Charles Dickens(1812-1870) at the age of twenty-five already had in his homeland the glory of "inimitable", the best of modern novelists. His first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), a brilliant masterpiece of comic prose, made him the favorite writer of the English-speaking world. Second novel "Oliver Twist"(1838) will be the subject of our consideration as Victorian novel sample.
This is a defiantly implausible story of a pure orphan boy, illegitimate, who miraculously survives in a workhouse, as an apprentice to a ferocious undertaker, in London's darkest thieves' dens. Angelic Oliver wants to be destroyed by his brother, a secular young man Monks, who does not want to fulfill the will of his late father, who, before his death, bequeathed half of his fortune to his illegitimate son Oliver. According to the terms of the will, the money will go to Oliver only if, before adulthood, he does not go astray, does not tarnish his name. To destroy Oliver, Monks conspires with one of the bigwigs of the London underworld, the Jew Fagin, and Fagin lures Oliver into his gang. But no forces of evil can prevail over the good will of honest people who sympathize with Oliver and, against all intrigues, restore him. good name. The novel ends with a happy ending, traditional for English classical literature, a "happy ending", in which all the villains who sought to corrupt Oliver are punished (the buyer of stolen goods, Fagin, is hanged; the killer Sykes dies to escape the police and an angry mob), and Oliver finds relatives and friends , returns its name and state.
"Oliver Twist" was originally conceived as a crime-detective novel. In the English literature of those years, the so-called "Newgate" novel, named after the Newgate criminal prison in London, was very fashionable. This prison is described in the novel - Fagin spends his last days in it. In the "Newgate" novel, criminal offenses were necessarily described that tickled the nerves of the reader, a detective intrigue was woven in which the paths of the lower classes of society, the inhabitants of the London bottom, and the very top - aristocrats with impeccable reputation who actually turned out to be the inspirers of the most heinous crimes. The sensational "Newgate" novel, with its poetics of intentional contrasts, obviously owes much to romantic literature, and thus, in early work Dickens reveals the same measure of continuity in relation to romanticism, which we noted for " Shagreen leather", an early novel by Balzac. However, at the same time, Dickens opposes the idealization of crime characteristic of the "Newgate" novel, against the charm of Byronic heroes who have penetrated the criminal world. The author's preface to the novel indicates that the main thing for Dickens as a Victorian novelist was the exposure and punishment of vice and the service of public morality:
It seemed to me that to depict the real members of a criminal gang, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their vileness, to show their miserable, impoverished life, to show them as they really are - they are always sneaking, seized with anxiety, along the dirtiest paths life, and wherever they look, a terrible black gallows looms before them - it seemed to me that to portray this means to try to do what is necessary and what will serve society. And I did to the best of my ability.
The "Newgate" features in "Oliver Twist" consist of a deliberate thickening of colors in the description of dirty dens and their inhabitants. Hardened criminals, runaway convicts exploit the boys, instilling in them a kind of thieves' pride, from time to time betraying the less capable of their students to the police; they also push girls like Nancy, torn by remorse and loyalty to their lovers, onto the panel. By the way, the image of Nancy, a "fallen creature", is characteristic of many novels of Dickens' contemporaries, being the embodiment of the feeling of guilt that the prosperous middle class felt towards them. The most vivid image of the novel is Fagin, the head of a gang of thieves, "a burned-out beast," according to the author; of his accomplices, the image of the robber and murderer Bill Sykes is most detailed. Those episodes that unfold in the thieves' environment in the slums of the East End are the most vivid and convincing in the novel; the author, as an artist, is bold and diverse here.
But in the process of work, the idea of the novel was enriched with themes that testify to Dickens' attention to the urgent needs of the people, which make it possible to predict his further development as a truly national realist writer. Dickens became interested in workhouses, new English institutions created in 1834 under the new Poor Law. Prior to that, local church authorities and parishes were responsible for the care of the weak and the poor. The Victorians, for all their piety, did not donate too generously to the church, and the new law ordered that all the poor from several parishes be gathered in one place, where they had to work as hard as they could, paying off their maintenance. At the same time, families were separated, fed in such a way that the inhabitants of the workhouses died of exhaustion, and people preferred to be imprisoned for begging than to end up in workhouses. With his novel, Dickens continued the stormy public controversy around this newest institution of English democracy and strongly condemned it in the unforgettable opening pages of the novel, which describes the birth of Oliver and his childhood in the workhouse.
These first chapters stand apart in the novel: the author writes here not a criminal, but a socially accusatory novel. The description of Mrs. Mann's "baby farm", the workhouse practices, shocks the modern reader with cruelty, but it is completely reliable - Dickens himself visited such institutions. The artistry of this description is achieved by contrasting the gloomy scenes of Oliver's childhood and the humorous tone of the author. Tragic material is set off by a light comic style. For example, after Oliver's "crime" when, in desperation of hunger, he asked for more of his meager portion of porridge, he is punished with solitary confinement, which is described as follows:
As for exercise, the weather was wonderfully cold, and he was allowed to douse each morning under a pump in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who saw to it that he did not catch a cold, and with a cane caused a feeling of warmth throughout his body. As for the society, every two days he was taken to the hall where the boys dined, and there they were flogged as an example and a warning to everyone else.
In the novel, which is diverse in terms of material, the image of Oliver becomes a connecting link, and in this image the melodramatic nature of the art of early Dickens, the sentimentality so characteristic of Victorian literature as a whole, is most clearly manifested. This is a melodrama good sense words: the author operates with enlarged situations and universal feelings, which are perceived by the reader in a very predictable way. Indeed, how can one not feel sympathy for a boy who did not know his parents, who was subjected to the most cruel trials; how not to be imbued with disgust for villains who are indifferent to the suffering of a child or push him onto the path of vice; how not to sympathize with the efforts of the good ladies and gentlemen who wrested Oliver from the hands of a monstrous gang. Predictability in the development of the plot, the given moral lesson, the indispensable victory of good over evil are the characteristic features of the Victorian novel. In this sad story social problems are intertwined with the features of criminal and family novels, and Dickens takes only the general direction of the development of the plot from the novel of education, because of all the characters in the novel, Oliver is the least realistic. These are Dickens' first approaches to the study of child psychology, and the image of Oliver is still far from the images of children in Dickens' mature social novels, such as Dombey and Son, Hard Times, Great Expectations. Oliver in the novel is called to embody Good. Dickens understands a child as an uncorrupted soul, an ideal being, he resists all the ulcers of society, vice does not stick to this angelic creature. Although Oliver himself does not know about it, he is of noble birth, and Dickens is inclined to explain his innate subtlety of feelings, decency precisely by the nobility of blood, and vice in this novel is still more the property of the lower classes. However, Oliver would not have been able to escape the persecution of evil forces alone if the author had not brought to his aid the sugary-leafy images of "good gentlemen": Mr. Brownlow, who turns out to be closest friend late father Oliver, and his friend Mr. Grimwig. Another defender of Oliver is the "English Rose" Roz Maylie. The lovely girl turns out to be his own aunt, and the efforts of all these people, wealthy enough to do good, bring the novel to a happy ending.
There is another side to the novel that made it especially popular outside of England. Dickens here for the first time showed his remarkable ability to convey the atmosphere of London, which in the 19th century was the largest city on the planet. Here he spent his own difficult childhood, he was aware of all the districts and nooks and crannies of the giant city, and Dickens draws it differently from what was customary before him in English literature, without emphasizing its metropolitan facade and signs. cultural life, but from the inside, depicting all the consequences of urbanization. Dickens' biographer H. Pearson writes about this: "Dickens was London itself. He merged with the city together, he became a particle of every brick, every drop of bonding mortar. humor, his most valuable and original contribution to literature. the greatest poet streets, embankments and squares, but at that time this unique feature of his work escaped the attention of critics.
The perception of Dickens' work at the beginning of the 21st century, of course, is very different from the perception of his contemporaries: what caused tears of emotion in the reader of the Victorian era, today seems to us to be strained, overly sentimental. But Dickens' novels, like all great realistic novels, will always show examples of humanistic values, examples of the struggle between Good and Evil, inimitable English humor in the creation of characters.
Introduction
1. The place of Dickens' creativity in the development of English and world realistic literature
2. The formation of the realistic method in the early works of Dickens ("The Adventures of Oliver Twist")
Social Philosophy of Dickens and the Formation of the Realist Method
Artistic features of early works
3. Ideological and artistic originality of Dickens' novels late period Creativity ("Great Expectations")
Genre and plot originality of later works
Features of the realistic method in the novel
Conclusion
Literature
INTRODUCTION
Dickens belongs to those great writers whose world fame was established immediately after the appearance of their first works. Not only in England, but also in Germany, France, Russia, very soon after the publication of the first books of Boz (the pseudonym of the young Dickens), they started talking about the author of The Pickwick Club, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby.
Especially in Russia, the works of Dickens were worthily appreciated very early and from the beginning of the 40s they were systematically and repeatedly published both on the pages of literary magazines and individual publications.
This circumstance was noted by F. M. Dostoevsky, who wrote: "... we understand Dickens in Russian, I'm sure, almost the same as the British, even, perhaps, with all shades ...".
Dwelling on the reasons for such a pronounced interest in Dickens, both on the part of Russian readers and Russian critics, MP Alekseev rightly sees the reason for Dickens' special popularity in Russia, primarily in the democratic and humanistic nature of his work.
With all the variety of opinions about Dickens that have come down to us by great Russian writers and critics, such as Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Ostrovsky, Goncharov, Korolenko, Gorky, the thought of Dickens's democracy and humanism, his great love for people, is leading in them.
So, Chernyshevsky sees in Dickens "a defender of the lower classes against the upper ones", "a punisher of lies and hypocrisy". Belinsky emphasizes that Dickens' novels are "deeply imbued with the sincere sympathies of our time." Goncharov, calling Dickens "a common teacher of novelists", writes: "Not just an observant mind, but fantasy, humor, poetry, love, with which he, in his words," carried the whole ocean "in himself, helped him write all of England alive , immortal types and scenes". Gorky admired Dickens as a man who "amazingly comprehended the most difficult art of loving people."
At the same time, along with the very essence, with the main pathos of Dickens's work, his "accurate and subtle observation", "skill in humor", "relief and accuracy of images" (Chernyshevsky) are emphasized.
In V. G. Korolenko’s story “My First Acquaintance with Dickens”, the special penetrating and life-giving atmosphere of Dickens’ works, Dickens’s greatest ability to create images of heroes that convince the reader, how to involve him in all the vicissitudes of their life, to make him sympathize with their suffering and rejoice in their joys are shown figuratively, concretely and convincingly.
Today, Dickens continues to be one of the favorite writers of young people and adults. His books diverge in mass editions and are translated into all languages of the peoples inhabiting our country. In 1957-1964, the complete works of Dickens in thirty volumes were published in Russian in a circulation of six hundred thousand copies.
Literary critics also remain interested in the writer's work. In addition, the changed socio-political and social views make us see in a new way literary heritage Dickens, which in the Soviet literary criticism considered only from the standpoint of socialist realism.
The purpose of this work is to analyze the evolution of the realistic method in the work of Dickens on the example of the novels The Adventures of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.
To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved in the work:
Determine the place of the work of Charles Dickens in English and world realistic literature;
Compare the realistic method in the novels "The Adventure of Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations", comparing plot and compositional features, images of the main characters and secondary characters;
Analyze the development of Dickens' social philosophy on the example of these works
Identify the main features of Dickens' style in early and late works.
When solving the tasks set, methods of analysis and comparison of works of art are used.
1. The place of Dickens' creativity in the development of English and world realistic literature
Dickens opens a new stage in the history of English realism. It is preceded by the achievements of 18th-century realism and half a century of Western European romance. Like Balzac, Dickens combined the virtues of both styles in his work. Dickens himself lists Cervantes, Lesage, Fielding and Smollet as his favorite writers. But it is characteristic that he adds "Arabic Tales" to this list.
To some extent, in the initial period of his work, Dickens repeats the stages of development of English realism in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The origins of this realism are Steele and Addison's Moral Weeklies. On the eve of the big novel there is a moralistic essay. The conquest of reality, which takes place in the literature of the 18th century, takes place first in genres approaching journalism. Here the accumulation of vital material takes place, new social types are established, which the realistic social novel will use as a kind of starting point for a long time.
The realistic novel of the 18th century arises from the literature of everyday life. This attempt to generalize and systematize the materials of reality is especially characteristic of the ideology of the third estate, which sought to realize and order the world with the power of its thought.
The writers of the realistic novel of the nineteenth century, among whom Dickens occupies one of the first places, begin by destroying this tradition which they have inherited. Dickens, whose characters in some of their features show a significant resemblance to the characters of Fielding or Smollet (for example, it has been repeatedly pointed out that Nicholas Nickleby or Martin Chasseluit are more or less close copies of Tom Jones), makes a significant reform in a novel of this type. Dickens lives in an era of open internal contradictions of bourgeois society. Therefore, following the moral-utopian construction of the novel of the 18th century is replaced by Dickens with a deeper penetration into the essence of bourgeois reality, a more organic plot following its contradictions. The plot of Dickensian novels in the first period of his work (after the Pickwick Club), however, also bears family character(the happy ending to the love of heroes, etc. in Nicholas Nickleby or Martin Chasseluit). But in fact, this plot is often relegated to the background and becomes a form that holds the narrative together, because it constantly explodes from the inside with more general and more directly expressed social problems (raising children, workhouses, oppression of the poor, etc.) that do not fit within the narrow confines of the "family genre". The reality included in Dickens' novel is enriched with new themes and new material. The horizon of the novel is clearly expanding.
And further: utopia " happy life” in Dickens only in a few cases (like “Nicholas Nickleby”) finds a place for itself within the bourgeois world. Here Dickens, as it were, seeks to get away from the real practice of bourgeois society. In this respect he, despite his dissimilarity with the great romantic poets of England (Byron, Shelley), is in some way their heir. True, his very searches " wonderful life» directed in a different direction than theirs; but the pathos of rejecting bourgeois practice connects Dickens with romanticism.
The new era taught Dickens to see the world in its inconsistency, moreover, in the insolubility of its contradictions. The contradictions of reality gradually become the basis of the plot and the main problem of Dickensian novels. This is especially clearly felt in later novels, where the "family" plot and "happy ending" openly give way to the leading role of a wide range of socio-realistic picture. Novels such as "Bleak House", "Hard Times" or "Little Dorrit" pose and resolve, first of all, the social issue and the life contradictions associated with it, and secondly, any family-moral conflict.
But the works of Dickens differ from previous realistic literature not only in this strengthening of the realistic social moment. The attitude of the writer to the reality he depicts is decisive. Dickens has a profoundly negative attitude towards bourgeois reality.
A deep awareness of the internal gap between the world desired and the world that exists is behind Dickensian predilection for playing with contrasts and romantic mood swings - from harmless humor to sentimental pathos, from pathos to irony, from irony back to realistic description.
At a later stage of Dickens' work, these superficially romantic attributes for the most part disappear or take on a different, more gloomy character. However, the concept of "another world" beautiful world, albeit not so picturesquely decorated, but still clearly opposed to the practice of bourgeois society, is preserved here as well.
This utopia, however, is for Dickens only a secondary moment, not only demanding, but directly suggesting a full-blooded depiction of real life with all its catastrophic injustice.
However, like the best realist writers of his time, whose interests went deeper than the external side of phenomena, Dickens was not content with simply stating the randomness, "accident" and injustice of modern life and yearning for an obscure ideal. He inevitably approached the question of the internal laws of this chaos, of those social laws that nevertheless govern it.
The realism and "romance" of Dickens, the elegiac, humorous and satirical stream in his work are in direct connection with this progressive movement of his creative thought. And if the early works of Dickens are still largely “decomposable” into these constituent elements (“Nicholas Nickleby”, “The Antiquities Store”), then in its further development Dickens comes to some kind of synthesis, in which all the previously separate aspects of his work are subject to a single task - to “reflect the basic laws of modern life” (“Bleak House”, “Little Dorrit”) with the greatest completeness.
This is how the development of Dickensian realism should be understood. It's not that Dickens' later novels are less "fabulous", less "fantastic". But the fact is that in the later novels both the “fairy tale”, and “romance”, and sentimentality, and, finally, the realistic plan of the work - all this as a whole has come much closer to the task of a deeper, more essential reflection of the basic laws and basic conflicts. society.
Dickens is a writer by whose works we can judge, and quite accurately, about the social life of England in the middle of the 19th century. And not only about the official life of England and its history, not only about the parliamentary struggle and the labor movement, but also about small details, as if not included in the “big story”. From the novels of Dickens, we can judge the state of railways and water transport in his time, the nature of the exchange operations in the City of London, prisons, hospitals and theaters, markets and places of entertainment, not to mention all types of restaurants, taverns, hotels of the old England. The works of Dickens, like all the great realists of his generation, are, as it were, an encyclopedia of his time: various classes, characters, ages; the lives of the rich and the poor; the figures of a doctor, a lawyer, an actor, a representative of the aristocracy and a man with no specific occupation, a poor seamstress and a secular young lady, a manufacturer and a worker - such is the world of Dickens' novels.
“From all the works of Dickens it is clear,” A.N. wrote about him. Ostrovsky, - that he knows his fatherland well, studied it in detail and thoroughly. To be folk writer, love for the motherland is not enough - love gives only energy, feeling, but does not give content; you still need to know your people well, get along with them more briefly, become related.
2. Features of the realistic method in early novels Dickens ("The Adventures of Oliver Twist")
Social Philosophy of Dickens and the Formation of the Realist Method
The social philosophy of Dickens, in the form in which it has come down to us in most of his works, takes shape in the first period of his work (1837-1839). Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and the somewhat later Martin Chasseluit, which in their external construction are a kind of Fielding's Tom Jones, were the first novels by Dickens to give some more or less coherent realistic picture of the new capitalist society. It is precisely in these works, therefore, that it is easiest to trace the process of the formation of Dickensian realism, as it, in its essential features, took shape in this era. In the future, it is true, there is a deepening, expansion, refinement of the already achieved method, but the direction in which artistic development can go is given in these first social novels. We can see how in these books Dickens becomes the writer of his own time, the creator of the English social novel of a wide range.
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839), begun at the same time as The Pickwick Club, being Dickens's first realistic novel, thus creating a transition to a new period of his work. Here the deeply critical attitude of Dickens to bourgeois reality has already fully affected. Along with the traditional plot scheme adventure novel-biography, which was followed not only by eighteenth-century writers like Fielding, but also by Dickens' immediate predecessors and contemporaries like Bulwer-Lytton, there is a clear shift towards socio-political modernity. Oliver Twist was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the position created for the people in the story of a boy born in a house of charity.
Dickens's novel began to appear in those days (since February 1837) when the struggle against the law, expressed in popular petitions and reflected in parliamentary debates, had not yet ended. Particularly strong indignation, both in the revolutionary Chartist camp and among the bourgeois radicals and conservatives, was caused by those Malthusian-colored clauses of the law, according to which husbands in workhouses were separated from wives, and children from parents. It is this side of the attack on the law that found the most vivid reflection in the Dickensian novel.
In The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens shows the starvation and horrendous bullying that children endure in a community care home. The figures of the parish beadle Mr. Bumble and other workhouse bosses open a gallery of satirical grotesque images created by Dickens.
Oliver's life path is a series of terrible pictures of hunger, want and beatings. Depicting the ordeal that befalls young hero novel, Dickens develops a broad picture of the English life of his time.
First, life in the workhouse, then in the "teaching" of the undertaker, and finally, the flight to London, where Oliver finds himself in a den of thieves. Here - a new gallery of types: the demonic owner of the thieves' den Fagin, the robber Sykes, a tragic figure in his own way, the prostitute Nancy, in which the good principle constantly argues with evil and finally wins.
Thanks to their revealing power, all these episodes obscure the traditional plot scheme of the modern novel, according to which the protagonist must certainly extricate himself from a difficult situation and win a place for himself in the bourgeois world (where he actually comes from). For the sake of this scheme, Oliver Twist also finds his benefactor, and at the end of the novel becomes a rich heir. But this path of the hero to well-being, quite traditional for the literature of that time, is in this case less important than the individual stages of this path, in which the revealing pathos of Dickensian creativity is concentrated.
If we consider the work of Dickens as a consistent development towards realism, then Oliver Twist will be one of the most important stages in this development.
In the preface to the third edition of the novel, Dickens wrote that the purpose of his book was “one harsh and naked truth,” which forced him to abandon all the romantic embellishments that works devoted to the life of the scum of society were usually full of.
“I read hundreds of stories about thieves - charming little ones, mostly amiable, immaculately dressed, with a tightly stuffed pocket, experts on horses, bold in handling, happy with women, heroes behind a song, a bottle, cards or bones and worthy comrades, the most brave, but nowhere, with the exception of Hogarth, did I encounter genuine cruel reality. It occurred to me that to describe a bunch of such fellow-criminals as really exist, to describe them in all their ugliness and misery, in the miserable poverty of their lives, to show them as they actually wander or creep anxiously along the dirtiest paths of life, seeing in front of them, wherever they went, a huge black, terrible ghost of the gallows - that to do this meant trying to help society in what it badly needed, which could bring him a certain benefit.
Among the works sinning with such a romantic embellishment of the life of the scum of society, Dickens ranks Gay's famous Beggar's Opera and Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford (1830), the plot of which, especially in the first part, in many details anticipated the plot of Oliver Twist. But, arguing with this kind of "salon" image of the dark sides of life, which was characteristic of writers like Bulwer, Dickens still does not reject his connection with literary tradition of the past. He names a number of eighteenth-century writers as his predecessors. “Fielding, Defoe, Goldsmith, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie - all of them, and especially the first two, brought the scum and scum of the country onto the stage for the most good purposes. Hogarth is a moralist and censor of his time, whose great works will forever reflect both the age in which he lived and the human nature of all times - Hogarth did the same, without stopping at anything, did with the strength and depth of thought that were the lot of very few before him ... "
Pointing to his closeness to Fielding and Defoe, Dickens thereby emphasized the realistic aspirations of his work. The point here, of course, is not in the closeness of the theme of "Moth Flanders" and "Oliver Twist", but in the general realistic orientation, which forces authors and artists to depict the subject without softening or embellishing anything. Some descriptions in Oliver Twist could well serve as an explanatory text for Hogarth's paintings, especially those where the author, deviating from direct following of the plot, dwells on individual paintings of horror and suffering.
Such is the scene that little Oliver finds in the house of a poor man weeping for his dead wife (Chapter V). In describing the room, the furnishings, all the members of the family, Hogarth's method is felt - each object tells, each movement narrates, and the picture as a whole is not just an image, but a coherent narrative seen through the eyes of a moral historian.
Simultaneously with this decisive step towards a realistic depiction of life, we can observe in Oliver Twist the evolution of Dickensian humanism, which is losing its abstract dogmatic and utopian character and is also approaching reality. The good beginning in Oliver Twist leaves the fun and happiness of the Pickwick Club and settles in other areas of life. Already in the last chapters of The Pickwick Club, the idyll had to face the gloomy sides of reality (Mr. Pickwick in Fleet Prison). In "Oliver Twist", on fundamentally new grounds, there is a separation of humanism from the idyll, and the good beginning in human society is increasingly combined with the world of real everyday disasters.
Dickens seems to be groping for new ways for his humanism. He had already broken away from the blissful utopia of his first novel. Good no longer means happy for him, but rather the opposite: in this unjust world, drawn by the writer, goodness is doomed to suffering, which does not always find its reward (the death of little Dick, the death of Oliver Twist's mother, and in the following novels, the death of Smike, little Nelly, Paul Dombey, who are all victims of cruel and unfair reality). Here is how Mrs. Maley argues in that sad hour when her beloved Rose is threatened with death from a fatal illness: “I know that death does not always spare those who are young and kind and on whom the affection of others rests.”
But where, then, is the source of goodness in human society? In a certain social class? No, Dickens cannot say that. He resolves this issue as a follower of Rousseau and the Romantics. He finds the child, the uncorrupted soul, the ideal being who emerges pure and undefiled from all trials and who resists the plagues of society, which in this book are still largely the property of the lower classes. Subsequently, Dickens will stop blaming criminals for their crimes, and will blame the ruling classes for all existing evil. Now the ends have not yet been made, everything is in its infancy, the author has not yet drawn social conclusions from the new arrangement of moral forces in his novel. He does not yet say what he will say in the future - that goodness not only coexists with suffering, but that it mainly resides in the world of the destitute, unfortunate, oppressed, in a word, among the poor classes of society. In Oliver Twist there still operates a fictitious, as it were, supra-social group of “good gentlemen” who, in their ideological function, are closely related to the reasonable and virtuous gentlemen of the 18th century, but, unlike Mr. Pickwick, are well-off enough to do good deeds (a special strength - "good money"). These are Oliver's patrons and saviors - Mr. Brownlow, Mr. Grimwig and others, without whom he would not have escaped the persecution of evil forces.
But even within the group of villains, a close-knit mass of opposing philanthropic gentlemen and beautiful-hearted young men and women, the author looks for such characters that seem to him capable of moral rebirth. Such is, first of all, the figure of Nancy, a fallen being, in whom, nevertheless, love and self-sacrifice prevail and defeat even the fear of death.
In the preface to Oliver Twist cited above, Dickens wrote the following: “It seemed very rude and indecent that many of the persons acting in these pages were taken from the most criminal and low strata of the London population, that Cyke is a thief, Fagin is a hoarder of stolen goods. that the boys are street thieves and the young girl is a prostitute. But, I confess, I cannot understand why it is impossible to learn the lesson of the purest good from the most vile evil ... I saw no reason when I wrote this book why the very dregs of society, if their language does not offend their ears, cannot serve moral purposes at least measure as much as the top of it.
Good and evil in this novel by Dickens have not only their "representatives", but also their "theorists". Indicative in this regard are the conversations that Fagin and his student have with Oliver: both of them preach the morality of shameless selfishness, according to which every person is “his own best friend” (chapter XLIII). At the same time, Oliver and little Dick are prominent representatives of the morality of philanthropy (cf. chapters XII and XVII).
Thus, the alignment of the forces of "good" and "evil" in "Oliver Twist" is still quite archaic. It is based on the idea of a society not yet divided into warring classes (a different idea appears later in the literature of the 19th century). Society is viewed here as a kind of more or less integral organism, which is threatened by various kinds of "ulcers" that can corrode it either "from above" (soulless and cruel aristocrats), or "from below" - depravity, begging, crime of the poor classes, or from the official side. the state apparatus - the court, police officials, city and parish authorities, etc.
Artistic features of the novel
Oliver Twist, as well as novels such as Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) and Martin Chasseluit (1843-/1844), were the best proof of how outdated the plot scheme, which Dickens still continued to adhere to. This plot scheme, however, allowed for the description of real life, but real life existed in it only as a significant background (cf. "Pickwick Club"), and Dickens in his realistic novels had already outgrown this concept of reality.
For Dickens, real life was no longer a "background". It gradually became the main content of his works. Therefore, it had to come into inevitable collision with the plot scheme of the traditional bourgeois novel-biography.
In the realistic social novels of Dickens of the first period, despite their broad content, there is one protagonist in the center. Usually these novels are called by the name of their protagonist: "Oliver Twist", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Martin Chasseluit". Adventures, "adventures" (adventures) of the hero, on the model of the novels of the 18th century (meaning biographical novels such as "Tom Jones"), create the necessary prerequisite for depicting the world around us in that diversity and at the same time in that random variegation in which modern reality appeared to the writers of this comparatively early period in the development of realism. These novels follow the plot of experience individual and, as it were, reproduce the randomness and natural limitations of this experience. Hence the inevitable incompleteness of such an image.
And indeed, not only in the novels of the 18th century, but also in the early novels of Dickens of the late 30s and early 40s, we observe the foreground of this or that episode in the biography of the hero, which can simultaneously serve as material and means for depicting some or a typical phenomenon of social life. So in "Oliver Twist" a little boy finds himself in a den of thieves - and before us is the life of scum, outcasts and fallen ones ("Oliver Twist").
Whatever the author portrays, no matter what unexpected and remote corner of reality he throws his hero into, he always uses these excursions into one or another area of life to draw a broad social picture that was absent from the writers of the 18th century. This is the main feature of early Dickensian realism - the use of any seemingly random episode in the hero's biography to create a realistic picture of society.
But at the same time, the question arises: how comprehensive is the picture that the writer unfolds before us in this way? To what extent all these separate phenomena, so important in themselves - since it is they who often determine the color, character and main content of this or that Dickens novel - are equivalent from a social point of view, are they equally characteristic, is their organic connection with each other shown in capitalist society? This question must be answered in the negative. Of course, all these phenomena are unequal.
The early works of Dickens, his realistic novels, thus give us an extremely rich, lively, diverse picture of reality, but they paint this reality not as a single whole, governed by uniform laws (it is precisely this understanding of modernity that Dickens will later have), but empirically, as amount individual examples. During this period, Dickens interprets contemporary capitalist reality not as a single evil, but as a sum of various evils, which should be fought one by one. This is what he does in his novels. He confronts his hero, in the course of his personal biography, with one of these primary evils and takes up arms against this evil with all possible means of cruel satire and withering humor. Now the barbaric methods of raising children, now the hypocrisy and vulgarity of the middle philistine classes of English society, now the venality of parliamentary figures - all this in turn causes an angry protest or ridicule of the writer.
As a result of summing up these various aspects, do we get any general impression about the nature of the reality depicted by the author? Undoubtedly, it is created. We understand that this is a world of venality, corruption, and crafty calculation. But does the author set a conscious goal to show the internal functional connection of all these phenomena? So far, this is not the case, and it is precisely here that the difference between the two periods of Dickens's realistic work lies: while in the first period, which has just been discussed, Dickens is still largely an empiricist in this respect, “in his further artistic development he will more and more to subordinate his work to the search for generalizations, drawing closer in this respect to Balzac.
3. Ideological and artistic originality of Dickens' novels of the late period of creativity ("Great Expectations")
Genre and plot originality of later works
Dickens' last novels Great Expectations (1860-1861), Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) are united by a number of common features that allow us to talk about the development and consolidation of detective genre trends in Dickens's work .
The mysterious crime, to which the efforts of a number of characters are directed, is generally quite common in Dickens' novels. In Martin Chesluit, in Nicholas Nickleby, in Oliver Twist, in Bleak House, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit, there are all kinds of sinister criminals and murderers, but at the same time, none of these works cannot be unconditionally called a detective novel. True, the crime is the engine of the plot, it organizes the intrigue, it helps to arrange the characters, it more clearly distributes moral chiaroscuro - all this is true. But the crime and the disclosure of the secret associated with it are not the main content of the work here. Its content is much broader.
The movement and interweaving of individual destinies (where some secret of a gloomy character enters only as an integral element) played an auxiliary role in all these novels and served the main, broader task, symbolizing the dark, mysterious forces of the depicted reality.
In the so-called crime or detective novel, the situation is different. The center of gravity is transferred to the individual, empirical fact, to the very way in which the crime was committed, or to the methods of its disclosure. It is characteristic that in Gothic literature the main interest of the reader was attracted by the figure of the criminal, often (in typical cases, like Melmoth) surrounded by a mystical halo. The crime may already be known or it may not exist at all. Intentions are important, the “philosophy of evil” is important, the very bearer of the evil principle is important as an ideological phenomenon, regardless of its real actions (Manfred, Melmoth).
In a detective novel, the crime itself is important, and most importantly (and hence the name of the genre) is all the complex mechanics of finding out, which, in fact, constitutes the plot of such works. The reader, as it were, joins the active investigation of the judicial incident and tirelessly participates in solving the problem, which is initially presented to him in the form of an equation with a fairly large number of unknowns (however, a gradual increase in their number is also possible here). The solution to this equation is the forward movement of a typical detective novel.
The detective genre, which first found its complete expression in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, came into contact with the so-called sensational novel in England and gained extraordinary popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers like Charles Reid and Wilkie Collins especially cultivate this genre and give it a certain finish. Elements of a "black" novel and a detective story, combined with a melodramatic love affair against the backdrop of modern life - this is basically the composition of this novel.
All kinds of mysterious adventures, disguises, disappearances, "resurrection from the dead" (based on the hero's imaginary death), kidnappings, robberies, murders - all this is an inevitable accessory. Works of this kind are teeming with strange, scary characters: sleepwalkers, morphine addicts, opium smokers, all kinds of maniacs or charlatans, hypnotists, soothsayers, etc. All this literature, especially the novels of Wilkie Collins, had an undeniable influence on Dickens.
Starting with "Great Expectations" and ending with "The Secret of Edwin Drood", we can observe the process of a gradual decrease in social pathos and the shift of the author's attention to the crime-detective theme. In this respect, Great Expectations, like Our Mutual Friend, occupies an intermediate position. But since the crime theme and the detective “solving the mystery” have not yet completely mastered the plot and leave room for a relatively broad picture of social reality as well (in “Great Expectations” these are episodes of Pip’s city life, in “Our common friend is a mostly satirical depiction of secular society). And only "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" can be called a detective novel in the full sense of the word.
Features of the realistic method in the novel
The novel "Great Expectations" is interesting to compare not only with the early works of Dickens, but also with the novels of Balzac. The earlier works of Dickens, and "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit", are extremely close to the work of Balzac in their theme and in the very direction of thought. Dickens and Balzac, above all, are brought together by the grandeur of artistic intent, although this idea is embodied in them in different ways.
The novel "Great Expectations" is similar in its theme to "Lost Illusions" by Balzac.
Both here and there - the story of a young man's career. And here and there - dreams of glory, of wealth, of a brilliant future. Both here and there - disappointment after the hero's acquaintance with life. But at the same time, for Balzac, every disappointment of a young man is the result of another collision with some typical phenomenon of bourgeois reality. Each disappointment is the result of experience, concrete knowledge, is a sign of acquired wisdom, which in modern Balzac society is tantamount to a wound inflicted pure heart. Losing illusions, the hero gains wisdom, becomes a "worthy" member of a society where everything is built on predatory, anti-human laws. Therefore, the ideological result of the work is a critical exposure of bourgeois reality, adaptation to which is bought at the cost of losing everything beautiful that is in man.
Although "Great Expectations" is also devoted to a certain extent to lost illusions, the character of the disappointment of Dickens' heroes is very far from Balzac's.
Pip, the hero of Great Expectations, passively waits for the happiness that should fall on him from heaven. The main reason for Pip's disappointment is that his patrons are not a noble, rich old woman and her beautiful pupil, but a fugitive convict whom Pip once saved from persecution. Thus, Pip's disillusionment itself does not contain that critical, revealing content in relation to bourgeois reality, which is in Balzac and which was in Dickens' previous novels.
The plot of the novel is presented in such an individualized way that the generalizing tendency in it exists somewhere near the "private" experience of the hero.
Reality is depicted in rather gloomy, almost revealing tones (especially the London episodes), but the hero himself would willingly agree to exist in it under more favorable conditions, could, ultimately, adapt to these circumstances,
And at the same time, this “adjustability” of the hero (in combination with some other negative traits, which will be discussed later) also does not find an unambiguous moral assessment on the pages of the novel.
All this is possible only because the author's social pathos is muted here and that the interest of the novel is largely focused on finding out who the hero's real patron is, that is, on finding out a "secret" that does not have a wide generalizing meaning.
In this novel, Dickens partially returns to his earlier works, in the center of which is the figure of the destitute little hero subject to all the trials of a harsh life.
Pip is reminiscent of both Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. And the very structure of the novel, as it were, returns us to the original positions of Dickensian poetics, when the plot of the work was built around the hero’s biography and basically coincided with it (“Oliver Twist”, “Nicholas Nickleby”, “David Copperfield”). This method of "one-line" construction is all the more natural in cases where the story, as in "Great Expectations", is told in the first person, and, consequently, the volume of reality depicted completely coincides with the individual experience of the hero.
From the very beginning of the novel, the narrative goes along two lines: in an emphatically everyday plan, the house of Pip's older sister, the ferocious Mrs. Jo Gargery, she herself and her husband, the touchingly good-natured blacksmith Joe, as well as their inner circle are described. Pip's adventures in his own home are traced with cheerful humor: the friendship of Pip and Joe, these two sufferers, oppressed by a ferocious sister and wife, the episode of stealing a file and a pie, Pip's disturbing experiences during a festive dinner, when an unpleasant parallel is drawn between a pig on a platter and himself .
The second plan of the story is connected with extraordinary incidents in the life of young Pip, with his "personal biography", and introduces us into the atmosphere of a crime-detective novel. So the first scenes of the novel are played out in a cemetery, where a meeting with a convict takes place on the graves of the hero's parents, which is of decisive importance for Pip's entire future fate.
Even touching details about the boy's early orphanhood (let's recall Oliver's story for comparison) are given here not only in sentimental terms, but are surrounded by elements of adventurous-criminal literature of secrets and horrors.
And then, no matter how dramatically the hero's life changes, fate again and again leads him to the gloomy swamps behind the cemetery, the peace of which is often disturbed by the appearance of fugitive criminals seeking shelter here.
This second plan of the novel, connected with the intrusion into the life of Pip by the gloomy, persecuted convict Abel Magwitch, is all built on secrets, from the first meeting and ending with all those episodes when a stranger in an incomprehensible way lets Pip know about himself and about his disposition towards him.
This, at first glance, inexplicable, attachment of Mzgvich leads not only to the fact that he provides Pip with the enviable existence of a “youth from a rich house”. But, risking his life, for the sake of meeting with him, he returns to England (here again, a comparison with Balzac suggests itself: the motive of the dependence of a young man from bourgeois society on a criminal rejected by this society).
In the history of Magwitch, the crime-detective line of the novel finds its most vivid embodiment. Only towards the end are revealed all the complex storylines, connecting Pip with this man through the mysterious house of Miss Hevisham, as well as with her pupil Estella, who turns out to be Magwitch's daughter.
However, despite the emphasized dependence of Magwitch's line on the tradition of the "nightmare" and detective genre, his story, nevertheless, is not without a socially accusatory meaning. The high point here is the story of his past life, where Magwitch grows before our eyes into a pathetic, tragic figure of an eternally persecuted sufferer. His speech sounds like an indictment of the bourgeois system.
“To prison and from prison, to prison and from prison, to prison and from prison,” he begins his story like this ... - I was dragged back and forth, expelled from one city and from another, beaten, tortured and driven. I know no more than you about the place of my birth ... I first remember myself in Essex, where I stole turnips to satisfy my hunger ... I knew that my name was Magwitch, and I was baptized Abel. How did I know about it? Just as I learned that one bird is called a sparrow, the other a tit...
As far as I could see, there was not a living soul who, seeing Abel Magwitch, would not be frightened, would not drive him away, would not lock him up, would not torment him. And it so happened that, although I was a small, unfortunate, ragged creature, the nickname of an incorrigible criminal was established behind me ”(Chapter XVII).
The biography of Magwitch is a variant of the biography of Oliver Twist, devoid, however, of the essential element by which Dickens usually rescued his well-meaning but destitute heroes. In the history of Magwitch, Dickens finally showed what can happen to a person in a capitalist society without the "good money" that he so often resorted to at the end of his novels - Magwitch remained an internally noble person (this can be seen from his disinterested attachment to Pip), but both morally and physically he is doomed to perish. The optimism of the previous plot endings in Dickens' novels is finally broken here.
The criminal-adventurous atmosphere of the novel is further enhanced by a fairy-tale-fantastic element. Fate confronts Pip with Miss Hevish, a rich, half-mad old woman, and her pretty, capricious and by no means kind pupil Estella, whose life purpose is to avenge all men for the offense inflicted once upon her patroness.
Miss Hevisham's house is surrounded by secrets, Pip is let in here at the special invitation of an old woman, whom he, a simple village boy, for some reason must entertain.
The image of the mistress of the house is designed in fabulous colors. Here is her first description when Pip enters her room, forever deprived of daylight: “She was wearing a white dress made of expensive fabric ... Her shoes were white, a long white veil came down from her head, attached to her hair with white wedding flowers, but her hair was completely gray. Precious jewelry sparkled on the neck and arms, and the same jewelry lay on the table. Around the room were scattered dresses, not as expensive as the one she was wearing, unpacked suitcases were lying around. She herself, apparently, had not yet finished dressing; she had only one shoe on, the other lay on the table beside her hand; the veil was half pinned on, the watch and its chain, lace, a handkerchief, gloves, a bouquet of flowers, a prayer book - everything was thrown somehow on the table next to the jewels lying on it ... I noticed that white had long ceased to be white, lost shine, yellowed. I noticed that the bride faded just like her wedding clothes and flowers ... I noticed that her dress was once sewn on the slender forms of a young girl, and now hung like a bag on her figure, which was bones covered with skin ”( Chapter VIII).
It must be added that the clock in Miss Havisham's house stopped at twenty minutes to nine many years ago, when she learned of her fiancé's treachery, that her shoe had never been worn since then, that the stockings on her feet had decayed to holes and that in one of the neighboring rooms, teeming with mice and other evil spirits, covered in cobwebs, there was a wedding cake on the table - details that are already possible only in a real fairy tale itself. If we recall in this connection other Dickens novels, we will find that houses surrounded by secrets were met with him before.
The atmosphere of this part of the novel is largely reminiscent of the atmosphere of some of Andersen's fairy tales, where the hero finds himself in mysterious castle, where an old sorceress and a beautiful but cruel princess live. In Pip's mind, Miss Hevisham is called a sorceress (chapter XIX), he himself is a knight, and Estella is a princess (chapter XXIX).
Thanks to a sharp turn, as is often the case with Dickens, the plot of the novel changes radically, and the realistic plan of narration comes into force again. An unexpected enrichment (which Pip falsely attributes to the generosity of Miss Hevisham) forces the hero to leave his native place, and we find ourselves in a new and very real sphere of reality.
Realistic and deep in its own way psychological drawing and to the knowledge of life, the episode of Pip's farewell to poor, modest Joe and the equally modest and selfless Biddy, when Pip involuntarily assumes the tone of a condescending patron and begins to secretly be ashamed of his simple-hearted friends.
These first days of his social exaltation thus signify a well-known moral decline - Pip has already approached the world of worldly filth, into which he will inevitably have to plunge in connection with his enrichment. True, the motive of the “fall” of the hero does not become the leading one and emerges for the most part only at each regular meeting with Joe. The “good start” in Pip still prevails, despite all the trials.
Once again, Dickens brings his young hero to London (“Oliver Twist”), shows him a huge unfamiliar city, makes him think about the inner springs of modern bourgeois society. And from that moment in the novel there is a contrast between the two worlds. On the one hand, there is a world of calmness, silence and spiritual purity in the blacksmith Joe's house, where the owner himself lives, who most of all suits his work dress, his hammer, his pipe. On the other hand, there is the “vanity of vanities” of the modern capitalist capital, where a person can be deceived, robbed, killed, and, moreover, by no means because of special hatred for him, but because this “for some reason may turn out to be beneficial” (Chapter XXI).
Dickens has always been inexhaustible in creating figures that symbolize this terrible world of bloodthirsty selfishness. But here, less than before, he resorts to the metaphorical and masking symbolism of the Gothic novel, and draws people as they are generated every day and every hour by the prose of capitalist existence.
One of the colorful figures in this part of the novel is Clerk Wemmick, whose life is sharply divided into two halves. On the one hand, the withering and embittering work in Jaggers' office, where Wemmick cheerfully shows Pip casts from the faces of executed criminals and boasts of his collection of rings and other valuable "souvenirs" that he obtained with their help. And on the other hand, Wemmick's home idyll, with a garden, a greenhouse, a poultry house, a toy drawbridge and other innocent fortification tricks, with touching solicitude for a deaf old father.
At the invitation of Wemmick, Pip visited him (according to the chosen biographical method, the hero must personally visit the house of a person completely alien to him, so that his home environment could be described in the novel), and so the next morning they rush to the office : “As we moved forward, Wemmick became drier and more severe, and his mouth closed again, turning into a mailbox. When at last we entered the office and he pulled out the key from behind the gate, he apparently forgot both his "estate" in Walworth, and his "castle", and the drawbridge, and the gazebo, and the lake, and the fountain. , and the old man, as if all this had time to scatter to smithereens ... ”(Chapter XXV).
Such is the power of bourgeois "efficiency" and its influence on the human soul. Another terrible symbol of this world is in Great Expectations the figure of the powerful lawyer Jagters, the guardian of the hero. Wherever he appears, this powerful man, who seems to have in his hands all the accusers and all the defendants, all the criminals and all the witnesses, and even the very London court, wherever he appears, the smell of fragrant soap spreads around him, emanating from his hands, which he carefully washes in a special room of his office, both after police visits and after each regular client. The end of the working day is marked by an even more detailed washing - up to gargling, after which not one of the petitioners dares to approach him (chapter XXVI). The dirty and bloody activities of Jaggers are most clearly emphasized by this "hygienic" procedure.
Dickens reproduces in this novel other spheres of reality, the image of which is familiar to us from earlier works. Such is the family of Mr. Pocket, Pip's London tutor, depicted in plotless, humorous grotesque, and very reminiscent of the similar Kenwigs family in Nicholas Nickleby.
With virtuoso skill, Dickens draws the utter chaos that reigns in the Pockets' house, where Mr. Pocket's wife is busy reading books, the cook gets drunk to insensibility, the children are left to their own devices, roasts disappear without a trace during dinner, etc.
So far we have been talking about those aspects of the novel "Great Expectations" that connected this later work with early period creativity of Dickens.
As we have seen, there was quite a lot in common here, and the most significant in this sense was the construction of the novel, in which Dickens, abandoning the diverse, multi-tiered structure of Little Dorrit or Bleak House, returned again to the biographical one-linearity of Oliver Twist.
Now let's talk about significant differences. They lie in the author's attitude to some significant problems of our time and are also reflected in the plot structure of the novel.
First of all, it refers to the character of the protagonist. We remember that the "main characters" of Dickens's early novels were usually rather pale figures, endowed, however, with all the necessary attributes of "positivity" - here and unselfishness, and nobility, and honesty, and steadfastness, and fearlessness. Take Oliver Twist, for example.
In Little Dorrit, in Bleak House, in Hard Times, in A Tale of Two Cities, the center of gravity is shifted towards large historical events and the broadest social themes, so that here it is hardly possible to talk about some single central (and positive) hero for each novel.
The protagonist reappears in Dickens with a return to the biographical construction of the plot. But his character had already changed a lot, we mentioned those not particularly noble feelings that had taken possession of Pip from the moment he enriched himself. The author draws his hero conceited, sometimes selfish, cowardly. His dream of wealth is inseparable from the dream of a "noble" biography. He would like to see only Miss Hevisham as his patroness; he does not separate his love for Estella from the desire for a secure, elegant and beautiful life. In short, Pip, being very far from the vulgar rogues and swindlers, from the "knights of profit" with which the novel is teeming, nevertheless reveals a penchant for ostentatious luxury, and for extravagance, and for idleness.
Pip's vanity, cowardice and selfishness are especially pronounced at the moment when he again encounters a runaway convict and learns the name of his true benefactor. Despite the fact that Pip's wealth was obtained for him by Magwitch at the cost of great perseverance, effort and sacrifice, and is a sign of the most selfless love to him, Pip, full of "noble" disgust, selfishly dreams of getting rid of the unfortunate man who risked his life to meet him. Only further ordeals make Pip treat Magwitch differently and have an ennobling effect on his character.
Thus, "good money", or rather, their fiction, is exposed for the second time in the novel already in the history of Pip himself. Pip, who from childhood dreamed that wealth would fall on him - and precisely the "noble" wealth coming from Miss Hevisham - sees that the capital received did not bring him anything good, that nothing was left of them but debts and dissatisfaction with himself, that his life is fruitless and joyless (chapter LVII).
“Good money” turned out to be useless money, and to top it off, “terrible money”, so that by the end of the novel Pip comes to the end of the novel as a broken man, resting his soul at someone else’s family hearth, however, with a timid hope that once proud, and now also punished life, resigned Estella will share the rest of her days with him.
And again Dickens comes to his former conclusion that simple people, working people, such as the blacksmith Joe and his faithful Biddy, constitute the most noble and reliable part of mankind.
4. conclusion
Based on the foregoing, it can be argued that Charles Dickens is one of the founders of the realistic method, whose work had a significant impact on the development of realism not only in English, but also in European literature in general, and in Russia in particular.
Already in his early works (beginning with the novel "Oliver Twist") the writer defines the realistic task of his work - to show the "bare truth", mercilessly exposing the shortcomings of the contemporary social order. Therefore, a kind of message to the novels of Dickens are the phenomena public life. So in "Oliver Twist" was written after the passage of the law on workhouses.
But in his works, along with realistic pictures of modern reality, there are also romantic motifs. This is especially true for early works, such as the novel Oliver Twist. Dickens tries to resolve social contradictions through reconciliation between social strata. He grants happiness to his heroes through the "good money" of certain benefactors. At the same time, the characters retain their moral values.
At a late stage of creativity romantic tendencies are replaced by a more critical attitude to reality, the contradictions of contemporary society are highlighted by the writer more sharply. Dickens comes to the conclusion that “good money” alone is not enough, that well-being not earned, but acquired without any effort, distorts the soul of a person. What happens to the main character of the novel "Great Expectations". He is also disappointed in the moral foundations of the wealthy part of society.
Already in the early works of Dickens, the characteristic features of his realism are formed. In the center of the work is usually the fate of one hero, whose name the novel is most often named (“Oliver twist”, “Nicholas Nickleby”, “David Copperfield”, etc.), so the plot often has a “family character”. But if at the beginning of the creative path the novels most often ended with a “family idyll”, then in later works the “family” plot and the “happy ending” openly give way to the leading role of a socially realistic picture of a wide range.
A deep awareness of the internal gap between the world desired and the world that exists is behind Dickensian predilection for playing with contrasts and romantic mood swings - from harmless humor to sentimental pathos, from pathos to irony, from irony back to realistic description. At a later stage of Dickens' work, these superficially romantic attributes for the most part disappear or take on a different, more gloomy character.
Dickens is completely immersed in the concrete being of his time. This is his greatest strength as an artist. His fantasy is born, as it were, in the depths of empiricism, the creations of his imagination are so dressed in flesh that it is difficult to distinguish them from genuine casts of reality.
Like the best realist writers of his time, whose interests went deeper than the outer side of phenomena, Dickens was not satisfied with simply stating the randomness, "accident" and injustice of modern life and yearning for an obscure ideal. He inevitably approached the question of the internal laws of this chaos, of those social laws that nevertheless govern it.
Only such writers deserve the title of true realists of the 19th century, with the courage of real artists mastering new life material.
literature
1. Dickens C. "Great Expectations". M., 1985
2. Dickens C. "The Adventures of Oliver Twist". M., 1989
3. Dickens C. Collected works in 2 volumes. M .: "Fiction", 1978.
4. “Charles Dickens. Bibliography of Russian translations and critical literature in Russian (1838-1960), compiled by Yu. V. Fridlender and I. M. Katarsky, ed. acad. M. P. Alekseeva, M. 1962; I. Katarsky, Dickens in Russia, M.: "Science", 1966
5. Ivasheva V.V. The work of Dickens. M., 1984
6. Katarsky I.M. Dickens in Russia. mid XIX century. M., 1960
7. Katarsky I.M. Dickens / critical and bibliographic essay. M., 1980
9. Nersesova T.I. The work of Charles Dickens. M., 1967
10. Nilson E. The World of Charles Dickens /translated by R. Pomerantseva/. M., 1975
11. Pearson H. Dickens (translated by M. Cann). M., 1963
13. The Secret of Charles Dickens (collection of articles). M., 1990
14. Tugusheva M.P. Charles Dickens: Essay on Life and Works. M., 1983
Silman T.I. Dickens: an essay on creativity. L., 1970
Dickens C. Collected works in 2 volumes. M .: "Fiction", 1978.
Mikhalskaya I.P. Charles Dickens: Essay on Life and Works. M., 1989
Katarsky I.M. Dickens / critical and bibliographic essay. M., 1980
Silman T.I. Dickens: an essay on creativity. L., 1970
Tugusheva M.P. Charles Dickens: Essay on Life and Works. M., 1983
Mikhalskaya I.P. Charles Dickens: Essay on Life and Works. M., 1989
Ivasheva V.V. The work of Dickens. M., 1984
This is the best boy for you.
Need it from time to time
treat pa-koy - it will do
to his advantage. And its content
won't cost much because
he has not been fed since birth.
C. Dickens. The Adventures of Oliver Twist
Having been published, the works of C. Dickens immediately fell into the treasury of world literature, since they reflected many of the acute problems of public life in the 19th century, and in particular the plight of the common people in England.
The protagonist of the novel is a little boy Oliver Twist, whose school of life was hard and cruel from birth. Ironically, Oliver was born in a workhouse. His mother died immediately after giving birth, no one knew his father. Therefore, as soon as he was born, he received the status of a criminal or "violator of the law on the poor" and was forced to be brought up by strangers, or, in other words, "was a victim of a system of treachery and deceit." In infancy, Oliver was placed "on a farm" where, "without suffering from excess food or clothing," he received the precious right to suffering and death, since most of the children in this establishment died at the tenderest age.
There is a bitter irony in the writer’s tone when he tells us what a caring upbringing the poor boy received, who managed to survive on the farm and was, at nine years old, “a pale, stunted child, small in stature and, undoubtedly, skinny” , that is, quite suitable for hard work.
In denouncing the cruelty of councilors and public trustees, Dickens depicts them as "very wise, shrewd philosophers" who condescendingly gave the poor of the workhouses the right to choose: "either slowly starve to death in the workhouse, or die quickly outside its walls." Children who got here are doomed to be raised by beatings, hunger and, of course, work. Asking for an addition to the miserable portion of liquid porridge that the children received here (enough to slowly die of hunger) was equated with a social crime and severely punished. Where, if not in a workhouse, the English poor from childhood learned to lie, offend the weak, steal, take care only of themselves.
From the doors of this humane orphanage, three whole roads opened before Oliver. One led to the apprentices to the chimney sweep, where little boys were forced to spend many hours in dirty, sooty pipes, which many of them could not stand, getting stuck or suffocating in the workplace. Another road, which, by the way, Oliver had to take, led to the "mourners" to the undertaker, where the boy received no less valuable life lessons in the ability to adapt to the conditions of existence than in the workhouse. And, finally, the third road - to the underworld, to the streets belonging to the representatives of the criminal "bottom", where Oliver Twist continues to be brought up under the strict guidance of little thieves and a major robber Sykes, as well as a buyer of stolen Fagin, who seek to introduce the boy to theft and immorality. material from the site
However, a realist in describing everyday details, Dickens idealizes his hero, endowing him with an innate virtue that cannot be shaken by any vices and dirt of the surrounding world. In difficult moments of life, kind people come to the aid of a lonely, useless Oliver: Nancy, who managed to save a living soul in the inhuman conditions of the criminal world, Mr. Brownlow, who later adopted Twist, kind and merciful Rosa Maylie.
With all his heart attached to his little hero, Ch. Dickens helps him to endure all the trials. The book ends happily, but for many pages it makes the reader think about those unjust laws that contribute to the achievement of happiness by the elect, while the bulk of the people undergo humiliation, insults, bullying, all kinds of hardships. And this, of course, is the educational impact of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" on the public consciousness.
The Adventures of Oliver Twist is the first social novel by Dickens, in which the contradictions of English reality were incomparably clearer than in The Pickwick Papers. “Hard truth,” Dickens wrote in the preface, “was the aim of my book.”
In the preface to Oliver Twist, Dickens declares himself a realist. But he immediately makes the exact opposite statement: “... It is still far from clear to me why the lesson of the purest good cannot be learned from the most vile evil. I have always considered the opposite to be a firm and unshakable truth ... I wanted to demonstrate on little Oliver how the principle of good always triumphs in the end, despite the most unfavorable circumstances and difficult obstacles. The contradiction that is found in this policy statement of the young Dickens stems from the contradiction that characterizes the writer's worldview at an early stage of his creative activity.
The writer wants to show reality "as it is", but at the same time excludes the objective logic of life facts and processes, tries to idealistically interpret its laws. A convinced realist, Dickens could not abandon his didactic ideas. To fight this or that social evil for him always meant to convince, that is, to educate. The writer considered the correct education of a person to be the best way to establish mutual understanding between people and the humane organization of human society. He sincerely believed that the majority of people are naturally drawn to goodness and that a good beginning can easily triumph in their souls.
But to prove the idealistic thesis - "good" invariably triumphs over "evil" - within the framework of a realistic depiction of complex contradictions modern era was impossible. To implement the controversial creative task that the author set himself, it took creative method, combining elements of realism and romanticism.
At first, Dickens intended to create a realistic picture of only criminal London, to show the "miserable reality" of the thieves' dens of London's "Eastside" ("East" side), that is, the poorest quarters of the capital. But in the process of work, the original idea expanded significantly. The novel depicts various aspects of modern English life, and poses important and topical problems.
The time when Dickens was collecting material for his new novel was a period of fierce struggle around the Poor Law published back in 1834, in accordance with which a network of workhouses was created in the country for the maintenance of the poor for life. Drawn into the controversy that arose around the opening of workhouses, Dickens strongly condemned this terrible product of the rule of the bourgeoisie.
“... These workhouses,” wrote Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England, “or, as the people call them, bastilles for the poor (poor-law-bastilles), are arranged in such a way as to scare away anyone who has the slightest hope of living without this form of public charity. In order that a man should turn to the poor's fund only in the most extreme cases, so that he would resort to it only when he had exhausted all the possibilities of managing on his own, the workhouse was turned into the most disgusting place that the refined imagination of the Malthusian could conceive of.
The Adventures of Olever Twist is directed against the Poor Law, against workhouses and existing political economy concepts that lull public opinion with promises of happiness and prosperity for the majority.
However, it would be a mistake to think that the novel is only the fulfillment by the writer of his public mission. Along with this, creating his work, Dickens is included in the literary struggle. "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" was also a kind of response by the author to the dominance of the so-called "Newgate" novel, in which the story of thieves and criminals was conducted exclusively in melodramatic and romantic tones, and the lawbreakers themselves were a type of superman, very attractive to readers. In fact, in the "Newgate" novels, the criminals acted as Byronic heroes who moved into the criminal environment. Dickens strongly opposed the idealization of crimes and those who commit them.
In the preface to the book, Dickens clearly stated the essence of his plan: “It seemed to me that to portray the real members of a criminal gang, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their vileness, to show their miserable, impoverished life, to show them as they really are , - they are always sneaking, seized with anxiety, along the dirtiest paths of life, and wherever they look, a terrible black gallows looms before them, - it seemed to me that to portray this means trying to do what is necessary and what will serve society. And I did it to the best of my ability."
The author shows that evil penetrates all corners of England, most of all it is widespread among those whom society has doomed to poverty, slavery, suffering. The darkest pages in the novel are those dedicated to the workhouses.
The workhouses were contrary to the beliefs of Dickens the humanist, and their depiction becomes the writer's response to disputes around a deeply topical issue. The excitement that Dickens experienced in studying what he regarded as an unsuccessful attempt to alleviate the lot of the poor, the sharpness of his observations, gave the images of the novel a great artistic power and persuasiveness. The writer draws a workhouse based on real facts. It depicts the inhumanity of the Poor Law in action. Although the order of the workhouse is described in only a few chapters of the novel, the book has firmly established the fame of a work that exposes one of the darkest sides of English reality in the 30s. However, a few, but eloquent in their realism, episodes were enough for the novel to firmly establish the glory of a novel about workhouses.
The main characters of those chapters of the book in which the workhouse is depicted are children born in gloomy dungeons, their parents dying of hunger and exhaustion, eternally hungry juvenile pupils of workhouses and hypocritical "trustees" of the poor. The author emphasizes that the workhouse, promoted as a “charitable” institution, is a prison that degrades and oppresses a person physically.
Thin oatmeal three times a day, two onions a week, and half a loaf on Sundays—that was the meager ration that supported the pathetic, always hungry boys of the workhouse, who had been tearing hemp since six o'clock in the morning. When Oliver, driven to despair by hunger, timidly asks the warden for an extra portion of porridge, the boy is considered a rebel and locked in a cold closet.
Dickens, in the first of his social novels, also depicts the filth, poverty, crimes that reign in the slums of London, people who have sunk to the "bottom" of society. The slum dwellers Fagin and Sykes, Dodger and Bates, who represent thieves' London in the novel, in the perception of young Dickens are an inevitable evil on earth, to which the author opposes his preaching of goodness. The realistic depiction of the bottom of London and its inhabitants in this novel is often colored with romantic and sometimes melodramatic tones. The pathos of denunciation here is not yet directed against those social conditions that give rise to vice. But whatever the subjective assessment of the phenomena by the writer, the images of the slums and their individual inhabitants (especially Nancy) objectively act as a harsh accusatory document against the entire social system that generates poverty and crime.
Unlike the previous novel, in this work the narrative is colored with gloomy humor, the narrator seems to have difficulty believing that the events taking place relate to a civilized and boasting of its democracy and justice in England. The pace of the story is different here too: short chapters are filled with numerous events that make up the essence of the adventure genre. In the fate of little Oliver, adventures turn out to be misadventures when the sinister figure of Monks, Oliver's brother, appears on the scene, who, in order to obtain an inheritance, is trying to destroy the protagonist by conspiring with Fagin and forcing him to make a thief out of Oliver. In this novel by Dickens, the features of a detective story are palpable, but not professional servants of the law are investigating the mystery of Twist, but enthusiasts who fell in love with the boys and wished to restore the good name of his father and return the inheritance legally belonging to him. The nature of the episodes is also different. Sometimes melodramatic notes sound in the novel. This is especially clearly felt in the farewell scene of little Oliver and Dick, the hero's friend doomed to death, who dreams of dying sooner in order to get rid of cruel torments - hunger, punishments and overwork.
The writer introduces a significant number of characters into his work, tries to deeply reveal them inner world. Of particular importance in The Adventures of Oliver Twist are the social motivations of people's behavior, which determined certain traits of their characters. True, it should be noted that the characters of the novel are grouped according to a peculiar principle arising from the originality of the worldview of the young Dickens. Like the romantics, Dickens divides heroes into "positive" and "negative", the embodiment of goodness and carriers of vices. At the same time, the moral norm becomes the principle underlying such a division. Therefore, the son of wealthy parents, Oliver's half-brother Edward Liford (Monks), the head of the thieves' gang Fagin and his accomplice Sykes, the beadle Bumble, the matron of the workhouse, Mrs. Corney, engaged in raising orphans, Mrs. Mann, and others, fall into one group (“evil”). It is noteworthy that critical intonations are associated in the work with and with the characters, who are called upon to protect order and law in the state, and with their "antipodes" - criminals. Despite the fact that these characters are at different levels of the social ladder, the author of the novel endows them with similar features, constantly emphasizing their immorality.
To another group (“good”), the writer includes Mr. Brownlow, the sister of the mother of the protagonist Rose Fleming, Harry Maley and his mother, Oliver Twist himself. These characters are drawn in the traditions of educational literature, that is, they emphasize the indestructible natural kindness, decency, and honesty.
The defining principle of the grouping of characters, both in this and in all subsequent Dickens novels, is not the place that one or another of the characters occupies on the social ladder, but the attitude of each of them to the people around him. Positive characters are all persons who “correctly” understand social relationships and the principles of social morality that are unshakable from his point of view, negative characters are those who come from ethical principles that are false for the author. All the "good" are full of vivacity, energy, the greatest optimism and draw these positive qualities from the fulfillment of their social tasks. Among the characters positive for Dickens, some (“poor”) are distinguished by humility and. devotion, others ("the rich") - generosity and humanity, combined with efficiency and common sense. According to the author, the fulfillment of social duty is a source of happiness and well-being for everyone.
The negative characters of the novel are the bearers of evil, hardened by life, immoral and cynical. Predators by nature, always preying on others, they are hideous, too grotesque and caricatured to be plausible, though they leave the reader in no doubt that they are true. So, the head of a gang of thieves Fagin loves to enjoy the sight of stolen gold things. He can be cruel and merciless if disobeyed or harmed in his cause. The figure of his accomplice Sikes is drawn in more detail than the images of all the other accomplices of Fagin. Dickens combines the grotesque, caricature and moralizing humor in his portrait. This is a “subject of strong build, a kid of about thirty-five, in a black velvet frock coat, very dirty short dark trousers, lace-up shoes and gray paper stockings that fit thick legs with bulging calves - such legs in such a suit always give the impression of something unfinished unless they are adorned with shackles. This "cute" subject keeps a "doggie" named Flashlight to punish children, and even Fagin himself is not afraid of him.
Among the “bottom people” depicted by the author, the image of Nancy turns out to be the most difficult. Sykes' accomplice and lover endows the writer with some attractive character traits. She even shows a tender affection for Oliver, however, subsequently cruelly pays for it.
While ardently fighting selfishness in the name of humanity, Dickens nonetheless put forward considerations of interest and benefit as the main argument: the writer was dominated by the views of the philosophy of utilitarianism, which was widely popular in his time. The concept of "evil" and "good" was built on the idea of bourgeois humanism. To some (representatives of the ruling classes), Dickens recommended humanity and generosity as the basis of "correct" behavior, to others (workers) - devotion and patience, while emphasizing the social expediency and usefulness of such behavior.
In the narrative line of the novel, didactic elements are strong, or rather, moral and moralizing, which in " Posthumous notes Pickwick Club" were only insert episodes. In this novel by Dickens they form an integral part of the story, explicit or implied, expressed in a playful or sad tone.
At the beginning of the work, the author notes that little Oliver, like his peers, who find themselves at the mercy of heartless and morally unscrupulous people, will face the fate of “a humble and hungry poor man who goes through his life under a hail of blows and slaps, despised by everyone and nowhere meeting pity” . At the same time, portraying the misadventures of Oliver Twist, the author leads the hero to happiness. At the same time, the story of a boy who was born in a workhouse and left an orphan immediately after his birth ends happily, clearly contrary to the truth of life.
The image of Oliver is in many ways reminiscent of the characters in Hoffmann's fairy tales, who suddenly find themselves in the thick of the battle between good and evil. The boy grows up, despite the most difficult conditions in which the children who are raised by Mrs. Mann are placed, he experiences a half-starved existence in the workhouse and in the family of the Sowerbury undertaker. The image of Oliver is endowed by Dickens with romantic exclusivity: despite the influence of the environment, the boy rigorously strives for good even when he is not broken by the lectures and beatings of the trustees of the workhouse, who has not learned obedience in the house of his "tutor" - the undertaker, falls into Fagin's gang of thieves. Having gone through the life school of Fagin, who taught him the art of thieving, Oliver remains a virtuous and pure child. He feels his unsuitability for the craft, for which he is an old swindler, but he feels light and free in Mr. Brownlow's comfortable bedroom, where he immediately draws attention to the port of a young woman who later turned out to be his mother. As a moralist and Christian, Dickens does not allow the moral fall of the boy, who is saved by a happy accident - a meeting with Mr. Brownlow, who pulls him out of the kingdom of evil and transfers him to a circle of honest, respectable and wealthy people. At the end of the work, it turns out that the hero is the illegitimate, but long-awaited son of Edwin Lyford, to whom his father bequeathed a fairly significant inheritance. Adopted by Mr. Brownlow, the boy finds a new family.
In this case, we can talk not about Dickens' strict adherence to the logic of the life process, but about the writer's romantic mood, confident that Oliver's purity, purity of soul, his resistance to life's difficulties need to be rewarded. Together with him, others find prosperity and a peaceful existence. positive characters novels: Mr. Grimwig, Mr. Brownlow, Mrs. Maley. Roz Fleming finds his happiness in marriage with Harry Maley, who, in order to marry his beloved girl of low birth, has chosen a career as a parish priest.
Thus, a happy ending crowns the development of intrigue, the good characters are rewarded by the humanist writer for their virtues with a comfortable and cloudless existence. Equally natural for the author is the notion that evil must be punished. All the villains leave the stage - their intrigues are unraveled, because their role is played. In the New World, Monks dies in prison, having received, with the consent of Oliver, part of his father's inheritance, but still wishing to become a respectable person. Fagin is executed, Claypole, to avoid punishment, becomes an informant, Sykes dies, saves from the chase. Beadle Bumble and the workhouse matron who became his wife, Mrs. Corney, lost their jobs. Dickens reports with satisfaction that, as a result, they “succumbed gradually to a state of extreme misery and misery, and at last settled like the despised poor in the same workhouse where they had once ruled over others.”
In an effort to maximize the completeness and persuasiveness of a realistic drawing, the writer uses various artistic means. He describes in detail and carefully the setting in which the action takes place: for the first time he resorts to subtle psychological analysis (the last night of Fagin, who was sentenced to death, or the murder of Nancy by her lover Sykes).
It is obvious that the original contradiction of Dickens's worldview appears in Oliver Twist especially clearly, primarily in the original composition of the novel. Against a realistic background, a moralistic plot that deviates from the strict truth is built. It can be said that the novel has two parallel narrative lines: the fate of Oliver and his fight against evil, embodied in the figure of Monks, and a picture of reality, striking in its truthfulness, based on a truthful depiction of the dark sides of contemporary life for the writer. These lines are not always convincingly connected; a realistic depiction of life could not fit into the framework of the given thesis - "good triumphs over evil."
However, no matter how important the ideological thesis for the writer, which he tries to prove through a moralizing story about the struggle and final triumph of little Oliver, Dickens, as a critical realist, reveals the power of his skill and talent in depicting the wide social background against which the hero’s difficult childhood passes. In other words, the strength of Dickens as a realist does not appear in the depiction of the protagonist and his story, but in the depiction of the social background against which the story of the orphan boy unfolds and ends happily.
The skill of the realist artist appeared where he was not bound by the need to prove the unprovable, where he depicted living people and real circumstances over which, according to the author's intention, a virtuous hero should triumph.
The advantages of the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist", according to Belinsky V.G., lie in "fidelity to reality", while the disadvantage is in the denouement "in the manner of sensitive novels of the past."
In Oliver Twist, Dickens' style as a realist artist was finally determined, a complex complex of his style matured. Dickens' style is built on the intertwining and contradictory interpenetration of humor and didactics, the documentary transmission of typical phenomena and elevated moralizing.
Considering this novel as one of the works created at an early stage of the writer's work, it should be emphasized once again that The Adventures of Oliver Twist fully reflects the originality of the worldview of the early Dickens. During this period, he creates works in which positive characters not only part with evil, but also find allies and patrons for themselves. In the early novels of Dickens, humor supports positive characters in their struggle with the hardships of life, it also helps the writer to believe in what is happening, no matter how gloomy colors reality is painted. It is also obvious that the writer's desire to penetrate deeply into the life of his characters, into its dark and bright corners. At the same time, inexhaustible optimism and love of life make the works of the early stage of Dickens's work generally joyful and bright.
D. M. Urnov
"- Don't be afraid! We will not make a writer out of you, since there is an opportunity to learn some honest trade or become a bricklayer.
“Thank you, sir,” said Oliver.
"The Adventures of Oliver Twist"
Once Dickens was asked to tell about himself, and he said this:
“I was born on the seventh of February 1812 in Portsmouth, an English port city. My father, on duty - he was in the settlement part of the Admiralty - was forced to change his place of residence from time to time, and so I ended up in London as a two-year-old child, and at the age of six I moved to another port city, Chatham, where I lived for several years, after which returned to London again with my parents and half a dozen brothers and sisters, of whom I was second. I began my education somehow and without any system at the priest in Chatham, and finished at a good London school - my studies did not last long, since my father was not rich and I had to enter into life early. I began my acquaintance with life in a lawyer's office, and I must say that the service seemed to me rather miserable and boring. After two years I left this place and for some time continued my education by myself in the Library british museum, where I read intensively; at the same time I took up the study of shorthand, wanting to test my strength as a reporter - not a newspaper one, but a court one, in our church court. I did a good job with this case, and I was invited to work in the "Mirror of Parliament". Then I became an employee of the Morning Chronicle, where I worked until the appearance of the first issues of the Pickwick Club ... I must confess to you that in the Morning Chronicle I was in good standing due to the lightness of the pen, my work was very generously paid, and I parted with the newspaper only when Pickwick achieved fame and popularity." 
Was it really so? Let's go to the Dickens Museum.
Dickens also often changed his place of residence, like his father, however, for other reasons, which we will discuss later. Many Dickensian addresses no longer exist. They were replaced by new buildings. The house in which the writer lived for the last fifteen years of his life is now occupied by a children's school. And the museum is located in the same house in London on Doughty Street, where Dickens settled precisely after the Pickwick Club brought him fame and funds sufficient to rent a house. 
The museum has been restored to its original state. Everything, as in the days of Dickens. Dining room, living room, fireplace, study, desk, even two desks, because they also brought here the table at which Dickens worked for the last fifteen years and at which he worked even on the very last morning. What is it? There is a small window in the corner near the wall, the size of a window. Yes, it's worth it. Rough, clumsy frame with cloudy glass - from another house. Why did she end up in a museum? They will explain to you: little Dickens was looking through this window ... Excuse me, when and where was it - in Portsmouth or in Chatham? No, in London, just on another street, near the northern outskirts of the city. The window is small and dim; it was a semi-basement floor. The Dickens family then lived in very cramped circumstances. After all, my father was in prison!
What did Dickens say about himself? “Father was not rich,” when one should say: “Father went to prison for debts and left the family completely without funds.” “I had to enter into life early” ... If you decipher these words, you get: “From the age of twelve I had to earn my own bread.” “I started my acquaintance with life in a lawyer’s office” - here it’s just a pass, which must be filled in like this: “I started working in a factory.”
Before keeping minutes of judges or recording the speeches of witnesses, Dickens stuck labels on jars of wax, and if working in a law office seemed to him, as he himself says, boring, then what did young Dickens think about the wax factory? “No words could convey my mental anguish,” he recalled about it. After all, even children worked then! - sixteen hours a day. In his own words, even in his mature years, Dickens could not bring himself to pass by the house near Charring Cross, where the factory was once located. And of course, he kept silent about poverty, prison and wax, talking with friends and even more so when he talked about himself in print. Dickens told about this only in a special letter, not sent anywhere - addressed to the future biographer. And only after the death of Dickens, and even then in a softened form, did the readers know that the writer experienced the misadventures of his heroes, those who had to work from an early age, humiliation, fear for the future. 
Hungerford stairs. Not far from this place was Warren's wax factory, where C. Dickens worked.
The writer himself described the premises for work as follows: “It was a dilapidated, dilapidated building adjacent to the river and filled with rats. Its paneled rooms, its rotten floors and steps, old gray rats crawling in the cellars, their constant squeaking and fussing on the stairs, dirt and destruction - all this rises before my eyes, as if I were there. The office was on the ground floor, overlooking the coal barges and the river. There was a niche in the office where I sat and worked.”
Why did Dickens hide his past? Such was the world in which he lived and wrote books. Class arrogance, the main thing - the position in society - Dickens had to reckon with all this. He even changed addresses sometimes, taking new apartment for the sake of reputation. 
And his own house, a country house, in the vicinity of Chatham, the house where he died and where the boarding school for girls is now, Dickens acquired in fulfillment of his dream, which originated in his childhood. “You’ll grow up and, if you’re good enough, you’ll buy yourself such a mansion,” his father once told him when they were still living in Chatham. Dickens Sr. himself never really worked in his life and did not come out of it, but the boy learned as a matter of course: a person is valued for money, according to his property. And how proud Dickens was of meeting celebrities: his fame grew and even the queen herself wished to see him! Could he, walking with friends in a park on the outskirts of London, tell them that he spent his childhood here? No, not on the velvety lawns, but next to the park, in Camden Town, where they huddled in the basement and the daylight entered through a dim window. 
Warren's wax jar, 1830 model.
The artist, who made drawings for his works, Dickens somehow led around London, showing him the houses and streets that fell on the pages of his books. They visited the inn where the first page of The Pickwick Club was once written (now there is a bust of Dickens), at the post office, from where stagecoaches departed (Dickensian characters rode in them), they even looked into thieves' dens (Dickens, after all, he settled his heroes there), but the waxing factory near Charring Cross was not included in this tour. What can you do, in those days even the profession of a writer was not yet considered particularly respectable. And Dickens himself, who made respect for the writer's title, very often in order to give himself more weight in the eyes of society, called himself "a man with means."
It is clear that it was not appropriate for a “man of means” to recall his difficult past. But Dickens the writer drew material for books from his memoirs. He was so attached to the memory of his childhood that sometimes it seems as if time has stopped for him. Dickensian characters use the services of stagecoaches, while Dickens's contemporaries already traveled by rail. Of course, time did not stand still for Dickens. He himself brought change closer with his books. Prison and judicial procedures, conditions of study in closed schools and work in workhouses - all this changed in England under the pressure of public opinion. And it evolved under the impression of the works of Dickens.
The concept of The Pickwick Club was suggested to Dickens and even directly ordered by two publishers who wanted the young observant journalist (they read his reports and essays) to write captions for funny pictures. Dickens accepted the offer, but so that the signatures become whole stories, and the drawings become illustrations for them. The circulation of the Pickwick Papers rose to forty thousand copies. This has never happened before with any book. Everything contributed to the success: an entertaining text, pictures, and, finally, the form of publication - issues, pamphlets, small and inexpensive. (Collectors now pay huge sums to collect all issues of The Pickwick Club, and few can be proud to have all issues the size and green cover of a schoolbook.)
All this did not escape the attention of other publishers, and one of them, the enterprising Richard Bentley, made Dickens a new tempting offer to become editor of a monthly magazine. This meant that every month, in addition to preparing various materials, Dickens will publish the next portion of his new novel in the magazine. Dickens agreed to this, and so in 1837, when the Pickwick Papers were not yet finished, The Adventures of Oliver Twist had already begun.
True, success almost turned into a disaster. Dickens received more and more new offers and eventually got into, in his own words, a nightmare situation when he had to work on several books at the same time, not counting the small magazine work. And these were all monetary contracts, for non-fulfilment of which one could be taken to court or at least become a debtor. Dickens was rescued by the first two publishers, they bought him out from a competing company, returning the advance that Dickens received for Oliver Twist.
The characters of the "Pickwick Club" were, first of all, a company of wealthy gentlemen, athletes at heart, lovers of pleasant and useful pastime. True, they sometimes had a hard time, and the Honorable Mr. Pickwick himself, by virtue of his own imprudence, first ended up in the dock, and then behind bars, but still the general tone of the adventures of the Pickwickian friends was cheerful, simply cheerful. The book was inhabited mainly by eccentrics, and with eccentrics, you know what just happens. The book about Oliver Twist, published in 1838, brought readers into a completely different “company”, set them up in a different way. The world of the outcasts. Slum. London bottom. Some critics grumbled, therefore, that this author knew how to amuse readers, his new novel is too gloomy, and where did he find such vile faces? But the general verdict of the readers was again in favor of Dickens. One researcher says that "Oliver Twist" has found popular success.
Dickens was not the first to write about a joyless childhood. Daniel Defoe was the first to do this. After Robinson Crusoe, he published the book Colonel Jack, the first fifty pages of which are the forerunner of Oliver Twist. These pages describe a boy who grew up as an orphan, nicknamed "colonel", who trades in theft *. Jack and Oliver are neighbors, they know the same streets, but time really does not stand still, and if in Defoe's time London was mostly the old City, then in the Dickensian era the city included the settlements and villages that were already outside the city wall , in one of which Dickens settled himself, and in the other he settled a gang of thieves ... Oliver becomes an accomplice in dark deeds involuntarily. In the boy's soul all the time something resists the thieves' "craft" imposed on him. Dickens, again following Defoe, assures us that it is in him that "noble birth" is reflected. Let's put it simply, as many critics who are quite sympathetic to Dickens have said: steadfastness, good quality of nature. Dickens himself shows that Nancy, a young girl, is also a sincere, kind person, but she has crossed the line, because of which no sympathetic hand will ever rescue her. Or Jack Dawkins, aka the Dodger, a smart, resourceful, endearing fellow, and his intelligence would be worthy of a better use, but he is doomed to wallow in the social bottom, because he is too deeply poisoned by the “easy life”.
A lot was written about criminals at that time. They tried to captivate readers with adventures - all kinds, for the most part inconceivable, frightening. What exactly are the adventures in this book? Sometimes it may seem overloaded with various surprises, but everything is known in comparison. In the usual "criminal" stories, thefts, break-ins, escapes followed at every turn. Defoe also said that when reading such books one might think that the author, instead of exposing the vice, decided to glorify it. Dickens has one murder, one death, one execution for the whole novel, but on the other hand, there are many living, memorable faces, for the sake of which the book was written. Even Bill Sykes' dog turned out to be an independent "face", a special character, taking its place in that zoological gallery, where by that time there were already Robinson's parrot and Gulliver's talking horses and where all literary horses, cats and dogs, up to Kashtanka, would subsequently fall.
Indeed, since the time of Defoe, English writers have at least thought about the question of what makes a person what he is - noble, worthy, or vile criminal. And then, if criminal, does it necessarily mean vile? The pages on which Nancy comes to talk to Rose Mayly, a girl from a good family, testify how difficult it was for Dickens himself to answer such questions, for, reading to him the described meeting, we do not know which of the two girls to prefer.
Neither Defoe nor Dickens reproached their unfortunate characters with misfortune and poverty. They reproached a society that refuses to help and support those who were born in poverty, who are doomed to an unhappy fate from the cradle. And the conditions for the poor, and especially for the children of the poor, were in the exact sense of the word inhuman. When an enthusiast who volunteered to study social evils introduced Dickens to child labor in the mines, even Dickens at first simply refused to believe it. It was he who, it would seem, did not need to be convinced. He, from an early age, found himself in a factory when they worked sixteen hours a day. He, whose descriptions of prisons, courts, workhouses, asylums, raised the incredulous question: “Where did the author get such passions from?” He took it from his own experience, from his memories that he had accumulated since he came as a boy to visit his father, who was in debtor's prison. But when Dickens was told that somewhere under the ground little morlocks (underground inhabitants) were crawling, dragging wheelbarrows behind them from dawn to dusk (and this greatly reduces the cost of laying drifts, since they don’t need small children and large passages), then even Dickens At first he said: "It can't be!" But then he checked, believed, and he himself raised his voice of protest. 
The picture shows the work of children in coal mines in narrow tunnels (1841).
To some contemporaries, critics and readers, it seemed as if Dickens was exaggerating. Now researchers are coming to the conclusion that he softened them. The reality that surrounded Dickens, when historians restore it with facts, with figures in hand, showing, for example, the length of the working day or the age of children (five-year-olds) who dragged wheelbarrows underground, seems implausible, unthinkable. Historians offer to pay attention to such a detail: the entire everyday life passes before us on the pages of Dickens' books. We see how Dickensian characters dress, we know what and how they eat, but - historians say - they very rarely wash their faces. And this is not an accident. Truly, no one will believe, historians say, how dirty Dickensian London was. And the poorer, the dirtier, of course. And this means epidemics that raged with particular force in the darkest quarters.
Dickens made Oliver's fate still comparatively prosperous by sending him to "study" to the undertaker, instead of putting him in the hands of a chimney sweep. In the chimney sweep, slavery awaited the child in the literal sense, to the point that the boy would be constantly black, because this category of Londoners did not know at all what soap and water were. There was a great demand for small chimney sweeps. Nobody's head for a long time it did not come that this evil could somehow be got rid of. The proposal to use mechanisms met with resistance, because, you see, no mechanisms can penetrate the bends and elbows of chimneys, so it’s better little boy(six or seven years old), which will crawl through any gap, you can’t imagine anything. And the boy climbed, choking on dust, soot, smoke, with the danger of falling down, very often into the hearth that was not yet extinguished. This issue was raised by enthusiastic reformers, this issue was discussed by Parliament, and Parliament in the House of Lords once again failed miserably in a decree that demanded not even the abolition, but at least an improvement in the conditions of a pile of juvenile chimney sweeps. The lords, as well as one archbishop and five bishops, called to carry the word of truth and goodness to their flock, rebelled against the decree, in particular on the grounds that chimney sweeps are mostly illegitimate children, and let hard work be their punishment for sins, for that they are illegal!
The trains went before Dickens' eyes, the rivers began to be cleared of sewage, the Laws for the poor were repealed, dooming the already poor to starvation ... Much has changed, and has changed with the participation of Dickens, under the influence of his books. But the “chimney-sweep teaching”, about which we get some concept in the very first pages of Oliver Twist, was never canceled in Dickens's lifetime. True, historians add, climbing into a chimney is still not descending into a dark dungeon, so if Oliver had ended up not with an undertaker, but with a chimney sweep, he would have to thank fate, for an even more terrible and quite probable fate was for such as he, "a pupil of the workhouse", work in the mine.
Dickens did not send Oliver to the mine, perhaps because he himself knew little about it. In any case, I have not seen it with my own eyes. Perhaps he trembled before horrors that surpassed the most terrible fiction, and thought that readers would tremble in the same way. But on the other hand, with extraordinary bold truthfulness for his time, he portrayed the imaginary "care" of the poor, the abandoned and, of course, the underworld. For the first time in literature, with such force and detail, he showed what a crippled human soul is, already crippled to such an extent that no correction is possible, but only malicious retribution is possible and inevitable - an evil that is returned to society in abundance. Where and when is the boundary broken in the soul of a person that keeps him at the limit of the norm? Following Defoe, Dickens traced the strange connection between the criminal world and the world considered normal and stable. The fact that Oliver in all his misadventures was supposedly rescued by "noble blood" is, of course, an invention. But the fact that the noble Mr. Brownlow turned out to be the culprit of his deplorable fate is a deep truth. Mr. Brownlow saved Oliver, but, as Dickens shows, he thereby only atoned for his own wrongdoing towards his unfortunate mother.
While Dickens was working on Oliver Twist, a great misfortune occurred in his own family - and he was already married. My wife's sister died suddenly. A good friend of Dickens, who understood him, in his own words, better than all friends. This grief is reflected in the novel. In memory of the unforgettable Kat, Dickens created the image of Roz Meily. But, under the influence of difficult experiences, he was too carried away by the description of her fate, her family, and deviated from the main line of the story. So sometimes the reader may think that he is being told some completely different story. Did the author forget about the main characters? Well, this happened to Dickens in general, and not only under the influence of family circumstances, but because of the conditions of his work. Oliver Twist, like The Pickwick Club, he wrote in monthly installments, he wrote in a hurry and did not always manage, with all the ingenuity of his imagination, to find the most natural course in the development of events.
Dickens published his novels in editions, then published them as separate books, and over time he began to read them from the stage. This was also an innovation, which Dickens did not immediately decide on. He kept doubting whether it was proper for him (“a man of means”!) to act as a reader. Success here exceeded all expectations. In London, Dickens' speech was heard by Tolstoy. (Then, however, Dickens read not a novel, but an article about education.) Dickens spoke not only in England, but also in America. Excerpts from "Oliver Twist" performed by the author himself enjoyed exceptional success with the public.
Many tears were shed over the pages of Dickens in their time. The same pages now, perhaps, will not have the same effect. However, Oliver Twist is an exception. Even now readers will not remain indifferent to the fate of the boy who had to endure a hard struggle for his life and human dignity.
