论查尔斯狄更斯的小说特点(英文论文)

Introduction

Charles John Huffam Dickens(1812--1870),one of the greatest representative of English critical realism writers. He was born in a navy office worker family, when he was 10 years old his family was move into the prison because of the debts. So,Dickens did much hard work to raise the whole family when he was only 11 years old. He used be a leather shoes' trainee, and then he to be a write member when he was 16 years old, and soon he became a reporter in a newspaper office. In fact Charles did not accepted much high education, but because of his hard learning by himself so he became a learned after many years later and he also got the fame at the same time. In many works of Charles Dickens revealed the idea of criticism, we know that Charles liked to criticize the reality due to his ordeal, the ordeal let he realized the cruel,unconcerned and numb reality,he has the chance to went into the proletariat life and these experiences was his inspirations of his creations.And hard times is one of his critical works about the labour conflicts.

I. Hard Times(synopsis)

Thomas Gradgrind, a citizen of Coketown, a northern industrial city, is a misguided exponent of Utilitarianism, who believes in facts and statistics and brings up his children Louisa and Tom accordingly. He marries Louisa to Josia Bounderby, a manufactrure 30 years older than Luiosa. Luoisa consents partly from the indifference and cynicism engendered by her father's treatment, partly from a desire to help her brother, who is employed by Bounderby. James Harthouse, a young politician without heart or principles, taking advantages of her unhappy life with Bounderby, attempts to seduce her. The better side of her nature is awakened at this experience, and she flees for protection to her father, who in turn is awakened to the folly of his system. He shelters her from Bounderby and the couple is permanently separated. But Tom has robbed the bank of his employer, and although he contrives for a time to throw suspicion on a blameless artisan, Stephen Blackpool, is finally detected and hustled out of the country.

II.The performance of critical realism on Hard Times

The performance of Charles Dickens's critical realism on Hard Times was concentrated expression in the characters, we can analyse these people to comprehend the author's thoughts. The first one is the protagonist,Thomas Gradgrind espouses a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and cold, hard fact. He describes himself as an "eminently practical" man, and he tries to raise his children--Luoisa, Tom, Jane, Adam Smith, and Malthus--to be equally practical by forbidding the development of their imagination and emotions. In Dickens' opinion, Thomas Gradgrind is the representative of the rich and powerful men but indifferent and cruel, this kind of people just believe that everything can judge with money, what did they just money, they had no love and have no spirits to enjoy the life beauty and care about the people who around them. He believes the human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is "ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you what it comes to ." This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade

that, appropriately, deals in hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the industrial revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a number of scientific principles. While the narrator's tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic, Gradgrind undergoes a significant change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator's sympathy. When Louisa confesses that she feels something important missing in her life and that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfected. This intuition is confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby's bank. Faced with these failures of his system, Gradgrind admits," The ground on which i stand has cased to be solid under my feet." His children problem teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler man, ultimately "making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity." The second one is Louisa who is Gradgrind's daughter, confused by her coldhearted upbringing, Louisa feels disconnected from her emotions and alienated from other people. While she vaguely recognizes that her father's system of education has deprived her childhood of all joy, Louisa cannot actively invoke her emotions or connect with others. But she still has the merit, though unemotional, still has the ability to recognize goodness and distinguish between right and wrong, even when it does not fall within the strict rubric of her father;s teachings. Moreover, under Sissy's guidance, Louisa shows great promise in learning to express her feelings. Louisa learns to respond charitably to suffering and to not view suffering simply as a temporary state that is easily overcome by effort, as her father does. We can see that Louisa is the sacrificial lamb of the society, so even thought there are some hot-heart people to help her, she also did not escape from her fate, lonely to live at last. Thomas Gradgrind.Jr--Tom, Gradgrind's eldest son, who is also the typical loser of his father's teaching system, he is the negative character of this novel. At first he was an apprentice at Bounderby's bank, who is genenraly called Tom. Tom reacts to his strict upbringing by becoming a dissipated, hedonistic, hypocritical young man. Although he appreciates his sister's affection, Tom cannot return it entirely--he loves money and gambling even more than he loves Louisa. These vices lead him to rob Bounderby's bank and implicate Stephen as the robbery's prime suspect. And there is another very important role in this novel, Stephen Blackpool. Stephen Blackpool is introduced after

the Gradgrind family and Bounderby, and Blackpool provides a stark contrast to these earlier characters. One of the 'Hands' in Bounderby's factory, Stephen lives a life of drudgery and poverty. In spite of the hardships of his daily toil, Stephen strives to maintain his honesty, integrity, faith, and compassion. He is an impoatant character not only because his poverty and virtue contrast with Bounderby's wealth and self interest, but also because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that illustrates the strained relations between rich and poor. Stephen is the only hand who refuses to join a workers' union. He believes that striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the worker's group. However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him away. Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing way. As Rachael explain Stephen ends up with the "masters against him on one hand, the man against him on the other, he only wantin' to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right." Through Stephen, Dickens suggests that industrialization threatens to compromise both the employee's and employer moral integrity, thereby creating a social muddle to which there is no easy solution. Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides, Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for Tom's crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to Coketown to clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby's bank, Stephen comforts himself by gazing at a particularly bright star that seems to shine on him in his "pain and trouble." This star not only represents the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives, but also the happiness and tranquility that is lacking in his troubled life. Moreover, his ability to find comfort in the star illustrates the importance of imagination, which enables him to escape the cold, hard facts of his miserable existence.

III.About the critical realism

As one kind of literature trend, the critical realism has inherited the traditional realism and developed it. There was one time that it has reached the peak. In 19centry, the critical realism has formed, after the romanticism it has became the main trend in Europe. France was the bornland of critical realism, there are so many great works in

that time, and these works means the achievements of critical realism. And this kind of literature is concluded by the capitalist class literature scope, one particular character of this literature is that it react every field of life and reveal the reality conflicts. And the critical realism writers tried to describe the whole world's conflicts, when these writers reflected the reality, they took more attention to the obscurity of society because most of them were the believers of enlightenment doctrine, but the capitalism serious reality made them despaired, so they fiercely attacked the rotten system and the egoism social atmosphere. They faced the social reality and seek the origin of bad hostility, and that broke the optimism of capitalism. But we knew that the reason why they criticize the society was that they wanted find the economical root of capitalism and most of them were limited, that means they should restricted by themselves, so although they discontented to the situation they still against the proletarian revolution, this verity implied that they could never the way in the dark society, but even if them have the tragedy them still made a big contribution for people to find the method due with the social problems later. And Charles Dickens was one of the group writers. I will illustrate this in the following contents.

IV.Thoughts of Dickens

Influenced by Carlyle, Dickens learned, as did his literary contemporaries, to direct his fiction to a questioning of social priorities and inequalities, to a distrust of institutions, particularly defunct or malfunctioning ones, and to a pressing appeal for action and earnestness. He was prone to take up issues, and to campaign against what he saw as injustice or desuetude, using fiction as his vehicle. Dickens was faithful to the teaching, and to the general theological framework, of Christianity as a moral basis for his thought, his action, above all, for his writing, nevertheless. A critical awareness that there was something deeply wrong with the society in which he lived sharpened the nature of his fiction and gave it its distinct political edge. Dickens' novels are multifarious, digressive and humorous. In an important way, they reflect the nature of Victorian urban society with all its conflicts and disharmonies, its eccentricities and its constrictions, its energy and its extraordinary fertility, both physical and intellectual. But the standard pattern in his novels is the basic conflict between money on the one hand, and love on the other. What this conflict usually

reveals is that the people who have the greatest love for their fellow humans are also the ones who are most hurt by the world of money, simply because money is power. In his novels, the people who possess most money and most power seem incapable of love, whereas the people who are capable of love are very often both poor and powerless. This is a potentially gloomy vision of the world because it suggests that the good and the rich. And yet, this gloomy view is counteracted by Dickens'comic way of dealing with his characters.

V.The early age society of Victorian era(historical background)

The Victorian era was considered to be the peak of English Industrial Revolution and the peak of whole country. In this period, the industries of English has became the most strange country in the world and influenced many countries around the world, everything of English was the most powerful in the world,the country became the most prosperous and look down upon the other countries. At that time many factories seted up and spreaded all over the whole country and many burgeoning capitalist class came to the force. In one hand ,these capital class has made a big contribute to the country's developing, for their trades drove the country's economy and enhanced the relations between the English and the whole world, and strengthen the country power. The Kingdom of Great Britain was known by everyone on the earth. But in the other hand, the gap between rich and poor has enlarged, the rich became richer while the poor became poorer. The minority industry factories owners possess most of the wealth of the country and them control the economical operation of the country. They hired many workers to worked for them, with the deepening of economic reforming ,the factories were seted up more and more, so many farmlands were taken up by the bourgeoises and of curse a lot of people lost their home. And there is one class, that is proletariat, this kind of people was lived in the junk houses and in a low living standards, they have to face the starvation and disease everyday. So, in that situation, the child labour was emerged, this poor children were forced to the work over time and many of them even died. We can say that under the country's prosperous was the blood and tears of the poor people.

VI.Influenced by the literature trend

The Victorian period, as a whole, is the age of the novel in the same sense that the Restoration was an age of drama and the Romantic period an age of poery. The Victorian fiction is first of all characterized by its richness and variety, which is well presented in these great writers: Dickens, the great novelist in the language; Thackeray, a brilliant satirist and realist; Charlotte and Emily Bronte, who wrote the most famous romances in English; George Eliot, whose work marks the highest point of an English realist tradition in which Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Gissing also figure; Meredith, the writer who extended the intellectual range of the novel through innovation and experiment. The greatest of the Victorian novel is not only qualitative a matter of a galaxy of major talent--but also qualitative. For the work of a host of other writers who have been reassessed by feminist critics and biographers, as well as by other scholars. Thematically, Victorian novelists favor stories about middle class life and ordinary domestic experience; the novels are then narrated in a tone of voice that clearly identifies with the ruling social and moral principles of such a society. The novelists are simultaneously constructing and endorsing the middle class values, and in doing so, they, to an extent, and always consciously, are able to stand outside those values and see their own shortcomings. Stylistically, the Victorian novel is generally discussed under a rubric such as "the rise of realism", since the period saw the consolidation of fictional technique in the "mainstream realist novel". The word"realism" in mid-Victorian criticism applies to a variety of literary categories. In terms of subject matter, for example, realism could mean simply the depiction of modern life. But the Victorian period was equally marked by trends, tendencies, and schools that contested the dominance of realism. Among these sub-genres is the social problem novel, in which conflicts between the classes, between master and man, or between male seducer and female victim, are dramatized. In either case, the Victorian historical novelist examines the past in order both to entertain and teach his or her generation. It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that the idea that fiction should embody some kind of moral teaching was seriously challenged by the comparatively amoral novel of ideas, which was generally described as romance of fantasy. This new sub-generally includes science fiction, detective stories, ghost stories, utopian writing, all of which represent the escapist search for other words in

ways which were to become increasingly popular in the twentieth century.

VII.The conclusion

The novel contains a picture of the industrialized England which emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of the Industrialization: the philosophy of utilitarianism. Throughout the novel, the central conflict is located in the opposition between the world of money, affectation and self-interest and the world of love and a nature simplicity. Here Dickens is focusing on the corrupting power of money, and the way in which it can poison both the physical and emotional parts of people's lives. So, here we can know that this novel imply that nineteenth-century England overzealous adoption of industrialization threatens to turn human beings into machines by thwarting the development of their emotions and imaginations. This suggestion comes forth largely through the actions of Gradrind and his follower, Bounderby: as the former educates the young children of his family and his school in the ways of fact, the latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited for his own self-interest. The narrator draw a parallel between the factory Hands and the Gradgrind children--both lead monotonous, uniform existences, untouched by pleasure. Consequently, their fantasies and feelings are dulled, and they become almost mechanical themselves.

Bibliography

1、Charles Dickens 外语教学与研究出版社，英国Sutton出版公司

2、Hard Times 袁鑫译，天津科技翻译出版公司

3、A Brief Introduction to English Literature，左金梅，张德玉编著，中国海洋大学出版社

4、《英美文学概述及作品选读》刘洊波高等教育出版社

5、www,baidu,com

6、wwwsohu,com