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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... observes that " The severity of God , awful as it is , has a side of love . " To wound here , he says , may be to spare forever . The sinner is any how the object of God's special care , in that He adapts His severe chastening to his ...
... observes a disharmony . “ We may not have , as we read Dickens , solved the ' puzzles ' of pov- erty and disease and crime and of lumbering institutions such as the Court of Chancery , but as we solve the plot mysteries of Dickens's ...
... observes . “ We survive even our remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit ; but I doubt if we ever for- give slights of this nature put upon us , or forget circumstances in which our self- love had been made to suffer " ( 16 ...
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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