend by in such a way. The play, Two Gentlemen of Verona, has a shocking ending that seems like it could have many different meanings. The scene begins with Valentine sitting alone in a bush where he hears that Proteus, Sylvia, and Julia (disguised as Sebastian) enter the forest scene. Proteus tells Sylvia that she should be thankful that he had saved her from the â€Å"outlaws†, but Sylvias love for Valentine and hatred for Proteus to betray his friend is too strong. When Proteus is about to rape Julia, Valentine jumps out and stops him. In the end, Julia reveals who she is and the Thurio, the man who was supposed to marry Sylvia from the beginning, enters the scene saying that he will not marry Sylvia because he never really loved her. When Proteus decides he does loves Julia after all, the Duke, Sylvias father, says both men will get married on the same day to both women. This scene proves Federico Garcia Lorcas view that â€Å"the theater is a school of pain and laughter, a free tribunal where we can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain with living examples the eternal norms of the human heart. The whole play involves pain and laughter, in this comedy, we as the audience laugh at Proteus thinking that he loves any girl that is beautiful. Though we laugh at it, there are other mixtures of pain and laughter. It is comical that Valentine, such a noble man, is hiding in the bushes waiting for his best friend to do something bad to his girlfriend; Julia is dressed as a man and no one can see it, but at the same time she is in pain because the love of her life is about to rape someone else; and there is more pain and laughter irony in this one scene. It is definitely a â€Å"tribunal where we can question norms that are outmoded† because the Duke comes into the scene unexpectedly and lets the two men get married without asking the women. This is an outmoded norm that men are superior to women, and men do not need to ask the women permission or what they would like. What if Julia no longer wanted to marry Proteus after all she saw? What if Sylvia did not want to get married on the same day of the man who tried to rape her. The norms can also be â€Å"mistaken† because there is a line where Valentine forgives Proteus for almost raping his lover and he concludes by saying, â€Å"All that was mine in Sylvia I give thee† (Act V, Scene iiii). This line, among many others, is up to interpretation. The line could mean that Valentine decided to give away Sylvia to Valentine in the end, or it could mean something completely different and the audience could be â€Å"mistaking† Shakespeares meaning of what is said. The finale, everyone getting married, shows â€Å"the eternal norms of the human heart†, even in Shakespeare’s time a happy ending is seems more complete. The audience in that time, and today would rather hear that everything resolved in the end for these characters. Although some people may argue that Shakespeares plays were not so well writen in the beginning of his career, there can be much said about his earlier plays like The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It is also clear that Shakespeare has changed and influenced theater greatly. He had changed various things like the English language, characters development within soliloquies, and even created new genres. There can be so much to be said about all his novels, in one scene, like the one above there can be much to debate, laugh, and feel pain about. In this on scene proved Federico Garcia Lorcas quote about theater to be true. If analyzing another scene, the same could be said.

Foundations of Psychology Essay -- What Is Psychology, Define Psycholo

When psychology first emerged as a science, the process of explaining the human mind and human behavior began. In this essay we will present a brief synopsis of what psychology is and introduce the reader to the primary biological foundations of psychology that are linked to behavior as well as introducing the reader to the major schools of thought in psychology. In Kowalski and Westen Fifth Edition of Psychology, psychology is define as â€Å"the scientific investigation of mental processes such as; thinking, remembering, feeling, and behavior. Understanding a person requires attention to the individual’s biology, psychological experience, and cultural context.†(Kowalski & Weston, 2009, p. 4). Each component is necessary in formulating who the individual is. As we delve into history, we must be cautious in our analyzation of human behavior and the human mind that we do not contribute our analyzation to a single thought or process as many times it may be a conglomerat ion of events or items that contribute to the overall picture of a person’s psychological process. Furthermore, Kowalski specifies in his writing that â€Å"humans are complex creatures whose psychological experience lies at the intersection of biology and culture.†(Kowalski & Weston, 2009, p. 3). He expounds upon this fact by stating that â€Å"all psychological processes occur through the interaction of cells in the nervous system and all human action occurs in the context of cultural beliefs and values that render it meaningful.† (Kowalski & Weston, 2009, p. 3). The primary biological foundation of psychology is linked to biopsychology. Biopsychology is an extension of psychology that analyzes our brains and the neurotransmitter that are prevalent in our nervous system... ... internalized. Sigmund Freud three elements of id, ego and superego when implemented together explained human behavior even in the most complex form. Psychology has many roles in the greater realm of science, but I will always believe that the most profound role of psychology is to enable humans to have a better understanding of their self and their world. Psychology delves into the deeper levels of the mind and intrigues us with the various theories and observations of our mental and physical capacities and although there are many schools of thought, each school of thought opens our mind to new theories and concepts that stretch our brains to boundaries unlimited! Works Cited Kowalski, R. & Westen, D. (2009). Psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Functional Psychology. (2011). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_psychology

Aspects of Literary History: Spring and Summer Terms 2008 Essay

Welcome to the Aspects of Literary History course. This is an ambitious course with a number of separate but interwoven strands: 1) The course will introduce you to some of the key concepts of literary history. 2) The course will enact literary history by examining the history of a particular mode of writing from its Greek origins through the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twenty and twenty-first centuries. You will be asked to think in terms of specific literary historical periods. 3) The course will make you more familiar with the reading and interpreting of poetry, with particular attention to improving your skills in close reading. 4) The course will examine pastoral poetry from its origins in the Greek Idylls, its dissemination through Roman models and its diversification into many forms: the elegy, the country house poem, the love lyric, the poem of reflection, the philosophical poem, the nature poem and the satire. 5) The course will focus historically on the pastoral not simply because it provides the originating mode for these diverse forms but because it is the product of a specific political and social culture: an elite form produced originally in a slave culture (Greek) and disseminated through another slave culture (Roman). This will give you the basis for thinking about the historical contextualization of the pastoral as a form. 6) How have later English poets – from the seventeenth century onwards – made use of the political and social entailments of the pastoral form? How have they expanded it by the introduction of a Christian content? How have American poets made use of the form in response to the colonization of the New World, a process seen by many (at the time and subsequently) through the means of the pastoral? 7) The analysis of pastoral will enable you to undertake the most subtle intrinsic literary historical analysis, the most ambitious and the most ranging extrinsic literary historical analysis and the most effective combination of intrinsic and extrinsic modes. The Aspects of Literary History course will be taught by lecture and seminar in the spring term and the summer term. You will use the Aspects of Literary History course reader for preparation and for seminar discussion. The poems for discussion in the lectures and in the seminars are all printed in the course reader and the course supplement. The lectures for the course will be held in Chichester Lecture Theatre on Mondays 12-1. The seminars for the course will take place later in the week. Please check the timetable for your individual tutor and for the time of your seminar. There are four secondary texts we would also like you to read during this course: Paul Alpers’ What Is Pastoral?, Raymond Williams’ The Country and the City, Jonathan Bate’s The Song of the Earth and Chris Fitter’s Poetry, Space, Landscape. There are multiple copies of these in short loan and you should be able to read these during the vacation and during the spring and summer terms. You can borrow short loan books over the vacation and renew on-line. Essential secondary material is available in the Reserve Collection or in the Artsfac part of the Reserve Collection. [Ask at the Reserve Collection Counter: this material is stored under the name of the course convenor, Alistair Davies]. The seminar strand will support the lecture series by ensuring that you have grasped the literary historical topic of the week (definitions and information are set out in the reader). But it will function principally a) to improve your confidence and skill in reading poetry and b) to encourage you [if you wish] to explore your own creative response in poetry to the themes and topics of the course. We hope that you will become more proficient, more imaginative and more self-assured readers of poetry. Your written course work will be two 1000 word course work essays [20% each]. We are hoping to encourage you to be concise, focused and lucid in your writing. You will have the opportunity, if you wish, to submit one piece of creative writing out of two pieces of written work for the course. Remember to check your written work against the criteria set out in the ‘Feedback and How to Make Use of It’ document you were given last term. To underline the importance we attach to your creativity, we draw your attention to details of the Stanmer Prize on page 4 of the course reader. You can read the poems produced by previous winners on the English web-site. The course will also be examined by an unseen in the summer term [60%]. You will be required to comment closely on three poems or passages of poems in ways that reflect upon the literary historical topics covered in the course. You can consult past examination papers through the Sussex web-site. You will find below a detailed plan of the course. You will be able to see how lectures prepare you for seminars in each week; and you will be able to plan your work for the course from the beginning to the end of the course. We hope that you will find this course informative and enjoyable. If you have any queries, do not hesitate to contact your course tutor or the course convenor, Dr Alistair Davies [H.A.Davies@sussex.ac.uk] The course will be taught in the following order [the order in which it is set out in the course reader]: Week 1:Genre and Conventions The first lecture by Professor Norman Vance will focus on Milton’s Lycidas and Paradise Lost and will explore Milton’s use of classical genre(s) and conventions. Prepare for the lecture by reading the ‘Genre and Conventions’, ‘The Origins of the Pastoral’ and ‘the Pastoral Elegy’ sections of the course reader and the section of the Aspects Course Supplement. Week 1: Norman Vance: ‘Pastoral Genre and Convention: Milton’s Lycidas and Paradise Lost In your first seminar, you will focus on two poems — Herrick’s ‘To Daffodils’ (p.33) and Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘North Haven’ (p.5). What are the generic constituents of Herrick’s poem? What makes Bishop’s poem a) a pastoral elegy and b) how does it differ as a modern pastoral elegy from Milton’s Renaissance pastoral elegy? Paul Alpers’ study of pastoral cited in the course reader will be helpful here. You may wish to read Alpers’ discussion of Lycidas in What is Pastoral [there are copies of this in reserve and in short loan; copies too in Artsfac]. We begin with pastoral and we will focus on pastoral; but one presupposition we will explore in the course is that the pastoral idyll provides the matrix out of which the elegy, the love poem, the poem of philosophical reflection, the subjective lyric, the love poem, the satire and the nature poem are developed within the western and within the English traditio n. Week 2: Intertextuality. The second lecture will be given by Professor Andrew Hadfield and will focus on Jonson’s To Penshurst. Prepare for the lecture by re-reading Virgil’s first eclogue and Horace’s second epode in the course reader. You will find To Penshurst in the course reader (pp.29-31). Read the ‘Intertextuality’ section of the course reader, pp.26-32. Week 2: Andrew Hadfield: ‘Intertextuality: Ben Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst and the Country-House Poem’ For your seminar, read Yeats’ ‘Coole Park, 1929’ and Walcott’s ‘Ruins of a Great House’ in the course reader (pp.31-32). How does Yeats relate to Jonson; how does Walcott relate to Yeats (who was an important early influence)? What does it tell us about history and about the history of literature that a poet of the English renaissance, an Irish poet of the 1920s and a Caribbean poet of post-war period should use a form established by Roman poets in the first century BC. What are the links between pastoral, the country-house poem and empire? Week 3/: Literature and Social Change The third lecture of the term will be given by Dr Sophie Thomas on the topic of the eighteenth century prospect poem. Week 3: Dr Sophie Thomas: Politics, Poetics and Landscape For this lecture, Sophie Thomas will explore the changing modes of the prospect poem in works by Pope, Gray, Cowper and Smith printed in the course reader (pp.36-45) and Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey printed on pages 47-48. Please read the section Literature and Social Change, pp.33-48 of the course reader. In her lecture, Sophie Thomas will explore the so-called prospect poem, raising questions about the class and the gender position of the viewer and about the different ways in which nature is re-presented. Will you please read carefully Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.’ In your seminar, your tutor will either focus on one or more of the poems by Gray, Cowper and Smith in the reader. How important is it to take into account the gender of the poets discussed? Does a female writer have a different sense of the possession of a landscape to a male writer? Week 4: Literature and Social Change The fourth lecture of the term will be given by Dr Sophie Thomas. Please prepare by reading the poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the course reader, pp. 45-48. Week 4: Dr Sophie Thomas: The Landscape of the Imagination: Wordsworth and Coleridge In your seminar, you will read Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey (p.47). How does the tradition of the pastoral poem enable the poet to write here a poem of psychology, a poem of philosophical reflection and a poem of relationship [remember it is addressed to the poet’s sister]. Even though it is written [for us] in heightened diction, this was written as an example of a form Coleridge and Wordsworth admired, the so-called conversational poem. Of course, The Prelude is one, very long conversational poem. Week 5: Research Break Week 5 will be a research break for your seminar (this will allow you to catch up with your reading and your writing). You will write your first assignment. Your first written assignment will be due in week 6 [check on Sussex Direct] : one 1000 word essay — 1) a reading of either a) Jonson b) Bishop c) Yeats or d) Walcott in the light of questions of genre, convention and intertextuality or 2) a reading of the prospect poem, with reference to Gray, Cowper, Smith or Wordsworth) or, if you wish, 3) you may write an account of George Herbert’s ‘Life’ and Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ in the supplement in relationship to ideas of melancholy and of loss, pp. 6-7. The poetry of the English renaissance provides the models from which the English poets of the Romantic period develop the religious, philosophical and psychological preoccupations of their verse. Your seminar tutor will set you specific titles for this assignment. Week 6: Literary History and Periodisation (pp.37-40) The fifth lecture will be given by Dr Alistair Davies on Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village’ pp.53-58 of course reader). Please read this poem closely before the lecture. Week 6: Dr Alistair Davies: ‘Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village: Literary History and Periodisation. To prepare for the topic for week 6, read the section on Literary History and Periodisation (pp. 49-58) in the course-reader and the section on Literary History and Periodisation in the course supplement. The lecture will set the poem in the context of the construction of an eighteenth century landscaped estate and house. The University of Sussex is built in the eighteenth-century country-park of Stanmer House. Please take a stroll around this park (or its remnants) and have a look at the Palladian-style Stanmer House (see final page of course reader). In your seminar, you will discuss the Virgilian and Horatian intertexts of The Deserted Village, relate the poem to questions of globalisation and migration, and explore the links between Goldsmith’s poem and the English landscape and pictorial tradition of the eighteenth century represented by Gainsborough’s painting in the course reader and on its back cover. Please also read the account of Michael McKeon’s article ‘The Pastoral Revolution’ cited in the course reader. There is a brief prà ©cis in the course reader but you should make every effort to read the whole of this important article in Kevin Sharpe and Steven N.Zwicker (eds): Refiguring Revolutions. You would also benefit, if you have not yet done so, from reading the recommended chapters in Raymond Williams’s indispensable The Country and the City [there are many copies of this in reserve and in short loan] and Jonathan Bate’s The Song of the Earth. Week 7. Literary History: Politics and the Subject of Modernity The sixth lecture of the course will be given by Dr Alistair Davies on The Prelude. Week 7: Dr Alistair Davies: ‘Wordsworth’s The Prelude: Politics and the Subject of Modernity’ For your preparation, please re-read The 1805 Prelude, with particular reference to Books 1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13. For the seminar, we want you to read A.R.Ammons’s ‘Corsons Inlet’ (pp. 77-8). In what ways can you read Ammons’s poem as a post-Romantic rejoinder to ‘Tintern Abbey’? In what way is twentieth century American poetry, as we find it instanced in Ammons’ poem, a critique of the English Romantic tradition and of the American nineteenth century transcendental tradition it helped to shape? Remember that Wordsworth is a fundamental precursor figure for the modern American lyric poet as he is for the modern English lyric poet. Remember too that the pastoral is a fundamental form in American self-identification in the founding and settling of the New World. Sylvia Plath’s has written wonderful and little known sonnet ‘Mayflower’ on this topic, which you will find on page 49 of the course reader. Week 8. Feminist Literary History. The seventh lecture will be given by Dr Jenny Taylor on Christina Rossetti, concentrating on ‘Goblin Market’, pp. 66-71 of the course reader. Please prepare for the lecture by reading Goblin Market and the section on Feminist Literary History in the Aspects course reader, pp.63-71. Week 8: Dr Jenny Taylor: ‘Christina Rossetti and the Question of Feminist Literary History’ For your seminar, we want you to work through the three poems by Rossetti in the course reader in the light of the questions raised by the lecture and to compare them to the contemporaneous poems by Emily Dickinson in the Atlantic Studies and American pastoral section of the course reader, pp. 96. Second assignment for delivery in week 2 of the summer term. [see Sussex Direct]. What we want you to do for your second essay is to explore the idea of loco-descriptive verse and the walking or ‘ambulatory’ poem, examining the ways in which Wordsworth and Ammons have used these forms for metaphysical and religious explorations. You may write a walking poem for your final submission (no more than 30 lines) but with an auto-critique or justification amounting in total to 750 words. Or you may write a sonnet in the same on the building a) of Stanmer House in the 1700s or b) the University of Sussex in the 1960s — to explore a moment of profound historical transition. It would be useful to re-read Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village and the material on Enclosure and Emparking in the course reader before you embark on this (pp.53-58). You might take Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mayflower’ on page 49 as your model. Otherwise, you may write a comparative analysis of Wordworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and of the Ammons poem. Or your tutor may set you an exercise which has arisen from discussions in your final seminar on Hardy. This exercise is 1000 words long. Week 9. Literary History: Transmission and Dissemination The eighth lecture will be given by Professor Norman Vance on pastoral and the loss of faith reflected in and through attitudes to nature in Romantic and post-Romantic poetry, focusing on the poems by Wordsworth, Shelley and Hardy in the course reader, pp.72-77. Please read the section on Literary History and Dissemination in the course reader, pp.47-51. Week 9: Prof Norman Vance: ‘The Decline of Nature: from Wordsworth to Hardy’. For your seminar, you will read the series of poems about birds and bird-song in the course supplement, [as well as poems by Hardy and Yeats in the course reader] linking the poet’s concerns with bird song and with flight to the possibility [or impossibility] of preserving the poetic tradition. How do scientific ideas – particularly those of Darwin – affect nineteenth century poetry? You will also consider the links between literary and intellectual history. Q. What do you think are the relationships between the Samuel Palmer ‘Pastoral Scene’ (1835) on the front cover of the course reader and nineteenth century preoccupations with secularisation? The Jo Francis essay cited in the course reader is useful for reading ‘Mont Blanc’; the Picot essay (like Francis’s essay in Artsfac in the Reserve Collection) is also very helpful. Summer Term: 2008 We expect you to undertake some preparation for the summer term by reading the ‘Atlantic Studies and American Pastoral’ section of the course reader and the ‘Atlantic Studies and American Pastoral’ section of the course supplement. The lecture titles for the summer term are as follows. You will be given details about the work to be undertaken during the vacation and in your term-time seminars at the end of the spring term.

History of the Textile Industry

The major steps in the manufacture of textiles and clothes are: Harvest and clean the fiber or wool.Card it and spin it into threads.Weave the threads into cloth.Fashion and sew the cloth into clothes. Great Britains Lead in Textile Machinery During the early eighteenth century, Great Britain was determined to dominate the textile industry. Laws forbade the export of English textile machinery, drawings of the machinery, and written specifications of the machines that would allow them to be constructed in other countries. Britain had the power loom, a steam-powered, mechanically-operated version of a regular loom for weaving. Britain also had the spinning frame that could produce stronger threads for yarns at a faster rate. Meanwhile the stories of what these machines could do excited envy in other countries. Americans were struggling to improve the old hand loom, found in every house, and to make some sort of a spinning machine to replace the spinning wheel by which one thread at a time was laboriously spun. American Failures with Textile Machinery and the American Textile Industry Flounders In 1786, in Massachusetts, two Scotch immigrants, who claimed to be familiar with Richard Arkwrights British-made spinning frame, were employed to design and build spinning machines for the mass production of yarn. The inventors were encouraged by the U.S. government and assisted with grants of money. The resulting machines, operated by horse power, were crude, and the textiles produced irregular and unsatisfactory. In Providence, Rhode Island another company tried to build spinning machines with thirty-two spindles. They worked badly and all attempts to run them by water-power failed. In 1790, the faulty machines were sold to Moses Brown of Pawtucket. Brown and his partner, William Almy, employed enough hand-loom weavers to produce eight thousand yards of cloth a year by hand. Brown needed working spinning machinery, to provide his weavers with more yarn, however, the machines he bought were lemons. In 1790, there was not a single successful power-spinner in the United States. How Did the Textile Revolution Finally Happen in the United States? The textile industry was founded by the work and importance of the following businessmen, inventors, and inventions: Samuel Slater and MillsSamuel Slater has been called both the Father of American Industry and the Founder of the American Industrial Revolution. Slater built several successful cotton mills in New England and established the town of Slatersville, Rhode Island. Francis Cabot Lowell and Power LoomsFrancis Cabot Lowell was an American businessman and the founder of the worlds first textile mill. Together with inventor Paul Moody, Lowell created a more efficient power loom and a spinning apparatus. Elias Howe and Sewing MachinesBefore the invention of the sewing machine, most sewing was done by individuals in their homes, however, many people offered services as tailors or seamstresses in small shops where wages were very low. One inventor was struggling to put into metal an idea to lighten the toil of those who lived by the needle. Ready-Made Clothing It was not until after the  power-driven sewing machine  was invented, that factory production of clothes and shoes on a large scale occurred. Before sewing machines, nearly all clothing was local and hand-sewn, there were tailors and seamstresses in most towns that could make individual items of clothing for customers. About 1831, George Opdyke (later Mayor of New York) began the small-scale manufacture of ready-made clothing, which he stocked and sold largely through a store in New Orleans.  Opdyke was one of the first American merchants to do so. But it was not until after the power-driven sewing machine was invented, that factory production of clothes on a large scale occurred. Since then the clothing industry has grown. Ready-Made Shoes The Singer machine of 1851 was strong enough to sew leather and was adopted by shoemakers. These shoemakers were found chiefly in Massachusetts, and they had traditions reaching back at least to Philip Kertland, a famous shoemaker (circa 1636) who taught many apprentices. Even in the early days before machinery, division of labor was the rule in the shops of Massachusetts. One workman cut the leather, often tanned on the premises; another sewed the uppers together, while another sewed on the soles. Wooden pegs were invented in 1811 and came into common use about 1815 for the cheaper grades of shoes: Soon the practice of sending out the uppers to be done by women in their own homes became common. These women were wretchedly paid, and when the sewing machine came to do the work better than it could be done by hand, the practice of putting out work gradually declined. That variation of the sewing machine which was to do the more difficult work of sewing the sole to the upper was the invention of a mere boy, Lyman Blake.  The first model, completed in 1858, was imperfect, but Lyman Blake was able to interest Gordon McKay, of Boston, and three years of patient experimentation and large expenditure followed. The McKay sole-sewing machine, which they produced, came into use, and for twenty-one years was used almost universally both in the United States and Great Britain. But this, like all the other useful inventions, was in time enlarged and greatly improved, and hundreds of other inventions have been made in the shoe industry. There are machines to split leather, to make the thickness absolutely uniform, to sew the uppers, to insert eyelets, to cut out heel tops, and many more. In fact, division of labor has been carried farther in the making of shoes than in most industries, for there about three hundred separate operations in making a pair of sh oes.