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- Racism_in_the_work_of_Charles_Dickens abstract "Although Charles Dickens is best known as a writer of coming-of-age novels about children and adolescents and as a champion of the downtrodden poor, it has sometimes been noted that both in his journalism and fiction he expresses attitudes that can be interpreted as racist and xenophobic, as was true of many eminent writers of his time. While it cannot be said that he opposed fundamental freedoms of minorities in British society or supported legal segregation or employment discrimination, he defended the privileges of Europeans in colonies and was highly xenophobic of primitive cultures. He opposed slavery but defended colonialists against their native attackers and opposed suffrage for blacks on grounds of cultural superiority. Questions have been raised as to whether Dickens believed in biological determinism or was instead a cultural chauvinist. Ledger and Ferneaux do not believe he advocated any form of "scientific racism" regarding heredity- he had no concept at all of a superior "master race" and could not be described as either a white supremacist or segregationist - but still had the highest possible antipathy for the lifestyles of native peoples in British colonies, and believed that the sooner they were civilized, the better. The Oxford Dictionary of English Literature describes Dickens as nationalistic often both stigmatizing foreign European cultures and taking his attitude to "colonized people" to "genocidal extremes", albeit based mainly on a vision of British virtue, but not on any concept of heredity.One of the best known instances of this is Dickens' portrait of Fagin in one of his most widely read early novels Oliver Twist, which has been seen by some as deeply antisemitic, though others such as Dickens' biograper "G.K.Chesterton" have argued against this notion. The novel refers to Fagin 257 times in the first 38 chapters as "the Jew", while the ethnicity or religion of the other characters is rarely mentioned. Dickens' attacked John Rae's report on the fate of the Franklin expedition, based on Inuit testimonies, calling the Inuit evidence unreliable, and attacking their character as covetous and cruel. He co-authored the play The Frozen Deep, as an allegorical attack on Rae. In response to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Dickens advocated genocide against the Indian race writing the allegorical The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. In Perils Dickens describes the "native Sambo", a paradigm of the Indian mutineers, as a "double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain" who takes part in a massacre of women and children, in an allusion to the Cawnpore Massacre. Dickens was much incensed by the massacre in which over a hundred English prisoners, most of them women and children, were killed, and on 4 October 1857 wrote in a private letter to Baroness Burdett-Coutts: "I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India. ... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested ...". In his essay The Noble Savage, Dickens' attitude towards Native Americans is one of condescending pity, tempered (in the interpretation of Grace Moore) by a counterbalancing concern with the arrogance of European colonialism. This essay was Dickens' rejection of painter George Catlin's positive portrayal of Native Americans. The term "Noble Savage" was in circulation since the 17th century, but Dickens regards it as an absurd oxymoron. He advocated that savages be civilised "off the face of the earth".Dickens is sometimes thought of as a champion of the oppressed, but his humanitarian impulse often seems to extend to only other Europeans. Dickens scholar Grace Moore sees Dickens' racism as having abated in his later years, while cultural historian Patrick Brantlinger and journalist William Oddie see it as having intensified. Moore contends that while Dickens later in life became far more sensitive to the unethical character of British colonialism and came to plead mitigation of cruelties to natives, he never lost his distaste for those whose life style he regarded as primitive".The role of Fagin in Oliver Twist continues to be a challenge for actors who struggle with questions as to how to interpret the role in a post-Nazi era. Various Jewish writers, directors, and actors have searched for ways to "salvage" Fagin. Late in life, Dickens developed close friendships with Jews and unambiguously retracted his earlier antisemitic views and created a sympathetic Jewish character "Riah" (meaning "friend" in Hebrew) in his novel Our Mutual Friend, whose goodness, is almost as complete as Fagin's evil. Riah says in the novel: "Men say, 'This is a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not so with the Jews ... they take the worst of us as samples of the best ...". However, Dickens' expressions of revulsion at non-European peoples and his advocacy of civilizing savages remains a subject of discussion.".
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- Racism_in_the_work_of_Charles_Dickens subject Category:Antisemitism.
- Racism_in_the_work_of_Charles_Dickens subject Category:Charles_Dickens.
- Racism_in_the_work_of_Charles_Dickens subject Category:Racism.
- Racism_in_the_work_of_Charles_Dickens comment "Although Charles Dickens is best known as a writer of coming-of-age novels about children and adolescents and as a champion of the downtrodden poor, it has sometimes been noted that both in his journalism and fiction he expresses attitudes that can be interpreted as racist and xenophobic, as was true of many eminent writers of his time.".
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