dénouement

  

"It’s common, in a Dickens or Eliot novel, for one person’s unthinking action or local relationship to dramatically influence the fate of someone seemingly unconnected with them. Highlighting such connections was an integral part of the moral work of Victorian fiction, which sought to remind readers how all members of society depended on one another to survive and thrive.

In Martineau’s work, though, these uncanny networks of connection did not stop at the borders of society. Her stories involved lives upended by unexpected patterns of rainfall, by the felling of trees, by the importing of new crops, and by the movements of fish. 

Martineau’s work wasn’t just social or sociological. It was ecological. She put far more thought into the entanglements that draw the fates of humans together with those of trees, water, grain, cattle, and fish than any English-speaking novelist I could find before her—or after her, for that matter.

It wasn’t until the late twentieth century and the rise of environmentalism that novelists began, slowly, to reconnect their stories of human lives to the material changes in the nonhuman world around them. In many ways, Martineau still has today’s most ecologically attuned fiction writers beat when it comes to her sheer astuteness about the surprising ways interspecies connections affect us all." 

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"Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed readings extensively; was an indefatigable letter writer; and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education and other social reforms". 

The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters. " 

"Dickens's writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte.  

An early reviewer compared him to Hogarth for his keen practical sense of the ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of varieties of class idiom 

 may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre. 

 Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an "allegorical impetus" to the novels' meanings. 

To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony coldness. 

 His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular.  

Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy." 

" Dickens employs Cockney English in many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears in terms such as ain't, and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere (here) and wot (what). 

An example of this usage is in Oliver Twist. The Artful Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English, when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying "seven" with "sivin"." 

"He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist, but flourished as a result. 

 His most strident indictment of this condition is in Hard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. 

 In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people"  

but rather only appendages of the machines they operated.  

His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in The Pickwick Papers are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down.  

Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". 

George Bernard Shaw even remarked that Great Expectations was more seditious than Marx's Das Kapital. 

 The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend, 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored.

It has been argued that his technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material' that, in the gradual dénouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the organisation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species."   

"He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, 

 he expressed his belief that "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen." 

_____ 

"In May, the ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested the court issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

A panel of judges is still considering the request which, if granted, would oblige countries that are signatories to the ICC to detain Netanyahu if he were to visit"