Dickens
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IdleRich
IdleRich
I never had Great Expectations for Dickens but Our Mutual Friend - you know, Oliver! - told me to try the musical instead and that was fine.
That’s a half arsed attempt at an Arthur Scargill comb over , but with a flamboyant, carefree bouffant thing going on. If Scargill had weaponized his hair in this manner he could’ve appealed to the ruling classes more.....Everyone seems to be either reading him or planning to atm, so might as well have a thread. Unbelievably bad hair.
jenks
thread death
I’m on a re-read of Copperfield, I’ve read them all over the years and Great Expectations is amongst the best novels I’ve ever read. I think he suffers from a great deal of projection from people who haven’t read him or indistinctly remember him. Unlike most Vic writers he knows poverty from the inside and is unsentimental about it.
I think he’s also excellent on platonic male friendship and the importance of those bonds which are not romantic. In fact I would suggest he’s got quite a jaundiced view of love.
I think he’s also excellent on platonic male friendship and the importance of those bonds which are not romantic. In fact I would suggest he’s got quite a jaundiced view of love.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Started reading DC last night. I like it so far. Although it isn't as cartoonish and entertaining as Hard Times, it's very charming, and pointedly sensitive to the capacious capacity children have for imagining and observing things. I can see straightaway why Tolstoy loved it (apparently claiming it was the greatest novel ever written).
luka
Well-known member
"He is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know that I am a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious man. And he he takes," said my mother, with the tears which were engendered in her sensitive nature, stealing down her face, "he takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts"
luka
Well-known member
"I was sorry, David, I remarked," said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his eyes stiffly towards me, "to observe that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. We must endeavour sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you."
"I beg your pardon sir," I faltered. "I have never meant to be sullen since I came back."
"Don't take refuge in a lie' sir!" he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. "You have withdrawn yourself in your own sullenness to your own room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring odedience here. You know me David, I will have it done."
"I beg your pardon sir," I faltered. "I have never meant to be sullen since I came back."
"Don't take refuge in a lie' sir!" he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. "You have withdrawn yourself in your own sullenness to your own room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring odedience here. You know me David, I will have it done."
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
The innocence of childhood (vs. the tyranny of adults) seems to be a Romantic concept, starting with or heralded by Rousseau.
So says this article, at least: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/perceptions-of-childhood
Dickens writes so well about being a child, and I think it's in part because he didn't lose that sense of the brutality, unfairness and dullness both of the way adults behave towards children and of the adult world (which unfortunately we all end up belonging to) itself.
Perhaps this theme emerging in English literature is connected to the industrial revolution - which from some points of view was a loss of innocence on a society-wide scale.
Very early on in DC the narrator talks about how children observe more than adults, a faculty that Dickens obviously felt that he himself had retained:
"... I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood."
So says this article, at least: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/perceptions-of-childhood
Dickens writes so well about being a child, and I think it's in part because he didn't lose that sense of the brutality, unfairness and dullness both of the way adults behave towards children and of the adult world (which unfortunately we all end up belonging to) itself.
Perhaps this theme emerging in English literature is connected to the industrial revolution - which from some points of view was a loss of innocence on a society-wide scale.
Very early on in DC the narrator talks about how children observe more than adults, a faculty that Dickens obviously felt that he himself had retained:
"... I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood."
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Was the English school system particularly brutal?
Obviously everyone knows the classic English fetish is spanking.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Is there not a brutality in the imposition of discipline?
Even if it's not physical flogging, there's a sense of a spirit being crushed and contorted.
"Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness."
Even if it's not physical flogging, there's a sense of a spirit being crushed and contorted.
"Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness."
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Perhaps brutality is too violent/savage a word, but I do think Dickens recognises the casual cruelty with which children are treated.
Basing this off what I've read of DC and Great Expectations...
I see what you're saying, though. It's not violence so much as clapping your spirit in irons.
Basing this off what I've read of DC and Great Expectations...
I see what you're saying, though. It's not violence so much as clapping your spirit in irons.