Dobrzycka, Irena. The Conditions of Living of the
Working Class in the Social Novels of Charles Kingsley (Poznan: Panstwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1955).
In her treatment of Kingsley’s social and political views, especially
as presented in such novels as Yeast and Two Years Ago ,
Dobrzycka focuses on what she perceives as Kingsley’s reactionary bourgeois
ideology. Still, despite his feudalistic views, Dobrzycka praises the realistic
portrayal by this “bard of imperialism”of the living conditions of the
proletariat in these novels. She also lauds his vehement criticism of agrarian
misery and his advocacy of sanitary reform.
Social
and Political Views ; Working-Class
life, Depiction of ; Yeast
; Two
Years Ago ; Sanitation
.
Johnson, Patricia E. Hidden Hands: Working-Class
Women and Victorian Social-Problem Fiction (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 2001).
Johnson briefly considers how Kingsley marginalizes working-class women
in Alton Locke . The novel epitomizes how working-class men represent
the sole voice and political agent of their class with working-class women
being eclipsed in every instance of Alton’s experience. Even Alton’s sexual
and emotional attachments are to upper class women.
Alton
Locke ; Working-Class
life, Depiction of ; Females
Keating, P. J. The Working Classes in Victorian
Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971).
Keating makes numerous references to Kingsley in this work, particularly
to Alton Locke. Keating declares that the depiction of slum
life in the episode where Sandy Mackaye takes young Alton on a tour of
working-class London is representative of most pre-1880s accounts of slum
life in Victorian fiction. It is all foulness, all horror, with no
redeeming vitality, humor or humanity. Keating contrasts this type
of scene with what he declares are the more subtle portrayals of slum life
in Dickens. Though the latter also frequently represents the squalor
of slums, he usually depicts their inhabitants as possessing humor and
vigor. He humanizes the slum and, unlike Kingsley, does not accept
that the pervasive physical meanness represents the whole of working-class
life.
Alton
Locke ; Dickens
; Working-Class
life, Depiction of .
Raban, Jonathan. “Mr. Kingsley & Master Locke,”
New Statesman Vol. 81 (7 May, 1971): 643-644.
Raban strongly criticizes Kingsley's depiction of the working classes
in Alton Locke, maintaining that his view of them, in common with
that of many contemporary members of the genteel classes, tended towards
the voyeuristic, indecent, and sexual. Raban also observes that the
ending of this novel is among the worst in English fiction.
Alton
Locke ; Working-Class
Life, Depiction of . |
