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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... close connexion with everybody and everything in the world around them , not only neglect the first duty of life , but , by a happy retributive justice , deprive themselves of its truest and best enjoyment " ( 596 ) . From the beginning ...
... his nature . " A sense of injustice is within him , all along . The more he represses it , the more unjust he necessarily is . Internal shame and external circumstances may bring the contest to a close 169 Chapter Eleven: Dombey and.
... close confinement ( not to say summarily smothered ) before the poi- son is communicable . ( 571 ) Dickens ' use of the disease metaphor here suggests that treatment for this behav- ior should be more in the nature of cure or quarantine ...
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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