One Of The Four Dancers: Grace Flisser

In preparation for another script, this web site was privileged to visit Community College Of Philadelphia one recent morning and photograph Grace Flisser's class in English literature. We are familiar with the aptly named Grace per her Israeli dance activities but it was a real treat to watch Dr Flisser (after all, we have to be professional about this) teach and lecture her class. The classics come alive when Grace is lecturing and you can see this in some of the pictures below as it is clear that she interests her students in this subject which, for this class, was the writings of Charles Dickens.

Dickens lived in 18th century England and started his carrer as a journalist. He covered the Parlimant in London at the same time his father was in and out of debtor prison. Possibly the juxtaposition of watching high governmental dealings while dealing with his father's, and the family's, situation, influenced much of his work.

Another interesting aspect of Dickens is that he created our concept of Christmas. Prior to his writings, Christmas was another business day which had religious significance but it is through Dickens' influence that this holiday now is one of gift giving and celebration.

While rising in journalism, Dickens began to pen some stories about life in London. He was at this time a journalist for the Morning Chronicle, apparently a daily paper in London. Fortuitously, one of the owners of this paper had eight daughters and Dickens cemented his relationship with the paper by becoming engaged (and subsequently married) to one of the daughters and, if suspicions are correct, having an affair with at least one more. Having secured a type of job security through his marriage, Dicken turned his attention to writing and his first major work, the Pickwick Papers, made an appearance in 1837 when he was 25.

Dickens visited the United States in 1842 and Philadlephia was one of the cities included in the visit. This year, 2012, marks the 200th anniversary of his birth and you can join these festivities, if you like, as the Free Library of Philadelphia is holding a year long celebration. Some would say it is only fitting that the Free Library hold this as it now provides the home to Dicken's stuffed pet raven, Grip, and one assumes that he was extremely fond of this animal to go to the trouble of this taxidermy. This pet became the basis of a tale by another writer associated with Philadelphia, Edger Allan Poe.

Dickens became a very prolific writer as any who has taken an English Literature course can attest. To our subject here, Grace, he remains a favorite writer. We asked her to add some words about this:

"Dickens is one of my favorite authors. He cares about poor people, having worked in a "blacking" (kind of like paint) when he was twelve, and later, while his father was in and out of debtor's prison; he was amazingly sympathetic to prostitutes for a person of his era, and tried to set up a kind of sanctuary/home that they could go to. He completely understood the experience of the people who suffered most during the industrial revolution. And he was ferocious in his broad, mocking depictions of unfeeling, self-congratulating "aldermen" and other higher-class folk, drawing many a guffaw from me, and in fact making me laugh until I cried. As he was a Romantic writer, at least in part, he did idealize the poor and did render the children in his stories as way too angelic, but his sympathy for the plight of his poor characters and compassionate grasp of their lives transforms his muckraking into really great literature."

Thanks to Dr Grace Flisser and her students for allowing us to have a peek into her professional life. Thanks also to Grace for her words about one of the giants of English literature. We think you will find the script being prepared about one of Grace's hobbies, Israeli dancing, to be equally of interest.