| 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.
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