Posted on 12/28/2004 8:50:02 AM PST by UnklGene
The Dangers of Reading - Dickens and the Social Order
BreakPoint with Chuck Colson
December 28, 2004
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
When you hear the name Charles Dickens, what comes to mind? A Christmas Carol? Sentimental tales of poor but loving families, or helpless orphans saved by wealthy benefactors? All of those impressions are accurate, but there’s a lot more to Dickens than that. In fact, there’s a lot more to this great novelist than even many literary critics have been able to see.
Author, editor, and critic Myron Magnet suggests that this is because so many readers and critics bring their own preconceptions to their reading of Dickens (along with many other authors). As Professor Lilia Melani of Brooklyn College summarizes, “Because of Dickens’s moral outrage and his attacks on society’s institutions and values, later critics, who were often Marxists, hailed him variously as subversive, rebellious, and even revolutionary.”
But in a provocative book Dickens and the Social Order, that’s recently been reissued, Magnet makes the point that Charles Dickens—the passionate reformer and champion of the downtrodden, a man usually hailed by modern liberals as one of their own—was actually more of a traditionalist than many people realize. Indeed, Dickens, with his emphasis on the reality of fallen human nature and the importance of families, echoed themes we have found to be so important in the lives of children and in keeping them out of a life of crime.
For example, Dickens lived in an age when many philosophers and writers promoted the inherent goodness of human beings, especially human beings unspoiled by civilization. But Dickens was completely unconvinced by that utopian idea. In an essay that can only be described as politically incorrect today, he wrote bluntly, “I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition. . . . If we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid.” While Dickens had his doubts about civilized society, he viewed it as vastly desirable compared to the alternative.
That has left some critics wondering whether Dickens was not attacking society at all, but rather fallen human nature. That suggests that Dickens—radical as he was in some ways—would have very little in common with the kind of reformers today who operate by putting all the blame for society’s ills on someone else.
Magnet also demonstrates that Dickens’s attitude toward human nature is at the root of his strong belief in the need for families. In Barnaby Rudge, for example, the fatherless, untaught, and undisciplined characters are naturally inclined toward villainy, not saintliness. They have, as Magnet puts it, “undeveloped or defective souls” and “built-in . . . aggressiveness.” This illustrates why even imperfect families play a vital role in restraining the young from giving in to their worst impulses and teaching them to function in society.
In short, Magnet makes a strong case that radical critics who have seen in Dickens a reflection of their own political views have missed a great deal of what he had to say. It just goes to show the trap that even the most intelligent and educated readers can fall into. It takes more than intelligence to be a good reader—it also takes discernment, humility, and a willingness to listen to other people, beginning with the author. Without those qualities, reading can be downright dangerous.
Dickens had to be a hard lefty. It's completely apparent in A Christmas Carol. One of Scrooge's many faults is just being rich, and wanting to make something of himself as a young man is shadowed as something bad in the book.
Who was it who said to forsake worldy possessions in favor of brotherhood, love, charity and eternity in paradise?
George Orwell wrote an interesting essay on Dickens. Too bad I am 8000 miles away from the book, or I would post the essay.
"Who was it who said to forsake worldy possessions in favor of brotherhood, love, charity and eternity in paradise?"
Sounds like Dickens to me.
Dickens is indeed a great writer, and well worth reading and re-reading.
"Hard Times" is about as close as he comes to a "marxist" position, but even there what he is criticizing is capitalism and utilitarianism with a soul, which I believe any decent conservative should agree with.
What Squarebarb said in #6 is correct. It's not bad to be rich. It's bad to be rich and not share it--to be a miser. Look at the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby, or Oliver Twist's adopted families. Dickens greatly admired rich people who are benevolent and kind to others. The Cheeryble brothers are successful capitalists, too, not landed gentry with inherited wealth, and Nicholas succeeds by apprenticing himself to them.
Oops. "capitalism and utilitarianism with a soul" = "without a soul."
No, it's Scrooge's hard-heartedness toward others that Dickens objects to (though he also takes pains to show how Scrooge's personality was formed through painful incidents in his past, by using flashbacks). Dickens had nothing against working hard or gaining prosperity. He just wanted people to care about others.
Infant mortality rates before the industrial revolution were also extremely high.
I won't pretend that there were no abuses in the industrial revolution, because of course there were. But it was not capitalism or industrialization as such that caused them.
The chief cause of infant mortality was lack of adequate medical care, and in particular of antibiotics and other modern medicines. If you lived to adulthood, you were as likely as not to live to three score and ten. But many never made it past the age of one.
hogwash.
if you want to see the rich being trashed, watch Trading Places. At least Dickens explains why Scrooge is bitter. It's not becuase he's rich, (the nephew did pretty well), it's because he loved money and lost his love.
A Christmas Carol is a story for today, what with the left trying put "bah humbug" into the Constitution.
A line from the book reads, "we were poor, and content to be so, until by our patient industry we might improve our lot." These are not the words of a leftist.
well said.
To each his own. A Christmas Carol was one book. I maintain my opinion, despite text. One line does not a conservative make.
with love, tih
"one mimicked cliche does not a thought make."
Touche. But we know Dickens came from a largely marxist era, and most of those authors were leftists. It's my interpretation and I'm sticking to it. I've only read his books a few hundred times.
Be well and happy.
Why would you do that? If you haven't changed your opinion of them why do you continue to read and re-read the same thing? Perhaps you intuitively know you didn't get it the first time?
Merry Christmas
"Why would you do that? If you haven't changed your opinion of them why do you continue to read and re-read the same thing? Perhaps you intuitively know you didn't get it the first time?"
Most of it came in edumucation.
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