Was Charles Dickens a racist?

[Milk Sheikh]

I always thought he was a socialist; his stories always have working class heroes. Anyway, here's something he wrote about Indians:

In a letter to Angela Burdette-Couts, October 4, 1857, Charles Dickens wrote:
The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement...should be to proclaim to them, in their language, that I should do utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested."

Dickens also called for the "extermination" of the Indian race and applauded the "mutilation" of the wretched Hindoo who were punished by being "blown from...English guns[s]"

Is all this true, or is just false information on the net?

Milk Sheikh

[Volcanicity]

It is true that Dicken's said those thing's,but I think he said them as a reaction to the Indian mutiny of 1857.A couple of month's before Walter one of his teenage son's had started working for the East India Company in Calcutta and so those quote's have to seen as uttered through fear of his son's life and as a reaction to the way the Mutiny and the Indian people themselves were being portrayed in the western media of those times.So inexcusable as those quote's are they need to be seen in their proper context.

[red cat]

He was more likely to have racist prejudices. Why else did the boss of the thieves in Oliver Twist have to be jewish ?

[Meridian]

Why else did the boss of the thieves in Oliver Twist have to be jewish ?
Coincidence, for example.

[Dr Mindbender]

A personality produced by Victorian era society had some backwards attitudes, who'd have thought it?

:rolleyes:

[Red Commissar]

I don't think Dickens struck me as a socialist. He was deeply concerned about the plight of the poor and social justice, but he wasn't out advocating for workers' control or overthrow of the capitalist system.

Dickens, like a number of the citizens of Britain at the time, were not disposed too well towards Indians, especially after the Sepoy Rebellion. A lot of them had the "clash of civilizations" mindset similar to what we have currently, and this was compounded by the so-called "White Man's Burden" mentality. Of course, we have to keep in mind what durdles said as well in regards to the time frame and the media/society then (Victorian Era shit) that shaped their attitudes towards Indians in such a maner.



A personality produced by Victorian era society had some backwards attitudes, who'd have thought it?

:rolleyes:

I'm reminded of a certain thread a confused user here made once-

http://www.revleft.com/vb/queen-victoria-she-t139687/index.html?t=139687

[Dave B]

Dickens was criticised for the negative portrayal of ‘Jews’ in Oliver Twist at a time when ‘anti Semitism’ was the norm and acceptable.

However he did accept that criticism and responded to that by portraying a Jewish character Riah in his ‘Our Mutual Friend’ in a positive light and reversing the stereotype by having a usurious moneylender as the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Christian ‘Fledgeby’.

That was quite radical thing to do at the time.

Followed shortly by George Elliots Daniel Deronda which was also a major anti racist novel; anti semitism being the form that racism took at the time.

The anti ‘Indian’ thing was, as has been pointed out, the result of all the propagandist horror stories that were being poured out at the time over the Indian mutiny.

I think that Dickens attitude to working class radicalism was not always positive, so for instance his portrayal of trade unionism in ‘Hard times’ was not all that positive.

Considering workers as being misled by self serving vanguardist leaders with a sense of morality and self interest that was not all that different and equally reprehensible to that of the ruling class.
A similar attitude came out in Barnaby Rudge and a Tale of Two Cities (re the French Revolution).

I think his attitude or desire was for kind idealised harmonious patriarchal society were the well off should be merely be the curators of culture and learning etc without abusing the labouring poor which had its own nobility and value etc etc. ( in my opinion)


There is an interesting essay on Dickens by Orwell an extract of which is;




........and he is slightly hostile to the most hopeful movement of his day, trade unionism. In Hard Times trade unionism is represented as something not much better than a racket, something that happens because employers are not sufficiently paternal. Stephen Blackpool's refusal to join the union is rather a virtue in Dickens's eyes. Also, as Mr. Jackson has pointed out, the apprentices’ association in Barnaby Rudge, to which Sim Tappertit belongs, is probably a hit at the illegal or barely legal unions of Dickens's own day, with their secret assemblies, passwords and so forth. Obviously he wants the workers to be decently treated, but there is no sign that he wants them to take their destiny into their own hands, least of all by open violence.


http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/dickens/english/e_chd


( I have actually read most of Dickens, including the ‘books’ mentioned; just to refute ComradeOm’s claim that as a ordinary factory worker I am capable of reading nothing else apart from what my chips are wrapped in)

[FreeFocus]

He was a British man from the 1800s. Chances are, yes, he was a racist. Let's be real.

[Dimentio]

Dickens wasn't a socialist. He was against impoverishment, not against capitalism.

And most people were racists during those days.

[Reznov]

I don't think Dickens struck me as a socialist. He was deeply concerned about the plight of the poor and social justice, but he wasn't out advocating for workers' control or overthrow of the capitalist system.




Yeah, I don't think they used words like that back then.

Doesn't mean he wasn't aware of the system though.

[Dave B]

I think it might be worth pointing out Marx’s appreciation of Dickens etc as chroniclers in fiction of the condition of the ‘English’ working class.


Karl Marx in New-York Tribune 1854 The English Middle Class




The present splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together, have described every section of the middle class from the "highly genteel" annuitant and fundholder who looks upon all sorts of business as vulgar, to the little shopkeeper and lawyer’s clerk.

And how have Dickens and Thackeray, Miss Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell painted them? As full of presumption, affectation, petty tyranny and ignorance; and the civilised world have confirmed their verdict with the damning epigram that it has fixed to this class that "they are servile to those above, and tyrannical to those beneath them."



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/08/01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/08/01.htm)


Gaskell is of perhaps more interest with Mary Barton (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Mary_Barton) (1848) and North and South (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/North_and_South_(1854_novel)) (1854–5) although I think in both there was an appeal to the moral sensibilities, or insensitivity, of the capitalist class in the vein of the ‘True socialists’ that Karl and Fred attacked.


The same was true I think of Charlote Bronte’s Shirley (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Shirley_(novel)), published 1849 which was her only novel that really drifted into working class life and industrial capitalism.



Again, as in Gaskells stuff, seeming to portray the capitalist as a potentially ‘good’ being driven to ‘wickedness’ by the system.

On the racism thing, and I always feel like I am jumping into a cesspool when I address it.


There has been an interesting series of short progs on BBC radio 4 as regards historical attitudes to the claimed affect and/or effect on climate and thus geography on innate or otherwise behaviour and culture etc etc.


I do not want to endorse the series etc and there is I think at least two different threads running through it.


However I believe there is some useful stuff mixed in within it.


The whole of episode 3 is worth listening to, with Kants view on endemic ‘geographical’ and racial ‘inferiority’.


Episode 5; which you might want to start listening to 5 minutes in, with a ‘racist’ attitude from Hegel with the sensual ‘Africans’ as opposed to the spiritual Germans. (one is supposed to be superior to the other by the way- you might want to consult Rosa as the resident Hegelian as to which is best)


And again episode 4; 5 minutes in.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfhgg (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfhgg)



I think what the programme was good for, for me was at least raising the question as to as the origin of racism as opposed to just bloody stupid prejudice.

The argument for ‘racial’ differences was being put on a scientific or materialistic basis and I think some of these ‘scientists’ actually believed what they were saying.

And I think it affected Karl with his reverence for, it albeit bad science and ‘materialism’, in his famous racist remarks in;


Capital Vol. III Part VI
Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent
Chapter 47. Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent





This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances………….


The possibility is here presented for definite economic development taking place, depending, of course, upon favourable circumstances, inborn racial characteristics, etc.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm)

As well as reading Gaskell and Bronte I listen to Radio 4; I think ComradeOm would be surprised if he ever went into a works canteen as to how many workers read books.


It is some time I think since chips were wrapped up in newspapers, apart from really weird places like Stalybridge and Farnworth; elsewhere I suspect it is an affectation for middle class tourists. Which is probably where ComradeOm gets it from.

Recently emerging mitochondrial DNA and ‘Y’ chromosome DNA analysis is suggesting that modern humans originated in the torrid climate of south west Africa about 100,000 years ago.
A very short time frame for anything but superficial evolutionary variation.



.
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[28350]

He was more likely to have racist prejudices. Why else did the boss of the thieves in Oliver Twist have to be jewish ?

Fagan is a remarkably antisemitic character on the part of Dickens.


Coincidence, for example.
lolno.

Yeah, he was racist. This isn't excusable, but it also wasn't uncommon, or the norm.

[Red Commissar]

Yeah, I don't think they used words like that back then.

Doesn't mean he wasn't aware of the system though.

Marx and company were alive in the same time frame that Dickens was active. Charles Dickens was well aware of socialism as was anyone during that time period, and he wasn't advocating it any sense. He highlighted the flaws of the society at the time, but more in the way that someone like Mark Twain did.

That in itself doesn't make someone a "socialist" though. His writings nor his associations in his other fields of life showed he was active with the socialist groups of any sort, much less the trade unionists at the time.

I appreciate him for highlighting the grinding poverty and problems the Victorian Era produced for people in the United Kingdom, but that doesn't mean it makes him a socialist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Dickens was not a socialist as far as I know. Not to say that his focus on the poor as protagonists in his stories and his support of the fight of the under-dog isn't impressive and positive.

He exposes inequality and class abuses brilliantly, but what are his solutions? Really his solutions were just for people to adopt Victorian morality as he saw it. People should learn forgiveness, the rich should not be tight and unfeeling, people should celebrate and aim to achieve the Victorian nuclear family. In his books, when society fails to live up to these morals what do you get: rich who push austerity onto the poor (Scrooge - or any contemporary politician actually:lol:), perverted "families" made up of orphans and thieves rather than proper families of breadwinners and homemakers.

[Dimentio]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagin

Seems like he realised how wrong antisemitism was later, and saw to correct his writing to not stir up more antisemitic feelings.

[RED DAVE]

ORWELL ON DICKENS (http://www.george-orwell.org/Charles_Dickens/0.html)

Read it along with first three chapters of Great Expectations (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400). Quiz Monday.

RED DAVE

[Jimmie Higgins]

ORWELL ON DICKENS (http://www.george-orwell.org/Charles_Dickens/0.html)

Read it along with first three chapters of Great Expectations (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1400). Quiz Monday.

RED DAVE:laugh:


But does it count toward our final grade?

[Kiev Communard]

Dickens was most definitely not a socialist of any kind, even a Fabian one, he was a liberal moralist. However, I don't think accusing him of racism is something accurate as we then must attach the same label to Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon, the Utopian Socialists of 19th century, etc, proceeding from certain remarks in their works. The ethnic and racial stereotypes of that time were so much widespread that even socialists and communists, not speaking about liberals, were very likely to adopt them.