Dickens and Dostoevsky Discuss Fathers

{ By Anna Merz, Roanoke College

Contents

• Dickens and Dostoevsky• Discussing Fathers• Thesis• Fathers in Bleak House• Fathers in Crime and Punishment • Conclusions

Dickens and Dostoevsky

• Dostoevsky admired Dickens– Recommendations – Personal accounts– Direct references in

writing

• Dickens in Russia– Loved author,

loved text Edited photo of Dickens and Dostoevsky: Times Literary Supplement

Discussing Fathers

• Nineteenth Century fathers• Dickens and Dostoevsky

discuss fathers• Problematic fathers in

Bleak House and Crime and Punishment– Absent – Abusive – Surrogate

Page from Dostoevsky’s notebook with doodles

Thesis

• Dostoevsky was influenced by Dickens’s works to begin a revisionary relationship with the author in order to complicate Dickens’s original assertions about changing roles for fathers in the nineteenth century. While Dickens’s father characters offered a new, more realistic depiction of the struggles that English fathers faced, Dostoevsky’s interpretation depicts an even darker reality that families faced in Russia.

Fathers in Bleak House

• Absent fathers– Esther Summerson’s father

• Abusive fathers– Brick makers– Harold Skimpole

• Surrogate fathers– John Jarndyce – Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce chancery suit Original Illustration from

Bleak House of Skimpole by Phiz

Fathers in Crime and Punishment

• Absent fathers–Marmeladov– Raskolnikov’s father

• Abusive fathers–Marmeladov

• Surrogate fathers– Svidrigaylov– Napoleon Bonaparte

Illustration from Crime and Punishment of Raskolnikov and Marmeladov

Conclusions

• Dickens– The Bagnet Family

• Dostoevsky– No simple solution– Even God the Father is

dead – Solution: Christ the son

Portrait of Dostoevsky Late in Life

Works Cited A Russian Correspondent. "Dickens in Russia, a Moral Educator." Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction. Ed. Donald Davie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. 117-119. Print.Adrian, Arthur A. Dickens and the Parent-Child Relationship. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1984. Print.Bailey, Peter. "White Collars, Gray Lives? The Lower Middle Class Revisited." Journal of British Studies 38.3 (1999): 273-90. Print.Blum, Jerome. Lord and Peasant in Russia, from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1961. Print.Broughton, Trev Lynn, and Helen Rogers, eds. Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Print.Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Ed. Nicola Bradbury. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and Jessie Coulson. Crime and Punishment. Oxford's World's Classics Paperback Reissue ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.

Print."Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich." (2011): Credo Reference Collections. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.Fanger, Donald. Dostoevsky And Romantic Realism: A Study Of Dostoevsky In Relation To Balzac, Dickens, And Gogol. n.p.: Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1965., 1965. Print.Fusso, Susanne. "Dostoevskii and the Family." The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii (2002): 175-90. Print.Jacobson, Wendy S., ed. Dickens and the Children of Empire. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000. Print.Kincaid, James R. "Dickens and the Construction of the Child." Dickens and the Children of the Empire (2000). Print.Korolenko, V.G. "My First Encounter with Dickens." Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction. Ed. Donald Davie. Chicago: University

of Chicago, 1965. 107-116. Print.Langbauer, Laurie. "Ethics and Theory: Suffering Children in Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Le Guin." ELH 75.1 (2008): 89-108. Project Muse.

Web. 26 Sept. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elh/summary/v075/75.1langbauer.html>.Lary, N.M. Dostoevsky and Dickens: A Study of Literary Influence. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Print.MacPike, Loralee. Dostoevsky's Dickens : A Study Of Literary Influence / Loralee Macpike. n.p.: Totowa, N.J. : Barnes & Noble, 1981.,

1981. Print. Malkovich, Amberyl. Charles Dickens and the Victorian Child: Romanticizing and Socializing the Imperfect Child. New York: Routledge,

2013. Print.Mochulsky, Konstantin, and Michael A. Minihan. "Crime and Punishment." Dostoevsky: His Life and Work. English ed. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1967. 270-313. Print.Naiman, Eric. "When Dickens Met Dostoevsky." The Times Literary Supplement (2013). Print.Rowe, William Woodin. Dostoevsky; Child and Man in His Works. New York: New York UP, 1968. Print.Stoeber, Michael. "Dostoevsky's Devil: The Will to Power." The Journal of Religion 74.1 (1994): 26-44. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1203613Yildirim, Askin Haluk. "Angels of the House: Dickens' Victorian Women."DEU Journal of GSSS 14.4 (2012): 113-25. Print.

Picture Sources

• http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/the-historic-meeting-between-dickens-and-dostoevsky-revealed-as-a-great-literary-hoax.html

• http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/fyodor-dostoevsky-draws-elaborate-doodles-in-his-manuscripts.html

• http://www.cartoonstock.com/vintage/directory/j/john_jarndyce.asp• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klodt_Michail_Petrovich_-_Rask

olnikov_and_Marmeladov.jpg• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazov/resources/?page_id=552