Dickens and the Factories
Dickens and the Factories
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狄更斯与工厂
DOI：
10.2307/2933206
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发表时间：
1971
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Patrick Brantlinger
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Patrick Brantlinger
G伊辛和他之后的其他人批评狄更斯“在他的书中明显遗漏了“与资本作战的工人”。有人借口说“狄更斯不了解英格兰北部”，但他经常去曼彻斯特和伯明翰，参观一些工厂，研究几次罢工，阅读他的工业条件蓝皮书。此外，他的小说中对劳资战争的省略并不等同于对工厂和工厂工人的省略。《老古玩店》中有工业场景，《尼古拉斯·尼克尔比》中有一段关于工厂儿童的段落，《艰难时世》中有整部电影，《荒凉山庄》中有工厂主朗斯韦尔，《小杜丽》中有丹尼尔·多伊斯，甚至《匹克威克外传》中也有马格尔顿的工厂小镇。毫无疑问，狄更斯在他的整个职业生涯中都在关注“工厂问题”，但他的关注在小说中的表现形式让许多读者感到不满，因为这似乎证明了罗斯金嘲笑他是“蒸汽哨子党”成员的理由。要证明狄更斯支持那个“政党”是很简单的，因为他的演讲中夹杂着对英国工业的赞扬。例如，1844年在伯明翰，狄更斯说，那里的理工学院将有巨大的发展：
G ISSING AND OTHERS AFTER HIM have criticized Dickens for the "noticeable omission from his books" of "the workman at war with capital."l The excuse has been offered that "Dickens did not know the north of England," but he often traveled to Manchester and Birmingham, toured a number of factories, studied several strikes, and read his quota of blue books on industrial conditions. Besides, the omission of the war between labor and capital from his novels is not the same as an omission of factories and factory workers. There are industrial scenes in The Old Curiosity Shop, a paragraph on factory children in Nicholas Nickleby, the whole of Hard Times, factory masters Rouncewell in Bleak House and Daniel Doyce in Little Dorrit, and even the factory town of Muggleton in Pickwick Papers. There can be no doubt that Dickens was concerned about "the factory question" throughout his career, but the shape which his concern takes in the novels is unsatisfying to many readers, for it seems to justify Ruskin's gibe about his membership in "the steam-whistle party." It is simple to prove that Dickens supports that "party," for his speeches are larded with the praises of British industry. At Birmingham in 1844, for instance, Dickens said that its Polytechnic Institution would be of giant growth: