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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... finds " Almost as dull as the infernal old jail " ( 786 ) . Soon after , the house collapses , and when the debris is cleared away , searchers find " the dirty heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner " ( 794 ) . If Blandois - Rigaud ...
... finds himself uncomfortably circumscribed . Henry Gowan in this novel , and several charac- ters in Our Mutual Friend , to name just a few examples in Dickens ' fiction , are injured more than assisted by the possession of a small ...
... finds so ridiculous ; that it was I who laughed good - humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet- whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for prosperity , and no eye for anything beyond success . Such ...
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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