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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... bring about their own destruction , from the Court of Chancery in England to the ancien regime in France . But those are long - range consequences , and Dickens liked to show justice working itself out at the private level as well ...
... bring their own punishment . Rose Dawson could have been the contented wife of Peter Butt the farmer instead of the miserable Lady Crawley , married to crude and violent Sir Pitt , " but a title and a coach and four are toys more ...
... bring no mourners but your revenge and your vanity ? God help and pardon thee , Beatrix , as He brings this awful punishment to your hard and rebellious heart ' " ( 7 : 426 ) . Esmond views this event as the kind of therapeu- tic ...
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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