Ethical Narrative in Dickens and Thackeray (1997)

Comparing to in context of these books brought me ultimately to question of why we read each author. While both shared a thorough understanding of conventions of fiction and its rhetorical power, they exploited those conventions to illustrate dramatically different ethical systems. Contrasting assessments of relation between nature and culture in human character determined kinds of stories and would tell and, correspondingly, kinds of readings we can make of these stories. Clarke and Reed argue for conceptual and stylistic unity within oeuvre of these novelists. The aesthetic differences that allow us to read a Thackeray novel or a Dickens novel derive from deep-seated assumptions about moral behavior. A consequential relation between theme and plot is a cornerstone of Reed's intent, which is to show the way strongly held beliefs about what punishment and forgiveness involve determine ways in which stories can be told (p. xiv). Reed's primary technique, as he acknowledges, is repetition. He surveys almost all work by each author to demonstrate recurrence of one primary attitude toward punishment and forgiveness for and Thackeray; this determines plot structure, narrative presence, and resolution. Reed contextualizes his discussion of and within changing nature of penology from eighteenth to nineteenth century. Reed connects these practical changes in crime and punishment to Victorians' larger theological debate about nature of punishment and forgiveness, especially as this debate affected raising of children. Clarke's demonstration of Thackeray's unity is more developmental. Her basic argument is that over a century ago, Thackeray's novels were already providing a brilliant analysis of gender ideology of his age-not merely reproducing assumptions that authorized subjection of women but reproducing in order to oppose them (p. 18). Clarke contextualizes within growth of early Victorian feminism and history of Caroline Norton in particular. Harden's meticulous and valuable collection of letters, which supplements Gordon Ray's 194546 edition, offers support for Clarke's contention that Thackeray's sympathy for restricted life of Victorian angel stemmed from his own experience of his female friends' lives. Although Reed does not rely on Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, his analysis of shows us how fiction implicitly elaborated interiorization of punishment into a transcendental but subjective moral code. Police officers and prisons, tortures and trials are unneeded in Dickens's novels. Fate seeded in essence of individual takes care of both reward and punishment. Foucault argues that body in nineteenth century becomes not object of punishment but a means of reforming soul.(2) Moreover, interiorization of punishment which offers rehabilitation of individual also creates idea of individual, subjective self with its history, practice, and morality inscribed on its surface language and behavior.(3) Readers of penetrate surface of respectable villains such as Carker, Bradley Headstone, and Lammles to enter into sordid worlds of self-torture. Their agonies are displayed for our entertainment and moral benefit. For example, in Dombey and Son, after Edith has deserted Dombey, he incarcerates himself' (Reed, p. 176) in his cold, lonely house. The narrative voice punishes him, assuming persona of a scriptural prophet to remind Dombey of his lovelessness and cruel treatment of Florence. He was fallen, never to be raised up any more. For night of his worldly ruin there was not to-morrow's sun; for stain of his domestic shame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bang his dead child back to life. …