Contents introduction The role of critical realism in english literature of 19 century

"Dombey and Son" (1848). Dickens enjoyed life, but he hated the social system into which he had been born. As he grew older , his mood became darker. The criticism of his age became bitterer. The main subject of his later novels is money and the things that go with money — power, position and so on. In* "Dombey and Son" the symbol of money-power is Mr. Dombey himself, to whose pride of position as the British merchant everything must be sacrificed — affection, wife, children and love. He thinks he can buy everything, even an aristocratic young woman for his second wife. "The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre." Yet Mr. Dombey is near-sighted. He does not see this system is on the decline. The merchant class is losing power. The future belongs to another type of man of property. Mr. Dombey goes bankrupt: he is punished for his pride. Bankruptcy causes a great change in him. He becomes good.
Dickens fails to remain realistic to the end. Mr. Dombey — a loving grandfather does not seem a character true to life. It is Dickens's petty bourgeois sentimentality that finds expression in the happy endings of almost all of his novels. He criticises capi­talist society from the point of view of middle-class humanism, he wants to improve the world by means of reforms. The novelist does not solve the social problems though he introduces them mas­terfully.
"Oliver Twist" (1838) is Dickens's first social novel. It pic­tures the life of the workhouses, the London slums, poverty and crime there.
The hero of the novel is Oliver Twist, a miserable, poor and unhappy child. His mother dies in childbirth. The boy grows up in a workhouse where eight of every ten children. His life is not any better when he is taken as an ap­prentice by a coffin-maker. Oliver is to go in front of funeral processions as he has pretty and sad looks. He cannot bear this life. One morning the unhappy child runs away. On his way to London he meets the "Artful Dodger", a boy with little, sharp and ugly eyes. He gives Oliver a good meal and promises to take him to a good gentleman who will give him shelter and food. The "Dodger leads him to a room, black with age and dirt. There are four boys and an old dirty Jew sitting round the table. They are glad to see Oliver. The poor child does not know they are thieves and the Jew, Old Fagin, their master and teacher. When he is taught to steal he thinks it is a game. Once the boys take Oliver out "to work". They rob Mr. Brownlow of his hand­kerchief. Oliver is only watching, but he is caught and beaten. Mr. Brownlow takes the poor boy home with him, because his face reminds him of some other familiar face. One day Oliver is sent to a bookseller with some books and a five-pound note. The boy does not return, he is kidnapped by a girl from Fagin's gang, Nancy. Oliver understands the good old gentleman has now reason a clever, dishonest man to believe that Oliver is dishonest and a thief. He begs Fagin to let him go, but in vain.
Bill Sikes, a professional burglar, plans to rob Mrs. Maylie's house. He makes Oliver open the door for him as he is so small that he can get through the kitchen window. Oliver alarms the house and is wounded. When Mrs. Maylie and her niece .Rose find the boy, he tells them his sad story. He wants to apologize to Mr, Brownlow but he has already left England. After a happy spell at Mrs. Maylie's Oliver is frightened by Fagin and a stranger, Monks. Nancy tells Rose that Monks has asked Fagin to make Oliver a thief. Nancy's "treachery" becomes known to Bill Sikes, and he kills her. The police are after him, and the murderer kills himself while trying to escape. Fagin's gang are arrested. Fagin is sentenced to death.
The real name of Monks is Edward Leeford. Oliver is his younger half-brother, whom he has deprived of. his fortune and whose life he wants to ruin. Their father's will was that the younger brother would get half of his property only in case he was an honest man. Otherwise all the money would belong to Edward. That's why Edward wanted to make Oliver a thief. Now he is discovered. He leaves England and dies in America. Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow, his father's former friend.
Through Oliver's character Dickens wanted to show that people could not be spoiled if they were born good and honest. There would be no misery, no crimes and no poverty if all Brownlows adopted all Olivers. Dickens hoped to change the world by means of charity.
"I, lady!" replied the girl. "I am the infamous creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement."
"What dreadful things are these!" said Rose, involuntarily fal­ling from her strange companion.
"Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady," cried the girl, "that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot¹ and drunkenness, and — and — something worse than all — as I have been from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed."[2]
"I pity you!" said Rose, in a broken voice. "It wrings my heart to hear you!"
"Heaven bless you for your goodness!" rejoined the girl. "If you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?".
"I never heard the name," said Rose.
"Then he goes by -some other amongst us," rejoined the girl, "which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I — suspecting this man — listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that Monks — the man I asked you about, you know — " "Yes," said Rose, "I understand."
"—That Monks," pursued¹ the girl, "had seen him accidentally with tw.o of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watchmg for, though I couldn't make out why. A bargain was struck² with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own."
"For what purpose?" asked Rose.
"He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of finding out," said the girl; "and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night." "And what occurred then?"
"I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went up stairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow should not betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were these: 'So the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag³ that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin/ They laughed, and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil's money safely now, he'd rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father's will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hauling⁴ him up for some capital felony⁵ which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides."
"The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips," replied the
girl, "Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but
strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the
boy's life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but,
as he couldn't, he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every turn
in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he.might
harm him yet." _m
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
(1811 — 1863)
The second greatest novelist whom the English-speaking world recognised as a man of genius in the XIX century was W. M. Thackeray, Dickens and Thackeray were such near contemporaries that their work was often compared, but in'education and social status they were widely separated.
W. M. Thackeray was born in the family of an English civil servant in India. When his father died the boy, aged five, was sent to England where he attended the famous Charterhouse School. Thackeray was disgusted with the educational system there, with the corporal punishment and cramming. He was also disappointed in Cambridge University and left it without taking a degree.
Thackeray began writing satirical verses and drawing cari­catures at school. At Cambridge he edited a students' leaflet Snob which criticised the University. His favourite writers were D. Defoe, J. Swift and H. Fielding. He travelled much, visited Italy, France and Germany and studied the life and customs of these countries. He wrote satirical and humorous stories and poems which he sent to London magazines. He himself often illustrated his works as he had to earn his own living: he lost his fortune at the age of twenty-two.
The first book which attracted attention was "The Book of Snobs" (1847), followed by his novels "Vanity Fair" (1847—1848), "Pendennis" (1850), "The History of Henry Esmond" (1852), "The Newcomes" (1853—1855), "The Virgi­nians" (1857—-1859). Like Dickens Thackeray also delivered two courses of lectures in London and in America. He overworked himself and died suddenly at the age of fifty-two.
W. M. Thackeray is known as an essayist and a novelist. His essays "The English Humorists" and "The Four Georges" are remarkable for their exquisite style, gentle humour and keen literary criticism,