scholarly journals Social Environment and Crime in Dickens' Oliver Twist and Great Expectations

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Lina Alzouabi
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Differential Association ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Decent Life

This study reads Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Great Expectations as crime novels by applying Sutherland's theory of "differential association" which postulates that criminal behavior is learned rather than inherited, and it is learned through interaction with other people within intimate personal groups in which one learns techniques and acquires motives for committing crimes. In Oliver Twist, Oliver is portrayed as a victim of the corrupted social environment as well as Monks' conspiracy with Fagin to drag him down to the underworld.; he is raised as an orphan in a workhouse and subjected to mistreatment. Thus, he unknowingly indulges in Fagin's gang and learns the crime of pickpocketing, as all the members of the gang come from a poor background and are taught how to commit crimes within the gang, their intimate social group. Nancy's poverty also compels her to join the gang, which ultimately leads to her death, as criminality is not innate in her personality. Criminality in Oliver's character is not innate either, so he ends up leading a decent life in a healthier environment. Like Fagin, Compeyson in Great Expectations favors the violation of law and has others indulge in the criminal world, thereby exploiting Magwitch and Orlick who turn into criminals. By presenting criminal characters with various motives and from harsh backgrounds, Dickens' fiction suggests that crime behavior has nothing to do with heredity. Rather, criminal characters are implicated in crimes as a result of the corrupted social environment forced on them, along with gangs and corrupt people they have to encounter.   

scholarly journals An Attempt at Applying Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Khalid LAHLOU
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Organic Unity

The present paper is an attempt at approaching Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations from a morphological perspective based upon Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with a brief view of the nature of formalism: its background and its process of analysis. The second part is devoted to putting into practice what has been dealt with in the first part. It will be mostly concerned with the question as to whether all the functions of dramatis personae as stated by Propp figure in the object of analysis, Great Expectations. Finally, the paper will draw the conclusion as to whether the aforementioned elements constitute an organic unity.

scholarly journals Of Grim Witches and Showy Lady-Devils: Wealthy Women in Literature and Film

Text Matters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
Veronika Schuchter
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Women In Literature ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Societal Expectations ◽  
Literature And Film ◽  
Wealthy Women

Imagining super rich women in the real and fictional world has long been a struggle. Those few depictions that do exist are scattered across time periods and literary genres, reflecting the legal restrictions that, at different points in time, would not allow women to accumulate assets independent of the patriarchal forces in their lives. The scarcity of extremely wealthy women in literature and film is confirmed by Forbes magazine’s list of the fifteen richest fictional characters that features forty different fictional men and only nine women, with never more than two female characters nominated in a single year. This article explores the depiction of three exceptionally wealthy women: Cruella de Vil in The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) by Dodie Smith, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, and the figure of the stepmother in various adaptations of “Cinderella.” I demonstrate how the protagonists’ wealth allows them to manipulate others and disconnect themselves from patriarchal and societal expectations. Further, I argue that these affluent antagonists are “rogued” by their respective narratives, highlighting their perceived anti-feminine and emasculating behaviour resulting in a mode of narration that greedily gazes at and shames their appearances and supposed unattractiveness. While this genealogy of rich rogues reiterates the narrow scope of imagining wealthy women on the page and on the screen, there are moments in the narratives that disrupt stereotypical depictions of these wealthy characters who defy the labels imposed on them.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-222
Author(s):  
Karin Kukkonen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
The Media

The conclusion shows that several of the embodied aspects of writing fiction discussed for the eighteenth-century novel can be traced into the nineteenth century through an example from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. It is shown that, like the earlier authors in the case studies in this book, Dickens features shifting embodied stances and involves elements of the media ecology of his day rather than deploying the concrete particulars that “formal realism” considers central to the novel. Links to larger arguments about the role of the novel in literary history are then drawn in contrast with accounts, based on Adorno/Habermas and Benjamin, that argue that eighteenth-century fiction becomes rationalised and disembodied with the novel and its culture industry. Rather than impoverishing experience, it is argued that the novel as a lifeworld technology depends profoundly on readers’ embodied engagements and that 4E cognition is a critical perspective that affords such an alternative take.

Group Processes Within Gangs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy R. Lauger
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Gang Member ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Gang Members

Street gangs are, by definition, social groups that contain patterns of interactions between gang members, associates, and other gangs in their social environment. The structure and content of these interaction patterns, or group processes, are essential for both understanding gang life and explaining collective and individual behavior. For example, variations in organizational sophistication, internal cohesion, and individual-level social integration influence the day-to-day experiences of gang members and can affect criminal behavior. Social ties between gang members are also mediums for street socialization and the development and/or transmission of gang culture. As prospective gang members age and become exposed to street life, they gravitate to peers and collectively learn about how to negotiate their social environment. They connect to other gang members and model the gang’s ideals to become accepted by the group. Routine interactions in the gang communicate the nuances of gang culture and explain the group’s expectations for violent behavior. These lessons are reinforced when conflicts with other groups arise and contentious interactions escalate into serious threats or actual violence. Cultural meanings developed in the gang can alter how a member perceives social situations, various social roles (e.g., gender roles), and his or her sense of self. Interactions within the gang develop the gang’s collective identity, which becomes an ideal standard for members to pursue. Gang members perform this idealized notion of “gang member” in public settings, often acting as if they are capable of extreme violence. For some members these performances may be fleeting and largely disconnected from the ideals to which they truly aspire, while others may fully embrace the ideals of the gang. Such variation is contingent on social processes within the gang and how socially integrated an individual is to other members. Researching social processes within gangs provides a wealth of information about how life in the gang influences gang member behavior.

Social and Moral Vision in Great Expectations and Huckleberry Finn

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Nicolaus C. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Moral Vision ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Episodic Nature ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Specific Influence

With the exception of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper, no two British and American writers of the nineteenth century are compared as frequently as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Yet, despite the far greater literary importance of Dickens and Twain, we are without a thorough understanding of the parallels in their work. Why does this problem exist? There are two basic reasons. The first lies in the thinness of Twain's comments on Dickens. If, to a modern critic like Ellen Moers, it is clear that Twain resembled Dickens in ‘the theatricality of his prose, the conception of the public as an audience of responsive listeners rather than as solitary readers, the episodic nature of his fiction cut to an oral rather than a literary measure’, to Twain himself it seemed unnecessary to make such an acknowledgement. In his fiction, as well as in his correspondence, Dickens's specific influence is at best marginal, and in his Autobiography he relegates Dickens to the position of the artist-innovator of the public reading.

scholarly journals Theory of Differential Association

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Ahmet Maloku
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Deviant Behavior ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Differential Association ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Delinquent Behaviors ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Criminological Theories

In the broad spectrum of criminological theories on the causes of deviant behavior, sociological theories of criminality involve particular importance. These theories, the causes of such behaviors are only seen in the conditions and social interactions of the individual in their environment. However, with scientific explanations about the causes of criminal behavior, special place has the theory who gives a special importance to the delinquent's interaction with its environment. This is known as theory of various associations or more commonly known as the theory of differential association. The creator of this theory is the famous American sociologist and criminologist Edwin Sutherland, who has left indelible imprints on the relatively short but very important tradition of American criminological theories of criminality. The famous creator's lessons have been taken and modified by many prominent criminologists in their reviews of criminal etiology. As a result this lesson has also been the basis for numerous subsequent empirical research on criminal behavior. In this paper, using the comparative, theoretical, and meta-analysis methods, will be presented the views of some criminology authors and their interpretation of Sutherland's lessons on differential association. Due to this, a brief section of some empirical studies of delinquent behaviors based on E. Sutherland's lessons will be presented, and also the final discussion on these issues will be discussed.

scholarly journals Depiction of Victorian Era in the Novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p17
Author(s):  
Farhana Haque
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Great Expectation ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Class System ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Middle Class Family

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectation actually did reflect the Victorian society and therefore the morality of that era’s people inside of the novel. Since we know that Victorian era basically present some features such as virtue, strength, thrift, manners, cleanliness, honesty and chastity. These are the morals that Victorian people used to hold with high esteem. In this novel Great Expectations, Dickens has created some Victorian characters whom we have seen both in good working way or not at all. But the protagonist named Pip was dynamic and he went through some several changes and dealt with different and significant moral issues. Somehow Pip left behind all the values he was raised with. Because Miss Havisham and Estella have corrupted Pip with rich life. Greed, beauty and arrogance were his ingredient of immoral life. The other characters like Joe and Biddy were static characters throughout the entire novel and became noticeable to be the manifestation of what we call as ideal Victorians. The main heroin of this novel was Estella with whom Pip thought he had some love connection. Hence, Estella has been presented as a good in the sense of potentiality and turned morally bad. Miss Havisham, who was basically a corrupt woman and she engraved the center of the novel. Great Expectations did disclose how was the situation of Victorian society through some important features such as higher class, corrupted judicial system between rural and urban England. Here in this novel, Dickens was concern about the education system in Victorian era where the lower class people get less opportunities of getting proper education. From the beginning to the end of this novel, Dickens explored some significant issues regarding higher and lower class system of Victorian society which did fluctuate from the greatest woeful criminal named Magwitch to the needy people of the swamp country, where Joe and Biddy were the symbol of that regime. After that we can proceed to the middle class family where Pumblechook was the person to represent that regime. Last but not the least Miss Havisham symbolized and bear flag of very rich and sophisticated Victorian woman who has represented the higher class society in the novel Great Expectations. Hence we can say Great Expectations has talked and displayed the class system of Victorian England and the characters of this novel therefore also did uphold the true reflection of Victorian era.

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