3. +
The setting
Dickens is the classical Victorian man, he
followed the Victorian compromise. His novels
are set in Victorian London, a city characterized
by a high rate of corruption and poverty that
often led men to crime. In his novels Dickens
described three different worlds:
- The parochial world;
- The criminal world;
- The world of the middle class.
To face the large number of
problems in Victorian
London Londoners
promoted a code of values
that reflected the world as
they wanted it to be. This
code consisted in 4 points:
-RESPECTABILITY: the
concept that divided middle
from the lower class, it was
a mixture of morality and
hypocrisy;
-HARD WORK
-FAMILY
-REPRESSION OF SEX in
its public and private forms.
Charles Dickens
4. +
In his novels Dickens
denounces the system of
workhouses, buildings
where poor people lived
and where they could find
job.
Workhouses were founded with the idea
that poverty was the consequence of
laziness and that the terrible conditions
in which their inhabitants lived would
inspire them to improve their own
conditions.
5. +
Verga is the most important Italian Verist writer.
His novels are generally set in South Italiy,
exspecially in Sicily. In his novels he writes
about the world of lower classes, exspecially
miners, fishermen and people ‘’won by
progress’’.
The setting
Giovanni Verga
6. +
The plot
Oliver Twist deals about a poor boy of unknown parents who is brought up in a
workhouse in an inhuman way. There, he was victim of arrogance and bad
treatment: he was obliged, by the other children of the workhouse to ask for
more food to the master, who did not appreciate this sense of “rebellion” and
offered five pounds to each person who would take the boy away from the
workhouse. Oliver managed to escape and he started to work for a new master
as undertaker but the unhappienes that this job causes in him and the
uncorrect behaviour of another apprentice against him led him to run away to
London. There he fell into the hands of a gang of young pickpockets that forced
him to commit burglary but fortunately he managed to escape from there.
The story has a happy ending: he was adopted by Mr. Brownlow, a middle-
class man who shows him kindness and affection (We can see a sort of
optimism of the English writer) and garanted him a life of wealth and
happiness.
Oliver Twist
7. +
The plot
Rosso Malpelo
Rosso Malpelo is the story of a young boy who works in a sandpit. He is always
discriminated and considered "bad" only because of his red hair. When his
father, a miner, dies because of the collapse of the pit, he becomes even more
a victim of the other miners’ abuses.
The story has a mysterious ending: Rosso never comes back from the cave in
which he enters towords the end of the story. (We can see a sort of pessimism
of the Italian writer).
8. These two masterpieces are
SIMILIAR:
-both characters are forced to live in
terrible conditions (Victorian London
and South Italy after the unification of
1861 weren’t the best places to live…);
-both denounce the utilitarian society in
which they live, sometimes also using a
lot of exaggerations;
-both are victims of the adult world.
10. - in Oliver Twist we can see a sort of
OPTIMISM because Oliver is adopted by a
family of the middle class; this aspect
totally reflects the “first Dickens” who
denounces the industrialized society but
finds a solution (philantropic attitude of
the middle class).
- in Rosso Malpelo we can see a sort of
PESSIMISM, in fact Rosso never comes
back from the mysterious cave (we think
he dies); this aspect totally reflects the
Verist literature whose intent was to
represent the society as it really was,
without giving alternatives to it.
But these two stories have two different endings:
