three reflections on oliver twist《霧都孤兒》三映像分析

1、<p>　　Three Reflections on Oliver Twist</p><p><b>　　《霧都孤兒》三映像</b></p><p>　　Abstract: Oliver Twist, as a great novel of English critical realism, is a powerful exposure of the ca

2、pitalism and it reveals deeply about the situation of society in the 1830s. In the novel, the descriptions of the social background and the characters have their own meanings and connotations. An analysis of the Poor Law

3、 and the ineffectiveness of charitable institutions associated with the social situation of that time and the incorruptibility of goodness on the protagonist are made in this pap</p><p>　　Key Words: Oliver T

4、wist；Charles Dickens；The Poor Law; goodness; anti-Semitism</p><p>　　摘 要: 《霧都孤兒》是一部偉大的英國(guó)現(xiàn)實(shí)主義作品，它有力地揭示了英國(guó)十九世紀(jì)三十年代的社會(huì)現(xiàn)狀。小說中，不論是對(duì)時(shí)代背景的選材還是個(gè)中人物形象的描寫都賦予了其自身的意義和內(nèi)涵，它不但體現(xiàn)了與當(dāng)時(shí)社會(huì)現(xiàn)狀相聯(lián)系的貧民法和低工作效率的慈善機(jī)構(gòu)的缺陷，而且還對(duì)主人公的人性善良做了

5、大量描寫。本文將對(duì)這兩方面及作者在塑造 “費(fèi)金”這一人物形象時(shí)所體現(xiàn)出來的自身的反猶主義傾向做出分析，以期達(dá)到對(duì)作品以及其背景有一個(gè)更深層次的了解與掌握。</p><p>　　關(guān)鍵詞: 《霧都孤兒》；查爾斯?狄更斯；貧民法；善良；反猶主義</p><p><b>　　Contents</b></p><p>　　1.The author, th

6、e story and the social background........................................................1</p><p>　　1.1Main content of the story...............................................................................

7、.........1</p><p>　　1.2Charles Dickens—the author of Oliver Twist.........................................................2</p><p>　　1.3The social background of the 1830’s in England............

8、........................................3</p><p>　　2. Three reflections on Oliver Twist...............................................................................4</p><p>　　2.1The ineffectiv

9、eness of charitable institutions and the Poor Law............................4</p><p>　　2.2The incorruptibility of goodness.............................................................................6</p

10、><p>　　2.3The author’s anti-Semitism.....................................................................................7</p><p>　　3.Conclusion.....................................................

11、.............................................................8</p><p>　　Bibliography...................................................................................................................9</p&

12、gt;<p>　　Acknowledgement.......................................................................................................10</p><p>　　The author, the story and its social background</p>&l

13、t;p>　　Charles Dickens is a famous English writer as we know and his novels are popular with a lot of readers. His massive work, Oliver Twist, is one of his masterpieces. It is a story about an orphan, but it is not a

14、simple novel at all. The long piece of fiction reveals deeply the English society in the 1830s. Reading the novel, we cannot only have an enjoyment of reading, but an enjoyment of the spirit. On the surface, the novel is

15、 not a very difficult one, but the great author has the ability to co</p><p>　　1.1 Main content of the story</p><p>　　Oliver Twist was born in the lying-in room of a parochial workhouse about 75

16、 miles north of London. His mother’s name was unknown. She had been found unconscious on the roadside, exhausted by a long journey on foot, and she died leaving as the only token of her child’s identity a locket and a ri

17、ng. But the old woman, Sally, a pauper present at her death, stole these. Oliver spent his first nine years in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. Bumble,</p><

18、p>　　In a London urban, Oliver, starved and exhausted, met Jack Dawkins, sharp-witted slum pickpocket, who was known as Artful Dodger, offered Oliver lodgings in the city, and Oliver soon found himself in the midst of

19、a gang of thieves. The head of the gang was an old Jew, Fagin, and the other chief members were the burglar, Bill Sikes and his mistress Nancy, also the Artful Dodger. Then every effort was made to convert Oliver into a

20、thief. On his first mission he was caught and taken to the police s</p><p>　　Unfortunately, Oliver was chosen to participate. He and Bill Sikes, with another housebreaker, went on the burgling expedition, in

21、 course of which he received gun-shot wound, and came into the hands of Mrs. Maylie and her protege Rose, by whom he was treated kindly. And Oliver spent an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a my

22、sterious man named Monks who had somehow a special interest in keeping Oliver in the gang were set on recapturing Oliver. When the Maylies came to Lon</p><p>　　Rose, at last married Mrs. Maylie’s son, Harry

23、Maylie. Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver and lived with the Maylies in the countryside. Monks died in prison. Oliver’s years of hardship and unhappiness were at an end.</p><p>　　1.2 Charles Dickens—the author of

24、Oliver Twist</p><p>　　Charles Dickens, regarded as the most popular writer of his day, was the model writer of the Victorian time, for his works combined realistic and social criticism with comedy and romant

25、ic sentiment. That is to say, “the greatest of all English novelists is Charles Dickens. His range of imagination, his characterization, his descriptive powers, his commentary on life and society, his humor and satire, a

26、nd his narrative skill, set him among the best story-sellers in the world.” (Baverly Ann Chin，D</p><p>　　At this time Dickens wrote a number of little sketches of “cockney characters”. He signed them “Boz”,

27、which was his nickname for his young brother. His first book, Sketches by Boz appeared in 1836, earned him recognition as a writer. His first long novel, Pickwick Papers, which was published in 1837, was a novel with the

28、 life of contemporary English society. Then came to the Oliver Twist, which told the story of an orphan boy, and his adventures provided a description of the lower depths of Lond</p><p>　　The social backgrou

29、nd of the 1830’s in England</p><p>　　Since the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the class structure in English society had undergone radical changes. The industrial capitalists b

30、egan to play a more important role and vied for political power with the old aristocracy. Due to the support of the people, this struggle for power ended in the victory of the bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. With the d

31、evelopment of capitalism, there arose a powerful working class, though the conflict between labor and capital </p><p>　　Now England became a typical capitalism country. Having consolidated its position at ho

32、me, the British bourgeoisie strengthened its policy of colonial expansion in all parts of the world, successively competing for markets with other powerful countries of the world. So England was experiencing the aggravat

33、ion of the struggle between the workers and the capitalists both at home and abroad. In spite of the parliamentary reform in 1832, the living conditions of the workers did not grow better but b</p><p>　　Duri

34、ng the years after 1832, the major contradiction in the political area became more definitely between labor and capitalist. The years between 1832and the early 50’s saw an important series of events known as the Chartist

35、 Movement, which was as Lenin said, “the first broad, really mass, politically formed, proletarian revolutionary movement.” (Wu Weiren 1998:151) And it appeared first in London and then spread to the passage of the new P

36、oor Law of 1834, the system of workhouses was applied to</p><p>　　In order to reflect the situation of that era, the critical realists described with much vividness and great artistic skill the chief traits

37、of the English society and criticized the capitalism from a democratic viewpoint. The greatest English realist of the time was Charles Dickens. With striking force and truthfulness, he created pictures of bourgeois civil

38、ization, describing the misery and sufferings of the common people.</p><p>　　2. Three reflections on Oliver Twist</p><p>　　2.1 The ineffectiveness of charitable institutions and The Poor Law<

39、/p><p>　　Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the 19th century English poor laws and it was a distorted manifestation of the Victorian middle class’s emphasis on the virtues of hard work. As G

40、uo Qunying says, “It is a powerful exposure of the bourgeois society and it shows the extreme brutality and corruption of the oppressors and their agents under the mask of philanthropy. (2001:193) England in the 1830s wa

41、s rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural, rural economy to an</p><p>　　But the resulting moral value attached to work, along with the middle class’s insecurity about its own social legitima

42、cy, led English society to subject the poor to hatred and cruelty. Many members of the middle class were anxious to be differentiated from the lower classes, and one way to do so was to stigmatize the lower classes as la

43、zy good-for-nothings. The middle class’s value system transformed earned wealth into a sign of moral virtue. Victorian society interpreted economic success as a s</p><p>　　The philosophy was that the miserab

44、le conditions would prevent able-bodied paupers from being lazy and idle bums. In the eyes of middle-class English society, those who could not support themselves were considered immoral and evil. Therefore, such individ

45、uals should enjoy no comforts or luxuries in their reliance on public assistance. In order to create the misery needed to deter immoral idleness, families were split apart upon entering the workhouse. Husbands were permi

46、tted no contact with thei</p><p>　　In short, the State undertook to become the surrogate parents of workhouse children, whether or not they were orphans. Moreover, meals served to workhouse residents were de

47、liberately inadequate, so as to encourage the residents to find work to support themselves. The workhouse was supposed to demonstrate the virtue of gainful employment to the poor. In order to reserve public assistance, t

48、hey had to pay in suffering and misery. And Dickens meant to demonstrate this incongruity through the figure</p><p>　　In England in the 1830s, the poor truly had no voice, political or economic. In Oliver Tw

49、ist, Dickens presents the everyday existence of the lowest menders of English society. He goes far belong the experience of the workhouse, extending his depiction of poverty to London’s squalid streets, dark alehouses, a

50、nd thieves’ dens. He gives voice to those who had no voice, establishing a link between politics and literature with his social commentary. So much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenge</p><p>　　2.2 Th

51、e incorruptibility of goodness</p><p>　　On the surface, Dickens appears to be using Oliver Twist to criticize the Victorian idea that the poor were naturally destined for live of degradation and desperation.

52、 Dickens satirizes characters that voice an opinion, such as Mr. Bumble, Mr. Grimwig, and Mrs. Sowerberry. The latter, for instance, declares that children like Oliver “are born to be murderers and robbers from their cra

53、dle”. (Charles Dickens 1963:35). In fact, Oliver had nine years of hard life in the charitable institution and th</p><p>　　Finally, while the character of Monks explicitly violates the connection of vice wit

54、h poverty, he represents some support for the argument that moral shortcomings are the product of nature, not nurture. Mr. Brownlow tells monks that, “You …from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s h

55、eart, and …all evil passions, vice, and profligacy festered (in you).” (Charles Dickens 1963:305)</p><p>　　It seems, then, that vice and virtue may be hereditary traits, present in an individual from his cra

56、dle.</p><p>　　2.3 The author’s anti-Semitism</p><p>　　Like those of several of Dickens’s contemporaries, some of his works, in today’s context are perceived as being combined with anti-Semitism.

57、 For example, the character Fagin in Oliver Twist is depicted as a stereotypical Jew, with passages describing his hooked nose and greedy eyes. Fagin, a Jew in Dickens’s first social fiction, is a person described like a

58、n anti-Socialist and hurts the children physically and mentally. There is no doubt about that the author decides to mould the figure and how</p><p>　　In 1863, 25 years after Oliver Twist was published, a wom

59、an called Mrs. Davis wrote a letter to Dickens to express her feeling about the character of Fagin. She believed that Fagin was a person coming of the racial prejudice, and it was a symbol of another discrimination to th

60、e Jewry. The response of Dickens was revealing: “Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true of the time to which the story refers that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew… and seco

61、ndl</p><p>　　Generally, in Dickens’s opinion, people inherited some contemptible characteristics to some degree; their appearance and nature are unchangeable, which was inevitable biological result because o

62、f heredity. Besides, Dickens thought that Fagin was called “Jew” was reasonable: firstly, Fagin was a Jew; secondly, using Fagin to replace the attribute of the Jewry was appropriate, which could match with his race.<

63、/p><p>　　At last, we can make a statement, which is we can see clearly that it is not accidental that Dickens chooses Fagin as a spokesman who persecutes children and ruin the social moral, and that the author

64、was influenced by the biased tradition to the Jewry in the European history. As we know, Shakespeare, the greatest writer in English literature, described a self, greedy and venomous Jew in one of his comedies—The Mercha

65、nt of Venice. So we have to say that Dickens’s so-called writing facts could no</p><p>　　3. Conclusion </p><p>　　At last, I want to make some conclusions about the three reflections in the novel

66、. Firstly, though Oliver is the leading character in Oliver Twist, he is also one of the massive poor people’s embodiments in English society in the 1830s. In the novel, The Poor Low that exists in the real life has been

67、 showed, and the ineffectiveness of charitable institutions is a good example. Secondly, from Oliver Twist, we also feel that Oliver is a poor orphan, but he is a character with goodness that we cann</p><p>

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72、Anthology of English Literature [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1988: 146-186. </p><p>　　[7] 查爾斯?狄更斯. 霧都孤兒 [M]. 龍冰. 北京: 北京燕山出版社, 1995.</p><p>　　[8] 郭群英. 英國(guó)文學(xué)新編（上）[M

73、]. 北京：外語教學(xué)與研究出版社, 2001: 189-193.</p><p>　　[9] 喬國(guó)強(qiáng). 從《霧都孤兒》看狄更斯的反猶主義傾向 [J]. 外國(guó)文學(xué)研究, 2004,106(2):63-67.</p><p>　　[10] 石璞. 歐美文學(xué)史（上）[M]. 成都: 四川人民出版社，1980: 189.</p><p>　　[11] 王思敏等. 外國(guó)文學(xué)