"A Dismal Swamp": Darwin, Design, and Evolution in Our Mutual Friend

1994 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard W. Fulweiler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Dismal Swamp ◽  
Human World ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Our Mutual Friend ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend, published just six years after Darwin's The Origin of Species, is structured on a Darwinian pattern. As its title hints, the novel is an account of the mutual-though hidden-relations of its characters, a fictional world of individuals seeking their own advantage, a "dismal swamp" of "crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures." The relationship between the two works is quite direct in light of the large number of reviews on science, evolution, and The Origin from 1859 through the early 1860s in Dicken's magazine, All the Year Round. Given the laissez-faire origin of the Origin, Dicken's use of it in a book directed against laissez-faire economics is ironic. Important Darwinian themes in the novel are predation, mutual relationships, chance, and, especially, inheritance, a central issue in both Victorian fiction and in The Origin of Species. The novel asks whether predatory self-seeking or generosity should be the desired inheritance for human beings. The victory of generosity is symbolized by a dying child's "willing" his inheritance of a toy Noah's Ark, "all the Creation," to another child. Our Mutual Friend is saturated with the motifs of Darwinian biology, therefore, to display their inadequacy. Although Dickens made use of the explanatory powers of natural selection and remained sympathetic to science, the novel transcends and opposes its Darwinian structure in order to project a teleological and designed evolution in the human world toward a moral community of responsible men and women.

What Is Our Sacred Responsibility in the World?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhuri M. Yadlapati
Keyword(s):  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines four particular ways in which faith has been expressed as a commitment to one's responsibilities vis-à-vis one's community and God. It discusses Hindu epic illustrations of dharma, or sacred duty; an allegorical extrapolation of Christian responsibility in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series as well as his discussion of the relationship between faith and works; Islamic understanding of human beings as God's caliphs (khalifa) and the responsibility for jihad; and Jewish articulations of human responsibility in a covenantal relationship with God. These examples concern a specific interface of religious ethics and the commitment to faith, by which one embraces a tremendous sense of responsibility for the very fate of the human world.

scholarly journals The Relationship Between Education and Social Value in The Novel “The Magician’s Apprentice” By: Trudi Canavan

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Rohdearni Wati Sipayung
Keyword(s):  
Social Value ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This novel  has many basic values of human, and the writer wants to share about the social value of this Novel. Although this novel tells of a witch, as we know that the stories of about witches, it may be difficult to find which part is the social value. But the writer wants to find the part that is a social value, because in every story there must be a positive value that can be taken by the reader. The social value of Cooperation, cooperation within a group can make the job easier. The social value of care. Human beings we should care about each other, helping each other and pay attention. The social value of bravery, in life we must have the courage because, as we know there are still many people who are afraid to face the people.

scholarly journals MORAL VALUE IN NOVEL TASAWUF LOVE KARYA M. HILMI AS'AD

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wulandari Ramadania
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
Social Messages ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Descriptive Method

ABSTRACTThe moral value conveyed by the author to the reader through works of fiction especially novels is useful and useful to the reader. This study aims to describe the moral values associated with social messages and expose the moral values associated with the religious message contained in the novel Tasawuf Cinta by M. Hilmi As'ad. The method used in this research is analytic descriptive method. The results of this study indicate the moral values associated with social messages are: (1) social in social life; (2) relations between human beings of religion, and (3) association between the opposite sex. The moral values associated with the religious message are: (1) the relationship of man and God; (2) human nature and conscience; (3) the personal freedom that man possesses; And (4) the dignity and dignity of each individual.Keywords: moral value, novel                                                

scholarly journals The Transformed Beast:Penny Dreadful, Adaptation, and the Gothic

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Poore
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
International Success ◽  
Media Fandom ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Serial Fiction

After only one eight-part season, the television series Penny Dreadful, a Showtime/Sky Atlantic co-production, had already become an international success with an active and vocal fanbase. Yet the relationship of the show (which was created and written by John Logan) to the Victorian serial fiction genre, penny dreadfuls, is an oblique one, and worth unpicking. The first part of this article focuses on the task of teasing out the connections between Penny Dreadful and the penny dreadful genre, arguing that the show's title performs significant cultural work in positioning itself in relation to Victorian fiction and in relation to modern television. In the second part of the essay, I explore how Penny Dreadful works as an adaptation, using Kamilla Elliott's insights into the contradictory and overlapping concepts of adaptation in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Finally, the essay considers Penny Dreadful as a reflection – and, it is argued, an appropriation – of contemporary media fandom.

DICKENS'S “JEWISH QUESTION”: PARIAH CAPITALISM AND THE WAY OUT

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Epstein Nord
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Amy Levy ◽  
Our Mutual Friend ◽  
Great Writer ◽  
Mutual Friend

The story – we might almost saylegend – of how Dickens came to make the character of Riah inOur Mutual Frienda benign figure and a deliberate revision of Fagin, underworld denizen ofOliver Twist, is well known. In 1860, an Anglo-Jewish couple, J. P. and Eliza Davis, bought Charles Dickens's London home, Tavistock House. Dickens remarked to his personal secretary, William Wills, that he could not recall any “money-making dealings . . . that have been so satisfactory, considerate, and trusting” (Johnson 487). This expression of relief and slight surprise that the sale of his property to a Jewish family was without complication followed on Dickens's suspicion, crudely expressed earlier in the negotiations, that the “Jew Money-Lender” (as he referred to J. P. Davis) would not come through on the deal (Stone 243). But, though the Davises proved surprisingly cooperative in this phase of the transaction as far as Dickens was concerned, Mrs. Davis did ultimately have a complaint to register with the great writer and delivered it politely in a letter three years later. It was not about the house or the terms of purchase but rather about the character of Fagin, created by Dickens in 1837, some twenty-six years earlier. English Jews, she told him, had taken offense at this portrayal of one of their people and believed Dickens had done them a “great wrong” by offering the greedy, thieving, child-corrupting, sausage-eating criminal as representative of their “scattered nation” (Lane 98). Still, she added, while the author lived he might conceivably “justify himself or atone” for this deed. Apparently contrite and unaware of feeling any of the prejudices his portrait of the London fence might convey, Dickens declared in a letter back to Mrs. Davis that he had only “friendly feelings” for the Jews. His contrition did not end there. For the novel he was then beginning to write, Dickens would create a beneficent Jewish character, Riah, friend to the river dredger's daughter, Lizzie Hexam, and her misshapen companion, the dolls’ dressmaker, Jenny Wren. As the late-nineteenth century Anglo-Jewish poet and novelist Amy Levy put it, Dickens “trie[d] to compensate for his having affixed the label ‘Jew’ to one of his bad fairies by creating the good fairy Riah” (Levy 176).

scholarly journals The Naturalist in the Garden of Eden: Science and Colonial Landscape in Jem Poster'sRifling Paradise

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-130
Author(s):  
Mariadele Boccardi
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Relationship

This essay seeks to supplement an established critical tradition that reads natural history in neo-Victorian fiction from a postmodern and largely de-politicised perspective. I argue that the figure of the naturalist can be used to revisit natural history's complicity with imperial expansion, both in its practice and in its discursive framework. By means of a close reading of Jem Poster's Rifling Paradise (2006), I explore the ways in which natural history gives way to an ecological approach to the colonial landscape, pointing to a possible – though still problematic – alternative to a scientific (exploitative, colonial) understanding of the relationship between nature and human beings.

scholarly journals Ecological Perspectives in Linus T. Asong’s No Way to Die

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Danlami Amadou
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ecological Vision ◽  
The World ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second Wave

Given the environmental crisis plaguing the world, this paper investigates the manner in which Linus Asong represents man’s link with nature in the novel No Way to Die. It attempts to provide an answer to the following question: how does Linus Asong portray the contact between man and nature? The work is based on the premise that the Cameroonian author depicts the relationship between human beings and other elements of the ecosystem with perspectives for improvement for the benefit of both man and nature. Second Wave Ecocriticism, as outlined by Lawrence Buell, is used to bring out novelist’s ecological vision which posits that human beings need to improve their relationship with, or treatment of, other elements of nature so that the rapidly degrading ecosystem is saved. Keywords: Environment, Fiction, Ecocriticism, Degradation, Protection, Vision

scholarly journals Concept of Time in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse: Bergsonian Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-74
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Sadat Basirizadeh ◽  
Shiva Zaheri Birgani ◽  
Narges Raoufzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Formal Element ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Time is an important element in modern literature, has always been one of the most important themes of Virginia Woolf’s novels. The purpose of this paper is to look at Woolf treatment of the movement of time within the conscious mind in the novel in title of To the Light House by Virginia Woolf. One conclusion drawn from this study is that Woolf began to use time as a literary element, thereby decreasing her development of plot and characterization. A second conclusion is that she was greatly influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson and that consequently her writing increasingly reflects the fluid movement of time within consciousness. This paper demonstrates that Virginia Woolf used time as a formal element of narrative to show the relationship of time to human consciousness; and she never overlooked the fact that time moves human beings toward death. For Woolf, life is characterized by endless variety and movement. Its exquisite beauty is enhanced by knowing that we humans live short lives and lose everything when we die.

scholarly journals Ecological Consciousness and Self-Realization-- an Identification: A Step towards Spiritualistic World

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Dr. Mayuri Barman
Keyword(s):  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
True Self ◽  
Ecological Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Bhagavad Gītā ◽  
The Relationship

The most dangerous tendency of the present human generation is to enjoy every aspect of life selfishly which leads to serious threat to an environment. From the very beginning man was never a solitary creature in the planet where the relationship between humans and nature is one of the most fundamental issues we face and must deal with today. A universal holistic approach is needed, which may develop ecological consciousness among us. Many religions, scriptures can help to build a model of ecological consciousness. The importance of ancient Indian religious practices shows that human beings are an integral part of nature, and should, therefore, naturally understand the framework of life. At present human society is misled by the false attraction of the materialistic life, so to realize his true ‘self ,‘ one has to get out of this false notion that human society is the only proprietor of the world. The ‘Bhagavad-Gita’ nicely describes detachment from materials activities to the transcendental activities with realizing our true ‘self.’ Warwick Fox and Arne Naess’s ‘Self Realization’ shows how a person who Is self-realized and well-identified with the non-human world, will behave in harmony with nature, acting from inclination rather than duty.

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