Chapter V: The Victorian Age Critical Realism in England

Chapter V The Victorian Age Chapter V The Victorian Age Critical Realism in England The 19th century was characterized by sharp contradictions In many ways it was an age of progress railways and steamships were built, great scientific discoveries were made, education became more widespread; but at the same time it was an age of profound social unrest, because there was too much poverty, too much injustice, too much ugliness; and above all, fierce exploitation of man by man The growth of scientif.

Chapter V: The Victorian AgeCritical Realism in England

The 19th century was characterized by sharp contradictions In many ways it was anage of progress: railways and steamships were built, great scientific discoveries weremade, education became more widespread; but at the same time it was an age of profoundsocial unrest, because there was too much poverty, too much injustice, too much ugliness;and above all, fierce exploitation of man by man

The growth of scientific inventions mechanized industry and increased wealth, butthis progress only enriched the few at the expense of the many Dirty factories,inhumanly long hours of work, child labor, exploitation of both men and women workers,low wages, slums and frequent unemployment, - these were the conditions of life forthe workers in the growing industries of England, which became the richest country inthe world towards the middle of the 19th century

By the thirties of the 19th century English capitalism had entered a new stage ofdevelopment England had become a classical capitalist country, a country of industrialcapitalism The Industrial Revolution on gathered force as the 19th century progressed,and worked profound changes in both the economic and the social life of the country Quietvillages, sailing vessels and hand-looms gave way, within a hundred years, to factorytowns, railroads, and steamships In 1844 Engels wrote as follows about the industrialprogress of England: "Sixty, eighty years ago, England was a country like every other, withsmall towns, few and simple industries Today it is a country like no other, with a capital

of two and a half million inhabitants, with vast manufacturing cities, with an industry thatsupplies the world " With the development of large-scale industry small artisanswere ruined "History," wrote Karl Marx, "discloses no tragedy more horrible than thegradual extinction of the English hand-loom weavers, an extinction that was spreadover several decades "

The population of Manchester, Birmingham and other industrial centres was growingrapidly as the number of factory workers multiplied, while the number of poor farmersdecreased and many rural districts were depopulated The basic social classes inEngland were no longer the peasants and the landlords but the proletariat and thebourgeoisie

Having won the victory over the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie betrayed theinterests of the working class The reform bill of 1832 gave the vote neither to factoryworkers nor to agricultural labourers It was the merchants, the bankers and themanufacturers who profited by it

Trying to justify their policy and to turn aside the people's attention from theunequal distribution of wealth in the country, bourgeois ideologists began to createvarious theories Such was the doctrine of Utilitarianism taught by the philosopher JeremyBentham In his opinion private happiness is the measure of all things Leave thingsalone and the situation will improve itself automatically Wages and profits are fixed

by the automatic law of supply and demand If a man finds a way to make heaps ofmoney, nothing can be done about it, if he starves to death in the gutter, nothing can bedone about that either

Robert Malthus declared that the problem of poverty could only be solved byartificially limiting the birth rate, as the population of a country increases ingeometrical proportion, while the food supply can increase only in arithmeticalproportion; hence starvation is inevitable

The inconsistency of all these theories was proved later by Karl Marx's making Capital which revealed the true nature of the capitalist system, and gave anew conception of society and of the distribution of wealth

The attempts of the bourgeoisie to solve social contradictions and to turn aside theattention of the workers from political struggle ended in failure The workers fought fortheir rights Their political demands were expressed in the People's Charter in 1833 TheChartists introduced their own literature, which was the first attempt to create aliterature of the working class The Chartist writers tried their hand at different genres.They wrote articles, short stories, songs, epigrams, poems Their leading genre waspoetry

Though their verses were not so beautiful as those of their predecessors, theromantic poets, the Chartists used the motives of folk-poetry and dealt with the burningproblems of life They described the struggle of the workers for their rights, theyshowed the ruthless exploitation and the miserable fate of the poor

Ernest Jones, a leader and a poet of the Chartist movement, wrote in The Song ofthe Lower Classes:

We're low - we're low - we're very, very low,

As low as low can be;

The rich are high for we make them so And a miserable lot are we!

-And a miserable lot are we! are we!

A miserable lot are we!

Our place we know - we're so very low,

'Tis down at the landlord's feet:

We're not too low - the bread to grow,

But too low the bread to eat.

And what we get - and what we give,

We know - and we know our share

We're not too low the cloth to weave

But too low the cloth to wear!

The same idea is expressed by Thomas Hood, one of the most prominent of the Chartist

poets, in his popular The Song of the Shirt:

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread – Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch

She sang the "Song of the Shirt".

"Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!

And work - work - work,

Till the stars shine through the roof!

It's Oh! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save,

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!

Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives!

It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives!

Stitch - stitch - stitch,

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A Shroud as well as a Shirt!

"Work - work - work!

My labour never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,

A crust of bread - and rags.

That shatter'd roof and this naked floor

A table a broken chair And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

-For sometimes falling there!

"Work - work - work!

From weary chime to chime, Work - work - work –

As prisoners work for crime!

Band, and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd,

As well as the weary hand

"Work - work - work,

In the dull December light, And work - work - work,

When the weather is warm and bright "

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread - Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, -

Would that its tone could reach the Rich! She sang this "Song of the Shirt"!

-The Chartist writers called the toiling people to struggle for their rights andexpressed a firm belief in the final victory of the proletariat In 1845 Engels wrotethat the Chartist literature, heroic and revolutionary in its character, surpassed insignificance all the literature of bourgeois England of the period

THE NEW LITERARY TREND AND ITS CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES

The ideas of Chartism attracted the attention of many progressive-minded people ofthe time Many prominent writers became aware of the social injustices around them andtried to picture them in their works Thus this period of fierce class struggle wasmirrored in literature by the appearance of a new trend, that of Critical Realism Thegreatest novelists of the age are Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray,Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell.

These writers used the novel as a means to protest against the evils in contemporarysocial and economic life and to picture the world in a realistic way

Engels said that in his opinion Realism should depict typical characters in typicalcircumstances

The critical realists introduced new characters into literature: they described thenew social force in modern history - the working class They expressed deepsympathy for the working people; they described the unbearable conditions of theirlife and work; they voiced a passionate protest against exploitation and describedtheir persistent struggle for their rights

Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell are

among the best works of 19th century Critical Realism in which the Chartist movement isdescribed

The greatness of these novelists lies not only in their truthful description ofcontemporary life, but also in their profound humanism Their sympathy lies with theordinary labouring people They believed in the good qualities of the human heart

CONTRIBUTION OF THE CRITICAL REALISTS TO WORLD LITERATURE

The contribution of the writers belonging to what Karl Marx called the'present brilliant school of English novelists' to world literature is enormous Theycreated a broad panorama of social life, exposed and attacked the vices of aristocraticand bourgeois society, sided with the common people in their passionate protest againstunbearable exploitation, and expressed their hopes for a better future

The weakness of this literary trend lies in the fact, as Maxim Gorky puts it, that inspite of their democratism, the English critical realists, not being connected with theworking class movement, could not comprehend the laws of social development andtherefore were unable to show the only correct way of abolishing social slavery.They wanted to improve the existing social order by means of reforms Some of themwanted to reconcile the antagonistic classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, to makethe rich share their wealth with the poor, but being great artists they showed socialinjustices in capitalist England in such a way that the reader cannot help thinking that

changes in the existing social system as a whole were necessary.

William makepeace Thackeray

(1811-1863)

"Thackeray possesses great tatent Of all the European writers of the present time Dickens alone can be placed on a level with the author of Vanity Fair What a wealth of art, how precise and thorough are his observations, what a knowledge of life, of the human heart, what a bright and noble power of love, what a subtle humour, how precise and distinct are his depictions, how wonderfully charming his narration."

Chernyshevsky

William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens were the greatest representatives

of Critical Realism in English literature of the 19th century

In his novels Thackeray gives a vivid description of the upper classes of society, theirmode of life, manners and tastes He shows their pride and tyranny, their hypocrisy, andsnobbishness, and their selfishness and general wickedness His knowledge of humannature is broad and his portrayal of it is keenly analytical

Thackeray's works lack the gentle humour so typical of Dickens's style His criticism

is strong, his satire is sharp and bitter He is a genius in portraying negative characters;his positive characters are less vivid, but all of them are true to life Thackeray used tosay that he wished to describe men and women as they really are

The picture of life of the ruling classes of England in the 19th century as drawn byThackeray remains a classical example of social satire up to the present day

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in a prosperous middle-class family Hisfather was a well-to-do English official in Calcutta, India When the boy was six yearsold, he was taken from Calcutta, where he was born, to England to be educated FromCharterhouse school he passed on to Cambridge University

While a student, William spent much of his time drawing cartoons 1 and writingverses, chiefly parodies He did not stay long at the University, for he could not bear thescholastic atmosphere of the place Besides, his ambition was to become an artist, so heleft the University without graduating and went to Germany, Italy and France to study art

In Germany Goethe, and this meeting left a deep impression on him

Intending to complete his education, Thackeray returned to London and began a lawcourse in 1833 Meanwhile, the Indian bank, in which the money left to William by hisfather was invested, went bankrupt, and Thackeray was left penniless Therefore he had

to drop his studies to earn a living For a long time he hesitated whether to take up art orliterature as a profession Finally he decided to try his hand as a journalist His humorous

articles, essays, reviews and short stories found a ready market He himself illustratedmany of these pieces with amusing drawings, which added to the humorous effect

In 1836 Thackeray married Isabella Shawe, and from this union there came threedaughters Thackeray's married life was unhappy as his wife became ill after giving birth

to the third child The illness affected her mind, and Thackeray threw all business asideand for many months travelled with his wife from one health resort to another hoping thatshe would recover, but she never regained her health In the end she was placed with anold lady who took care of her Thackeray did all he could to make her life comfortable.Isabella outlived her husband by many years

Thackeray's first notable works was The Book of Snobs 1 (1846-1847) which dealswith the upper classes and their followers in the middle classes, whose vices the authorcriticizes with the sharp pen of satire The book may be regarded as a prelude to theauthor's masterpiece Vanity Fair, which can be called the peak of Critical Realism VanityFair brought great fame to the novelist and remains his most-read work up to the presentday It first appeared in twenty-four monthly parts which Thackeray illustrated himself In

1848 it came out as a complete book

The Book of Snobs is a satirical description of different circles of English society inthe century The gallery of snobs in the book, Great City Snobs, The University Snobsand others, convinces the reader that' snobbishness' was one of the most characteristicfeatures of the ruling classes of England at that time

"How can we help Snobbishness, with such a prodigious national institution erectedfor its worship? How can we help cringing to Lords? Flesh and blood can't do otherwise.What man can withstand the prodigious temptation? whose heart would not throb withpleasure if he could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of Dukes down Pall Mall?No; it is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a snob."

"The word Snob has taken a place in our honest English vocabulary We can't define

it, perhaps “We can't say what it is, any more than we can define wit, or humour, or

humbug; but we know what it is."

Thackeray's contribution to world literature

Thackeray's contribution to world literature is enormous Though the class struggle

found no reflection in his works, the novelist truthfullyreproduced the political atmosphere of the century This periodwitnessed the growth of the revolutionary movement of theEnglish proletariat Thackeray's attitude towards the rulingclasses of the country coincided with that of the broad

Thackeray's home where

"Vanity Fair" was written

democratic circles of England who struggled for the parliamentary reform of 1832, were

in favour of the People's Charter of 1833 and actively supported the Chartist movement.Thackeray developed the realistic traditions of his predecessors, the enlighteners,Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding in particular, and became one of the most prominentrealists and satirists of his age The world to him is Vanity Fair where men and women, touse his own words, "are greedy, pompous, mean, perfectly satisfied and at ease abouttheir superior virtue They despise poverty and kindness of heart They are snobs"

Thackeray loathed snobbishness, and in his works he used satire to expose thepretensions of the snobs and social climbers whom he depicts in his novels

vanity fair (a novel without a hero)

The Origin of the Novel

The subtitle of the book shows the author's intention not to describe separateindividuals, but English bourgeois-aristocratic society as a whole

The title of the book is borrowed from The Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical novelwritten by John Bunyan, one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 17th century.The hero of Bunyan's novel comes to a great city where there is a fair, whereeverything is on sale

" a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the yearlong Therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places,honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of allsorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver,gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not

Vanity Fair-1944

Vanity Fair is a social novel which shows not only the bourgeois aristocratic society

And, moreover, at this fair there are at all times to beseen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves,and rogues, and that of every kind."

Everybody there thinks only of his own interests.Such qualities as honour and dignity are of no value Toachieve his aim a man is ready to kill or devour anyhuman being, no matter whether he be friend or enemy.The same idea is expressed by Thackeray in his

masterpiece, Vanity Fair

as a whole, but the very laws which govern it Describing the events which took place atthe beginning of the 19th century, the author presents a broad satirical picture ofcontemporary England

The social background of the novel which influences all the characters in theirthoughts and actions, is high society at large Thackeray attacks the vanity, pretensions,prejudices and corruption of the aristocracy (the Crawleys, Lord Steyne); the narrow-mindedness and greed of the bourgeoisie (the Osbornes, the Sedleys) He mercilesslyexposes the snobbishness, hypocrisy, money-worship and parasitism of all those whoform the bulwark of society

The interest of the novel centres on the characters rather than on the plot The authorshows various people, and their thoughts and actions, in different situations There is nodefinite hero in the book In Thackeray's opinion there can be no hero in a society wherethe cult of money rules the world

Text 11

Vanity Fair

Sir Pitt Crawley

Thackeray's satire reaches its climax when he describes Sir Pitt Crawley, a typicalsnob of Vanity Fair

"Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care toread - who had the habits and the cunning of a boor; whose aim in life was pettifogging;who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet

he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow; and was a dignitary of the land, and apillar of the state He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach Great ministers andstatesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliantgenius of spotless virtue."

"Such people there are living and flourishing in the world {aithless, hopeless,charityless; let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main Some there are, andvery successful too, mere quacks and fools, and it was to combat and expose such asthose, no doubt, that Laughter was made."

Rebecca (Becky) Sharp

The novel tells of the destiny of two girls with sharply contrasting characters Rebecca (Becky) Sharp and Amelia Sedley The daughter of a rich city merchant, AmeliaSedley is a young girl representing 'virtue without wit' Rebecca Sharp, a pooradventuress, representing wit without virtue, forces her way after many struggles andsetbacks into the world to which Amelia belongs

-Rebecca Sharp and Joseph Sedley

(From the play Vanity Fair produced by the Moscow Maly Theatre)

Becky's character is depicted with great skill She is pleasant to look at, clever andgifted She possesses a keen sense of humour, and a deep understanding of human nature

At the same time she embodies the very spirit of Vanity Fair, since her only aim in life is

at all costs to worm her way into high society She will go to any length to achieve heraim

She was almost mistress of the house when Mrs Crawley was absent, but conductedherself in her new situation with such modesty as not to offend the authorities of thekitchen and stable, among whom her behaviour was always exceedingly modest Shewas quite a different person from the haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl whom we haveknown previously Whether it was the heart which dictated this new system ofcomplaisance and humility adopted by our Rebecca, is to be proved by her after-history

A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through whole years, is one seldom satisfactorilypractised by a person of one-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect that, thoughyoung in years, our heroine was old in life and experience "

Becky believes neither in love nor in friendship She is ready to marry any man whocan give her wealth and a title

Finally she marries Captain Rawdon Crawley, the younger son of Sir Pitt Crawley,whose daughters she had been engaged to teach Rawdon was not rich, but Becky hopedthat some day he would inherit a good deal of money from his wealthy aunt, MissCrawley, who possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon However, Becky's hopes did not come true She almost lost her presence of mind whenshe realized how wrong her calculations had been She would never have marriedRawdon if she had known that Sir Pitt Crawley himself would propose to her The factthat Sir Pitt was old and that she despised him did not count with her

Becky's opinion of Sir Pitt is clearly expressed in her letter to Amelia

"Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls imagined a baronet must have been Fancy anold, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, whosmokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper in a saucepan He speaks with acountry accent, and swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney coachmanwho drove us to the inn where the coach went from, and on which I made the journey

outside for the greater part of the way.

I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at the inn, was at

first placed inside the coach But when we got to a place called Leakington, where therain began to fall very heavily - will you believe it? - I was forced to come outside; forSir Pitt is a proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at Mudbury, who wanted aninside place, I was obliged to go outside in the rain, where, however, a young gentleman

of his several great-coats.

This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir Pittvery well, and laughed at him a great deal They both

anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate) "

Jane Octavia Brookfield, the wife of Thackeray's friend who was the inspiration for the character of Amelia

"Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a dreadful thumping at my door:and who do you think it was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his nightcap and dressing-gown -such a figure! As I shrank away from such a visitor, he came forward and seized mycandle 'No candles, after eleven 0' clock, Miss Becky,' said he 'Go to bed in thedark, you pretty little hussy (that is what he called me), and unless you wish me tocome for the candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven.' And with this, he and

Mr Horrocks the butler went off laughing You may be sure I shall not encourage anymore of their visits."

Sir Pitt was the owner of Queen's Crawley, he possessed money and a title andthese were the only things Becky's ambitious nature desired

Flattery, hypocrisy, lies and other mean and disloyal actions help Becky to enterthe upper ranks of society, but no happiness is in store for her Becky's whole life isnothing but Vanitas Vanitatum She has neither real sacred feelings, nor honest aims

in view

But for all that Amelia cannot be regarded as the heroine of the novel.

"As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe· her person; indeed I amafraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal tooround and red for a heroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips withthe freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest andhonestest good-humour, except, indeed, when they filled with tears, and that was a greatdeal too often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird, or over a mouse thatthe cat haply had seized upon; or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid "

Captain Dobbin

The most virtuous person in the novel is Captain William Dobbin He worshipsAmelia, and his only aim in life is to see her happy He does not think of his ownhappiness His sense of self-sacrifice is extreme Knowing that Amelia loves GeorgeOsborne, Dobbin persuades him to marry the girl He knows that his own life will be

Amelia and George (From the play

“Vanity Fair”) produced by the

Moscow Maly Theatre.

Amelia is not clever enough to understand the realqualities of the people who surround her She is toounintelligent, naive and simple-hearted to understandall the dirty machinations of the clever and slyRebecca She even tries to help Becky to marry horbrother Joseph Sedley, and is unhappy when her planfails

Amelia is absolutely blind to all the faults ofGeorge Osborne, her light-minded and selfish husband,and even after his death she is determined to remainfaithful to him The best years of her life are ruined bythis unhappy love Amelia is no longer young when sherealizes how unworthy of her love her idol was Subtleirony is characteristic of Thackeray's style when hedescribes Amelia's character

a complete disappointment, but he does not care His personal feelings are ()f noimportance in comparison with those of Amelia, as the following quotation shows

"The party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time As the majestic Josstepped out of the creaking vehicle the crowd gave a cheer for the fat gentleman, whoblushed and looked very big and mighty, as he walked away with Rebecca under hisarm George, of course, took charge of Amelia She looked as happy as a rose-tree insunshine

"I say, Dobbin," says George, "just look to the shawls and things, there's a goodfellow." And so while he paired off with Miss Sedley, and Jos squeezed through thegate into the Gardens with Rebecca at his side, honest Dobbin contented himself bygiving an arm to the shawls, and by paying at the door for the whole party

He walked very modestly behind them He was not willing to spoil sport AboutRebecca and Jos he did not care a fig But he thought Amelia worthy even of thebrilliant George Osborne, and as he saw that good-looking couple threading thewalks, to the girl's delight and wonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort

of fatherly pleasure Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have something onhis own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at seeing the gawky young officercarrying this female burden); but William Dobbin was very little addicted to selfishcalculations at all, and so long as his friend was enjoying himself, how should he bediscontented ?"

Though Dobbin, like Amelia, is an exception in Vanity Fair, he is too minded and one-sided to be admired by the author

simple-Thackeray on Society at Large

Thackeray divides society into 'rogues' and 'dupes' The characters are different, buttheir fates have much in common They are victims of a society where evil rules theworld Shallow people shallow lives shallow interests The author compares hischaracters to puppets, and society as a whole to a puppet show

"Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has hisdesire? or, having it, is satisfied ? - come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets,for our play is played out."

only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk aboutthem if they are good and kindly, to love them and shake them by the hand; if they aresilly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked andheartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits of."

"If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart, upon making the conquest ofthis big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task ofhusband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, intrusted by young persons totheir mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicatematters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else inthe wide world who would take the dancing till five o'clock in the morning through awhole mortal season? What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set theirhouses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and icedchampagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and an unadulterated wish to see youngpeople happy and dancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and as honest Mrs.Sedley has, in the depth of her kind heart, already arranged a score of little schemes forthe settlement of her Amelia, so also had our beloved but unprotected Rebeccadetermined to do her very best to secure the husband who was even more necessary forher than for her friend."

Thackeray seldom tells the reader what he thinks of this or that character directly, hedoes it indirectly: his attitude is usually expressed either by different personages in thenovel (see Becky's letter to Amelia), or by means of vivid and graphic descriptions whichinvite the reader to share the author's opinion

"Miss Crawley was an object of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawleyfor she had a balance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's!

How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every reader have ascore of such), what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her! How, when shecomes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends know herstation in the world!"

Vanity Fair is one of the greatest examples of 19th century Critical Realism It is anexceedingly rich novel The action is carried forward by a series of plots and subplots; thesetting is detailed and varied, the characters are real individuals, puzzling combinations

of good and bad, who have been remembered and talked about from Thackeray's days toour own Towering over all is Thackeray's ability to expose in his novel the cruel laws ofcapitalism which rule the capitalist world up to now

Dickens is magnificently successful in depicting common people, but he is illacquainted with the upper classes, while Thackeray is the penetrating analyst of bothmiddle class and aristocratic society

Thackeray's realism is different from that of Dickens; it is less combined withfantasy and lyricism, it is more exact and objective While Dickens idealizes hispositive characters (sometimes they are too good to be true and the author's attitudetowards them is somewhat sentimental), Thackeray portrays his characters morerealistically They are not static; his women characters, in particular, develop as thestory progresses Thackeray tries to describe things and human beings as existingoutside his mind, they are shown as natural results of their environment and thesociety which bred them He depicts his characters as if viewing them from afar Thiswas a new feature in literature which was followed by many other writers, and waslater called objective realism in literature

Dickens was more optimistic than Thackeray He tried to reform people andthought that that was the way to make them happy In Thackeray's opinion theexisting stale of things could not be changed, though he saw that bourgeois moralshad fallen into decay, and he subjected these morals to severe criticism, which is thechief merit of his works

Unlike Dickens, Thackeray is unable to see man reformed in the future

Chernyshevsky blamed him for this failure in his article on The Newcomes (Russian

magazine Sovremennik, 1857)

Thackeray's pessimism marks the beginning of the crisis of bourgeois humanismwhich began in the middle of the 19th century and found its full expression in theliterature of the second half of the age

Taken together, the novels of Dickens and Thackeray give us a remarkablyrealistic picture of all classes of English society up to the middle of the 19th century

Questions and Tasks

1 What are the greatest merits of Thackeray's works?

2 What classes of society does he show in his novels?

3 Which work of the author is considered to be a prelude to his masterpiece

Vanity Fair?

4 Explain the meaning of the subtitle of Vanity Fair Where is the idea of

the novel borrowed from?

5 What vices of bourgeois-aristocratic society are mercilessly exposed by Thackeray in the book?

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Charles Dickens began to write at a time when the labour movement, known as theChartist movement, was at its height Continuous demonstrations in defence of workers'rights took place in many manufacturing towns and in London as well The actions of theChartists had considerable effect on Dickens Though he did not believe in revolutionaryaction, he was on the side of the people with all his heart He wanted what the peoplewanted

Dickens wrote about the poorest, the most unprivileged sections of the population

He looked into the darkest corners of the large cities and there found the victims ofcapitalism Thus Dickens's immortal works became an accusation of the bourgeoissystem as a whole

LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth on the southern coast ofEngland His father was a clerk at the office of a large naval station there, and thefamily lived on his small salary They belonged to the lower middle class The fatherwas often transferred from place to place and there was always talk between theparents about money, bills and debts

Charles was very young when the family moved to the naval port of Chatham,which is near the ancient town of Rochester, where pilgrims used to stop on their way toCanterbury There Charles and his eldest sister first went to school

After school Charles loved to run to the docks where ships went for repairs Heliked to watch people at work There he saw sailors and brave old sea-captains; andfarther out were the ships, and among them the black prison-ships on which convictswith clanking chains moved heavily about the decks Many pictures were storedaway in his memory, which the writer used later in his novels

Charles's first teacher was a kind young man from Oxford, under whoseinfluence Charles grew fond of books At ten he read Defoe, Fielding Smollett,Goldsmith and translations of some European and other authors His favourite

books were Don Quixote and the Arabian Nights The great comfort he found in the world of books was later described in the novel David Copperfield.

Charles had a nurse called Mary Yeller, who used to say about him that 'he was

a terrible boy to read' and that he and his sister were fond of singing, reciting poemsand acting

The happy days at Chatham came to an end in 1822 when the fa ther was moved

to London The Dickenses rented a house in one of the poorest parts of London

Charles loved to walk about the busy streets and watch the lively street scenes.Charles was the eldest son, but he was not sent to school again The father made noplans for the education of his children He was an easy-going man who alwaysspent more money than he could afford Soon he lost his job and was imprisoned fordebt

All the property the family had was sold, even Charles's favourite books, and theboy was put to work in a blacking factory He worked hardwashing bottles for shoe-polish and putting labels on them, while his father, mother, sisters and brothers alllived in the Marshalsea debtors' prison

The long working hours at the factory, the poor food, the rough boys and theirtreatment of him he could never forget He later described this unhappy time in

David Copperfield.

Dickens visited his parents in the prison on Sundays There he saw many otherprisoners, and learned their stories The debtors' prison is described in the

Pickwick Papers and in the novel Little Dorrit.

In about a year the Dickenses received a small sum of money after the death of arelative, so all the debts were paid

Charles got a chance to go to school again This time he was sent to a very

old-fashioned school called Wellington House Academy The master was a rough,

ignorant man He knew nothing about children or teaching except the art of beatingthem regularly with a cane The class studied nothing but Latin

To make their lessons more cheerful the boys kept small pet ani mals in theirdesks White mice ran about everywhere and Charles remembered the regret ofthe pupils when the cleverest mouse, who lived on the cover of a Latin book, oneday drowned itself in an inkpot

THE YOUNG JOURNALIST

Dickens left school when he was twelve He had to continue his education byhimself His father sent him to a lawyer's office to study law He did not staythere long, but he learned the ways and manners of lawyers, as many of his

books show Bleak House in particular shows how legal decisions were made and

delayed Instead of law he studied shorthand and found a job as a newspaper reporter

He also went regularly to the British Museum reading-room to continue his general

education In 1832 Dickens became a parliamentary reporter Soon he came to

understand that the house of Commons had nothing to do with true democracy Theparties the members belonged to were all bourgeois parties though they lost noopportunity of quarrelling with each other It was in the Pickwick Papers that Dickenslater described the so-called par y struggle He himself never went in for politics

Dickens's first efforts at writing were little stories about the ordinaryLondoners he saw The stories were funny street sketches One day he dropped asketch he had written in the letter-box of a publishing house It was printed, and the

young author followed it up with other ketches which he signed Boz (the nickname

given him by his youngest brother) Sketches by Boz appeared in various

magazines

At the age of twenty-four Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of

his editor at the Evening Chronicle.

DICKENS THE NOVELIST

The publishing house of Chapman and Hall were planning to bring out a series of humorous pictures on sport events Dickens was asked to write short comic episodes to accompany the pictures about a certain Mr Pickwick whose efforts in sport always ended in failure But the artist died suddenly, leaving Dickens to develop the series as he would.

Dickens introduced new episodes and the characters grew in depth When all the series were put together, they formed a novel Later they were printed

in one volume under the title The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick

Club, or the Pickwick Papers for short.

Having discovered, almost accidentally, his ability as a novelist, Dickens

devoted himself to literary work His next novel was Oliver Twist It

appeared first in series in a new monthly magazine of which Dickens himself was editor Readers expected to see a new humorous story, and they were much surprised to find a nightmare novel instead.

Oliver Twist was written as a protest against the Poor Law The Poor

Law did not allow homeless people to live in the streets; they were put into

workhouses where they were only a little bit better off than in prison Oliver

Twist was not simply a novel but a social tract as well.

Dickens visited many schools in various towns of England, and he came across some where life was worse than anything he had been through in his

childhood in Nicholas Nickleby Dickens exposes the boarding-schools for

unwanted children.

Not yet thirty, Dickens was the most popular writer in England In 1842

he and his wife paid a visit to the United State They spent nearly five months travelling from town to town, and everywhere Dickens received a very hearty welcome.

Like most Europeans, Dickens had idealized American democracy, and

he became extremely disappointed when he heard of the false elections and saw the awful greed of the money-makers, the discrimination against foreign immigrants and worst of all, Negro slavery.

Dickens expressed his opinion of what he saw in his American Notes, where he condemned these crimes with his usual humorously satirical exaggeration of facts But the book roused bitter anger in America.

American Notes was followed by Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel in part of

which American life is also described.

The years between 1844 and 1848 Dickens travelled in Italy, France and Switzerland, because he found it easier to concentrate on English problems

from afar There he worked hard at the novel Dombey and Son In Paris

Dickens met the writer Victor Hugo.

When back in England, Dickens organized an amateur theatrical company, and for the next five years they put on performances for charity, giving all the money they collected to the poor Dickens was manager and actor He also conducted a weekly magazine for popular reading called Household Words (later its name was changed to All the Year Round).