Critical realism. Charles Dickens, W. Thackeray, the Bronte sisters.

LITERATURE FROM THE 1830s TO THE 1860s

The industrial power of Great Britain continued to grow. The number of factories increased, as well as the number of people who worked in them. The profits of the manufacturers became larger from year to year, while the conditions of the working people grew worse and worse. At the same time Britain was becoming a great commercial power in the world. Big fortunes were made by business-men trading with other countries. The wealth and power of Great Britain as a country contrasted with the terrible poverty and misery of its working people. Great changes occurred in the class structure of Britain in the 1830s. The bourgeoisie, as always, made use of the working class in its fight for more power in the Government, against the landed aristocracy. However, in 1832, as soon as the Parliamentary reform they fought for was carried out, the bourgeoisie betrayed the interests of the people and looked for a compromise with the nobility. According to the Parliamentary reform only people who had property could vote. About 20 per cent of the population acquired a number of political rights. The main conflict of the century was born — that between the proletariat and the capitalists.

When the workers saw that they had been betrayed they decided to continue to fight for their rights alone. In 1833 they presented their political demands to Parliament in a document that was called the People’s Charter. Later, in 1839, thousands of workers signed the Charter. Thus began the first organized movement against capital, known as Chartism. It lasted till the early 1850s.

Chartist poets and writers described the position of the working people and shared their demands. Among them we might mention Thomas Hood (1799—1845), a talented journalist, whose poem The Song of the Shirt (1843) raised a new problem, that of the terrible exploitation of women. .

CRITICAL REALISM

The social and political situation in the country influenced a number of novelists who realized that it was

Necessary to deal with actual facts and realities, to set their books in present and to pose topical problems in them. Karl Marx spoke of these writers as of "the brilliant school of novelists whose graphic and eloquent descriptions have revealed more political and social truths to the world, than have all the politicians and moralists added together." (Since they lived at the time of Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to

1901, these authors are sometimes referred to as Victorian writers). These writers developed the traditions of English realist literature begun by the Enlighteners and further enriched by the historical approach of Walter Scott. In their works they exposed and criticized the vices and drawbacks of their time — social unjustice and inequality, poverty, lust for money, hypocrisy, etc. They drew their characters from all social levels; among them are reprentatives of the aristocracy and the middle class, as well as servants, clerks, workers, thieves, etc. The main subject of their novels was, however, the life of lower classes, and their sympathies always lay with common people who, as a rule, possessed higher qualities than the rich did. The negative characters embodied all the vices of the society that was a slave to gold.

Still another feature of the work of critical realists was that they stressed the function of the social environment in shaping human character. The novels often traced the life stories of their characters from their early years and depicted the circumstances which they grew. The detailed descriptions of life in big cities and in the country, of rich houses and slums, of schools and prisons as wellas the introduction of colloquial speech made these novels true to life. The most prominent of the critical realists were Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.

                              CHARLES DICKENS (1812—1870)

Charles Dickens was born in Landsport, a small town near the sea, in a middle-class family. In 1814 the family moved to London. His father was a clerk in a office; he got a small salary there and usually spent more than he earned. As a result of this he was thrown into the debtors' prison when Charles was only ten. At that age the boy went to work at a factory which was like a dark, damp cellar. There he stuck labels on bottles of shoeblacking all day long, for a few pennies. Later he went to school which he attended for only three years and at the age of 15 he started his work in a lawyer's office. He continued to educate himself, mainly by reading books. At 18 he became a reporter in Parliament. There he got acquainted with politics and never had a high opinion of his country's policy afterwards. In 1833 he began to write his first short stories about London life. In 1836 those stories were published as a book, under the title of Sketches by Boz; Boz was the penname with which he signed his first work. In 1837 Dickens became well-known to the English readers. His first big work appeared, written in instalments for a magazine at first, and later published in book form. It was The Posthumous Papers of the Pick\vick Club. From then on Dickens was one of the best known and loved writers of his day. In 1842 he made his first trip to America. He said that he wanted to see for himself what real democracy was like. He was rather disappointed with it. He wrote about his trip and his impressions in his American Notes. Dickens travelled a lot. He visited France and Italy and later went to America again. At the same time he continued to write. In 1858 he began to tour England, reading passages from his works to the public. These readings were a great success, for Dickens was a wonderful actor, but the hard work and travelling were baa for his health. On March 15, 1870 he made his last reading and said to the public "From these garish lights I vanish now for evermore". He suffered a stroke on June, 8 and died the following day at his writing desk penning a sentence for Edwin Drude. The novel was left unfinished.

  Dickens literary heritage is of world importance. He developed the English social novel, writing about the most burning social problems of his time. He created a wide gallery of pictures of bourgeois society and its representative types which still exist in England; he wrote of the workhouses of England and the tragec

Of the children who lived in them (Oliver Twist); he wrote about the problem of education and showed how it handicapped children (Nicholas Nickleby). After his trip to America Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit.

A part of this work had an American setting. He criticized American customs and democracy very severely. Later he wrote about money and its terrible, destructive power over men (Dombey and Son).

 David Copperfield, one of the most lyrical of his works, was to some extent autobiographical; it reflected a young man's life in bourgeois society. Dickens criticized some negative aspects of that society, especially child labour and the system of education. Such problems as marriage and love in the bourgeois world were

Also treated in this novel.

Dickens' later novels were Bleak House and Little Dorrit. In Bleak House he took up the problem of law and justice; in Little Dorrit the reader got acquainted with the debtors' prison of London. Those novels showed more clearly than before the great social gap between the bourgeoisie and the common people. In

Hard Times he wrote of the class struggle between the capitalists and the proletariat. Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend reflected an entirely new feeling, that of disillusionment. That tragic feeling became stronger than Dickens' usual optimism. Among his works there are two historical novels. In 1841 he wrote Bamaby Rudge, taking a subject from English history of the year 1780, known as the "Gordon Rebellion". In 1848 Dickens turned to history again; he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, a story about people closely connected with the French Bourgeois Revolution, and the time that preceded it. Doomney and son Dickens possessed an immense power of generalization which made all his characters look familiar and recognisable types. He used to repeat that the best compliment to him was to hear his readers say that he or she had known personally this or that one of his characters.

The critical realistic approach to society was established by him at the very beginning of his creative life. His criticism of reality became sharper as his outlook and art matured. In the course of time the soft humour and light-hearted laughter of his first works gave way to mockery and satire. His novels were socially

Effective because they drew the wide public's attention to various problems and made the authorities consider and introduce reforms into such spheres as education, law and others. Up to our days Dickens has remained one of the most widely read writers. He is loved and honoured by readers all over the world.

                          WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811—1863)

W. M. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, in the family of an English official of high standing. Unlike Charles Dickens, he had a very good education both at school and at Cambridge University. Wishing to be an artist, he went to Europe to study art. For some time he lived among the artists of Paris. Later, when he returned to London, he learned that he had lost all his money, for the bank where it was deposited had gone bankrupt. Thus, he had to earn his living. He began to draw sketches, but was not very successful. He started writing satirical and humorous stories and essays. Later he wrote novels and delivered lectures. Thackeray wrote in the same years and under the same political conditions as his great contemporary Dickens did. Their works complement each other in presenting the life of the period. Dickens usually chose for his main character the "little" man with his troubles and difficulties.

      Thackeray directed his satire against the representatives of the upper classes of society, whom he knew better. Dickens was inclined to look for a happy solution that smoothed over the existing contradictions. Thackeray, by contrast, was merciless in his satirical attacks on the ruling classes. He considered that art should be a real mirror of life. He showed bourgeois society and its vices without softening their description. In this approach to art he was a follower of Jonathan Swift, the great satirist of the Enlightenment. Thackeray's most outstanding works are The Book of Snobs (under this title he published a collection of satirical essays) that appeared in 1846—1847, and his novel Vanity Fair (1847—1848).

THE BOOK OF SNOBS

In this book Thackeray presents a gallery of men and women of the ruling classes of England. He writes about the parasitical life of the aristocracy; he describes the evils of the bourgeoisie, which is only interested in resembling as near as possible the aristocracy. Thackeray also writes about the English military men of high rank, who in their stupidity and self-conceit place themselves entirely above the rank and file; he also attacks the clergy with his biting satire. All these people are snobs, according to Thackeray, because they cringe before those who are superior, and are rude and despotic towards those who are below them. Most of the chapters of this book have the word "snob" in the title. Thus, there is a chapter on The Snob Royal, on Great City Snobs, Military Snobs, Party-Giving Snobs, on Clerical Snobs, on Some Country Snobs and so on. The word "snob", which had existed long before Thackeray's time, acquired a new meaning under his pen. It became a mirror of moral and psychological ideas of national character, customs and personal traits. The book is a perfect reflection of Thackeray's satirical and highly negative approach to bourgeois society. It is a real encyclopedia of the life of the ruling classes in England. These classes retain much of what Thackeray saw in them even today.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 -1855) EMILY BRONTE (1818 - 1848) ANNE BRONTE (1820 - 1849)

Charlotte Bronte ' s principal work is the novel " Jane Eyre : An Autobiography (1847) which tells a story of a poor orphan - a girl whose high moral standards , her dignity, chastity, strong will helped her to get through all her life hardships and won her the respect and love of a man (Rochester).

Her novel " Shir1ey " (1849) was inspired by the Chartist Movement and has class struggle for its background.

Emily Bronte’s work was smaller in scope but not in importance. Her only novel "Wuthering Heights" (1847) combines elements of romantic aesthetics and literature on the one hand (Heatheliff has all the features of the Byronic character - he is a strong individual, very passionate, struggling for his independence) and realistic features on the other hand (all the characters, especially the main ones, are not only psychologically, but also socially motivated).

Anne Bronte is known for her poems.