Download or read book Dombey and Son written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1848 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Dombey is a cold, unbending, pompous merchant, and a widower with two children - Paul and Florence. His chief ambition is to perpetuate the firm-name. He dreams of passing his business on to his son. Dombey dotes on his son, and neglects and mistreats his daughter.The "son" in the title of the book is incapable of ever joining the firm. A sickly and odd child, Paul dies at the age of six. Dombey pours his resentment and anger out on his daughter, whom he pushes away despite her efforts to earn her father's love.Eventually Dombey remarries, after literally acquiring his new wife from her father in a commercial transaction. Dombey is as bad a husband as he is a father and his marriage is loveless. His new bride hates Dombey and eventually runs off with Canker, his business manager. Dombey characteristically blames Florence for this reversal, and strikes her, causing Florence to run away as well.Abandoned by everyone, Dombey loses his business and goes half insane, living in his decaying house. Dombey is eventually reconciled to his daughter, who always a doormat forgives her father........

Download or read book A Tale of Two Capitalisms written by Supritha Rajan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No questions are more pressing today than the ethical dimensions of global capitalism in relation to an unevenly secularized modernity. A Tale of Two Capitalisms offers a timely response to these questions by reexamining the intellectual history of capitalist economics during the nineteenth century. Rajan’s ambitious book traces the neglected relationships between nineteenth-century political economy, anthropology, and literature in order to demonstrate how these discourses buttress a dominant narrative of self-interested capitalism that obscures a submerged narrative within political economy. This submerged narrative discloses political economy’s role in burgeoning theories of religion, as well as its underlying ethos of reciprocity, communality, and just distribution. Drawing on an impressive range of literary, anthropological, and economic writings from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, Rajan offers an inventive, interdisciplinary account of why this second narrative of capitalism has so long escaped our notice. The book presents an unprecedented genealogy of key anthropological and economic concepts, demonstrating how notions of sacrifice, the sacred, ritual, totemism, and magic remained conceptually intertwined with capitalist theories of value and exchange in both sociological and literary discourses. Rajan supplies an original framework for discussing the ethical ideals that continue to inform contemporary global capitalism and its fraught relationship to the secular. Its revisionary argument brings new insight into the history of capitalist thought and modernity that will engage scholars across a variety of disciplines.

Download or read book Heroic Disobedience The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel 1747 1880 written by Leah Grisham and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880' shows the ways in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels used what the author terms the forced marriage plot - a plot arc in which a greedy father tries to force his daughter into a marriage she does not want but that would be financially expedient to himself - to explore capitalism’s detrimental impacts on women’s right to autonomy. As capitalist economic practices replaced mercantilism, a woman’s value was seen primarily in the economic sense. That is, men came to recognize that women – especially young, marriageable women – could be used as objects of exchange between men. Recognizing this phenomenon, the novelists considered in 'Heroic Disobedience' – Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Stone, and Anthony Trollope – depict the very specific ways in which women were raised to become willing pawns in this system. Religious discourse, conduct guides, marriage and property laws, wages, lack of meaningful education, and inheritance practices combined to leave women with no other options besides dependence on their patriarchs. Importantly, authors who use the forced marriage plot go beyond exposing women’s subjugation by creating – and celebrating – heroically disobedient heroines who believe, above all else, that they have the right to determine their own futures: futures in which they are autonomous agents, not subjected objects.

Download or read book Charles Dickens and the Victorian Child written by Amberyl Malkovich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ideas of children and childhood, and the construct of the ‘ideal’ Victorian child, that developed rapidly over the Victorian era along with literacy and reading material for the emerging mass reading public. Children’s Literature was one of the developing areas for publishers and readers alike, yet this did not stop the reading public from bringing home works not expressly intended for children and reading to their family. Within the idealized middle class family circle, authors such as Charles Dickens were read and appreciated by members of all ages. By examining some of Dickens’s works that contain the imperfect child, and placing them alongside works by Kingsley, MacDonald, Stretton, Rossetti, and Nesbit, Malkovich considers the construction, romanticization, and socialization of the Victorian child within work read by and for children during the Victorian Era and early Edwardian period. These authors use elements of religion, death, irony, fairy worlds, gender, and class to illustrate the need for the ideal child and yet the impossibility of such a construct. Malkovich contends that the ‘imperfect’ child more readily reflects reality, whereas the ‘ideal’ child reflects an unattainable fantasy and while debates rage over how to define children’s literature, such children, though somewhat changed, can still be found in the most popular of literatures read by children contemporarily.

Download or read book Social Dreaming written by Elaine Ostry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dickens was known for his incredible imagination and fiery social protest. In Social Dreaming , Elaine Ostry examines how these two qualities are linked through Dickens's use of the fairy tale, a genre that infuses his work. To many Victorians, the fairy tale was not childish: it promoted the imagination and fancy in a materialistic, utilitarian world. It was a way of criticizing society so that everyone could understand. Like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, Dickens used the fairy tale to promote his ideology. In this first book length study of Dickens's use of the fairy tale as a social tool, Elaine Ostry applies exciting new criticism by Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar, among others, that examines the fairy tale in a socio-historical light to Dickens's major works but also his periodicals-the most popular middle-class publications in Victorian times.

Download or read book Critical Childhood Studies and the Practice of Interdisciplinarity written by Joanne Faulkner and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes different figurations of childhood in contemporary culture and politics with a particular focus on interdisciplinary methodologies of critical childhood studies. It argues that while the figure of the child has been traditionally located at the peripheries of academic disciplines, perhaps most notably in history, sociology and literature, the proposed critical discussions of the ideological, symbolic and affective roles that children play in contemporary societies suggest that they are often the locus of larger societal crises, collective psychic tensions, and unspoken prohibitions and taboos. As such, this book brings into focus the prejudices against childhood embedded in our standard approaches to organizing knowledge, and asks: is there a natural disciplinary home for the study of childhood? Or is this field fundamentally interdisciplinary, peripheral or problematic to notions of disciplinary identity? In this respect, does childhood force innovation in thinking about disciplinarity? For instance, how does the analysis of childhood affect how we think about methodology? What role do understandings of childhood play in delimiting how we conceive of our society, our future, and ourselves? How does thinking about childhood affect how we think about culture, history, and politics? This book brings together researchers working broadly in critical child studies, but from various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (including philosophy, literary studies, sociology, cultural studies and history), in order to stage a conversation between these diverse perspectives on the disciplinary or (interdisciplinary) character of ‘the child’ as an object of research. Such conversation builds on the assumption that childhood, far from being marginal, is a topic that is hidden in plain sight. That is to say, while the child is always a presence in culture, history, literature and philosophy—and is often even a highly charged figure within those fields—its operation and effects are rarely theoretically scrutinized, but rather are more likely drawn upon, surreptitiously, for another purpose.

Download or read book Ten Girls from Dickens written by Kate Dickinson Sweetser and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary critic Kate Dickinson Sweetser offers this book on ten of the female characters of the books of the renowned author Charles Dickens. Among them will be found several of the most popular of the creations of Dickens, notably, The Marchioness, Little Nell, Jenny Wren, and Florence Dombey, and it is hoped that in this presentation as simple stories of girlhood, their classic form and beauty may arouse in young readers a new interest in the novels from which they are taken. It is a companion book to her other work, "Ten Boys from Dickens."

Download or read book Dickens His Parables and His Reader written by Linda M. Lewis and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Dickens once commented that in each of his Christmas stories there is “an express text preached on . . . always taken from the lips of Christ.” This preaching, Linda M. Lewis contends, does not end with his Christmas stories but extends throughout the body of his work. In Dickens, His Parables, and His Reader, Lewis examines parable and allegory in nine of Dickens’s novels as an entry into understanding the complexities of the relationship between Dickens and his reader. Through the combination of rhetorical analysis of religious allegory and cohesive study of various New Testament parables upon which Dickens based the themes of his novels, Lewis provides new interpretations of the allegory in his novels while illuminating Dickens’s religious beliefs. Specifically, she alleges that Dickens saw himself as valued friend and moral teacher to lead his “dear reader” to religious truth. Dickens’s personal gospel was that behavior is far more important than strict allegiance to any set of beliefs, and it is upon this foundation that we see allegory activated in Dickens’s characters. Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop exemplify the Victorian “cult of childhood” and blend two allegorical texts: Jesus’s Good Samaritan parable and John Bunyan’s ThePilgrim’s Progress. In Dombey and Son,Dickens chooses Jesus’s parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders. In the autobiographical David Copperfield, Dickens engages his reader through an Old Testament myth and a New Testament parable: the expulsion from Eden and the Prodigal Son, respectively. Led by his belief in and desire to preach his social gospel and broad church Christianity, Dickens had no hesitation in manipulating biblical stories and sermons to suit his purposes. Bleak House is Dickens’s apocalyptic parable about the Day of Judgment, while Little Dorrit echoes the line “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” from the Lord’s Prayer, illustrating through his characters that only through grace can all debt be erased. The allegory of the martyred savior is considered in Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens’s final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, blends the parable of the Good and Faithful Servant with several versions of the Heir Claimant parable. While some recent scholarship debunks the sincerity of Dickens’s religious belief, Lewis clearly demonstrates that Dickens’s novels challenge the reader to investigate and develop an understanding of New Testament doctrine. Dickens saw his relationship with his reader as a crucial part of his storytelling, and through his use and manipulation of allegory and parables, he hoped to influence the faith and morality of that reader.

Download or read book The Dickens Encyclopaedia RLE Dickens written by Arthur L. Hayward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the standard reference guide to the works of Charles Dickens. The material is arranged alphabetically, in dictionary style, and provides a quick means of reference to the plots of the novels and to all the characters and places mentioned in the novels. There are also useful explanatory notes on allusions and phrases.

Download or read book Screening Charles Dickens written by William Farina and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-10-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among professional storytellers whose works have been adapted for cinematic dramatization, mid-19th century English novelist Charles Dickens stands in a class of his own. In addition to his most well-known works such as A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, which are unrivaled for their sheer number of film adaptations, each of Dickens' other major works have been adapted for the screen multiple times, and many remain accessible for viewing on a variety of platforms. This survey highlights the most popular adaptations of each Dickens book, spanning from the films of the silent era through the 21st century. The survey also includes a critical examination that compares the adaptations to the original texts. An analysis outlines the many connections between the fictional narratives and the novelist's own frequently misunderstood biography.

Download or read book Stories from Dickens written by J. Walker McSpadden and published by Ozymandias Press. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title of this book rings in the ear with a pleasant sound. "Stories from Dickens"! "Stories" alone usually suggests such delightful rambles in the land of dreams! And when it is coupled with the name of a king of story-tellers by divine right, the charm is increased a hundredfold.

Download or read book Sex Crime and Literature in Victorian England written by Ian Ward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Victorians worried about many things, prominent among their worries being the 'condition' of England and the 'question' of its women. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England revisits these particular anxieties, concentrating more closely upon four 'crimes' which generated especial concern amongst contemporaries: adultery, bigamy, infanticide and prostitution. Each engaged questions of sexuality and its regulation, legal, moral and cultural, for which reason each attracted the considerable interest not just of lawyers and parliamentarians, but also novelists and poets and perhaps most importantly those who, in ever-larger numbers, liked to pass their leisure hours reading about sex and crime. Alongside statutes such as the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act and the 1864 Contagious Diseases Act, Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England contemplates those texts which shaped Victorian attitudes towards England's 'condition' and the 'question' of its women: the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot, the works of sensationalists such as Ellen Wood and Mary Braddon, and the poetry of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England is a richly contextual commentary on a critical period in the evolution of modern legal and cultural attitudes to the relation of crime, sexuality and the family.

Download or read book The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal written by Deborah Gorham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Victorian England, the perception of girlhood arose not in isolation, but as one manifestation of the prevailing conception of femininity. Examining the assumptions that underlay the education and upbringing of middle-class girls, this book is also a study of the learning of gender roles in theory and reality. It was originally published in 1982. The first two sections examine the image of women in the Victorian family, and the advice offered in printed sources on the rearing of daughters during the Victorian period. To illustrate the effect and evolution of feminine ideals over the Victorian period, the book’s final section presents the actual experiences of several middle-class Victorian women who represent three generations and range, socioeconomically, from lower-middle class through upper-middle class.

Download or read book Macropolitics of Nineteenth Century Literature written by Jonathan Arac and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the micropolitics of Foucault, macropolitics emphasizes that political transformations at the level of the state have great importance for many developments in nineteenth-century writing.

Download or read book Character Portraits from Dickens written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Who s Who in Dickens written by Donald Hawes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who's Who in Dickens is an accessible guide to the many characters in Charles Dickens' fiction. Dickens' characters are strikingly portrayed and have become a vital part of our cultural heritage - Scrooge has become a by-word for stinginess, Uriah Heep for unctuousness. From the much loved Oliver Twist to the fact-grubbing Mr Gradgrind, the obstinate Martin Chuzzlewit to the embittered Miss Havisham, this book covers the famous and lesser known characters in Dickens. The book contains a physical and psychological profile of each character, a critical look at his characters by past and present influential commentators and over forty illustrations of major characters drawn by Dickens' contemporaries.

Download or read book In Darkest London written by Jamieson Ridenhour and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 19th century, London was a complex, vibrant, and multi-faceted city, the first true metropolis. As such, it contained within it a widely disparate array of worlds and cultures. Representations of London in literature varied just as widely. In the late 1830s, London began appearing as a site of literary terror, and by the end of the century a large proportion of the important Victorian "Gothic revival" novels were set in the city: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Three Impostors, The Beetle, Dracula, and many others. In Darkest London is a full-length study of the Victorian Urban Gothic, a pervasive mode that appears not only in straightforward novels of terror like those mentioned above but also in the works of mainstream authors such as Charles Dickens and in the journalism and travel literature of the time. In this volume, author Jamieson Ridenhour looks beyond broad considerations of the Gothic as a historical mode to explore the development of London and the concurrent rise of the Urban Gothic. He also considers very specific aspects of London's representation in these works and draws upon recent and then-contemporary theories, close readings of relevant texts, and cartography to support and expand these ideas. This book examines the work of both canonical and non-canonical authors, including Dickens, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, G.W.M. Reynolds, Richard Marsh, Arthur Machen, Marie Belloc Lowndes, and Oscar Wilde. Placing the conventions of the Gothic form in their proper historical context, In Darkest London will appeal to scholars and students interested in an in-depth survey of the Urban Gothic.