Call number: LD2668 .T4 1958 H86 / Master of Science

This thesis is comprised of two articles that examine sympathy, material culture, and ownership in Victorian literature. In the first article, I explore the figure of the heiress in the Victorian literary tradition, focusing on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. George Eliot marked the heiress figure as unsympathetic, no matter her incarnation: whether the moralist of popular fiction or madwoman of gothic fiction, she is representative of excess and indulgence—ideas that society wanted to condemn in harmony with Georges Batailles's observation that a time of indulgence will be checked by a return to conservative bourgeois ideals. The heiress is made a vessel for these cultural anxieties, representing both the desire for and reaction against material possession within the larger male imperial imaginary landscape. The heiress is a way for the male protagonist to indulge in a decadent coming-of-age narrative before being scalded by his secular desires, abandoning this dream for bourgeois security. I employ the criticism of Batailles, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, etc., in order to discover how the heiress is objectified and controlled, yet, in the greater narrative structure, finds ways to act outside of the male linguistic system as an agent for change—bringing about the collapse of the fake set and props of the material world. In the second article, I examine Charles Dickens's attempts to control his printed materials and his belief that he could coalesce the expanding literate public into a faithful readership. However, Dickens was troubled by illicit reproductions of his work by the popular presses. In order to look at Dickens's concerns not only over losing control of his product, but also having the emotional essence of his characters and stories compromised, I turn to Bleak House which, critics have established, is in part a treatise against unlicensed copies. I argue that the character of Lady Dedlock serves as a representation of Dickens since she, like him, relies on the popular press in order to maintain her social standing, yet she also imagines that she is above them—though, in reality, much of her "private" life is already in public hands. I focus, specifically, on an unlicensed image of Lady Dedlock (that she is unaware of) that has been reproduced in a collection that anyone can purchase. In the end, Dickens allows his fiction to speak for him, forcing the reader to process the invasive horror of unlicensed copies through the emotion they feel for the actual, authentic woman. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 20, 2012 - June 20, 2014

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [295]-314). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [295]-314). Also available on the Internet.

Of the works of all the great British authors of the 19th century who wrote either consciously, or unconsciously, on the social ills of the time few can reach the same level of eloquence as the novel, Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. Through a close examination of this work by Dickens; the "Preston Lockout" on which Hard Times is based; along with the influence of Thomas Carlyle, this thesis will attempt to show that Dickens was an influential participant in the social reforms of Victorian England. This influence in social reform manifested itself through Dickens’ novels; his magazines Household Words and All the Year Round; and his many speeches on social injustice. While he advocated social reform, he did not advocate specific social reform legislation. Instead, it was through his enormous popularity as the foremost British author of his day that the influence was wielded for the eventual betterment of the working classes in Victorian England. And finally, by using the works of Carlyle and other contemporary authors and comparing them to Hard Times, the reader will see the influence that his peers had in the development of the socio-political philosophy of Dickens. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English / "May 2006." / Includes bibliographic references (leaves 65-71).

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2003

The purpose of this study is to determine. whether Charles Dickens's educational theories in England during the nineteenth century are conclusively juxtaposed to John Holt's educational theories in America during the twentieth century. Chapter One introduces the proposition and states the general nature of the discussion in -subsequent chapters. Chapter Two presents a history of economic conditions in nineteenth-century England and shows how its evolution influenced Dickens's educational theories. Chapter Three discusses the economic conditions in twentieth-century America, the moral crisis- and its affect on youth, and Holt's theories of how children fail and how they learn. Chapter Four synthesizes Dickens's and Holt's -theories and establishes that their philosophies and aims in the field of education are closely juxtaposed.

The worlds of Dickens's novels and of Darwin's science reveal striking similarity in spite of their involvement in different areas. The similarity comes from the fact that they shared the ethos of Victorian society: laissez-faire capitalism. In The Origin of Species, which was published on 1859, Charles Darwin theorizes that nature has evolved through the rules of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and the struggle for existence. Although his conclusion comes from the scientific evidence that was acquired from his five-year voyage, it is clear that Dawinian nature is reflected in cruel Victorian capitalism. Three novels of Charles Dickens which were published around 1859, Bleak House, Hard Times, and Our Mutual Friend, share Darwinian aspects in their fictional worlds. In Bleak House, the central image, the Court of Chancery as the background of the novel, resembles Darwinian nature which is anti-Platonic in essence. The characters in Hard Times are divided into two groups: the winners and the losers in the arena of survival. The winners survive in Coketown, and the losers disappear from the city. The rules controlling the fates of Coketown people are the same as the rules of Darwinian nature. Our Mutual Friend can be interpreted as a matter of money. In the novel, everything is connected with money, and the relationship among people is predation to get money. Money is the central metaphor of the novel and around the money, the characters kill and are killed like the nature of Darwin in which animals kill each other. When a dominant ideology of a particular period permeates ingredients of the society, nobody can escape the controlling power of the ideology. Darwin and Dickens, although they worked in different areas, give evidence that their works are products of the ethos of Victorian England.

The nineteenth century was a time of rapid change, brought about by increasing industrial development and changing patterns of thought and belief. Dickens's attitude to industrialism was ambivalent. He was not averse to progress, but feared that the ills of society would remain overshadowed. This dissertation explores representations of loss in Bleak House and examines some of the challenges the subject presents. The first chapter concentrates on examples of the wide range of losses with which Dickens deals in the novel to create the cumulative impression of individuals and a nation existing in a state of chaos and decay. Chapter Two focuses on the loss of physical life and the state of death-in-life. Chapter Three deals with the narrative techniques which Dickens uses to represent loss in the novel. / English Studies / M.A.

This dissertation deals with the symbolic uses of the prominent old houses in selected fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Henry James. The major texts include Hawthorn's "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure," The House of Seven Gables, and Doctor Grimshawe's Secret; Dicken's Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Little Dorrit; and James's The Portrait of a Lady, "The Jolly Corner," and The Sense of the Past. The introductory chapter of the dissertation points out the importance of the house in nineteenth-century fiction. To a century which was obsessed with time and particularly fascinated by the past, the house could serve as a literary symbol of the past and aid in the investigation of the relation of a character to the past he has experienced and the past he remembers with various degrees of accuracy. For Hawthorne, Dickens, and James the house is always more than inanimate space. It is linked by imagination and memory to the past. Chapter II identifies and defines the house of the imagined past. The house has a name and a long history which illuminates the present situation of the inhabitants. All three authors draw freely from the gothic tradition to fill the houses with old relics, curses, secrets, sins, and treasures from the past. Seeking the treasure--hidden gold in some cases, self-knowledge in others--the characters keep the past alive in their old houses. The character in the house of the imagined past is often fragmented because he does not understand or accept his relation with his own past. Time inside the house of the past is arbitrary. The past, or certain imagined or remembered portions of it dominate the space. Chapter III concerns the functions of the house. First, the actual fact of the house's existence generates action in the works. Second, the physical relation to his house suggests aspects of the character's spiritual state. The characters search and probe, even assault their houses, seeking themselves. Third, all three authors continually emphasize parallels between houses and people. Characters voluntarily imprison themselves in their houses just as they willingly imprison themselves in their interpretations of the past. The house also suggests that the past lives into and influences the present by means of heredity and environment. In addition, the physical state of the house mirrors the spiritual state of the characters: morally sick people inhabit decaying houses. Even further, houses become animated, metonymic representations of their inhabitants. The house of the past, then, projects or represents the character's mind. In Chapter IV I deal with the final return to and departure from the house of the imagined past. Finally the characters recognize the imprisoning nature of their obsessions and can then leave the house of the past or as happens in many cases, can be rescued by a woman who lives in the present. Hawthorne's characters turn their backs on the past with relief and turn to the present. Dickens's characters must know the past, accept it, and build on it, not simply turn away as Hawthorne's characters do. James allows his characters to close the door of the house of the past behind them if they can find love in the present. If domestic happiness is impossible, however, the broad human past can offer imagined solace and relief. The final chapter points out that Hawthorne, Dickens, and James, like many other authors, recognize archetypal and psychological relationships between a human and the space he inhabits. They use the house to understand the self, especially in relation to the past.