Difference between Charles Dickens and George Eliot

👬 Comparison Between Charles Dickens and George Eliot:-


🔮 Charles Dicken 

Charles  Dickens 

Charles Dickens was a British novelist, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator.Dickens is remembered as one of the most important and influential writers of the 19th century. Among his accomplishments, he has been lauded for providing a stark portrait of the Victorian-era underclass, helping to bring about social change.

who wrote such beloved classic novels as

👉 Oliver Twist, 
👉 A Christmas Carol, 
👉Nicholas Nickleby, 
👉 David Copperfield,
👉 A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

◼Charles Dickens has a very distinct writing style:-

He writes in a poetic way and uses a lot of satire and consequently humor. Since Dickens’s started off his literary career writing papers for newspapers most of his stories are in an episodic form. He is a master using this method in his stories, using cliff hanger endings he was able to keep his readers interested in his stories. 

🔷️Dickens uses idealized characters:-

In his books, this in itself can be a very bad thing because an idealized character does not have any room to grow throughout the course of the book. However Dickens does not make all of his characters perfect, rather he uses his idealized characters to contrast the ugly side of life that he so often portrays. 

📕 Oliver Twist :-

Oliver Twist is an example of one of his idealized characters, during the course of the book Oliver is put through many trials including an evil orphanage and a small training center for thieves. Throughout all of this Oliver is naive and his values are never compromised even though he is put in very difficult situations. Seeing the ugly circumstances that Oliver so often occupies, it is no wonder that Dickens chose to idealize Oliver and give the reader something to love completely. If Dickens had not idealized Oliver the book would have been dark with very little joy in it.

🔷️Use of upper class and lower class:-

Dickens also loves to employ incredible circumstances in his books. In Oliver Twist, Oliver turns out to be the nephew of the rich high class family that rescues him from the gang of thieves that Oliver had fallen in with. Using these incredible coincidences was popular for authors during Dickens’s time. 

He uses it in a distinct way. While other authors of the period would use the method to further their plot in their simple picturesque stories, Dickens’s took the approach that good will triumph over evil sometimes even in very unexpected ways and he used the method of incredible circumstances to show his outlook.

🔺️ Critical Writing against Upper class :-

Here Dickens’s is critiquing the rich upper class in London who largely ignored the starving population outside their window. Therefore, Dickens is critiquing all of the upper class citizens in London. They lead their lives pretending that they had no obligations to help their fellow man, except possibly a giving a few pounds to the poor on Sundays. Whistling in the dark was how they lived their lives and this was exactly what Scrooge was attempting to do.




🔷️ George Eliot :-

Mary Ann Evans, who later became famous as the novelist George Eliot, was born in 1819 at South Farm on the Arbury estate near Nuneaton, where her father, Robert Evans, was agent to the Newdigate family at Arbury Hall. When she was four months old the family moved to Griff House on the edge of the estate and here she spent 21 happy years. She was a great writer as she such works as

Chronology of Eliot's major work

1857 - Scenes of a Clerical Life

1859 - Adam Bede

11859 - Novella The Lifted Veil

1860 - The Mill on the Floss

1861 - Silas Marner

11862-1865 -  Romola published in Cornhill Magazine

1866 - Felix Holt the Radical

1868 - 'The Spanish Gypsy'

1871-72 -  Middlemarch

1876 - Daniel Deronda

Eliot's writing style :-

Eliot’s imaginary characters and situations were created in order to illustrate general problems, that is, to give rise to such passages of generalization as the ones at the head of this essay, the triumph of Eliot’s realism consists of the balance it achieves between the generalizing teachable moments and the exquisitely fine-grained depiction of characters and situations in all their distinctiveness. For all that they may be taken as cases, the happenings and people, even the minor people, never devolve into stick figures or contrived episodes delivering portable lessons with crude efficiency.

Use of fiction in his literary works :-

Eliot’s fiction could not differ more profoundly from the pedantic tales of Hannah More or the fictional Illustrations of Political Economy by Harriet Martineau. Part of the difference resides in the fact that Eliot nearly always enjoys mercy and compassion, showing fallible characters committing errors but reminding us that our own fallibility makes it incumbent on us to sympathize, not condemn.

The difference resides simply in the depth of Eliot’s investment in her characters and situations, the great lengths she goes to in delineating and particularizing them. The sinuous complexity of her prose style, which exhibits both the willingness and the capacity to make fine distinctions and to weigh the components of each statement with scrupulous care, in frequently elaborate complex sentence structures. Only such a style seems capable of grasping 

“the mysterious complexity of our life”

“divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.”

It is not too much to say that, in Eliot, style is ethics

The Representation of Women and Gender in George Eliot’s Fiction :-

When it comes to gender, the representation of it and the exploration of it, as a writer, George Eliot presents a conundrum. As a novelist, she developed several female characters whose characteristics and actions confound feminist theorists.

🔷️ Middlemarch:-

In Middlemarch, perhaps most obviously, Eliot often disappoints feminist readers by allowing Dorothea to marry Will Ladislaw. Dorothea’s first choice, the physically and intellectually impotent, Edward Casaubon. But Casaubon forbids Dorothea to marry Will. In fact, because he is jealous of Dorothea, in the end, and apparently aware of the attraction between his wife and his cousin, Casaubon adds a codicil to his will.

Dorothea must choose between a fulfilling and happy marriage, and the opportunity to fulfill her dreams of reform, using her husband’s money and power of her position as a landowner. Eliot forces Dorothea to choose and Dorothea often appears at a disadvantage because she chooses marriage.

Eliot’s consideration of gender throughout her fiction Middlemarch critical response to her handling of feminist issues. Eliot’s controversial rendering of women with a positive feminist reading of her works, emphasizing Eliot’s awareness of women’s obstacles and women’s potential to overcome such obstacles.

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