A Study on Charles Dickens from a Psychoanalytical Perspective

Jiang, Jindi(강금비),Baek, Nak-Seung(백낙승) 강원대학교 인문과학연구소 2014 인문과학연구 Vol.0 No.41

이 논문의 목적은 찰스 디킨스가 글을 쓰는 과정에서 어렸을 때 받았던 정신적 외상이 그의 자서전적 작품 속에 어떻게 반영되어 있는지를 고찰하는데 있다. 또한 지금까지 디킨스의 정신적 외상과 관련된 연구를 토대로 디킨스가 받은 구체적인 정신적 외상이 어떠한 형태로 표면화 되어있는지를 살펴보고, 작가가 글을 쓰는 과정에서 어린 시절에 받았던 정신적 외상을 어떻게 극복하게 되었는지를 프로이트의 정신분석이론을 바탕으로 고찰한다. 첫 번째 장에서는 다각적으로 연구된 디킨스에 관한 비평이 어떻게 디킨스의 외상을 설명하고 있는지를 분석하고, 두 번째 장에서는 디킨스의 외상에 직접적인 영향을 끼쳤다고 볼 수 있는 구두공장에서의 경험이 어떻게 정신적 외상으로 이어지는지를 구체적으로 조망하고, 디킨스가 글을 쓰면서 어떻게 그 외상으로부터 벗어났는지를 밝히고, 세 번째 장은 그의 자서전적 소설 올리버 트위스트, 데이비드 카퍼필드, 그리고 위대한 유산에서 디킨스의 정신적 외상이 어떻게 창조적인 문학성으로 발현되었는지를 살펴보고 이에 따른 작가의 정신적인 성장의 중요성에 대해 논의한다. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate how Charles Dickens’ childhood traumas are reflected in his autobiographical novels ? Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. This research is mainly based upon Freudian psychoanalysis theory. With an in-depth exploration of Dickens’ responses towards his traumatic incident, the paper defines the core of the traumas and surveys how the defense mechanisms function to counterbalance Dickens’ childhood trauma only through the medium of art. Introductory part of this paper takes a brief look at the past criticisms on Dickens and clarifies the task of the paper. Section two deals with Dickens’ traumatic experiences, including his parents’ influence on his growth and his experiences in Warren’s Blacking factory which leaves him a permanent scar for humiliation, and reveals the origin of his trauma and its healing process. Section three discusses how Dickens manages to transfer his childhood trauma into his literary creativity, especially in his three autobiographical novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. The paper attempts to look into the fact that writing serves primarily as a mental therapy for Dickens to gain his salvation. In view of Freudian psychoanalytical approach, his creation of autobiographical novels apparently does much toward a self-treatment to overcome his traumas.

『올리버 트위스트』이전의 찰스 디킨스: 1836년 편지 연결망을 중심으로

설연지 영미문학연구회 2025 영미문학연구 Vol.48 No.-

This article draws and analyzes a small-scale cultural map of 1836 Britain based on Charles Dickens’ letters written and sent during the thirteen-month period from January 1836 through January 1837, using digital network analysis tool Gephi. 1837 is a pivotal year in British literary history as the (official) beginning of the Victorian era. It is also a pivotal year in the career of Dickens the novelist, because Oliver Twist began to be serialized this year. Drawing on Gephi visualizations of the letters Dickens wrote during this period, I make two points. First, while Dickens’ surviving, and accessible, letter network during this period takes on a recognizably public face, Catherine Hogarth’s presence is unmistakably, and perhaps unexpectedly, large. Her presence in the letter network of this particular phase of Dickens’ career demands further research on her contribution to Dickens’ maturation as a writer from a feminist perspective. Second, the letters reveal that Oliver Twist is a product of the period when Dickens was heavily and actively engaged with the theatre, especially the musical theatre. As such, Oliver Twist should be read in the context of the nineteenth-century theatre history, including the nineteenth-century and modern adaptations of the novel itself.

디킨즈의 여성인물에 대한 페미니스트 비평 재고

김현숙 水原大學校 2016 論文集 Vol.30 No.-

This article aims to reconsider the development of Feminist criticism on Dickens’s female characters. From the first, Dickens’s female characters were criticized as nonrealistic and unattractive. His female heroines were Especially criticized as representing the typical Victorian angel of the house, the idol of Victorian women ideology. Resultingly, Dickens was appreciated as problematic in that he repeated the comtemporary women ideology. Early feminist criticism strengthened this traditional view on Dickens female characters and Dickens himself. They decided Dickens as one of the representative men of the Victorian patriarchal society. However, Later feminist criticism, combined with New Historicism, Marxism, and Linguistics, focused on the more complicated sides of Dickens’s female characters. They focused on Dickens’s understatements hidden in the representation of female characters, which subverted the traditional values of Victorian patriarchal society. As the result, Feminist criticism on Dickens expanded the horizons of Dickens criticism.

찰스 디킨스의 『미국 여행기』에 나타난 환경에 대한 인식

김택중 ( Tag Jung Kim ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2012 현대영어영문학 Vol.56 No.2

Charles Dickens is a social critic of the Victorian England, and his social criticism is mostly based on his belief that one`s living conditions can determine his or her moral status. It is well known that his novels clearly show his strong interest in such environmental issues as housing, sanitation, water pollution, urbanizing development, and so on. Dickens believes that although science may destroy nature and humans` living conditions, it also has a power of restoring living environment to its ideal state. Nature, he also understands, has a meaning when there are people living harmoniously with it. And that is why he is so concerned with people and their living conditions. American Notes, his travelogue to America to which not many critics have paid attention in this regard, also reveals his concern with environmental problems. This paper demonstrates how seriously Dickens criticizes sanitary problems in American cities and the reckless, incomplete development performed in inland frontiers. (Chungnam National University)

매그위치의 귀환: 『막대한 유산』과 『잭 맥스』

성은애 영미문학연구회 2004 안과 밖 Vol.16 No.-

This paper proposes to compare Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and its ‘post-colonial version,’ Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, in the light of their portrayal of British Empire. Both of them portray a returned convict from Australia as something repressed and banished from the Victorian England, and focus on the impact of his return, the threat and terror he evokes. While Dickens reconciles Pip, an English gentleman, with Magwitch, the returned convict, and puts them together like father and son, Carey mercilessly pushes the conflict between Maggs and Phipps to the extreme. Dickens is more optimistic about the possibility of sympathy and affection toward the ‘other,’ whereas Carey doesn’t believe in Dickens’ ‘melodramatic’ solutions. Dickens’s convict dies happily in his ‘homeland,’ whereas Carey’s convict has to risk his life once again for another ‘return’ to his ‘home’ in Australia.

The Theatre of Self-Fashioning in Dickens’ Mid-Career

Yoojin Jang Ewha Institute fo English and American Studies 2013 Journal of English and American studies Vol.12 No.-

Charles Dickens’ mid-career is characterized by a heightened sense of an audience which caused a transition in the author’s use of the theatrical element in his autobiographical narratives. Dickens was concerned about his readers from earlier on, but what differentiates his middle novels from his early works is the way in which he modifies his previous overtly theatrical style of writing to adopt a tone of sincerity. Contextual evidence shows how this change in narrative style originated from his need to reconstruct himself into a more respectable figure via his writing. Amidst such an acute consciousness of his readership, Dickens attempted to develop a narrative strategy that takes into consideration the reader’s imaginary participation in creating the impression of naturalness. This narrative strategy is similar to Dickens’ style of acting in an amateur performance titled The Frozen Deep: Dickens’ assimilation of his stage acting to his act of writing suggests how this performance mirrors his newly developed narrative technique. Stemming from an understanding of the interaction between the observer and the observed, this narrative technique enables Dickens to proceed as the mature novelist of his later works.

찰즈 디킨즈의 인간관과 사회의식

김효원 ( Hyo Won Kim ) 한림대학교 인문학연구소 2008 인문학 연구 Vol.14 No.-

Charles Dickens is regarded as the great realistic writer of the Shakespearean literary genius by exploring the deep inside of human nature and describing the various conflicts, absurdities and evils of the 19th century English industrial society with the philosophical insight and the ingenious techniques of satire and humor. He criticizes the English aristocratic system based on wealth and class, revealing the hypocrisy and deceptiveness of the gentleman class. David Copperfield, his autobiographical novel, describes David`s process of growth, overcoming many hardships and achieving his dream of becoming a successful writer while Bleak House, dealing with the problem of inheritance, exposes the irregularities, corruptions, and injustices of the court, parliament and government officials and represents the rights of the common people of the weak position. Hard Times is the most remarkable novel of social criticism. With the sense of balance and propriety, Dickens maintains that the utilitarianism of self-interest and harsh calculation can damage the education of good personality and the coexistence of factory owners and workers. This sense of harmony and propriety also applies to A Tale of Two Cities, a historical novel of French Revolution. While noting the inevitableness of revolution caused by the inhumane cruelty of the aristocratic people, Dickens demonstrates that the vicious cycle can not be evaded because of the terror of vengeance of the revolutionary parties. Great Expectation deals with the vainglorious Pip who longs to become a gentleman with inheritance and recognizes himself by the consciousness of guilt and shame. Pip realizes that not the class position and wealth, but the life of honesty, humbleness and hard working can give happiness. Our Mutual Friend also deals with the theme of inheritance employing the complicated plot of the mysteries and potentialities of human nature. Dickens`s moral viewpoint is that pride, egoism, craftiness, jealousy and other vices cannot defeat the virtues of integrity, humbleness, faithfulness, self-sacrifice and etc. That is the reason why he was praised as the peoples writer by the 19th century English readers. He is evaluated very highly in the world literature, impressing the world readers beyond time and space and influencing many famous writers like Leo Tolstoy, Pearl Buck, Agatha Christie and others.

찰스 디킨스의 『이탈리아의 초상』에 나타난 가톨릭

김택중 ( Kim Tag-jung ) 한국현대영어영문학회 2017 현대영어영문학 Vol.61 No.1

It is generally known that Charles Dickens disliked the Roman Catholicism. However, Dickens did not hate Catholicism itself, but rather its established religious affiliations. In this regard, he did not like any form of religion, the Roman Catholicism or the Church of England, when it asserts its violent and authoritative privileges at the sacrifice of human rights and freedom. Pictures from Italy is one of Dickens`s rare travel pieces. It is also the work that has been rarely dealt with by critics. This travelogue contains Dickens`s experiences and thoughts in his travels from France, Switzerland, and Italy during the period of 1844 and 1845 and shows his ideas about religion, the Roman Catholicism, profusely and distinctly. Therefore, Pictures from Italy is a work that we cannot ignore but have to discuss seriously when we talk of Dickens and religion. This paper aims to read this travelogue in view of his ideas and positions on Catholicism in detail. (Chungnam National University)

찰스 디킨스의 두 기행문 『미국 여행기』와 『이탈리아의 초상』 비교 분석

김택중 한국현대영어영문학회 2019 현대영어영문학 Vol.63 No.4

This paper deals with Charles Dickens’s two travelogues, American Notes and Pictures from Italy, which have been relatively ignored in criticism. These two travel books have a very important meaning in the context of the discourse of history that was then the key issue in intellectual milieu. Dickens was keenly aware of the social problems that Victorian England faced, and endeavored to improve the social conditions. He traveled to America and Europe during the 1840s. And he wanted to see how well the new improvements or systems had been applied to a new country, but realized that the problems of the Old Continent still existed in the New Continent. Through his travel to Europe, Dickens saw that the old habits and customs of the barbarous past were ‘strangely’ incorporated into the present. Hypocrisy and self-interest were everywhere he visited, and the violence of the past still had the possibility of re-occurrence. In the end, Dickens’s travel to the past and that to the future which are respectively represented by Europe and America both reconfirm his love and pride in his own country of the present.

The Restraints of Political Economy and Perverse Libido in Charles Dickens`s Hard Times

( Seung Pon Koo ) 경남대학교 인문과학연구소 2014 인문논총 Vol.33 No.-

This essay purports to examine how Charles Dickens`s Hard Times depicts the unnatural and tragic relationships between utilitarian political economy and the individuals who are affected by the economic principle in both the private sphere and the public one. Special attention must be paid to the adverse impact of the novel`s character Thomas Gradgrind`s principle of utilitarian education on his children Louisa and Tom in the household. Under the influence of her father`s dogmatic rules, Louisa develops her perverse libido toward her brother Tom as a way of escaping from the restraints and repression imposed upon her, which can be explicated by the Freudian theory of the pleasure principle and perversion. The Gradgrind-Louisa-Bounderby triangular model can elucidate the operation of sexual exchange of Louisa as an economic property negotiated between her father and the industrialist, which can be theoretically supported by Eve Sedgwick`s arguments about triangular transactions between men. The tension between Stephen and Bounderby in the public realm also testifies to the domination of the economic logics of self-help and self-interest over the working-class people, which can be examined through the lens of the Foucauldian theory of governmentality. In contrast, Sissy Jupe`s adherence to fancy and her affectionate sympathy for the few ignored by and alienated from the arithmetic calculation of utilitarianism can serve as an antidote to the ideologies of male-centered political economy.