Darwinism in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Essay...

Few people argue that Great Expectations, one of Dickens’s later novels, is a Darwinian work. Goldie Morgentaler, in her essay â€Å"Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations,† is one of those few. She argues primarily that Darwin’s Origin of the Species was a major topic of discussion in Dickens’s circle at the time he wrote Great Expectations, and that Great Expectations â€Å"marks the first time that Dickens jettisons heredity as a determining factor in the formation of the self† (Morgentaler, 708). This fascinating insight draws one to read more of Morgentaler’s essay. It does not, however, compel the reader to admit that Dickens became Darwinian. Morgentaler’s main argument, though useful, could point just as†¦show more content†¦Although she says that, â€Å"hereditary transmission is the sine qua non of evolutionary theory† and, in other writers of the late nineteenth century, this â €Å"intensif[ied] interest in heredity as a literary theme† (709), she concludes that Darwin’s influence on Dickens was to let him â€Å"shake off his earlier adherence to heredity as a way of explaining personality† (709). In other words, Darwin’s impact on Dickens was to make Dickens reject Darwin’s major point. This implies that Dickens was, in reality, an anti-Darwinian, someone who saw that Darwinian thought was dangerous, and who therefore, in reaction, tried to remove elements from his own worldview that led to the same evolutionary conclusions as Darwin proposed. He was as Darwinian as someone who reads Kant and rejects the idea of mental categories is Kantian. To show how this is true, it is necessary to demonstrate how Dickens’s rejection of hereditary influence in Great Expectations creates a novel that is actually quite opposed to evolutionary theories. Morgentaler’s own observations provide the material for this demonstration. While earlier books by Dickens had insisted â€Å"on the essential godliness of the goodhearted . . . amenable to hereditary transmission from one generation to the next,† here, â€Å"the emphasis on the ideal has given way to a demonstration of the omnipresence of the base† (715). This theme of guilt, lowness, and criminality is truly one of the central traitsShow MoreRelatedVictorian Novel9605 Words   |  39 Pagesdates frame the period of Victorian literature, it is commonly accepted that it was the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) that saw the novel emerge and flourish, all the more that the 1937 was the year when Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the first major work of fictio n. The first readers of both, Dickens and Eliot were not conscious they lived in the ‘Victorian period’. They thought that this was a modern era marked with turbulent transition. However, the most crucial writers of the period grew up in the earlierRead MoreThe Colonial Implications in Jane Eyre and Great Expectations3008 Words   |  13 Pagesthese claims of Spivak be applied to Charles Dickens Great Expectations and Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre and to what extent do these novelists draw from the colonial discourse in their representation of the `non- Western world? The Victorian novel has performed an important service in Eurocentric epistemologies and colonial ideologies in formulating the colonial discourse and establishing the alterity of `self and the `Other. Both Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, like most novels producedRead MoreIndustrial Revolution in Victorian England3817 Words   |  16 Pagesfrom 32 years to 39 years, an increase of a little over 20 percent† (Brown 36). The growth in population required innovations that would provide for a new generation of people. One reason that the population spiked so sharply was because of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland. During this time, the main food that the Irish relied on, potatoes, became diseased and many people starved to death. Because of this, many Irish settlers immigrated to England. New â€Å"manufactories† (Outman 7) were neededRead MoreStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words   |  1573 PagesPerformance Appraisal Around the World 558 An Ethical Choice Recruiting the Unemployed 561 Self-Assessment Library How Good Am I at Giving Performance Feedback? 563 Myth or Science? â€Å"Work Is Making Us Fat† 564 Point/Counterpoint Social Media Is a Great Source of New Hires 567 Questions for Review 568 Experiential Exercise Evaluating Performance and Providing Feedback 568 Ethical Dilemma Credit Checking 568 Case Incident 1 The End of the Performance Appraisal? 569 Case Incident 2 Job Candidates Without