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Charles Dickens George ORWELL’s essay from: Inside the Whale
Ms I. Marinaro George ORWELL’s Charles Dickens essay from: Inside the Whale (Secker & Warburg, London 1939)
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why? Dickens is a theft stolen by Marxists and by Catholics.
and above all by Conservatives why? Ms I. Marinaro
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because of: his familiarity: - any English has grown up with him
Ms I. Marinaro because of: his familiarity: - any English has grown up with him beyond any aesthetic judgement nobody can reject what belongs to our childhood.
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In the end Dickens becomes HE IS STILL HERE… “LIKE THE NELSON COLUMN”
Ms I. Marinaro In the end Dickens becomes an institution We may not approve him BUT HE IS STILL HERE… “LIKE THE NELSON COLUMN”
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How can Dickens attack the British society and be loved all the same?
That’s something “unreal”! To understand that, we have to consider what Dickens was not: Ms I. Marinaro
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a) He was not a PROLETARIAN WRITER
Ms I. Marinaro a) He was not a PROLETARIAN WRITER never dealt with the real English proletariat; all action takes place in the middle-class and surroundings. b) He was not a REVOLUTIONARY WRITER as given such a type of society, certain evils are inevitable.
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The central secret of his success?
Ms I. Marinaro The central secret of his success? his limitations his generosity of mind He expressed in a comic way the form of the native decency of the common man.
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Dickens’s judgement on his society is
Ms I. Marinaro Dickens’s judgement on his society is MORAL that is why he is not convinced a subverted society would be better he is not willing to subvert the social order his judgement is never political
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What about his MORALITY?
Ms I. Marinaro What about his MORALITY? A sort of Bible-Christian one. He backs for: - the oppressed - the underdogs No matter their side. Even for the aristocrats (hated!) if somehow persecuted.
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If all people behaved decently, the whole world would be better.
Ms I. Marinaro He seems to say capitalists ought to be “more human” and not that workmen should rebel against them!!! His central message? The following common-place: If all people behaved decently, the whole world would be better.
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Can he see a universal remedy?
YES, HE CAN. The single person’s goodness Ms I. Marinaro
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Dickens eventually wishes a change
in human psyche, not in the social structure. For him it is utterly useless to change the institutions if there is not a “change of hearts”. But ….. …this is the usual pretext of those people who do not want to change anything. Ms I. Marinaro
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? However Dickens understood something the same Marx undervalued!!!
Ms I. Marinaro However Dickens understood something the same Marx undervalued!!! ? We may overturn the system, but there will always be some other tyrant ready to come if the new system has not changed the human nature.
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He never faces work: we are never told about
Dickens’s themes: REVENGE universal ones SELFISHNESS AMBITION LOVE He never faces work: we are never told about his characters’ precise working activity Ms I. Marinaro
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never pictured as active members of the society
His characters: never pictured as active members of the society always in their private life. static, no evolution IF they act, melodrama starts intrigues, coincidences, murders, lost brothers, hidden wills… ALL FULL OF USELESS DETAILS. Ms I. Marinaro
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So, we remember Dickens’s details more than dynamic scenes.
Absolute meaningless details, with no function for the plot. Ms I. Marinaro
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What is the final goal of all Dickens’s characters?
to make money to marry the heroine to right themselves to live without any concern to be good. Eventually to live in a sort or static idleness. Ms I. Marinaro
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They lack of poetry, tragedy, life, sex.
lots of realistic details Ms I. Marinaro His characters are : “types”, not real people They lack of poetry, tragedy, life, sex. They do love staying at home without anything to do. Everything is protected, quiet and above all domestic.
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Why can’t we forget his characters?
Just because they are unreal. They live in a world of unnecessary details, in a rococo atmosphere. Like a wedding-cake that you may like... … or not. Ms I. Marinaro
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His novels lack of unity.
Doesn’t matter: in Dickens the best part is the fragment, not the whole. Ms I. Marinaro
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Differences between Dickens’s characters and Tolstoy’s ones
Ms I. Marinaro DICKENS: static, fixed, already perfect not intelligible outside the English-speaking culture most likely to impress working/middle class readers TOLSTOY: evolve cross frontiers complex, most likely to impress upper class / learned intellectuals Luckily nobody is forced to choose between a “rose and a sausage”.
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C O N C L U S I O N S: In spite of all that, Orwell pictures him as a man about forty, laughing with a slight anger , without triumph or malignity, as a man always in fight in the open, never frightned and generously angry: a “XIX century liberal”, a sort of “free intelligence”, hated by all those “smelly little orthodoxies that are now contending for our souls.” Ms I. Marinaro
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