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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... mysteries of Dickens's novels , we may feel that we have " ( 78 ) . But the point of the mystery plots may be self - discovery through the disclosure of secrets , not the solution of social problems . Steven Marcus contends that " the ...
... mystery and curiosity in this for evil purposes , it can be equally effective to employ the same devices for good - as in the spinning out of a narrative . It is precisely through the building up of several interlocking mysteries , some ...
... mystery as long as possible and always to have some unresolved plot element in reserve until the very end . Thus , even when the major mystery of Pip's benefactor is revealed , there remain the resolutions of other mysteries recent or ...
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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