Dickens and Thackeray: Punishment and ForgivenessAttitudes toward punishment and forgiveness in English society of the nineteenth century came, for the most part, out of Christianity. In actual experience the ideal was not often met, but in the literature of the time the model was important. For novelists attempting to tell exciting and dramatic stories, violent and criminal activities played an important role, and, according to convention, had to be corrected through poetic justice or human punishment. Both Dickens' and Thackeray's novels subscribed to the ideal, but dealt with the dilemma it presented in slightly different ways. At a time when a great deal of attention has been directed toward economic production and consumption as the bases for value, Reed's well-documented study reviving moral belief as a legitimate concern for the analysis of nineteenth-century English texts is particularly illuminating. |
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... Victorian culture , new and subtler features were equally significant . Early moralistic children's fiction sought to make inherently wicked children obey the strictures of religion and thus become good citizens . More secular writers ...
... Victorian Studies 10 , no . 4 ( June 1967 ) , 359-88 , offers a far more satisfying exploration of Thackeray's ... Victorian Conventions ( Athens : Ohio Uni- versity Press , 1975 ) and his " A Friend to Mammon : Speculation in Victorian ...
... Victorian Literature , " Victorian Studies 27 , no . 2 ( Winter 1984 ) , 179-202 . Victorian Will . Athens : Ohio University Press , 1989 . " Paying Up : The Last Judgment and Forgiveness of Debts , " Victorian Literature and Culture ...
Contents
Attitudes Toward Punishment and Forgiveness | 3 |
Some of the contents of this study appeared elsewhere in different form Mate | 28 |
Education | 30 |
Copyright | |
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