page_title: Racism in the work of Charles Dickens
section_title: Inuit in The Frozen Deep
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in the work of Charles Dickens / Inuit in The Frozen Deep
caption_attribution_description: English: Scene from Dickens' play "The Frozen Deep"
context_page_description: Although Charles Dickens is known as a writer who was strongly sympathetic to the disadvantaged in Britain, in common with many eminent writers of his time he expressed attitudes that can be interpreted as racist and xenophobic in his journalism and fiction. While it cannot be said that he opposed fundamental freedoms of minorities in British society or supported legal segregation or employment discrimination, he defended the privileges of colonial Europeans and was dismissive of what he believed were primitive cultures. The Oxford Dictionary of English Literature describes Dickens as nationalistic, often stigmatising foreign European cultures and taking his attitude to "colonized people" to "genocidal extremes", albeit based mainly on a vision of British virtue, rather than any concept of heredity. Ledger and Ferneaux do not believe he advocated any form of "scientific racism" regarding heredity – but still had the highest possible antipathy for the lifestyles of native peoples in British colonies, and believed that the sooner they were civilised, the better.
context_section_description: Dickens in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, wrote The Frozen Deep, which premiered in 1856, an allegorical play about the missing Arctic Franklin expedition, and which attacked the character of the Inuit as covetous and cruel. The purpose of the play was to discredit explorer John Rae's report on the fate of the expedition, which concluded that the crew had turned to cannibalism, and was based largely on Inuit testimonies. Dickens initially had a positive assessment of the Inuit. The earlier Dickens, writing in "Our Phantom Ship on an Antediluvian Cruise", wrote of the Inuit as "gentle loving savages", but after The Times published a report by John Rae of the Inuit discovery of the remains of the lost Franklin expedition with evidence that the crew resorted to cannibalism, Dickens reversed his stand. Dickens, in addition to Franklin's widow, refused to accept the report and accused the Inuit of being liars, getting involved on Lady Franklin's side in an extended conflict with John Rae over the exact cause of the demise of the expedition. Lady Franklin wrote that the white Englishman could do no wrong exploring the wilderness and was considered able to "survive anywhere" and "to triumph over any adversity through faith, scientific objectivity, and superior spirit." Dickens not only tried to discredit Rae and the Inuit, but accused the Inuit of actively participating in Franklin's end. In "The Lost Arctic Voyagers", he wrote "It is impossible to form an estimate of the character of any race of savages from their deferential behaviour to the white man while he is strong. The mistake has been made again and again; and the moment the white man has appeared in the new aspect of being weaker than the savage, the savage has changed and sprung upon him." Explorer John Rae disputed with Dickens in two rebuttals (also published in Household Words). Rae defended the Inuit as "a bright example to civilized people" and compared them favourably to the undisciplined crew of Franklin. Keal writes that Rae was no match for "Dickens the story teller", one of Lady Franklin's "powerful friends", to the English he was a Scot who wasn't "pledged to the patriotic, empire-building aims of the military." He was shunned by the English establishment as a result of his writing the report. Modern historians have vindicated Rae's belief that the Franklin crew resorted to cannibalism, having already been decimated by scurvy and starvation; furthermore they were poorly prepared for wilderness survival, contrary to Lady Hamilton's prejudices. In the play the Rae character was turned into a suspicious, power-hungry nursemaid, who predicted the expedition's doom in her effort to ruin the happiness of the delicate heroine.
caption: Scene from Dickens' play The Frozen Deep
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