Natalie+and+Carrie

= = =Charles Dickens=

• Charles Dickens was born the 2nd of 8 children in Portmouth, England on February 7, 1812.
==== • His father was imprisoned when Charles was young for debt. This was a hard time for the young boy because he had to support his family. He went to work at a warehouse when he was 12. It seems that this brief time of poverty really affected him because he wrote about these experiences in his novel David ====

• He got married in 1836 to Catherine Hogarth and they had ten children before their divorce in 1858.
==== • In his books, it becomes evident that he has an understanding of the lower classes of England. In A Christmas Carol he shares with his readers that he blames most of the problems in the world on people’s obsession with money and status. ====

• After Dickens’ traveled abroad in the 1840s, his works were much more serious. He published two of his most famous books: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
==== • He felt inspired to write about the French Revolution after he read Thomas Carlyle’s book The French Revolution. Having acted in the play Frozen Deep, he used his own character as the set for the self-sacrificing lover in A Tale of Two Cities. As he wrote this book, he went through his own revolutionary period of his wife leaving him. It was very successful because it was short and radical. ====

• By the 1860s his health began to fail him after the long hours he spent at public book readings.
==== • On June 9th 1870 he died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He left The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished but he had already become one of the most popular English authors of all time, second only to William Shakespeare. ==== = =

= = =The French Revolution= Causes:
 * French society class system of the "Old Regime" was unfair:
 * First Estate- made up of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church,
 * They did not have to pay taxes
 * Second Estate- made up of the nobles,
 * They had to pay few taxes
 * They had high positions in army and government
 * They had special privileges including the right to bear a sword
 * Third Estate- made up of peasants and laborers
 * They had to pay a lot of taxes
 * They had low power or wealth

Taking Action: Effect of French Revolution: The guillotine*
 * The Third Estate wanted liberty and equality with the higher estate, meaning the higher estates have to pay taxes, and they get rewarded for their labor*
 * People were angry with King Louis XVI because they were starving while he was feasting and completely unaware
 * the storming of the Bastille: (July 14, 1789)
 * This event kicked off the revolution
 * The Bastille was a building that housed weapons and ammunition, and in the past had held slaves
 * The angry people killed the guards and put their heads on sticks, and then stole the ammunition[[image:Bastille-sujin.jpg width="218" height="148"]]The Storming of the Bastille*[[image:tenniscourtoathdetail.gif width="175" height="128"]]Tennis Court Oath*
 * the Tennis Court Oath:
 * the parliamentary body representing the people gathered to have a meeting, but their meeting place was locked up
 * They angrily moved to the king's tennis courts and vowed that they would not stop meeting until they had a new constitution
 * They called themselves the "national assembly"
 * the Attack of the "fish women"
 * angry, strong, but poor women of the Third Estate stormed the castle looking to kill Marie Antoinette, King XVI's wife
 * they never actually found her, but they cut up her bed as symbolism of the event
 * Declaration of the Rights of Man (August 26, 1789):
 * proclaimed freedom and liberty
 * class system was abolished
 * King Louis XVI was beheaded for treason because he tried to flee France
 * His head, and his wife's head, was cut off in the guillotine
 * this marked the end of monarchy, and soon France would become a republican ruled by an elected president and a constitution

Sources: 1. Kosch, Karen. “The French Revolution.“ Pascack Valley High School, 6 January 2009. 2. "The French Revolution." 123HelpMe.com. 12 Jan 2010 .