:::::::::: ::::::::::

　　Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
　　
　　Honoré de Balzac's Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, translated either as The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans or as The Harlot High and Low, was published in four parts from 1838-1847. It continues the story of Lucien de Rubempré, who was a main character in Illusions perdues, a preceding Balzac novel. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes forms part of Balzac's La Comédie humaine.
　　Plot summary
　　
　　Lucien de Rubempré and "Abbé Herrera" (Vautrin) have made a pact, in which Lucien will arrive at success in Paris if he agrees to follow Vautrin's instructions on how to do so. Esther Van Gobseck throws a wrench into Vautrin's best-laid plans, however, because Lucien falls in love with her and she with him. Instead of forcing Lucien to abandon her, he allows Lucien this secret affair, but also makes good use of it. For four years, Esther remains locked away in a house in Paris, taking walks only at night. One night, however, the Baron de Nucingen spots her and falls deeply in love with her. When Vautrin realizes that Nucingen's obsession is with Esther, he decides to use her powers to help advance Lucien.
　　
　　The plan is the following: Vautrin and Lucien are 60,000 francs in debt because of the lifestyle that Lucien has had to maintain. They also need one million francs to buy the old Rubempré land back, so that Lucien can marry Clotilde, the rich but ugly daughter of the Grandlieu's. Esther will be the tool they use to get as much money as possible out of the impossibly rich Nucingen. Things don't work out as smoothly as Vautrin would have liked, however, because Esther commits suicide after giving herself to Nucingen for the first and only time (after making him wait for months). Since the police have already been suspicious of Vautrin and Lucien, they arrest the two on suspicion of murder over the suicide. This turn of events is particularly tragic because it turns out that only hours before, Esther had actually inherited a huge amount of money from an estranged family member. If only she had held on, she could have married Lucien herself.
　　
　　Lucien, ever the poet, doesn't do well in prison. Although Vautrin actually manages to fool his interrogators into believing that he might be Carlos Herrera, a priest on a secret mission for the Spanish king, Lucien succumbs to the wiles of his interviewer. He tells his interrogator everything, including Vautrin's true identity. Afterwards he regrets what he has done and hangs himself in his cell.
　　
　　His suicide, like Esther's, is badly timed. In an effort not to compromise the high society ladies who were involved with him, the justices had arranged to let Lucien go. But when he kills himself, things get more sticky and the maneuverings more desperate. It turns out that Vautrin possesses the very compromising letters sent by these women to Lucien, and he uses them to negotiate his release. He also manages to save and help several of his accomplices along the way, helping them to avoid a death sentence or abject poverty.
　　
　　At the end of the novel, Vautrin actually becomes a member of the police force before retiring in 1845. The nobility that was so fearful for its reputation moves on to other affairs.
　　Main characters
　　
　　 * Esther Van Gobseck, former courtesan and lover of Lucien, assigned to seducing Nucingen. Commits suicide after sleeping with Nucingen for money.
　　 * Lucien de Rubempré, ambitious young man protected by Vautrin, trying to marry Clotilde de Grandlieu. Commits suicide in prison.
　　 * Vautrin, escaped convict with the alias Carlos Herrera, real name Jacques Collin, nickname Trompe-la-Mort. Has a weakness for pretty young men, tries to help Lucien move up in society in every evil way possible.
　　 * Baron de Nucingen, obsessed with Esther and the target of Vautrin's money machinations.
　　 * Jacqueline Collin, aunt of Vautrin, alias of Asie. Charged with watching over Esther and helping Vautrin in his various schemes.
　　 * Clotilde de Grandlieu, target of Lucien's affections, key to his advancement in society. But he cannot marry her unless he buys back his family's ancient land, worth one million francs. Her father prevents the marriage after finding out that the money, which actually came from Esther, did not really come from an inheritance (from Lucien's father), like Lucien was saying.
　　 * Comtesse de Sérizy and Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, former lovers of Lucien of whom Vautrin possesses very compromising letters.
　　 * Camusot de Marville, Comte de Granville, judge and magistrate respectively. Try to work out the case of Vautrin and Lucien without compromising the women involved.
　　 * Peyrade, Contenson, Corentin, Bibi-Lupin, spies of various sorts associated with the police. Try to get Vautrin for various personal reasons.

幻灭

　　Illusions perdues was written by the French writer Honoré de Balzac between 1837 and 1843. It consists of three parts, starting in the provinces, thereafter moving to Paris, and finally returning to provincial France. Thus it resembles another of Balzac’s greatest novels, La Rabouilleuse (The Black Sheep), in that it is set partly in Paris and partly in the provinces. It is, however, unique among the novels and short stories of the Comédie humaine by virtue of the even-handedness with which it treats both geographical dimensions of French social life.
　　
　　Plot summary
　　
　　Lucien Chardon, the son of a lower middle-class father and an impoverished mother of remote aristocratic descent, is the pivotal figure of the entire work. Living at Angoulême, he is impoverished, impatient, handsome and ambitious. His widowed mother, his sister Ève and his best friend, David Séchard, do nothing to lessen his high opinion of his own talents, for it is an opinion they share.
　　
　　Even as Part I of Illusions perdues, Les Deux poètes (The Two Poets), begins, Lucien has already written a historical novel and a sonnet sequence, whereas David is a scientist. But both, according to Balzac, are "poets" in that they creatively seek truth. Theirs is a fraternity of poetic aspiration, whether as scientist or writer: thus, even before David marries Ève, the two young men are spiritual brothers.
　　
　　Lucien is introduced into the drawing-room of the leading figure of Angoulême high society, Mme de Bargeton, who rapidly becomes infatuated with him. It is not long before the pair flee to Paris where Lucien adopts his maternal patronymic of de Rubempré and hopes to make his mark as a poet. Mme de Bargeton, on the other hand, recognises her mésalliance and, though remaining in Paris, severs all ties with Lucien, abandoning him to a life of destitution.
　　
　　In Part II, Un Grand homme de province à Paris, Lucien is contrasted both with the journalist Lousteau and the high-minded writer Daniel d’Arthez. Jilted by Mme de Bargeton for the adventurer Sixte du Châtelet, he moves in a social circle of high-class actress-prostitutes and their journalist lovers: soon he becomes the lover of Coralie. As a literary journalist he prostitutes his talent. But he still harbours the ambition of belonging to high society and longs to assume by royal warrant the surname and coat of arms of the de Rubemprés. He therefore switches his allegiance from the liberal opposition press to the one or two royalist newspapers that support the government. This act of betrayal earns him the implacable hatred of his erstwhile journalist colleagues, who destroy Coralie’s theatrical reputation. In the depths of his despair he forges his brother-in-law’s name on three promissory notes. This is his ultimate betrayal of his integrity as a person. After Coralie’s death he returns in disgrace to Angoulême, stowed away behind the Châtelets’ carriage: Mme de Bargeton has just married du Châtelet, who has been appointed prefect of that region.
　　
　　Meanwhile, at Angoulême David Séchard is betrayed on all sides but is supported by his loving wife. He invents a new and cheaper method of paper production: thus, at a thematic level, the commercialization of paper-manufacturing processes is very closely interwoven with the commercialization of literature. Lucien’s forgery of his brother-in-law’s signature almost bankrupts David, who has to sell the secret of his invention to business rivals. He is about to commit suicide when he is approached by a sham Jesuit priest, the Abbé Carlos Herrera: this, in another guise, is the escaped convict Vautrin whom Balzac had already presented in Le Père Goriot. Herrera takes Lucien under his protection and they drive off to Paris, there to begin a fresh assault on the capital.
　　Fundamental themes of the work
　　
　　The novel has four main themes.
　　
　　(1) The lifestyle of the provinces is juxtaposed with that of the metropolis, as Balzac contrasts the varying tempos of life at Angoulême and in Paris, the different standards obtaining in those cities, and their different perceptions.
　　
　　(2) Balzac explores the artistic life of Paris in 1821-22, and furthermore the nature of the artistic life generally. Lucien, who was already a not quite published author when the novel begins, fails to get that early literary work published whilst he is in Paris and during his time in the capital writes nothing of any consequence. Daniel d’Arthez, on the other hand, does not actively seek literary fame: it comes to him because of his solid literary merit.
　　
　　(3) Balzac denounces journalism, presenting it as the most pernicious form of intellectual prostitution.
　　
　　(4) Balzac affirms the duplicity – and two-facedness – of all things, both in Paris and at Angoulême: e.g., the character of Lucien de Rubempré, who even has two surnames; David Séchard’s ostensible friend, the notary Petit-Claud, who operates against his client, not for him; the legal comptes (accounts) which are contes fantastiques (fantastic tales); the theatre which lives by make-believe; high society likewise; the Abbé Carlos Herrera who is a sham priest, and in fact a criminal; the Sin against the Holy Ghost, whereby Lucien abandons his true integrity as a person, forging his brother-in-law’s signature and even contemplating suicide.
　　Narrative strategies
　　
　　(1) Although Illusions perdues is a commentary upon the contemporary world, Balzac is tantalizingly vague in his delineation of the historico-political background. His delineation of the broader social background is far more precise.
　　
　　(2) Illusions perdues is remarkable for its innumerable changes of tempo. However, even the change of tempo from Part II to Part III is but a superficial point of contrast between life as it is lived in the capital and life in the provinces. Everywhere the same laws of human behaviour apply. A person’s downfall may come from the rapier thrust of the journalist or from the slowly strangling machinations of the law.
　　
　　(3) Most notably in La Cousine Bette Balzac was one of the first novelists to employ the technique of in medias res. In Illusions perdues there is an unusual example of this, Part II of the novel serving as the prelude to the extended flashback which follows in Part III.
　　
　　(4) Illusions perdues is also full of the "sublimities and degradations", "excited emphasis" and "romantic rhetoric" to which F.R. Leavis[1] has objected in Le Père Goriot. Characters and viewpoints are polarized. There is the strong and perhaps somewhat artificial contrast between Lucien and David, art and science, Lousteau and d’Arthez, journalism and literature, Paris and the provinces, etc. And this polarization reaches the point of melodrama as Balzac appears to draw moral distinctions between "vice" and "virtue". Coralie is the Fallen Woman, Ève an Angel of strength and purity. Yet Balzac also describes Coralie’s love for Lucien as a form of redemptive purity, an "absolution" and a "benediction". Thus, through what structurally is melodrama, he underlines what he considers to be the fundamental resemblance of opposites.
　　
　　(5) Introduced into narrative fiction by the Gothic novel (The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk), melodrama was widespread in literature around the time when Illusions perdues was written. Jane Austen satirizes it in Northanger Abbey. Eugène Sue made regular use of it. Instances in Illusions perdues are the use of improbable coincidence; Lucien, in an endeavour to pay Coralie’s funeral expenses, writing bawdy love-songs when her body is hardly yet cold; and the deus ex machina (or Satanas ex machina?) in the form of Herrera’s appearance at the end of the novel.
　　
　　(6) Like all the major works of the Comédie humaine, Illusions perdues pre-eminently focuses on the social nexus. Within the nexus of love, in her relationship with Lucien, Coralie is life-giving: her love has a sacramental quality. However, in an environment of worldly manœuvring her influence upn him is fatal. She is, in other words, both a Fallen and a Risen Woman; all depends upon the nexus within which she is viewed. In the unpropitious environment of Angoulême Mme de Bargeton is an absurd bluestocking; transplanted to Paris, she undergoes an immediate "metamorphosis", becoming a true denizen of high society – and rightfully, in Part III, the occupant of the préfecture at Angoulême. As to whether Lucien’s writings have any value, the social laws are paramount: this is a fact which he does not realize until it is too late.
　　
　　(7) A parallel ambiguity is present in the character of the epicene Lucien de Rubempré. Mme de Bargeton finds no fault with his amorous competence, nor does Coralie. Yet, partly because of his existential circumstances and also because of the narrative context in which Balzac places him, it appears that Lucien is fundamentally homosexual. This, incidentally, is almost the first appearance of homosexuality in modern literature.
　　
　　(8) Illusions perdues is, according to Donald Adamson, "a revelation of the secret workings of the world, rather than a Bildungsroman illuminating the development of character"[2].
　　
　　The success of this novel inspired Balzac to write a four-part sequel, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes form part of the Comédie humaine, the series of novels and short stories written by Balzac depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and July Monarchy (1815-1848).

欧叶妮·格朗台

　　Eugénie Grandet (1833) is a novel by Honoré de Balzac about miserliness, and how it is bequeathed from the father to the daughter, Eugénie, through her unsatisfying love attachment with her cousin. As is usual with Balzac, all the characters in the novel are fully realized. Balzac conceived his grand project, The Human Comedy, while writing Eugénie Grandet and incorporated it into the Comedie by revising the names of some of the characters in the second edition.
　　Plot Summary
　　
　　Eugenie Grandet is set in the town of Saumur. Eugenie's father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance. However he is very miserly, and he, his wife, daughter and their servant Nanon live in a run down old house which he is too miserly to repair. His banker des Grassins wishes Eugenie to marry his son Adolphe, and his lawyer Cruchot wishes Eugenie to marry his nephew President Cruchot des Bonfons. The two families constantly visit the Grandets to get Felix's favour, and Felix in turn plays them off against each other for his own advantage.
　　
　　
　　One day in 1819, Felix's nephew Charles Grandet arrives from Paris unexpectedly at their home having been sent there by his father Guillaume. Charles does not realise that his father has gone bankrupt and plans to takes his own life. Guillaume reveals this to his brother Felix in a confidential letter which Charles has carried.
　　
　　Charles is a spoilt, and indolent young man, who is having an affair with an older woman. His father's ruin and suicide are soon published in the newspaper, and his uncle Felix reveals his problems to him. Felix considers Charles to be a burden, and plans to send him off overseas to make his own fortune. However, Eugenie and Charles fall in love with each other, and hope to eventually marry. She gives him some of her own money to help with his trading ventures.
　　
　　Meanwhile Felix hatches a plan to profit from his brother's ruin. He announces to Cruchot des Bonfons that he plans to liquidate his brother's business, and so avoid a declaration of bankruptcy, and therefore save the family honour. Cruchot des Bonfons volunteers to go Paris to make the arrangements provided that Felix pays his expenses. The des Grassins then visit just as they are in the middle of discussions, and the banker des Grassins volunteers to do Felix's bidding for free. So Felix accepts des Grassins offer instead of Cruchot des Bonfons. The business is liquidated, and the creditors get 46% of their debts, in exchange for their bank bills. Felix then ignores all demands to pay the rest, whilst selling the bank bills at a profit.
　　
　　By now Charles has left to travel overseas. He entrusts Eugenie with a small gold plated cabinet which contains pictures of his parents.
　　
　　Later Felix is angered when he discovers that Eugenie has given her money (all in gold coins) to Charles. This leads to his wife falling ill, and his daughter being confined to her room. Eventually they are reconciled, and Felix reluctantly agrees that Eugenie can marry Charles.
　　
　　In 1827 Charles returns to France. By now both of Eugenie's parents have died. However Charles is no longer in love with Eugenie. He has become very wealthy through his trading, but he has also become extremely corrupt. He becomes engaged to the daughter of an impoverished aristocratic family, in order to make himself respectable. He writes to Eugenie to announce his marriage plans, and to break off their engagement. He also sends a cheque to pay off the money that she gave him. Eugenie is heartbroken, especially when she discovers that Charles had been back in France for a month when he wrote to her. She sends back the cabinet.
　　
　　Eugenie then decides to become engaged to Cruchot des Bonfons on two conditions. One is that she remains a virgin, and the other is that he agrees to go to Paris to act for her to pay off all the debts due Guillaume Grandet's creditor's. Bonfons de Cruchot carries out the debt payment in full. This comes just in time for Charles who finds that his future father-in-law objects to letting his daughter marry the son of a bankrupt. When Charles meets Bonfons de Cruchot, he discovers that Eugenie is in fact far wealthier than he is. During his brief stay at Saumur, he had assumed from the state of their home that his relatives were poor.
　　
　　Bonfons de Cruchot marries Eugenie hopeful of becoming fabulously wealthy. However he dies young, and at the end of the book Eugenie is a very wealthy widow having now inherited her husband's fortune. However she is also very unhappy, and tells her servant Nanon "You are the only one who loves me". She lives in the miserly way in which she was brought up, though without her father's obsession for gold.
　　Adaptations
　　
　　Adaptation for cinema:
　　
　　 * 1921 - The Conquering Power - by Rex Ingram - starring Alice Terry (Eugénie), Rudolph Valentino (Charles), Ralph Lewis (Father), Carrie Daumery (Mother), Bridgetta Clark (Mrs Des Grassins)
　　 * 1946 - Eugenia Grandet - by Mario Soldati - starring Alida Valli
　　 * 1965 - Eugenie Grandet - by Rex Tucker - starring Valerie Gearon (Eugénie), Mary Kerridge (Madame des Grassins), Beatrix Lehmann (Madame Grandet), Jonathan Cecil (Adolphe)
　　 * 1993 - Eugénie Grandet, by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe; starring: Alexandra London (Eugénie), Jean Carmet (Father Grandet), Dominique Labourier (Mother Grandet), Claude Jade (Lucienne des Grassins).

苏城舞会

　　Le Bal de Sceaux (The Ball at Sceaux) is the fifth work of Honoré de Balzac, one of the oldest texts of la Comédie Humaine.
　　
　　The first edition of this novella was published in 1830 by Mame and Delaunay-Vallée in the Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes of Private Life). It was republished in 1835 by Madame Charles-Béchet, in 1839 in the Charpentier edition, and then in 1842 in the first volume of the Furne edition of la Comédie Humaine.
　　
　　Analysis
　　
　　In writing this novella Balzac seems to have been inspired by the fables of La Fontaine, especially La fille ("The Girl") and Héron ("The Heron"). There is also an allusion to La Fontaine in the choice of Émilie’s surname. The plot is similar to that of another of Balzac's works, La Vieille Fille (The Old Maid), the subject of which hesitates between several suitors and finishes by making do with the only one left.
　　
　　A similar plot informs Aleksandr Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin, which was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832.
　　
　　Plot
　　
　　After having haughtily refused a number of suitors, under the pretext that they are not peers of France, Émilie de Fontaine falls in love with a mysterious young man who quietly appeared at the village dance at Sceaux. Despite his refined appearance and aristocratic bearing, the unknown (Maximilien Longueville) never tells his identity and seems interested in nobody but his sister, a sickly young girl. But he is not insensible to the attention Émilie gives him and he accepts the invitation of Émilie’s father, the Comte de Fontaine. Émilie and Maximilien soon fall in love. The Comte de Fontaine, concerned for his daughter, decides to investigate this mysterious young man, and he discovers him on the Rue du Sentier, a simple cloth merchant, which horrifies Émilie. Piqued, she marries a 70 year old uncle for his title of Vice Admiral, the Comte de Kergarouët.
　　
　　Several years after her marriage, Émilie discovers that Maximilien is not a clothier at all, but in fact a Vicomte de Longueville who has become a Peer of France. The young man finally explains why he secretly tended a store: he did it in order to support his family, sacrificing himself for his sick sister and for his brother, who had departed the country.

贝姨

　　La Cousine Bette (English: Cousin Betty or Cousin Bette) is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine.
　　
　　In the 1840s, a serial format known as the roman-feuilleton was highly popular in France, and the most acclaimed expression of it was the socialist writing of Eugène Sue. Balzac wanted to challenge Sue's supremacy, and prove himself the most capable feuilleton author in France. Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published in Le Constitutionnel at the end of 1846, then collected with a companion work, Le Cousin Pons, the following year.
　　
　　The novel's characters represent polarities of contrasting morality. The vengeful Bette and disingenuous Valérie stand on one side, with the merciful Adeline and her patient daughter Hortense on the other. The patriarch of the Hulot family, meanwhile, is consumed by his own sexual desire. Hortense's husband, the Polish exile Wenceslas Steinbock, represents artistic genius, though he succumbs to uncertainty and lack of motivation. Balzac based the character of Bette in part on his mother and the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. At least one scene involving Baron Hulot was likely based on an event in the life of Balzac's friend, the novelist Victor Hugo.
　　
　　La Cousine Bette is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels. Several critics have hailed it as a turning point in the author's career, and others have called it a prototypical naturalist text. It has been compared to William Shakespeare's Othello as well as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. The novel explores themes of vice and virtue, as well as the influence of money on French society. Bette's relationship with Valérie is also seen as an important exploration of homoerotic themes. A number of film versions of the story have been produced, including a 1971 BBC mini-series starring Margaret Tyzack and Dame Helen Mirren, and a 1998 feature film with Jessica Lange in the title role.
　　
　　By 1846 Honoré de Balzac had achieved tremendous fame as a writer, but his finances and health were deteriorating rapidly. After writing a series of potboiler novels in the 1820s, he published his first book under his own name, Les Chouans, in 1829. He followed this with dozens of well-received novels and stories, including La Peau de chagrin (1831), Le Père Goriot (1835), and the two-volume Illusions perdues (1837 and 1839). Because of his lavish lifestyle and penchant for financial speculation, however, he spent most of his life trying to repay a variety of debts. He wrote tirelessly, driven as much by economic necessity as by the muse and black coffee. This regimen of constant work exhausted his body and brought reprimands from his doctor.[2]
　　
　　As his work gained recognition, Balzac began corresponding with a Polish Baronness named Ewelina Hańska, who first contacted him through an anonymous 1832 letter signed "L'Étrangère". They developed an affectionate friendship in letters, and when she became a widow in 1841, Balzac sought her hand in marriage. He visited her often in Poland and Germany, but various complications prohibited their union. One of these was an affair Balzac had with his housekeeper, Louise Breugniot. As she became aware of his affection for Mme. Hanska, Breugniot stole a collection of their letters and used them to extort money from Balzac. Even after this episode, however, he grew closer to Mme. Hanska with each visit and by 1846 he had begun preparing a home to share with her. He grew hopeful that they could marry when she became pregnant, but she fell ill in December and suffered a miscarriage.[3]
　　
　　The mid-nineteenth century was a time of profound transformation in French government and society. The reign of King Charles X ended in 1830 when a wave of agitation and dissent forced him to abdicate. He was replaced by Louis-Philippe, who named himself "King of the French", rather than the standard "King of France" – an indication that he answered more to the nascent bourgeoisie than the aristocratic Ancien Régime. The change in government took place while the economy in France was moving from mercantilism to industrial development. This opened new opportunities for individuals hoping to acquire wealth, and led to significant changes in social norms. Members of the aristocracy, for example, were forced to relate socially to the nouveau riche, usually with tense results. The democratic spirit of the French Revolution also affected social interactions, with a shift in popular allegiance away from the church and the monarchy.[4]
　　
　　In the mid-nineteenth century, a new style of novel became popular in France. The serial format known as the roman-feuilleton presented stories in short regular installments, often accompanied by melodramatic plots and stock characters. Although Balzac's La Vielle fille (1836) was the first such work published in France,[5] the roman-feuilleton gained prominence thanks mostly to his friends Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas, père.[6] Balzac disliked their serial writing, however, especially Sue's socialist depiction of lower-class suffering.[7] Balzac wanted to dethrone what he called "les faux dieux de cette littérature bâtarde" ("the false gods of this bastard literature").[8] He also wanted to show the world that, despite his poor health and tumultuous career, he was "plus jeune, plus frais, et plus grand que jamais" ("younger, fresher, and greater than ever").[8] His first efforts to render a quality feuilleton were unsuccessful. Even though Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (published in segments from 1838 to 1847) was celebrated by critics, Balzac complained to Mme. Hanska that he was "doing pue Sue".[9] He tried again in 1844 with Modeste Mignon, but public reactions were mixed.[10] Two years later Balzac began a new project, determined to create something from his "own old pen again".[9]
　　Writing and publication
　　Balzac first visited the Château de Saché in 1832, when he wrote the autobiographical novel Louis Lambert.[11]
　　
　　After resting for a week in June 1846 at the Château de Saché in Tours, Balzac returned to Paris and began working on a short story called "Le Parasite", which he eventually developed into the novel Le Cousin Pons. He intended from the start to pair it with another novel, collecting them under the title Les Parents pauvres ("The Poor Relations"). He based the second book on a story his sister Laure Surville had written called "La Cousine Rosalie" and published in 1844 in Le Journal des enfants.[12] Writing intensively, he produced the entire novel, named La Cousine Bette after the main character, in two months. This was a significant accomplishment owing to his bad health, but its length made Balzac's writing speed especially remarkable.[13] One critic calls the writing of Les Parents pauvres Balzac's "last explosion of creative energy".[14] Another suggests that this effort was "almost the last straw which broke down Balzac's gigantic strength".[15]
　　
　　Balzac's usual mode of revision involved vast, complicated edits made to galley proofs he received from the printer. When creating La Cousine Bette, however, he submitted the work to his editor piece by piece, without viewing a single proof.[15] The book was serialized in Le Constitutionnel from 8 October to 3 December, and Balzac rushed to keep up with the newspaper's rapid printing schedule. He produced an average of eight pages each day, but was struck by the unexpected enormity of the story as it evolved.[16] Balzac was paid 12,836 francs for the series, which was later published with Le Cousin Pons as a twelve-volume book by Chiendowski and Pétion.[17] The first collected edition of La Cousine Bette was organized into 132 chapters, but these divisions were removed when Balzac added it to his massive collection La Comédie humaine in 1848.[18]
　　Plot summary
　　While caring for him, Bette refers to Wenceslas Steinbock as "mon enfant ... un garçon qui se relève du cercueil" ("my child ... a son risen from the grave").[19]
　　
　　The first third of the novel provides a lengthy exploration of the characters' histories. Balzac makes this clear after 150 pages: "Ici se termine, en quelque sorte, l'introduction de cette histoire." ("Here ends what is, in a way, the introduction to this story.")[20] At the start of the novel, Adeline Hulot – wife of the successful Baron Hector Hulot – is being pressured into an affair by a wealthy perfumer named Célestin Crevel. His desire stems in part from an earlier contest in which the adulterous Baron Hulot had won the hand of the singer Josépha Mirah, also favored by Crevel. The Hulots' daughter, Hortense, has begun searching for a husband; their son Victorin is married to Crevel's daughter Celestine. Mme. Hulot resists Crevel's advances, and he turns his attention elsewhere.
　　
　　Mme. Hulot's cousin, Bette (also called Lisbeth), harbors a deep but hidden resentment of her relatives' success. A peasant woman with none of the physical beauty of her cousin, Bette has rejected a series of marriage proposals from middle-class suitors, and remains unmarried at the age of 42. One day she comes upon a young unsuccessful Polish sculptor named Wenceslas Steinbock, attempting suicide in the tiny apartment upstairs from her own. As she nourishes him back to health, she develops a maternal fondness for him. She also befriends Valérie, the wife of a War Department clerk named Marneffe; the two women form a bond of mutual affection and protection.
　　
　　Baron Hulot, meanwhile, is rejected by Josépha, who explains bluntly that she has chosen another man because of his larger fortune. Hulot's despair is quickly alleviated when he meets and falls in love with Valérie Marneffe. He showers her with gifts, and soon establishes a luxurious house for her and M. Marneffe, with whom he works at the War Department. These debts, compounded by the money he borrowed to lavish on Josépha, threaten the Hulot family's financial security. Panicked, he convinces his uncle Johann Fischer to quietly embezzle funds from a War Department outpost in Algiers. Hulot's woes are momentarily abated and Bette's happiness is shattered, when – at the end of the "introduction" – Hortense Hulot marries Wenceslas Steinbock.
　　
　　Crushed at having lost Steinbock's company, Bette swears vengeance on the Hulot family. She works behind the scenes with Valérie to extract more money from Baron Hulot. Valérie also seduces Crevel and watches with delight as they vie for her attention. With Bette's help, Valérie turns to Steinbock and draws him into her bedroom. When Hortense learns of his infidelity, she leaves Steinbock and returns with their son to live with her mother Adeline. Valérie also proclaims her love to a Brazilian Baron named Henri Montès de Montéjanos, and swears devotion constantly to each of the five men.
　　When Baron Hulot marries the kitchen maid Agathe, his son Victorin concludes: "les enfants ne peuvent pas empêcher la folie des ancêtres en enfance" ("children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood").[21]
　　
　　Baron Hulot's brother, known as "le maréchal" ("the Marshal"), hires Bette as his housekeeper, and they develop a mild affection. He learns of his brother's infidelities (and the difficulties they have caused Adeline, who refuses to leave her husband), and promises to marry Bette if she will provide details. She agrees eagerly, delighted at the prospect of finally securing an enviable marriage. While investigating his brother's behavior, however, the Marshal discovers Baron Hulot's scheme in Algiers. He is overwhelmed by the disgrace, and his health deteriorates. Bette's last hope for a brighter future dies with him.
　　
　　When Valérie becomes pregnant, she tells each of her lovers (and her husband) that he is the father. She gives birth to a stillborn child, however, and her husband dies soon thereafter. Hulot and Crevel are ecstatic when they hear this news, each believing that he will become her only love once the official mourning period has passed. Valérie chooses Crevel for his comfortable fortune, and they quickly wed. This news outrages Baron Montès, and he devises a plot to poison the newlyweds. Crevel and Valérie die slowly, their bodies devoured by an exotic Brazilian toxin.
　　
　　Victorin Hulot is later visited by the Prince of Wissembourg, who delivers news of economic good fortune. The Marshal, prior to his death, had made arrangements for repayment of the Baron's debts, as well as employment for Adeline in a Catholic charity. Baron Hulot has disappeared, and Adeline spends her free time searching for him in houses of ill repute. She eventually finds him living with a fifteen-year-old courtesan, and begs him to return to the family. He agrees, but as he climbs into the carriage, Hulot asks: "mais pourrai-je emmener la petite?" ("But can I take the girl?")[22] The Hulot home is reunited for a time, and Bette's fury at their apparent happiness hastens her death. One evening after the funeral, Adeline overhears Hulot seducing a kitchen maid named Agathe. On her deathbed, Adeline delivers her first rebuke to her husband: "[D]ans un moment, tu seras libre, et tu pourras faire une baronne Hulot." ("In a moment, you will be free, and you can make another Baronne Hulot.")[23] Soon after burying his wife, Hulot marries Agathe.
　　Characters and inspirations
　　The death of Marshal Hulot has been called "one of the most moving in all of Balzac".[24]
　　
　　Balzac had written more than seventy novels when he began La Cousine Bette, and populated them with recurring characters. Many of the characters in the novel, therefore, appear with extensive back-stories and biographical depth. For example, Célestin Crevel first appeared in Balzac's 1837 novel César Birotteau, working for the title character. Having accumulated a considerable fortune in that book, Crevel spends his time in La Cousine Bette enjoying the spoils of his labor. Another important recurring character is Marshal Hulot, who first appeared as a colonel in Les Chouans. In the years between that story and La Cousine Bette, he became the Count of Forzheim; in a letter to the Constitutionnel, Balzac described how Marshal Hulot gained this title. The presence of Crevel and Marshal Hulot – among others – in La Cousine Bette allows a continuation of each character's life story, adding emphasis or complexity to earlier events.[25]
　　
　　Other recurring characters appear only briefly in La Cousine Bette; previous appearances, however, give deep significance to the characters' presence. This is the case with Vautrin, the criminal mastermind who tutors young Eugene de Rastignac in Balzac's 1835 novel Le Père Goriot. When he resurfaces in La Cousine Bette, he has joined the police and introduces the Hulot family to his aunt, Mme. Nourrison, who offers a morally questionable remedy for their woes. Although Vautrin's presence in La Cousine Bette is brief, his earlier adventures in Le Père Goriot provide instant recognition and emotional texture. Elsewhere, Balzac presents an entire world of experience by including characters from a particular sphere of society. For example, several scenes feature artists like Jean-Jacques Bixiou, who first appeared in 1837's Les Employés and in many other books thereafter. The world of Parisian nightlife is quickly brought to mind with the inclusion of several characters from Les Comédiens sans le savoir (1846), and Bianchon appears – as always – when a doctor is needed.[26]
　　
　　Balzac's use of recurring characters has been identified as a unique component of his fiction. It enables a depth of characterization that goes beyond simple narration or dialogue. "When the characters reappear", notes the critic Samuel Rogers, "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from the privacy of their own lives which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see."[27] Some readers, however, are intimidated by the depth created by these interdependent stories, and feel deprived of important context for the characters. Detective novelist Arthur Conan Doyle said that he never tried to read Balzac, because he "did not know where to begin".[28] The characterization in La Cousine Bette is considered especially skillful. Anthony Pugh, in his book Balzac's Recurring Characters, says that the technique is employed "for the most part without that feeling of self-indulgence that mars some of Balzac's later work. Almost every example arises quite naturally out of the situation."[29] Biographer Noel Gerson calls the characters in La Cousine Bette "among the most memorable Balzac ever sketched".[30]
　　Bette Fischer
　　Lisbeth Fischer (Cousin Bette) is described as "maigre, brune ... les sourcils épais et réunis par un bouquet ... quelques verrues dans sa face longue et simiesque" ("lean, brown, with ... thick eyebrows joining in a tuft ... and some moles on her narrow simian face").[31]
　　
　　Descriptions of Bette are often connected to savagery and animal imagery. Her name, for example, is a homophone in French for "bête" ("beast"). One passage explains that "elle ressemblait aux singes habillés en femmes" ("she sometimes looked like one of those monkeys in petticoats");[32] elsewhere her voice is described as having "une jalousie de tigre" ("tiger-like jealousy").[33] Her beastly rage comes to the surface with ferocity when she learns of Steinbock's engagement to Hortense:
　　
　　 La physionomie de la Lorraine était devenue terrible. Ses yeux noirs et pénétrants avaient la fixité de ceux des tigres. Sa figure ressemblait à celles que nous supposons aux pythonisses, elle serrait les dents pour les empêcher de claquer, et une affreuse convulsion faisait trembler ses membres. Elle avait glissé sa main crochue entre son bonnet et ses cheveux pour les empoigner et soutenir sa tête, devenue trop lourde; elle brûlait! La fumée de l'incendie qui la ravageait semblait passer par ses rides comme par autant de crevasses labourées par une éruption volcanique.
　　
　　 The peasant-woman's face was terrible; her piercing black eyes had the glare of the tiger's; her face was like that we ascribe to a pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from chattering, and her whole frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke of the flame that scorched her seemed to emanate from her wrinkles as from the crevasses rent by a volcanic eruption.[34]
　　
　　When she learns that her cousin Adeline has been welcoming Steinbock into the Hulot home, Bette swears revenge: "Adeline! se dit Lisbeth, ô Adeline, tu me le payeras, je te rendrai plus laide que moi!" ("'Adeline!' muttered Lisbeth. 'Oh, Adeline, you shall pay for this! I will make you uglier than I am.'")[34] Her cruelty and lust for revenge lead critics to call her "demonic"[35] and "one of Balzac's most terrifying creations".[36] Because of her willingness to manipulate the people around her, Bette has been compared to Iago in William Shakespeare's play Othello.[37] Her fierce persona is attributed partly to her peasant background, and partly to her virginity, which provides (according to Balzac) "une force diabolique ou la magie noire de la volonté" ("diabolical strength, or the black magic of the Will").[38][39]
　　
　　In a letter to Mme. Hanska, Balzac indicated that he based the character of Bette on three women from his life: his mother, Mme. Hanska's aunt Rosalie Rzewuska, and the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Balzac had a tumultuous relationship with his mother for most of his life, and he incorporated some of her personality (particularly her "obstinate persistence in living",[40] as one critic calls it) into Bette.[41] Rosalie Rzewuska disapproved of Mme. Hanska's relationship with Balzac; biographers agree that her cold determination was part of the author's recipe for Bette.[42] Elements taken from Marceline Desbordes-Valmore are more complex; she faced many setbacks in life and she and Balzac became friends after she left the theatre to take up poetry.[43]
　　Valérie Marneffe
　　
　　Bette's co-conspirator in the destruction of the Hulot family is beautiful and greedy Valérie Marneffe, the unsatisfied wife of a War Department clerk. They develop a deep friendship, which many critics consider an example of lesbian affection.[44] Because of their relationship and similar goals, the critic Frederic Jameson says that "Valérie serves as a kind of emanation of Bette".[45]
　　Valérie Marneffe "attirait tous les regards, excitait tous les désirs, dans le cercle où elle rayonnait" ("attracted every eye, and excited every desire in the circle she shone upon").[46]
　　
　　Valérie is repulsed by her ugly husband and has gone five years without kissing him.[47] She explains bluntly that her position as a married woman provides subtleties and options unavailable to the common prostitute who has one set price; after Marneffe dies, Valérie jockeys for position between Hulot and Montés (while also sleeping with Steinbock), then discards them all to marry Crevel, who offers the most wealth. She amuses herself by mocking her lovers' devotion, and this wickedness – not to mention her gruesome demise – has led some critics to speculate that she is actually the focus of Balzac's morality tale.[48]
　　
　　In one important scene, Valérie models for Steinbock as Delilah, standing victorious over the ruined Samson. With obvious parallels to her own activities, she describes her vision for the piece: "Il s'agit d'exprimer la puissance de la femme. Samson n'est rien, là. C'est le cadavre de la force. Dalila, c'est la passion qui ruine tout." ("What you have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary consideration. He is the corpse of dead strength. It is Delilah—passion—that ruins everything.")[49]
　　
　　Although Balzac did not draw specifically from the women in his life to create Valérie, parallels have been observed in some areas. The tumultuous end of his affair with Louise Breugniot and the advantage she gains from his devotion to Mme. Hanska is similar in some ways to Valérie's manipulation of Steinbock.[50] Critics also connect the pride and anguish felt by Balzac during Mme. Hanska's pregnancy and miscarriage to the same emotions felt by Baron Hulot when Valérie conceives and loses her child.[51] Although he never ascribed to Mme. Hanska any of the traits in Valérie's treacherous character, he felt a devotion similar to that of Hulot. He once wrote to her: "je fais pour mon Eve toute les folies qu'un Hulot fait pour une Marneffe, je te donnerai mon sang, mon honneur, ma vie" ("I commit for [you] all the follies that a Hulot commits for Madame Marneffe; I give you my blood, my honor, my life").[52]
　　Hector and Adeline Hulot
　　
　　Baron Hector Hulot is a living manifestation of male sexual desire, unrestrained and unconcerned with its consequences for the man or his family. As the novel progresses, he becomes consumed by his libido, even in a physical sense. When Valérie tells him to stop dyeing his hair, he does so to please her. His financial woes and public disgrace lead him to flee his own home; by the end of the book he is an elderly, decrepit shell of a man. Baron Hulot is so overcome by his taste for female flesh that he even asks his wife – without irony – if he can bring home his fifteen-year-old mistress.[53]
　　
　　Adeline Hulot, on the other hand, is mercy personified. Like her cousin Bette, she comes from a peasant background, but has internalized the ideals of 19th-century womanhood, including devotion, grace, and deference. She reveals in the first scene that she has known for years about her husband's infidelities, but refuses to condemn him. Adeline's forgiving nature is often considered a significant character flaw. Some suggest that she is partly to blame for Hulot's wandering affection. C.A. Prendergast, for example, calls her forgiveness "an inadequate and even positively disastrous response" to her situation.[54] He further suggests that Adeline, by choosing the role of quiet and dutiful wife, has excised from herself the erotic power to which the Baron is drawn. "[O]ne could at the very least offer the tentative speculation that Hulot's obsessional debauchery is in part the result of a certain poverty in Adeline, that the terrible logic of Hulot's excess is partially shaped by a crucial deficiency in his wife."[55] Others are less accusatory; Adeline's nearly infinite mercy, they say, is evidence of foolishness. Critic Herbert J. Hunt declares that she shows "more imbecility than Christian patience",[56] and David Bellos points out that, like her husband, she is driven by passion – albeit of a different kind: "Adeline's desire (for good, for the family, for Hector, for God) is so radically different from the motivating desires of the other characters that she seems in their context to be without desire...."[57]
　　
　　Balzac's inspiration for the characters of Hector and Adeline remain unclear, but several critics have been eager to speculate. Three officers named Hulot were recognized for their valor in the Napoleonic Wars, and some suggest that Balzac borrowed the name of Comte Hector d'Aure. None of these men, however, were known for the sort of philandering or thievery exhibited by Baron Hulot in the novel. Instead, Balzac may have used himself as the model; his many affairs with women across the social spectrum lead some to suggest that the author "found much of Hulot in himself".[58] Balzac's friend Victor Hugo, meanwhile, was famously discovered in bed with his mistress in July 1845. The similarity of his name to Hector Hulot (and that of his wife's maiden name, Adèle Foucher, to Adeline Fischer) has been posited as a possible indication of the characters' origins.[59]
　　Wenceslas Steinbock
　　"Quoique Steinbock eût vingt-neuf ans, il paraissait, comme certains blonds, avoir cinq ou six ans de moins ... cette jeunesse ... avait cédé sous les fatigues et les misères de l'exil" ("Though Steinbock was nine-and-twenty, like many fair men, he looked five or six years younger ... his youth ... had faded under the fatigue and stress of life in exile".)[60]
　　
　　The Polish sculptor Wenceslas Steinbock is important primarily because of Bette's attachment to him. He offers Bette a source of pride, a way for her to prove herself worthy of her family's respect. When Hortense marries Steinbock, Bette feels as though she has been robbed. Prendergast insists that the incident "must literally be described as an act of theft".[61]
　　
　　Steinbock's relevance also lies in his background and profession, illustrating Balzac's conception of the Polish people, as well as himself. Having spent more than a decade befriending Mme. Hanska and visiting her family in Poland, Balzac believed he had insight into the national character (as he felt about most groups he observed). Thus, descriptions of Steinbock are often laced with commentary about the Polish people: "Soyez mon amie, dit-il avec une de ces démonstrations caressantes si familières aux Polonais, et qui les font accuser assez injustement de servilité." ("'Be my sweetheart,' he added, with one of the caressing gestures familiar to the Poles, for which they are unjustly accused of servility.")[62][63]
　　
　　Critics also consider Steinbock important because of his artistic genius. Like Louis Lambert and Lucien Chardon in Illusions perdues, he is a brilliant man – just as Balzac considered himself to be. Before he is nurtured and directed by Bette, however, Steinbock's genius languishes under his own inertia and he attempts suicide. Later, when he leaves Bette's circle of influence, he fails again. Thus he demonstrates Balzac's conviction that genius alone is useless without determination.[64] Bellos organizes Steinbock and Bette into a duality of weakness and strength; whereas the Polish artist is unable to direct his energies into productive work, Bette draws strength from her virginity and thus becomes powerful by denying the lust to which Steinbock falls prey.[65] Steinbock's drive is further eroded by the praise he receives for his art, which gives him an inflated sense of accomplishment. One critic refers to the artist's downfall as "vanity ... spoiled by premature renown".[66]
　　Style
　　
　　If Balzac's goal was (as he claimed) to write a realist novel from his "own old pen" rather than mimic the style of Eugène Sue, history and literary criticism have declared him successful. William Stowe calls La Cousine Bette "a masterpiece of classical realism"[67] and Bellos refers to it as "one of the great achievements of nineteenth-century realism", comparing it to War and Peace.[68] Some sections of the book are criticized for being melodramatic, and Balzac biographer V. S. Pritchett even refers to a representative excerpt as "bad writing".[69] Most critics, however, consider the moralistic elements of the novel deceptively complex, and some point out that the roman-feuilleton format required a certain level of titillation to keep readers engaged.[70] Others indicate that Balzac's interest in the theatre was an important reason for the inclusion of melodramatic elements.[71]
　　Émile Zola said that Balzac's fiction was "uniquement le compte-rendu brutal de ce que l'écrivain a observé" ("only the brutal report of what the writer has observed").[72]
　　
　　Balzac's trademark realism begins on the first page of the novel, wherein Crevel is described wearing a National Guard uniform, complete with the Légion d'honneur. Details from the 1830s also appear in the novel's geographic locations. The Hulot family home, for example, is found in the aristocratic area of Paris known as the Faubourg Saint-Germain.[73] Bette's residence is on the opposite end of the social spectrum, in the impoverished residential area which surrounded the Louvre: "Les ténèbres, le silence, l'air glacial, la profondeur caverneuse du sol concourent à faire de ces maisons des espèces de cryptes, des tombeaux vivants." ("Darkness, silence, an icy chill, and the cavernous depth of the soil combine to make these houses a kind of crypt, tombs of the living.")[74] Descriptions of her meager quarters are – as usual in Balzac's work – an acute reflection of her personality. The same is true of the Marneffe home at the outset: it contains "les trompeuses apparences de ce faux luxe" ("the illusory appearance of sham luxury"),[75] from the shabby chairs in the drawing-room to the dust-coated bedroom.[76]
　　
　　Precise detail is not spared in descriptions of decay and disease, two vivid elements in the novel. Marneffe, for example, represents crapulence. His decrepit body is a symbol of society's weakness at the time, worn away from years of indulgence. The poison which kills Valérie and Crevel is also described in ghastly detail. The doctor Bianchon explains: "Ses dents et ses cheveux tombent, elle a l'aspect des lépreux, elle se fait horreur à elle-même; ses mains, épouvantables à voir, sont enflées et couvertes de pustules verdâtres; les ongles déchaussés restent dans les plaies qu'elle gratte; enfin, toutes les extrémités se détruisent dans la sanie qui les ronge." ("She is losing her hair and teeth, her skin is like a leper's, she is a horror to herself; her hands are horrible, covered with greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the flesh is eaten away by the poisoned humors.")[77]
　　
　　La Cousine Bette is unapologetic in its bleak outlook, and makes blunt connections between characters' origins and behavior. For these reasons, it is considered a key antecedent to naturalist literature. Novelist Émile Zola called it an important "roman expérimental" ("experimental novel"),[78] and praised its acute exploration of the characters' motivations.[79][80] Some critics note that La Cousine Bette showed an evolution in Balzac's style – one which he had little time to develop. Pointing to the nuance of plot and comprehensive narration style, Stowe suggests that the novel "might in happier circumstances have marked the beginning of a new, mature 'late Balzac'".[81]
　　Themes
　　Passion, vice, and virtue
　　
　　Valérie's line about Delilah being "la passion qui ruine tout" ("passion which ruins everything") is symbolic, coming as it does from a woman whose passion accelerates the ruin of most people around her – including herself. Baron Hulot, meanwhile, is desire incarnate; his wandering libido bypasses concern for his wife, brother, children, finances, and even his own health. Bette, of course, is living vengeance, and Adeline desperately yearns for the happy home she imagined in the early years of marriage. Each character is driven by a fiery passion, which in most cases consumes the individual.[82] As Balzac puts it: "La passion est un martyre." ("Passion is martyrdom.")[83]
　　After acknowledging herself as Delilah, Valérie warns her guests: "Prenez garde à vos toupets, messieurs!" ("Take care of your wigs, gentlemen!")[84]
　　
　　The intensity of passion, and the consequences of its manifestation, result in a stark contrast of vice and virtue. Bette and Valérie are pure wickedness, and even celebrate the ruin of their targets. As one critic says, "life's truths are viewed in their most atrocious form".[85] Mocking the use of the guillotine during the French Revolution while acknowledging her own malicious intent, Valérie says with regard to Delilah: "La vertu coupe la tête, le Vice ne vous coupe que les cheveux." ("Virtue cuts off your head; vice only cuts off your hair.")[84] Hulot is not intentionally cruel, but his actions are no less devastating to the people around him.[86]
　　
　　On the other side of the moral divide, Adeline and her children stand as shining examples of virtue and nobility – or so it would seem. Hortense ridicules her aunt when Bette mentions her protégé Wenceslas Steinbock, providing a psychological catalyst for the ensuing conflict.[87] Victorin repeatedly expresses outrage at his father's philandering, yet crosses a significant moral boundary when he agrees to fund Mme. Nourrison's plan to eradicate Valérie. As one critic puts it, Victorin's decision marks a point in the novel where "the scheme of right versus wrong immediately dissolves into a purely amoral conflict of different interests and passions, regulated less by a transcendent moral law than by the relative capacity of the different parties for cunning and ruthlessness."[88] The cruelties of the Hulot children are brief but significant, owing as much to their obliviousness (intentional in the case of Victorin, who asks not to learn the details of Mme. Nourrison's scheme) as to malicious forethought.[89]
　　
　　The question of Adeline's virtue is similarly complicated. Although she is forgiving to the point of absurdity, she is often considered more of a dupe than a martyr. Some have compared her to Balzac's title character in Le Père Goriot, who sacrifices himself for his daughters.[90] As Bellos puts it: "Adeline's complicity with Hector certainly makes her more interesting as a literary character, but it undermines her role as the symbol of virtue in the novel."[91] This complicity reaches an apex when she unsuccessfully attempts to sell her affections to Crevel (who has since lost interest) in order to repay her husband's debts. Her flirtation with prostitution is sometimes considered more egregious than Valérie's overt extortion, since Adeline is soiling her own dignity in the service of Baron Hulot's infidelity. For the remainder of the novel, Adeline trembles uncontrollably, a sign of her weakness.[92] Later, when she visits the singer Josépha (on whom her husband once doted), Adeline is struck by the splendor earned by a life of materialistic seduction. She wonders aloud if she is capable of providing the carnal pleasures Hulot seeks outside of their home.[93]
　　
　　Ultimately, both vice and virtue fail. Valérie is devoured by Montés' poison, a consequence of her blithe attitude toward his emotion. Bette is unsuccessful in her effort to crush her cousin's family, and dies (as one critic puts it) "in the margins".[94] Adeline's Catholic mercy, on the other hand, fails to redeem her husband, and her children are similarly powerless – as Victorin finally admits on the novel's last page. Like Raphael de Valentin in Balzac's 1831 novel La Peau de chagrin, Hulot is left with nothing but "vouloir": desire, a force which is both essential for human existence and eventually apocalyptic.[95]
　　Gender and homoeroticism
　　
　　Gender roles, especially the figure of the ideal woman, are central to La Cousine Bette. The four leading female characters (Bette, Valérie, Adeline, and Hortense) embody stereotypically feminine traits. Each pair of women revolves around a man, and they compete for his attention: Valérie and Adeline for Baron Hulot; Bette and Hortense for Wenceslas Steinbock. Balzac's study of masculinity is limited to the insatiable lust of Hulot and the weak-willed inconstancy of Steinbock, with the occasional appearance of Victorin as a sturdy patriarch in his father's absence.[96]
　　French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted lesbian relationships similar to (though more explicit than) that of Bette and Valérie, as in his 1893 painting "In Bed".[97]
　　
　　Critics pay special attention to Bette's lack of traditional femininity, and her unconventional relationships with two characters. She is described from the outset as having "des qualités d'homme" ("certain manly qualities"),[98] with similar descriptions elsewhere. Her relationship and attitude toward Steinbock, moreover, hint at her masculinity. She commands him into submission, and even binds him with economic constraints by lending him the money to develop his sculpture. Her domination is tempered by maternal compassion, but the couple's relationship is compared to an abusive marriage: "Il fut comme une femme qui pardonne les mauvais traitements d'une semaine à cause des caresses d'un fugitif raccommodement." ("He was like a woman who forgives a week of ill-usage for the sake of a kiss and a brief reconciliation.")[99][100]
　　
　　Bette's relationship with Valérie is layered with overtones of lesbianism. Early in the book Bette is "captée" ("bewitched")[101] by Valérie, and quickly declares to her: "Je vous aime, je vous estime, je suis à vous!" ("I love you, I esteem you, I am wholly yours!")[102] This affection may have been platonic, but neighbors of the Marneffes – along with many readers – suspect that their bond transcends friendship.[103] As with Steinbock, Bette and Valérie assume butch and femme roles; the narration even mentions "Le contraste de la mâle et sèche nature de la Lorraine avec la jolie nature créole de Valérie" ("The contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature and Valerie's creole prettiness").[104] The homoeroticism evolves through the novel, as Bette feeds on Valérie's power to seduce and control the Hulot men. As one critic says: "Valérie's body becomes, at least symbolically, the locus of Bette's only erotic pleasure."[105]
　　Wealth and society
　　Balzac once wrote: "The worst fault of the July Revolution is that it did not allow Louis-Philippe three months of dictatorship in which to put the rights of the people and the throne on a secure basis."[106]
　　
　　As with many of his novels, Balzac analyzes the influence of history and social status in La Cousine Bette. The book takes places between 1838 and 1846, when the reign of Louis-Philippe reflected and directed significant changes in the social structure. Balzac was a legitimist favoring the House of Bourbon, and idolized Napoleon Bonaparte as a paragon of effective absolutist power. Balzac felt that French society under the House of Orléans lacked strong leadership, and was fragmented by the demands of parliament. He also believed that Catholicism provided guidance for the nation, and that its absence heralded moral decay.[107]
　　
　　Balzac demonstrated these beliefs through the characters' lives in La Cousine Bette. The conflict between Baron Hulot and the perfumer Crevel mirrors the animosity between the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime and the newly-developed bourgeoisie of traders and industrial entrepreneurs. Although he despised the socialist politics of Eugène Sue, Balzac worried that bourgeois desperation for financial gain drove people from life's important virtues. The characters – especially Bette, Valérie, and Crevel – are fixated on their need for money, and do whatever they must to obtain it.[108] As Crevel explains to Adeline: "Vous vous abusez, cher ange, si vous croyez que c'est le roi Louis-Philippe qui règne ... au-dessus de la Charte il y a la sainte, la vénérée, la solide, l'aimable, la gracieuse, la belle, la noble, la jeune, la toute-puissante pièce de cent sous!" ("You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King Louis-Philippe rules us ... supreme above the Charter reigns the holy, venerated, substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble, ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece!")[109]
　　
　　Themes of corruption and salvation are brought to the fore as Valérie and Crevel lie dying from the mysterious poison. When his daughter urges him to meet with a priest, Crevel angrily refuses, mocking the church and indicating that his social stature will be his salvation: "la mort regarde à deux fois avant de frapper un maire de Paris!" ("Death thinks twice of it before carrying off a Mayor of Paris.")[110] Valérie, meanwhile, makes a deathbed conversion and urges Bette to abandon her quest for revenge. Ever the courtesan, Valérie describes her new Christianity in terms of seduction: "je ne puis maintenant plaire qu'à Dieu! je vais tâcher de me réconcilier avec lui, ce sera ma dernière coquetterie!" ("I can please no one now but God. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be my last flirtation...!")[111]
　　Reception and adaptations
　　In 1921 actor Bette Davis, born Ruth Elizabeth Davis, chose Bette as her stage name in honor of Balzac's character.[112]
　　
　　The critical reaction to La Cousine Bette was immediate and positive, which Balzac did not expect. Whether due to the intensity of its creation or the tumult of his personal life, the author was surprised by the praise he received. He wrote: "I did not realize how good La Cousine Bette is.... There is an immense reaction in my favour. I have won!"[113] The collected edition sold consistently well, and was reprinted nineteen times before the turn of the century. 20th-century critics remain enthusiastic in their praise for the novel; Saintsbury insists it is "beyond all question one of the very greatest of [Balzac's] works".[114] Biographer Graham Robb calls La Cousine Bette "the masterpiece of his premature old age".[115]
　　
　　Some 19th-century critics attacked the book, on the grounds that it normalized vice and corrupt living. Chief among these were disciples of the utopian theorist Charles Fourier; they disapproved of the "immorality" inherent in the novel's bleak resolution. Critics like Alfred Nettement and Eugène Marron declared that Balzac's sympathy lay with Baron Hulot and Valérie Marneffe. They lambasted him for not commenting more on the characters' degenerate behavior – the same stylistic choice later celebrated by naturalist writers Émile Zola and Hippolyte Taine.[116]
　　
　　Balzac's novel has been adapted several times for the screen. The first was in 1927, when French filmmaker Max DeRieux directed Alice Tissot in the title role.[117] Margaret Tyzack played the role of Bette in the five part serial Cousin Bette aired on the BBC, which also starred Helen Mirren as Valérie Marneffe.[118] The film Cousin Bette was released in 1998, directed by Des McAnuff. Jessica Lange starred in the title role, joined by Bob Hoskins as Crevel, and Elisabeth Shue as the singer Jenny Cadine. Screenwriters Lynn Siefert and Susan Tarr changed the story significantly, and eliminated Valérie. The 1998 film was panned by critics for its generally poor acting and awkward dialogue. Stephen Holden of the New York Times commented that the movie "treats the novel as a thoroughly modern social comedy peopled with raging narcissists, opportunists and flat-out fools".[119][120]
　　
　　La Cousine Bette was adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher, best known for his screenplay Stage Beauty (based on his stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty). The Antaeus Company in North Hollywood produced a workshop in 2008 and presented the world premiere of Cousin Bette in early 2010 in North Hollywood, California.[121] The adaptation retains many of the main characters but places Bette as the story's narrator.

邦斯舅舅

　　Of the 94 works of Honoré de Balzac’s Comédie humaine, which are in both novel and short story form, Le Cousin Pons is virtually the last. Begun in 1846 as a novella, or long-short story, it was envisaged as one part of a diptych, Les Parents pauvres (The Poor Relations), the other part of which was La Cousine Bette (Cousin Bette).
　　
　　The novella grew in 1847 into a full-length novel with a male poor relation, Pons, as its subject, whereas La Cousine Bette describes the female aspect of that subordinate relationship. The two novels were thus similar yet diametrically different. They were complementary, forming two parts of a whole.
　　
　　Le Cousin Pons has been classified by Balzac as the second Episode of Les Parents pauvres, the first Episode being La Cousine Bette. Especially admired by Paul Bourget, it is one of the very greatest of his novels.
　　
　　Plot summary
　　
　　The novella was based on a short story by an acquaintance of Balzac, Albéric Second,[1] as Tim Farrant has demonstrated. Its original title was to have been “Le Parasite”. Sylvain Pons, a musician in a Parisian boulevard orchestra, has a close friend in another musician from that same orchestra, the German pianist Wilhelm Schmucke. They lodge with Mme Cibot, but Pons – unlike Schmucke – has two failings: his passion (which is almost a mania) for collecting works of art, and his passion for good food. Schmucke, on the other hand, has only one passion, and that is his affection for Pons. Pons, being a gourmet, much enjoys dining regularly with his wealthy lawyer cousins M. and Mme Camusot de Marville, for their food is more interesting than Mme Cibot’s and full of gastronomic surprises. In an endeavour to remain on good terms with the Camusots, and to repay their favour, he tries to find a bridegroom for their unappealing only child Cécile. However, when this ill-considered marriage project falls through, Pons is banished from the house.
　　
　　The novella becomes a novel as Mme Camusot learns of the value of Pons’s art collection and strives to obtain possession of it as the basis of a dowry for her daughter. In this new development of the plot line a bitter struggle ensues between various vulture-like figures all of whom are keen to lay their hands on the collection: Rémonencq, Élie Magus, Mme Camusot – and Mme Cibot herself. Betraying his client Mme Cibot’s interests, the unsavoury barrister Fraisier acts for the Camusots. Mme Cibot sells Rémonencq eight of Pons’s choicest paintings, untruthfully stating in the receipt that they are works of lesser value. She also steals one for herself.
　　
　　Horrified to discover his betrayal by Mme Cibot, and the plots that are raging around him, Pons dies, bequeathing all his worldly possessions to Schmucke. The latter is browbeaten out of them by Fraisier. He in turn dies a broken-hearted man, for in Pons he has lost all that he valued in the world. The art collection comes to the Camusot de Marville family, and the vultures profit from their ill-gotten gains.
　　
　　Fundamental themes of the work
　　
　　(1) Le Cousin Pons is set entirely in Paris, where, as Balzac informs us in his Avant-propos (Foreword) to the Comédie humaine, “the extremes of good and evil are to be found”. However, Le Cousin Pons is not exclusively about the clash of extremes. Some characters, even the eponymous hero himself, are presented in a nuanced way.
　　
　　(2) Balzac’s hatred of the bourgeoisie is epitomized by the greedy, money-obsessed M. and Mme Camusot de Marville who put up with the weekly visits of their poor relation Sylvain Pons until they realize he is a very wealthy art collector, whereupon their sole concern is to exploit him. Balzac also presents the lawyer Fraisier and the doctor Poulain in an ambivalent light.
　　
　　(3) The morals of the working-class characters, e.g., La Cibot and Rémonencq, are scarcely any better than those of the bourgeoisie. As in Balzac’s novel of the countryside, Les Paysans, the proletarian world is displayed in a fiercely aggressive, acquisitive light – almost to the extent of engaging in bitter class conflict.
　　
　　(4) The values of art are contrasted with those of money. As Balzac says in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, “la Charte ( Charter of 1814 ) a proclamé le règne de l’argent, le succès devient alors la raison suprême d’une époque athée”. Artistic values aside, Balzac displays the reification or materialization of the world.
　　
　　(5) The law is seen by Balzac as a (totally illegal!) way of depriving people of their rightful property. Harassed by Fraisier, Schmucke renounces his property rights. Pons’s second will is more vulnerable than the first.
　　
　　(6) Balzac subverts conventional social values as social norms are revealed to be a fiction. The values of the Camusot de Marville family are materialistic. It is not the personality of Cécile Camusot herself but Pons’s art collection which is “the heroine of this story”; it is that, not her value as a person, which secures her marriage. The union of the Topinards, who are not strictly married, is the kindest, most affectionate relationship of man and woman in the novel. The friendship of Pons and Schmucke is true love but not love within marriage. The two men are poor and physically ugly but their relationship is golden and pure. Their Platonic friendship runs parallel to the idealizing function of art.
　　
　　(7) Though not a lover in the human physical sense, Pons is a man with an overriding passion, the passion for artistic beauty. In its etymological sense passion equates to suffering. Pons is a Christ-like figure, like some other characters in Balzac's novels (e.g., Joseph Bridau in La Rabouilleuse, and Goriot). He is a man with a mania or idee fixe, and this passion is the cause of his suffering and death.
　　
　　Narrative strategies
　　
　　(1) As has been shown by Donald Adamson, Le Cousin Pons began its existence as a novella, or nouvelle, and was suddenly transformed into a full-length novel. This process of transformation necessitated certain inconsistencies and an uneasy transition from long-short story to fiction of sizable proportions and complexity. Though this longer fiction is often referred to as “Part II” of the novel, Balzac himself does not embark upon his “Part II” of Le Cousin Pons until all the new characters – the corrupt Mme Cibot, Rémonencq, Élie Magus, Poulain and Fraisier – have been introduced. It is in dispute whether these two narrative elements have been fused into a perfect whole. V.S. Pritchett considers that Balzac has been totally successful in combining the two storylines.[2]
　　
　　(2) Le Cousin Pons thus became one of Balzac’s four inheritance novels (the others being Eugénie Grandet, Ursule Mirouët and La Rabouilleuse). From being the vignette of a downtrodden elderly man it mutated into a story of conflict, though with a plot far less complex than that of La Cousine Bette or Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. The struggle for an inheritance was one of the narrative situations most congenial to Balzac.
　　
　　(3) In the tradition of melodrama Schmucke represents “extreme good”, Mme Camusot “extreme evil”, whereas Pons is an amalgam of the two whilst, Janus-like, Mme Cibot embodies aspects of both. The lurid tones of Pons’s deathbed scene are the height of melodrama. In this drama of light and darkness, or chiaroscuro, the art collection is the heroine of the story.
　　
　　(4) Roman-feuilleton (serial (literature)). The serialization of novels was a feature of the rapid growth of the newspaper industry in France after 1814. Leading feuilletonistes were Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas, père, Paul Féval, père, Frédéric Soulié and Eugène Scribe. Balzac became increasingly preoccupied by their popularity in the 1840s and tried to emulate them. This involved incorporating many features of melodrama; it also encouraged the ending of each serialized extract on a note of high suspense.
　　
　　(5) The serialization of fiction also necessitated the increasing use of dialogue. This is particularly so in the later stages of the novel. In Donald Adamson’s words, “the second half of Le Cousin Pons is surely unsurpassed in the extent to which it uses dialogue and in the variety of purposes to which dialogue is applied. It contains few narrative interludes or other digressions”.[3] This gave the novel its markedly dramatic flavour.

驴皮记

　　La Peau de chagrin (English: The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass's Skin) is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.
　　
　　Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles and story fragments in several Parisian journals. Although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication. A second edition, which included a series of twelve other "philosophical tales", was released one month later.
　　
　　Although the novel uses fantastic elements, its main focus is a realistic portrayal of the excesses of bourgeois materialism. Balzac's renowned attention to detail is used to describe a gambling house, an antique shop, a royal banquet, and other locales. He also includes details from his own life as a struggling writer, placing the main character in a home similar to the one he occupied at the start of his literary career. The central theme of La Peau de chagrin is the conflict between desire and longevity. The magic skin represents the owner's life-force, which is depleted through every expression of will, especially when it is employed for the acquisition of power. Ignoring a caution from the shopkeeper who offers him the skin, the protagonist greedily surrounds himself with wealth, only to find himself miserable and decrepit at the story's end.
　　
　　La Peau de chagrin firmly established Balzac as a writer of significance in France. His social circle widened significantly, and he was sought eagerly by publishers for future projects. The book served as the catalyst for a series of letters he exchanged with a Polish baroness named Ewelina Hańska, who later became his wife. It also inspired Giselher Klebe's opera Die tödlichen Wünsche.

名士风流

Simone de Beauvoir

　　The Mandarins (French: Les Mandarins) is a 1954 roman-à-clef by Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir was awarded the Prix Goncourt prize in 1954 for The Mandarins. It was first published in English in 1957.
　　
　　The book follows the personal lives of a close-knit group of French intellectuals from the end of WWII to the mid fifties. The title refers to the scholar-bureaucrats of imperial China. The characters at times see themselves as ineffectual "mandarins" as they attempt to discern what role, if any, intellectuals will have in influencing the political landscape of the world after WWII. As in Beauvoir's other works, themes of Feminism, Existentialism, and personal morality are explored as the characters navigate not only the intellectual and political landscape but also their shifting relationships with each other.
　　
　　The British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch described the book as "endearing because of its persistent seriousness"
　　
　　Characters
　　
　　Henri Perron (considered to be Albert Camus) is the editor of the leftist newspaper L'Espoir. He is unhappily married to Paula. Henri primarily sees himself as a writer and struggles with his increasing involvement in the political arena.
　　
　　Robert Dubreuilh (considered to be Jean-Paul Sartre) is the founder and leader of the SRL, a liberal, non-Communist political group. He is partly responsible for Henri's literary success, and the two are close personal friends.
　　
　　Anne Dubreuilh (considered to be Beauvoir herself) is the wife of Robert. She is a practicing psychoanalyst. She has an affair with the American writer Lewis Brogan. Her reflections on the lives of the other characters comprises a large portion of the text.
　　
　　Paula Perron is Henri's wife. She is unrelentingly committed to her relationship with Henri, despite his indifference. She develops severe delusions and paranoia regarding this relationship and is forced to seek medical treatment.
　　
　　Nadine Dubreuilh is Robert and Anne's daughter. Nadine is haunted by the death of her boyfriend Diego during the French Resistance. She has an affair with Henri early in the course of the novel and later marries Henri and has a child by him.
　　
　　Lewis Brogan (considered to be Nelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated) is an American writer with whom Anne has an extended affair.
　　
　　Scriassine David Cesarani in his biography Arthur Koestler, The Homeless Mind, suggests that Scriassine's character is drawn on Arthur Koestler.

双城记

　　A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With 200 million copies sold, it is the most printed original English book, and among the most famous works of fiction.
　　
　　It depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events, most notably Charles Darnay, a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Sydney Carton, a dissipated British barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of love for Darnay's wife, Lucie Manette.
　　
　　The novel was published in weekly installments (not monthly, as with most of his other novels). The first installment ran in the first issue of Dickens' literary periodical All the Year Round appearing on 30 April 1859; the thirty-first and last ran on 25 November of the same year.
　　
　　Plot summary
　　Book the First: Recalled to Life
　　“ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... ”
　　
　　—Opening line of A Tale of Two Cities
　　
　　It is 1775. Jarvis Lorry, an employee of Tellson's Bank, is travelling from England to France to bring Dr. Alexandre Manette to London. At Dover, before crossing to France, he meets seventeen-year-old Lucie Manette and reveals to her that her father, Dr. Manette, is not dead, as she had been told. He has been a prisoner in the Bastille for the last 18 years.
　　
　　Lorry and Lucie travel to Saint Antoine, a suburb of Paris, where they meet the Defarges. Monsieur Ernest and Madame Therese Defarge own a wine shop. They also (secretly) lead a band of revolutionaries, who refer to each other by the codename "Jacques" (drawn from the name of an actual French revolutionary group, the Jacquerie).
　　
　　Monsieur Defarge (who was Dr. Manette's servant before Manette's imprisonment, and now has care of him) takes them to see Dr. Manette. Manette has withdrawn from reality due to the horror of his imprisonment. He sits in a dark room all day making shoes, a trade he had learned whilst imprisoned. At first he does not know his daughter, but eventually recognizes her by her long golden hair which resembles her mother's. Dr. Manette had long kept a strand of his wife's hair which was found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned. Lucie's eyes are blue also just like his. Lorry and Lucie take him back to England.
　　Book the Second: The Golden Thread
　　"The Golden Thread" redirects here. For the legal judgement, see Golden thread (law).
　　
　　It is now 1780. French emigrant Charles Darnay is being tried at the Old Bailey for treason. Two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, are trying to frame the innocent Darnay for their own gain. They claim that Darnay, a Frenchman, gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Darnay is acquitted when a witness who claims he would be able to recognise Darnay anywhere cannot tell Darnay apart from a barrister present in court (not one of those defending Darnay), Sydney Carton, who just happens to look almost identical to him.
　　
　　In Paris, the Marquis St. Evrémonde (Monseigneur), Darnay's uncle, runs over and kills the son of the peasant Gaspard; he throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Monsieur Defarge comforts Gaspard. As the Marquis's coach drives off, Defarge throws the coin back into the coach, enraging the Marquis.
　　
　　Arriving at his château, the Marquis meets with his nephew: Charles Darnay. (Darnay's real surname, therefore, is Evrémonde; out of disgust with his family, Darnay has adopted a version of his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais.) They argue: Darnay has sympathy for the peasantry, while the Marquis is cruel and heartless:
　　
　　 "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky."
　　
　　That night, Gaspard (who has followed the Marquis to his château, hanging under his coach) murders the Marquis in his sleep. He leaves a note saying, "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES."
　　
　　In London, Darnay gets Dr. Manette's permission to wed Lucie. But Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to "embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you".
　　
　　On the morning of the marriage, Darnay, at Dr. Manette's request, reveals who his family is, a detail which Dr. Manette had asked him to withhold until then. This unhinges Dr. Manette, who reverts to his obsessive shoemaking. His sanity is restored before Lucie returns from her honeymoon; to prevent a further relapse, Lorry destroys the shoemaking bench, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris.
　　
　　It is 14 July 1789. The Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower". The reader does not know what Monsieur Defarge is searching for until Book 3, Chapter 9. (It is a statement in which Dr. Manette explains why he was imprisoned.)
　　
　　In the summer of 1792, a letter reaches Tellson's bank. Mr. Lorry, who is planning to go to Paris to save the French branch of Tellson's, announces that the letter is addressed to Evrémonde. Nobody knows who Evrémonde is, because Darnay has kept his real name name a secret in England. Darnay acquires the letter by pretending Evrémonde is an acquaintance of his. The letter turns out to be from Gabelle, a servant of the former Marquis. Gabelle has been imprisoned, and begs the new Marquis to come to his aid. Darnay, who feels guilty, leaves for Paris to help Gabelle.
　　Book the Third: The Track of a Storm
　　"The Sea Rises", an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 21 by "Phiz"
　　
　　In France, Darnay is denounced for emigrating from France, and imprisoned in La Force Prison in Paris. Dr. Manette and Lucie—along with Miss Pross, Jerry Cruncher, and "Little Lucie", the daughter of Charles and Lucie Darnay—come to Paris and meet Mr. Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried.
　　
　　Dr. Manette, who is seen as a hero for his imprisonment in the hated Bastille, is able to get him released. But that same evening Darnay is again arrested, and is put on trial again the next day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and one "unnamed other". We soon discover that this other is Dr. Manette, through the testimony of his statement (his own account of his imprisonment, written in the Bastille in the "last month of the tenth year of [his] captivity"); Manette does not know that his statement has been found, and is horrified when his words are used to condemn Darnay.
　　
　　On an errand, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost brother, Solomon Pross, but Pross does not want to be recognised. Sydney Carton suddenly appears (stepping forward from the shadows much as he had done after Darnay's first trial in London) and identifies Solomon Pross as John Barsad, one of the men who tried to frame Darnay for treason at his first trial in London. Carton threatens to reveal Solomon's identity as a Briton and an opportunist who spies for the French or the British as it suits him. If this were revealed, Solomon would surely be executed, so Carton's hand is strong.
　　
　　Darnay is confronted at the tribunal by Monsieur Defarge, who identifies Darnay as the Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads the letter Dr. Manette had hidden in his cell in the Bastille. Defarge can identify Darnay as Evrémonde because Barsad told him Darnay's identity when Barsad was fishing for information at the Defarges' wine shop in Book 2, Chapter 16. The letter describes how Dr. Manette was locked away in the Bastille by the deceased Marquis Evrémonde (Darnay's father) and his twin brother (who held the title of Marquis when we met him earlier in the book, and is the Marquis who was killed by Gaspard; Darnay's uncle) for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. The younger brother had become infatuated with a girl. He had kidnapped and raped her and killed her husband, the knowledge of which killed her father, and her brother died in the act of fighting to protect her honor. Prior to his death, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister, "somewhere safe". The paper concludes by condemning the Evrémondes, "them and their descendants, to the last of their race". Dr. Manette is horrified, but his protests are ignored—he is not allowed to take back his condemnation. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and sentenced to be guillotined the next day.
　　
　　Carton wanders into the Defarges' wine shop, where he overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have the rest of Darnay's family (Lucie and "Little Lucie") condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. The only plot detail that might give one any sympathy for Madame Defarge is the loss of her family and that she has no (family) name. "Defarge" is her married name, and Dr. Manette cannot learn her family name, though he asks her dying sister for it. The next morning, when Dr. Manette returns shattered after having spent the previous night in many failed attempts to save Charles' life, he reverts to his obsessive shoemaking. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father and "Little Lucie".
　　
　　That same morning Carton visits Darnay in prison. Carton drugs Darnay, and Barsad (whom Carton is blackmailing) has Darnay carried out of the prison. Carton—who looks so similar to Darnay that a witness at Darnay's trial in England could not tell them apart—has decided to pretend to be Darnay, and to be executed in his place. He does this out of love for Lucie, recalling his earlier promise to her. Following Carton's earlier instructions, Darnay's family and Lorry flee Paris and France with an unconscious man in their coach who carries Carton's identification papers, but is actually Darnay.
　　
　　Meanwhile Madame Defarge, armed with a pistol, goes to the residence of Lucie's family, hoping to catch them mourning for Darnay (since it was illegal to sympathise with or mourn for an enemy of the Republic); however, Lucie, her child, Dr. Manette and Mr. Lorry are already gone. To give them time to escape, Miss Pross confronts Madame Defarge and they struggle. Pross speaks only English and Defarge speaks only French, so neither can understand each other verbally. In the fight, Madame Defarge's pistol goes off, killing her; the noise of the shot and the shock of Madame Defarge's death cause Miss Pross to go permanently deaf.
　　
　　The novel concludes with the guillotining of Sydney Carton. Carton's unspoken last thoughts are prophetic: Carton foresees that many of the revolutionaries, including Defarge, Barsad and The Vengeance (a lieutenant of Madame Defarge) will be sent to the guillotine themselves, and that Darnay and Lucie will have a son whom they will name after Carton: a son who will fulfill all the promise that Carton wasted. Lucie and Darnay have a first son earlier in the book who is born and dies within a single paragraph. It seems likely that this first son appears in the novel so that their later son, named after Carton, can represent another way in which Carton restores Lucie and Darnay through his sacrifice.
　　“ It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. ”
　　
　　—Final sentence of A Tale of Two Cities
　　Analysis
　　
　　A Tale of Two Cities is one of only two works of historical fiction by Charles Dickens (Barnaby Rudge is the other one). It has fewer characters and sub-plots than a typical Charles Dickens novel. The author's primary historical source was The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle: Charles Dickens wrote in his Preface to Tale that "no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book" Carlyle's view that history cycles through destruction and resurrection was an important influence on the novel, illustrated especially well by the life and death of Sydney Carton.
　　Language
　　
　　Dickens uses literal translations of French idioms for characters who can't speak English, such as "What the devil do you do in that galley there?!!" and "Where is my husband? ---Here you see me." The Penguin Classics edition of the novel notes that "Not all readers have regarded the experiment as a success."
　　Humor
　　
　　Dickens is renowned for his humor, but A Tale of Two Cities is one of his least comical books. Nonetheless, Jerry Cruncher, Miss Pross, and Mr. Stryver provide much comedy. Dickens also uses sarcasm as humour in the book to show different points of view. The book is full of tragic situations, therefore, leaving little room for intended humor provided by Dickens.
　　Foreshadowing
　　
　　A Tale of Two Cities contains much foreshadowing:
　　
　　 * Carton's promise to Lucie, the "echoing footsteps" heard by the Manettes in their quiet home, and the wine spilling from the wine cask are only a few of dozens of instances.
　　 * Carton promises Lucie he would die for her because he loves her so much.
　　 * Echoing footsteps can either be the people coming into their lives or the revolutionaries.
　　 * The wine spilling in the streets can be blood running through the streets of France.
　　 * The wine cask breaking is a corrupted government, freedom, or blood from guillotine.
　　 * The negro cupids show danger, and death from the guillotine.
　　
　　Themes
　　"Recalled to Life"
　　
　　In Dickens' England, resurrection always sat firmly in a Christian context. Most broadly, Sydney Carton is resurrected in spirit at the novel's close (even as he, paradoxically, gives up his physical life to save Darnay's—just as, in Christian belief, Christ died for the sins of all people.) More concretely, "Book the First" deals with the rebirth of Dr. Manette from the living death of his incarceration.
　　
　　Resurrection appears for the first time when Mr. Lorry replies to the message carried by Jerry Cruncher with the words "Recalled to Life". Resurrection also appears during Mr. Lorry's coach ride to Dover, as he constantly ponders a hypothetical conversation with Dr. Manette: ("Buried how long?" "Almost eighteen years." ... "You know that you are recalled to life?" "They tell me so.") He believes he is helping with Dr. Manette's revival, and imagines himself "digging" Dr. Manette up from his grave.
　　
　　Resurrection is the main theme in the novel. In Jarvis Lorry's thoughts of Dr. Manette, resurrection is first spotted as a theme. It is also the last theme: Carton's sacrifice. Dickens originally wanted to call the entire novel Recalled to Life. (This instead became the title of the first of the novel's three "books".)
　　
　　Jerry is also part of the recurring theme: he himself is involved in death and resurrection in way that the reader does not yet know. The first piece of foreshadowing comes in his remark to himself: "You'd be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!" The black humour of this statement becomes obvious only much later on. Five years later, one cloudy and very dark night (in June 1780), Mr. Lorry reawakens the reader's interest in the mystery by telling Jerry it is "Almost a night ... to bring the dead out of their graves". Jerry responds firmly that he has never seen the night do that.
　　
　　It turns out that Jerry Cruncher's involvement with the theme of resurrection is that he is what the Victorians called a "Resurrection Man", one who (illegally) digs up dead bodies to sell to medical men (there was no legal way to procure cadavers for study at that time).
　　
　　The opposite of resurrection is of course death. Death and resurrection appear often in the novel. Dickens is angered that in France and England, courts hand out death sentences for insignificant crimes. In France, peasants are even put to death without any trial, at the whim of a noble. The Marquis tells Darnay with pleasure that "[I]n the next room (my bedroom), one fellow ... was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter—his daughter!"
　　
　　Interestingly, the demolition of Dr. Manette's shoe-making workbench by Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry is described as "the burning of the body". It seems clear that this is a rare case where death or destruction (the opposite of resurrection) has a positive connotation, since the "burning" helps liberate the doctor from the memory of his long imprisonment. But Dickens' description of this kind and healing act is strikingly odd:
　　"The Accomplices", an illustration for Book 2, Chapter 19 by "Phiz"
　　
　　 So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.
　　
　　Sydney Carton's martyrdom atones for all his past wrongdoings. He even finds God during the last few days of his life, repeating Christ's soothing words, "I am the resurrection and the life". Resurrection is the dominant theme of the last part of the novel. Darnay is rescued at the last moment and recalled to life; Carton chooses death and resurrection to a life better than that which he has ever known: "it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there ... he looked sublime and prophetic".
　　
　　In the broadest sense, at the end of the novel Dickens foresees a resurrected social order in France, rising from the ashes of the old one.
　　Water
　　
　　Many in the Jungian archetypal tradition might agree with Hans Biedermann, who writes that water "is the fundamental symbol of all the energy of the unconscious—an energy that can be dangerous when it overflows its proper limits (a frequent dream sequence)." This symbolism suits Dickens' novel; in A Tale of Two Cities, the frequent images of water stand for the building anger of the peasant mob, an anger that Dickens sympathises with to a point, but ultimately finds irrational and even animalistic.
　　
　　Early in the book, Dickens suggests this when he writes, “[T]he sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.” The sea here represents the coming mob of revolutionaries. After Gaspard murders the Marquis, he is “hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water.” The poisoning of the well represents the bitter impact of Gaspard's execution on the collective feeling of the peasants.
　　
　　After Gaspard’s death, the storming of the Bastille is led (from the St. Antoine neighbourhood, at least) by the Defarges; “As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled around Defarge’s wine shop, and every human drop in the cauldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex...” The crowd is envisioned as a sea. “With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into a detested word [the word Bastille], the living sea rose, wave upon wave, depth upon depth, and overflowed the city...”
　　
　　Darnay’s jailer is described as “unwholesomely bloated in both face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water.” Later, during the Reign of Terror, the revolution had grown “so much more wicked and distracted ... that the rivers of the South were encumbered with bodies of the violently drowned by night...” Later a crowd is “swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets ... the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away.”
　　
　　During the fight with Miss Pross, Madame Defarge clings to her with “more than the hold of a drowning woman”. Commentators on the novel have noted the irony that Madame Defarge is killed by her own gun, and perhaps Dickens means by the above quote to suggest that such vicious vengefulness as Madame Defarge's will eventually destroy even its perpetrators.
　　
　　So many read the novel in a Freudian light, as exalting the (British) superego over the (French) id. Yet in Carton's last walk, he watches an eddy that "turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it onto the sea"—his fulfilment, while masochistic and superego-driven, is nonetheless an ecstatic union with the subconscious.
　　Darkness and light
　　
　　As is common in English literature, good and evil are symbolised with light and darkness. Lucie Manette is often associated with light and Madame Defarge with darkness.
　　
　　Lucie meets her father for the first time in a room kept by the Defarges:." Lucie's hair symbolises joy as she winds "the golden thread that bound them all together". She is adorned with "diamonds, very bright and sparkling", and symbolic of the happiness of the day of her marriage.
　　
　　Darkness represents uncertainty, fear and peril. It is dark when Mr. Lorry rides to Dover; it is dark in the prisons; dark shadows follow Madame Defarge; dark, gloomy doldrums disturb Dr. Manette; his capture and captivity are shrouded in darkness; the Marquis’s estate is burned in the dark of night; Jerry Cruncher raids graves in the darkness; Charles's second arrest also occurs at night. Both Lucie and Mr. Lorry feel the dark threat that is Madame Defarge. "That dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me," remarks Lucie. Although Mr. Lorry tries to comfort her, "the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself". Madame Defarge is "like a shadow over the white road", the snow symbolising purity and Madame Defarge's darkness corruption. Dickens also compares the dark colour of blood to the pure white snow: the blood takes on the shade of the crimes of its shedders.
　　Social injustice
　　
　　Charles Dickens was a champion of the maltreated poor because of his terrible experience when he was forced to work in a factory as a child. His sympathies, however, lie only up to a point with the revolutionaries; he condemns the mob madness which soon sets in. When madmen and -women massacre eleven hundred detainees in one night and hustle back to sharpen their weapons on the grindstone, they display "eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun".
　　
　　The reader is shown the poor are brutalised in France and England alike. As crime proliferates, the executioner in England is "stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging housebreaker ... now burning people in the hand" or hanging a broke man for stealing sixpence. In France, a boy is sentenced to have his hands removed and be burned alive, only because he did not kneel down in the rain before a parade of monks passing some fifty yards away. At the lavish residence of Monseigneur, we find "brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives ... Military officers destitute of military knowledge ... [and] Doctors who made great fortunes ... for imaginary disorders".
　　
　　The Marquis recalls with pleasure the days when his family had the right of life and death over their slaves, "when many such dogs were taken out to be hanged". He won't even allow a widow to put up a board bearing her dead husband’s name, to discern his resting place from all the others. He orders Madame Defarge's sick brother-in-law to heave a cart all day and allay frogs at night to exacerbate the young man's illness and hasten his death.
　　
　　In England, even banks endorse unbalanced sentences: a man may be condemned to death for nicking a horse or opening a letter. Conditions in the prisons are dreadful. "Most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and ... dire diseases were bred", sometimes killing the judge before the accused.
　　
　　So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey. The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity.
　　
　　Without entirely forgiving him, Dickens understands that Jerry Cruncher robs graves only to feed his son, and reminds the reader that Mr. Lorry is more likely to rebuke Jerry for his humble social status than anything else. Jerry reminds Mr. Lorry that doctors, men of the cloth, undertakers and watchmen are also conspirators in the selling of bodies.
　　
　　Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same revolution that so damaged France will not happen in Britain, which (at least at the beginning of the book) is shown to be nearly as unjust as France. But his warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy. He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping; if the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time. The lower classes do not have any agency in this metaphor: they simply react to the behaviour of the aristocracy. In this sense it can be said that while Dickens sympathises with the poor, he identifies with the rich: they are the book's audience, its "us" and not its "them". "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind".
　　Relation to Dickens' personal life
　　
　　Some have argued that in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens reflects on his recently begun affair with eighteen-year-old actress Ellen Ternan, which was possibly asexual but certainly romantic. Lucie Manette resembles Ternan physically, and some have seen "a sort of implied emotional incest" in the relationship between Dr. Manette and his daughter.
　　
　　After starring in a play by Wilkie Collins entitled The Frozen Deep, Dickens was first inspired to write Tale. In the play, Dickens played the part of a man who sacrifices his own life so that his rival may have the woman they both love; the love triangle in the play became the basis for the relationships between Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton in Tale.
　　
　　Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay may also bear importantly on Dickens' personal life. The plot hinges on the near-perfect resemblance between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay; the two look so alike that Carton twice saves Darnay through the inability of others to tell them apart. It is implied that Carton and Darnay not only look alike, but they have the same "genetic" endowments (to use a term that Dickens would not have known): Carton is Darnay made bad. Carton suggests as much:
　　
　　 'Do you particularly like the man [Darnay]?' he muttered, at his own image [which he is regarding in a mirror]; 'why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for talking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes [belonging to Lucie Manette] as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.'
　　
　　Many have felt that Carton and Darnay are doppelgängers, which Eric Rabkin defines as a pair "of characters that together, represent one psychological persona in the narrative". If so, they would prefigure such works as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Darnay is worthy and respectable but dull (at least to most modern readers), Carton disreputable but magnetic.
　　
　　One can only suspect whose psychological persona it is that Carton and Darnay together embody (if they do), but it is often thought to be the psyche of Dickens himself. Dickens was quite aware that between them, Carton and Darnay shared his own initials.
　　Characters
　　
　　Many of Dickens' characters are "flat", not "round", in the novelist E. M. Forster's famous terms, meaning roughly that they have only one mood. In Tale, for example, the Marquis is unremittingly wicked and relishes being so; Lucie is perfectly loving and supportive. (As a corollary, Dickens often gives these characters verbal tics or visual quirks that he mentions over and over, such as the dints in the nose of the Marquis.) Forster believed that Dickens never truly created rounded characters, but a character such as Carton surely at least comes closer to roundness.
　　
　　 * Sydney Carton – A quick-minded but depressed English barrister alcoholic, and cynic; his Christ-like self-sacrifice redeems his own life and that of Charles Darnay.
　　
　　 * Lucie Manette – An ideal Victorian lady, perfect in every way. She was loved by both Carton and Charles Darnay (whom she marries), and is the daughter of Dr. Manette. She is the "golden thread" after whom Book Two is named, so called because she holds her father's and her family's lives together (and because of her blond hair like her mother's). She also ties nearly every character in the book together.
　　
　　 * Charles Darnay – A young French noble of the Evrémonde family. In disgust at the cruelty of his family to the French peasantry, he has taken on the name "Darnay" (after his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais) and left France for England.
　　
　　 * Dr. Alexandre Manette – Lucie's father, kept a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years.
　　
　　 * Monsieur Ernest Defarge – The owner of a French wine shop and leader of the Jacquerie; husband of Madame Defarge; servant to Dr. Manette as a youth. One of the key revolutionary leaders, he leads the revolution with a noble cause, unlike many of other revolutionaries.
　　
　　 * Madame Therese Defarge – A vengeful female revolutionary, arguably the novel's antagonist
　　
　　 * The Vengeance – A companion of Madame Defarge referred to as her "shadow" and lieutenant, a member of the sisterhood of women revolutionaries in Saint Antoine, and revolutionary zealot. (Many Frenchmen and women did change their names to show their enthusiasm for the Revolution)
　　
　　 * Jarvis Lorry – An elderly manager at Tellson's Bank and a dear friend of Dr. Manette.
　　
　　 * Miss Pross – Lucie Manette's governess since Lucie was ten years old. Fiercely loyal to Lucie and to England.
　　
　　 * The Marquis St. Evrémonde – The cruel uncle of Charles Darnay.
　　
　　 * John Barsad (real name Solomon Pross) – A spy for Britain who later becomes a spy for France (at which point he must hide that he is British). He is the long-lost brother of Miss Pross.
　　
　　 * Roger Cly – Another spy, Barsad's collaborator.
　　
　　 * Jerry Cruncher – Porter and messenger for Tellson's Bank and secret "Resurrection Man" (body-snatcher). His first name is short for Jeremiah.
　　
　　 * Young Jerry Cruncher - Son of Jerry and Mrs. Cruncher. Young Jerry often follows his father around to his father's odd jobs, and at one point in the story, follows his father at night and discovers that his father is a resurrection man. Young Jerry looks up to his father as a role model, and aspires to become a resurrection man himself when he grows up.
　　
　　 * Mrs. Cruncher - Wife of Jerry Cruncher. She is a very religious woman, but her husband, being a bit paranoid, claims she is praying against him, and that is why he doesn't succeed at work often. She is often abused verbally, and almost as often, abused physically, by Jerry, but at the end of the story, he appears to feel a bit guilty about this.
　　
　　 * Mr. Stryver – An arrogant and ambitious barrister, senior to Sydney Carton. There is a frequent mis-perception that Stryver's full name is "C. J. Stryver", but this is very unlikely. The mistake comes from a line in Book 2, Chapter 12: "After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be." The initials C. J. almost certainly refer to a legal title (probably "chief justice"); Stryver is imagining that he is playing every role in a trial in which he browbeats Lucie Manette into marrying him.
　　
　　 * The Seamstress – A young woman caught up in The Terror. She precedes Sydney Carton, who comforts her, to the guillotine.
　　
　　 * Gabelle – Gabelle is "the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary, united" for the tenants of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Gabelle is imprisoned by the revolutionaries, and his beseeching letter brings Darnay to France. Gabelle is "named after the hated salt tax".
　　
　　 * Gaspard – Gaspard is the man whose son is run over by the Marquis. He then kills the Marquis and goes into hiding for a year. He eventually is found, arrested, and executed.
　　
　　Adaptations
　　Films
　　
　　There have been at least five feature films based on the book:
　　
　　 * A Tale of Two Cities, a 1911 silent film.
　　 * A Tale of Two Cities, a 1917 silent film.
　　 * A Tale of Two Cities, a 1922 silent film.
　　 * A Tale of Two Cities, a 1935 black-and-white MGM film starring Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone and Edna Mae Oliver. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
　　 * A Tale of Two Cities, a 1958 version, starring Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern and Donald Pleasance.
　　
　　In the 1981 film History of the World, Part I, the French Revolution segment appears to be a pastiche of A Tale of Two Cities.
　　
　　In the film A Simple Wish, the protagonist's father Oliver (possibly a reference to another of Dickens' famous novels, Oliver Twist) is vying for a spot in his theatre company's production of a musical of A Tale of Two Cities, of which we see the beginning and end, using the two famous quotes, including "It is a far, far better thing that I do", as part of a few solos.
　　
　　Terry Gilliam also developed a film version in the mid-1990s with Mel Gibson and Liam Neeson. The project was eventually abandoned.
　　Radio
　　
　　In 1938, The Mercury Theatre on the Air (aka The Campbell Playhouse) produced a radio adapted version starring Orson Welles.
　　
　　In 1945, a portion of the novel was adapted to the syndicated program The Weird Circle as "Dr. Manette's Manuscript."
　　
　　In 1950, a radio adaptation written by Terence Rattigan and John Gielgud was broadcast by the BBC. They had written it in 1935, as a stage play, but it was not produced.
　　
　　In June 1989, BBC Radio 4 produced a 7-hour drama adapted for radio by Nick McCarty and directed by Ian Cotterell. This adaptation is occasionally repeated by BBC Radio 7. The cast included:
　　
　　 * Charles Dance as Sydney Carton
　　 * Maurice Denham as Dr. Alexandre Manette
　　 * Charlotte Attenborough as Lucie Manette
　　 * Richard Pasco as Jarvis Lorry
　　 * John Duttine as Charles Darnay
　　 * Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Miss Pross
　　 * Margaret Robertson as Madame Defarge
　　 * John Hollis as Jerry Cruncher
　　 * John Bull as Ernest Defarge
　　 * Aubrey Woods as Mr. Stryver
　　 * Eva Stuart as Mrs. Cruncher
　　 * John Moffat as Marquis St. Evremonde
　　 * Geoffrey Whitehead as John Barsad and Jacques #2
　　 * Nicholas Courtney as Jacques #3 and The Woodcutter
　　
　　Television programs
　　
　　An 8-part mini-series was produced by the BBC in 1957 starring Peter Wyngarde as "Sydney Carton", Edward de Souza as "Charles Darnay" and Wendy Hutchinson as "Lucie Manette".
　　
　　Another mini-series, this one in 10 parts, was produced by the BBC in 1965.
　　
　　A third BBC mini-series (in 8 parts) was produced in 1980 starring Paul Shelley as "Carton/Darnay", Sally Osborne as "Lucie Manette" and Nigel Stock as "Jarvis Lorry".
　　
　　The novel was adapted into a 1980 television movie starring Chris Sarandon as "Sydney Carton/Charles Darnay". Peter Cushing as "Dr. Alexandre Manette", Alice Krige as "Lucie Manette", Flora Robson as "Miss Pross", Barry Morse as "The Marquis St. Evremonde" and Billie Whitelaw as "Madame Defarge".
　　
　　In 1989 Granada Television made a mini-series starring James Wilby as "Sydney Carton", Serena Gordon as "Lucie Manette", Xavier Deluc as "Charles Darnay", Anna Massey as "Miss Pross" and John Mills as "Jarvis Lorry", which was shown on American television as part of the PBS television series Masterpiece Theatre.
　　
　　In the 1970 Monty Python's Flying Circus episode "The Attila the Hun Show", the sketch "The News for Parrots" included a scene of A Tale of Two Cities (As told for parrots).
　　
　　The children's television series Wishbone adapted the novel for the episode "A Tale of Two Sitters".
　　
　　This novel was also mentioned in the Nickelodeon show Hey Arnold, where Oscar was learning how to read.
　　Books
　　
　　In Nicholas Meyer's novel The Canary Trainer, descended from Charles and Lucie, once more titled the Marquis de St. Evremonde, attends the Paris Opera during the events of The Phantom of the Opera.
　　
　　American author Susanne Alleyn's novel A Far Better Rest, a reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities from the point of view of Sydney Carton, was published in the USA in 2000.
　　
　　Diane Mayer self-published her novel Evremonde through iUniverse in 2005; it tells the story of Charles and Lucie Darnay and their children after the French Revolution.
　　
　　Simplified versions of A Tale of Two Cities for English language learners have been published by Penguin Readers, in several levels of difficulty.
　　Stage musicals
　　
　　There have been four musicals based on the novel:
　　
　　A 1968 stage version, Two Cities, the Spectacular New Musical, with music by Jeff Wayne, lyrics by Jerry Wayne and starring Edward Woodward.
　　
　　A Tale of Two Cities, Jill Santoriello's musical adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, was performed at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, in October and November 2007. James Stacy Barbour ("Sydney Carton") and Jessica Rush ("Lucie Manette") were among the cast. A production of the musical began previews on Broadway on 19 August 2008, opening on 18 September at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Warren Carlyle is the director/choreographer; the cast includes James Stacy Barbour as "Sydney Carton", Brandi Burkhardt as "Lucie Manette", Aaron Lazar as "Charles Darnay", Gregg Edelman as "Dr. Manette", Katherine McGrath as "Miss Pross", Michael Hayward-Jones as "Jarvis Lorry" and Natalie Toro as "Madame Defarge".
　　
　　In 2006, Howard Goodall collaborated with Joanna Read in writing a separate musical adaptation of the novel called Two Cities. The central plot and characters were maintained, though Goodall set the action during the Russian Revolution.
　　
　　The novel has also been adapted as a musical by Takarazuka Revue, the all-female opera company in Japan. The first production was in 1984, starring Mao Daichi at the Grand Theater, and the second was in 2003, starring Jun Sena at the Bow Hall.
　　Opera
　　
　　Arthur Benjamin's operatic version of the novel, subtitled Romantic Melodrama in six scenes, was premiered by the BBC on 17 April 1953, conducted by the composer; it received its stage premiere at Sadler's Wells on 22 July 1957, under the baton of Leon Lovett.

圣诞颂歌

　　A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman and Hall and first released on 19 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visitations of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim.
　　
　　The book was written and published at a time when Britain was experiencing a nostalgic interest in its forgotten Christmas traditions, and at the time when new customs such as the Christmas tree and greeting cards were being introduced. Dickens's sources for the tale appear to be many and varied but are principally the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and the Christmas stories of Washington Irving.
　　
　　The tale was pirated immediately, was adapted several times to the stage, and has been credited with restoring the holiday to one of merriment and festivity in Britain and America after a period of sobriety and sombreness. A Christmas Carol remains popular, has never been out of print, and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media.

大卫·科波菲尔

　　David Copperfield or The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (which he never meant to publish on any account) is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial form a year earlier. Many elements within the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of all of his novels. In the preface to the 1867 Charles Dickens edition, he wrote, "… like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."
　　
　　Plot summary
　　
　　The story deals with the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David is born in England in about 1820. David's father had died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother marries Mr Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Mr Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Mr Murdstone thrashes David for falling behind with his studies. Following one of these thrashings, David bites him and is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster, Mr. Creakle. Here he befriends James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles, both of whom he meets again later on.
　　
　　David returns home for the holidays to find out that his mother has had a baby boy. Soon after David goes back to Salem House, his mother and her baby die and David has to return home immediately. Mr Murdstone sends him to work in a factory in London, of which Murdstone is a joint owner. The grim reality of hand-to-mouth factory existence echoes Dickens' own travails in a blacking factory. His landlord, Mr Wilkins Micawber, is sent to a debtor's prison (the King's Bench Prison) after going bankrupt, and is there for several months before being released and moving to Plymouth. David now has nobody left to care for him in London, and decides to run away.
　　
　　He walks all the way from London to Dover, to find his only relative, his aunt Miss Betsey. The eccentric Betsey Trotwood agrees to bring him up, despite Mr Murdstone visiting in a bid to regain custody of David. David's aunt renames him 'Trotwood Copperfield', soon shortened to "Trot", and for the rest of the novel he is called by either name, depending on whether he is communicating with someone he has known for a long time, or someone he has only recently met.
　　
　　The story follows David as he grows to adulthood, and is enlivened by the many well-known characters who enter, leave and re-enter his life. These include Peggotty, his faithful former housekeeper for his mother, her family, and their orphaned niece Little Em'ly who lives with them and charms the young David. David's romantic but self-serving schoolfriend, Steerforth, seduces and dishonors Little Em'ly, triggering the novel's greatest tragedy; and his landlord's daughter and ideal "angel in the house," Agnes Wickfield, becomes his confidante. The two most familiar characters are David's sometime mentor, the constantly debt-ridden Mr Wilkins Micawber, and the devious and fraudulent clerk, Uriah Heep, whose misdeeds are eventually discovered with Micawber's assistance. Micawber is painted as a sympathetic character, even as the author deplores his financial ineptitude; and Micawber, like Dickens's own father, is briefly imprisoned for insolvency.
　　
　　In typical Dickens fashion, the major characters get some measure of what they deserve, and few narrative threads are left hanging. Dan Peggotty safely transports Little Em'ly to a new life in Australia; accompanying these two central characters are Mrs. Gummidge and the Micawbers. Everybody involved finally finds security and happiness in their new lives in Australia. David first marries the beautiful but naïve Dora Spenlow, but she dies after failing to recover from a miscarriage early in their marriage. David then does some soul-searching and eventually marries and finds true happiness with the sensible Agnes, who had secretly always loved him. They have several children, including a daughter named in honor of Betsey Trotwood.
　　Analysis
　　
　　The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to be written as such a narration.
　　
　　Critically, it is considered a Bildungsroman, i.e., a novel of self-cultivation, and would be influential in the genre which included Dickens's own Great Expectations (1861), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, published only two years prior, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
　　
　　Tolstoy regarded Dickens as the best of all English novelists, and considered Copperfield to be his finest work, ranking the "Tempest" chapter (chapter 55, LV – the story of Ham and the storm and the shipwreck) the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged. Henry James remembered hiding under a small table as a boy to hear instalments read by his mother. Dostoyevsky read it enthralled in a Siberian prison camp. Franz Kafka called his first book Amerika a "sheer imitation". James Joyce paid it reverence through parody in Ulysses. Virginia Woolf, who normally had little regard for Dickens, confessed the durability of this one novel, belonging to "the memories and myths of life". It was Freud's favourite novel.
　　Characters in David Copperfield
　　
　　 * David Copperfield – An optimistic, diligent, and persevering character, he is the protagonist. He is later called "Trotwood Copperfield" by some ("David Copperfield" is also the name of the hero's father, who dies before David is born). He has many nicknames: James Steerforth nicknames him "Daisy", Dora calls him "Doady", and his aunt refers to him, as a reference to his would-be sister (if he had been born a girl), in and on "Trot" – as in Betsey Trotwood Copperfield.
　　 * Clara Copperfield – David's kind mother, described as being innocently childish, who dies while David is at Salem House. She dies just after the birth of her second child, who dies along with her.
　　 * Peggotty – The faithful servant of the Copperfield family and a lifelong companion to David (referred to at times as Mrs. Barkis after her marriage to Mr. Barkis). Inherits £3,000—a large sum in the mid-19th century—when Mr. Barkis dies. After his death, she becomes Betsey Trotwood's servant.
　　 * Betsey Trotwood – David's eccentric and temperamental yet kindhearted great-aunt; she becomes his guardian after he runs away from Grinby and Murdstone's warehouse in Blackfriars (London). She is present on the night of David's birth but leaves after hearing that Clara Copperfield's child is a boy instead of a girl.
　　 * Mr. Chillip – A shy doctor who assists at David's birth and faces the wrath of Betsey Trotwood after he informs her that Clara's baby is a boy instead of a girl.
　　 * Mr. Barkis – An aloof carter who declares his intention to marry Peggotty. He says to David: "Tell her, 'Barkis is willin'!' Just so." He is a bit of a miser, and hides his surprisingly vast liquid wealth in a plain box labeled "Old Clothes". He bequeaths to his wife the then astronomical sum of £3,000 when he dies about ten years later.
　　 * Edward Murdstone – Young David's cruel stepfather, who canes him for falling behind in his studies. David reacts by biting Mr Murdstone, who then sends him to Salem House, the private school owned by his friend Mr. Creakle. After David's mother dies, Mr Murdstone sends him to work in a factory, where he has to clean wine bottles. He appears at Betsey Trotwood's house after David runs away. Mr Murdstone appears to show signs of repentance when confronted with Copperfield's aunt, but later in the book we hear he has married another young woman and applied his old principles of "firmness."
　　 * Jane Murdstone – Mr. Murdstone's equally cruel sister, who moves into the Copperfield house after Mr. Murdstone marries Clara Copperfield. She is the "Confidential Friend" of David's first wife, Dora Spenlow, and encourages many of the problems that occur between David Copperfield and Dora's father, Mr. Spenlow. Later, she rejoins her brother and his new wife in a relationship very much like the one they had with David's mother.
　　 * Daniel Peggotty – Peggotty's brother; a humble but generous Yarmouth fisherman who takes his nephew Ham and niece Emily into his custody after each of them has been orphaned. After Emily's departure, he travels around the world in search of her. He eventually finds her in London, and after that they emigrate to Australia.
　　 * Emily (Little Em'ly) – A niece of Mr. Peggotty. She is a childhood friend of David Copperfield, who loves her in his childhood days. She leaves her cousin and fiancé, Ham, for Steerforth, but returns after Steerforth deserts her. She emigrates to Australia with Mr. Peggotty after being rescued from a London brothel.
　　 * Ham Peggotty – A good-natured nephew of Mr. Peggotty and the fiancé of Emily before she leaves him for Steerforth. He later loses his life while attempting to rescue a sailor, who happens to be Steerforth, from a shipwreck. His death is hidden from his family due to the fact that David does not want them to worry on the brink of their journey.
　　 * Mrs. Gummidge – The widow of Daniel Peggotty's partner in a boat. She is a self-described "lone, lorn creetur" who spends much of her time pining for "the old 'un" (her late husband). After Emily runs away from home with Steerforth, she changes her attitude to better comfort everyone around her and tries to be very caring and motherly. She too emigrates to Australia with Dan and the rest of the surviving family.
　　 * Martha Endell – A young woman of a bad reputation who helps Daniel Peggotty find his niece after she returns to London. She has worked as a prostitute, and been victim to the idea of suicide.
　　 * Mr. Creakle – The harsh headmaster of young David's boarding school, who is assisted by Tungay. Mr. Creakle is a friend of Mr. Murdstone. He singles out David for extra torment. Later he becomes a Middlesex magistrate, and is considered enlightened for his day.
　　
　　"I am married". Etching by Phiz.
　　
　　 * James Steerforth – A close friend of David, he is of a romantic and charming disposition and has known David ever since his first days at Salem House. Although well-liked by most, he proves himself to be lacking in character by seducing and later abandoning Little Em'ly. He eventually drowns at Yarmouth with Ham Peggotty, who had been trying to rescue him.
　　 * Tommy Traddles – David's friend from Salem House. They meet again later and become eventual lifelong friends. Traddles works hard but faces great obstacles because of his lack of money and connections. He eventually succeeds in making a name and a career for himself.
　　 * Wilkins Micawber – A gentle man who befriends David as a young boy. He suffers from much financial difficulty and even has to spend time in a debtor's prison. Eventually he emigrates to Australia where he enjoys a successful career as a sheep farmer and becomes a magistrate. He is based on Dickens' father, John Dickens.
　　 * Mr. Dick (Richard Babley) – A slightly deranged, rather childish but amiable man who lives with Betsey Trotwood. His madness is amply described in as much as that he claims to have the "trouble" of King Charles I in his head.
　　 * Dr. Strong – The headmaster of David's Canterbury school, whom he visits on various occasions.
　　 * Anne Strong – The young wife of Dr. Strong. Although she remains loyal to him, she fears that he suspects that she is involved in an affair with Jack Maldon.
　　 * Jack Maldon – A cousin and childhood sweetheart of Anne Strong. He continues to bear affection for her and tries to seduce her into leaving Dr. Strong.
　　 * Mr. Wickfield – The father of Agnes Wickfield and lawyer to Betsey Trotwood. He is prone to alcoholism.
　　 * Agnes Wickfield – Mr. Wickfield's mature and lovely daughter and close friend of David since childhood. She later becomes David's second wife and mother of their children.
　　 * Uriah Heep – A wicked young man who serves as partner to Mr. Wickfield. He is finally discovered to have stolen money and is imprisoned as a punishment. He always talks of being "'umble" (humble) and nurtures a deep hatred of David Copperfield and many others.
　　 * Mrs. Steerforth – The wealthy widowed mother of James Steerforth. She herself is incredibly like her son.
　　 * Miss Dartle – A strange, vitriolic woman who lives with Mrs. Steerforth. She has a secret love for Steerforth and blames others such as Emily and even Steerforth's own mother for corrupting him. She is described as being extremely skinny and displays a visible scar on her lip caused by Steerforth. She is also Steerforth's cousin.
　　 * Mr. Spenlow – An employer of David's during his days as a proctor and the father of Dora Spenlow. He dies suddenly of a heart attack while driving his phaeton home.
　　 * Dora Spenlow – The adorable but foolish daughter of Mr. Spenlow who becomes David's first wife. She is described as being impractical and with many similarities to David's mother. She dies of illness on the same day as her dog, Jip.
　　 * Mr.Sharp – He was the chief teacher of Salem House and had more authority than Mr.Mell.He looked weak,both in health and character;his head seemed to be very heavy for him:he walked on one side.He had a big nose.
　　 * Mr.Mell – A tall, thin young man with hollow cheeks.His hair was dusty and dry too,with rather short sleeves and legs.

艰难时世

　　Hard Times - For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1853. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.
　　
　　Background
　　
　　The novel is unusual in that it did not contain illustrations; nor is it set in or around London (both usual in Dickens' novels). Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town partially based upon 19th-century Preston.
　　
　　Dickens' reasons for writing Hard Times were mostly monetary. Sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and he hoped the inclusion of this novel in instalments would increase sales. Since publication it has received a mixed response from a diverse range of critics, such as F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay, mainly focusing on Dickens' treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalistic mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.
　　Prevalence of utilitarianism
　　
　　The Utilitarians were one of the targets of this novel. Utilitarianism was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its most famous proponents being Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Theoretical Utilitarian ethics hold that promotion of general social welfare is the ultimate goal for the individual and society in general: "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people." Dickens believed that in practical terms, the pursuit of a totally rationalized society could lead to great misery.
　　
　　Bentham's former secretary, Edwin Karbunkle, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible. In the novel, this is conveyed in Bitzer's response to Gradgrind's appeal for compassion.
　　
　　Dickens was appalled by what was, in his interpretation, a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices. In Dickens' interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an over-emphasis on facts at the expense of more imaginative pursuits.
　　
　　Dickens wished to satirize radical Utilitarians whom he described in a letter to Charles Knight as "see[ing] figures and averages, and nothing else." He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions. Dickens had visited factories in Manchester as early as 1839, and was appalled by the environment in which workers toiled. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences, Dickens resolved to "strike the heaviest blow in my power" for those who laboured in horrific conditions.
　　
　　John Stuart Mill had a similar, rigorous education to that of Louisa Gradgrind, consisting of analytical, logical, mathematical, and statistical exercises. In his twenties, Mill had a nervous breakdown, believing his capacity for emotion had been enervated by his father's stringent emphasis on analysis and mathematics in his education. In the book, Louisa herself follows a parallel course, being unable to express herself and falling into a temporary depression as a result of her dry education.
　　Publication
　　
　　The novel was published as a serial in his weekly publication, Household Words. Sales were highly responsive and encouraging for Dickens who remarked that he was "Three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times". The novel was serialised, every week, between April 1 and August 12, 1854. It sold well, and a complete volume was published in August, totalling 110,000 words. Another related novel, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, was also published in this magazine.
　　Synopsis
　　
　　The novel follows a classical tripartite structure, and the titles of each book are related to Galatians 6:7, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The interpretation of this quote being, whatever is effected upon or done in the present will have a direct effect on what happens later. Book I is entitled "Sowing", Book II is entitled "Reaping", and the third is "Garnering."
　　Book I: Sowing
　　
　　Mr. Gradgrind, whose voice is "dictatorial", opens the novel by stating "Now, what I want is facts" at his school in Coketown. He is a man of "facts and calculations." He interrogates one of his pupils, Sissy, whose father is involved with the circus, the members of which are "Fancy" in comparison to Gradgrind's espousal of "Fact." Since her father rides and tends to horses, Gradgrind offers Sissy the definition of horse. She is rebuffed for not being able to define a horse factually; her classmate Bitzer does, however, provide a more zoological profile description and factual definition. She does not learn easily, and is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers "So you would carpet your room—or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you? Why would you?" She is taught to disregard Fancy altogether. It is Fancy Vs Fact.
　　
　　Louisa and Thomas, two of Mr. Gradgrind's children, pay a visit after school to the touring circus run by Mr. Sleary, only to find their father, who is disconcerted by their trip since he believes the circus to be the bastion of Fancy and conceit. With their father, Louisa and Tom trudge off in a despondent mood. Mr. Gradgrind has three younger children: Adam Smith, (after the famous theorist of laissez-faire policy), Malthus (after Rev. Thomas Malthus, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning of the dangers of future overpopulation) and Jane.
　　Gradgrind apprehends Louisa and Tom, his two eldest children, at the circus.
　　
　　Josiah Bounderby, "a man perfectly devoid of sentiment", is revealed as being Gradgrind's boss. Bounderby is a manufacturer and mill owner who is affluent as a result of his enterprise and capital. Bounderby is what one might call a "self-made man" who has risen from the gutter. He is not averse to giving dramatic summaries of his childhood, which terrify Mr. Gradgrind's wife who is often rendered insensate by these horrific stories. He is described in an acerbic manner as being "the Bully of Humility."
　　
　　Mr. Gradgrind and Bounderby visit the public-house where Sissy resides to inform her that she cannot attend the school anymore due to the risk of her ideas propagating in the class. Sissy meets the two collaborators, informing them her father has abandoned her not out of malice, but out of desire for Sissy to lead a better life without him. This was the reasoning behind him enlisting her at Gradgrind's school and Gradgrind is outraged at this desertion. At this point members of the circus appear, fronted by their manager Mr. Sleary. Mr. Gradgrind gives Sissy a choice: either to return to the circus and forfeit her education, or to continue her education and never to return to the circus. Sleary and Gradgrind both have their say on the matter, and at the behest of Josephine Sleary she decides to leave the circus and bid all the close friends she had formed farewell.
　　
　　Back at the Gradgrind house, Tom and Louisa sit down and discuss their feelings, however repressed they seem to be. Tom, already at this present stage of education finds himself in a state of dissatisfaction, and Louisa also expresses her discontent at her childhood while staring into the fire. Louisa's ability to wonder, however, has not been entirely extinguished by her rigorous education based in Fact.
　　
　　We are introduced to the workers at the mills, known as the "Hands." Amongst them is a man named Stephen Blackpool or "Old Stephen" who has led a toilsome life. He is described as a "man of perfect integrity." He has ended his day's work, and his close companion Rachael is about somewhere. He eventually meets up with her, and they walk home discussing their day. On entering his house he finds that his drunken wretch of a wife, who has been in exile from Coketown, has made an unwelcome return to his house. She is unwell, and mumbles inebriated remarks to Stephen, who is greatly perturbed by this event.
　　
　　The next day, Stephen makes a visit to Bounderby to try and end his woeful, childless marriage through divorce. Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Bounderby's paid companion, is "dejected by the impiety" of Stephen and Bounderby explains that he could not afford to effect an annulment anyway. Stephen is very bewildered and dejected by this verdict given by Bounderby.
　　
　　Meanwhile, Mr. Gradgrind prepares to talk to his daughter about a "business proposal", but she is seemingly apathetic in his company, and this seems to frustrate Mr. Gradgrind's efforts. He says that a proposal of marriage has been made to Louisa by Josiah Bounderby, who is some 30 years her senior. Gradgrind uses statistics to prove that an age inequity in marriage does not prove an unhappy or short marriage however. Louisa passively accepts this offer. Bounderby is rendered ecstatic by the news, as is Louisa's mother, who again is so overwhelmed that she is overcome yet again. Sissy is confounded by but piteous of Louisa.
　　
　　Bounderby and Louisa get married, and they set out to their honeymoon in "Lyon"; so Bounderby can observe the progress of his 'Hands' (labourers who work in his factories there). Tom, her brother, bumps into her before they leave. They hug each other, Tom bidding her farewell and promising to look for her after they come back from their honeymoon.
　　Book 2: Reaping
　　
　　Book Two opens with the attention focused on Bounderby's new bank in Coketown, of which Bitzer alongside the austere Mrs. Sparsit keep watch at night for intruders or burglars. A dashing gentleman enters, asking for directions to Bounderby's house, as Gradgrind has sent him from London, along with a letter. It is James Harthouse, a languid fellow, who was unsure what to do with his life, so became an MP as he saw it as a way out. For this, Dickens despises him.
　　
　　Harthouse is introduced to Bounderby, who again reverts to almost improbable stories of his childhood to entertain Gradgrind. Harthouse is utterly bored by the blusterous millowner, yet is astounded by his wife, Louisa, and notices her melancholy nature. Louisa's brother Tom works for Bounderby, and he has become reckless and wayward in his conduct, despite his meticulous education. Tom decides to take a liking to James Harthouse, on the basis of his clothes, showing his superficiality. Tom is later debased to animal status, as he comes to be referred to as the "whelp", a denunciatory term for a young man. Tom is very forthcoming in his contempt for Bounderby in the presence of Harthouse, who soaks up all these secretive revelations.
　　
　　Stephen is called to Bounderby's mansion, where he informs him of his abstention from joining the union led by the orator Slackbridge, and Bounderby accuses Stephen of fealty and of pledging an oath of secrecy to the union. Stephen denies this, and states that he avoided the Union because of a promise he'd made earlier to Rachael. Bounderby is bedevilled by this conflict of interest and accuses Stephen of being waspish. He dismisses him on the spot, on the basis that he has betrayed both employer and union. Later on a bank theft takes place at the Bounderby bank, and Stephen Blackpool is inculpated in the crime, due to him loitering around the bank at Tom's promise of better times to come, the night before the robbery.
　　
　　Sparsit observes that the relationship between James Harthouse and Louisa is moving towards a near tryst. She sees Louisa as moving down her "staircase", metaphorically speaking. She sets off from the bank to spy upon them, and catches them at what seems to be a propitious moment. However, despite Harthouse confessing his love to Louisa, Louisa is restrained, and refuses an affair. Sparsit is infatuated with the idea that the two do not know they are being observed. Harthouse departs as does Louisa, and Mrs. Sparsit tries to stay in pursuit, thinking that Louisa is going to assent to the affair, though Louisa has not. She follows Louisa to the railway station assuming that Louisa has hired a coachman to dispatch her to Coketown. Sparsit however, misses the fact that Louisa has instead boarded a train to her father's house. Sparsit relinquishes defeat and proclaims "I have lost her!" When Louisa arrives at her father's house, she is revealed to be in an extreme state of disconsolate grief. She accuses her father of denying her the opportunity to have an innocent childhood, and that her rigorous education has stifled her ability to express her emotions. Louisa collapses at her father's feet, into an insensible torpor.
　　Book 3: Garnering
　　
　　Mrs. Sparsit arrives at Mr. Bounderby's house, and reveals to him the news her surveillance has brought. Mr. Bounderby, who is rendered irate by this news, journeys to Stone Lodge, where Louisa is resting. Mr. Gradgrind tries to disperse calm upon the scene, and reveals that Louisa resisted the temptation of adultery. Bounderby is inconsolable and he is immensely indignant and ill-mannered towards everyone present, including Mrs. Sparsit, for her falsehood. Bounderby finishes by offering the ultimatum to Louisa of returning to him, by 12 o'clock the next morning, else the marriage is forfeited. Suffice it to say, Mr. Bounderby resumes his bachelorhood when the request is not met.
　　
　　The discomfited Harthouse leaves Coketown, on an admonition from Sissy Jupe, never to return. He submits. Meanwhile, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa cast suspicions that Tom, the "whelp", may have committed the bank robbery. Stephen Blackpool who has been absent from Coketown, trying to find mill work under a pseudonym, tries to exculpate himself from the robbery. On walking back to Coketown, he falls down the Old Hell Shaft, an old pit, completing his terminal bad luck in life. He is rescued by villagers, but after speaking to Rachael for the last time, he dies.
　　
　　Louisa suspects that Tom had a word with Stephen, making a false offer to him, and therefore urging him to loiter outside of the bank. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy concur with this theory and resolve to find Tom, since he is in danger. Sissy makes a plan for rescue and escape, however, and she reveals that she suspected Tom early on during the proceedings. She sends Tom off to the circus that she used to be a part of, namely Mr. Sleary's. Louisa and Sissy travel to the circus; Tom is there, disguised in blackface. Remorselessly, Tom says that he had little money, and that robbery was the only solution to his dilemma. Mr. Sleary is not aware of this and agrees to help him reach Liverpool, and Mr. Gradgrind, prays that his son is able to board a ship that will send him to the faraway Americas. The party is stopped, however, by Bitzer, who is anxious to claim his reward for the misdemeanour. The "excellent young man" is entreated to show compassion and questions whether he has a heart, to which Bitzer, cynically responds, that of course he has a heart, and that the "circulation could not be carried on without one." Sleary is dismayed by this revelation, and agrees to take Bitzer and Tom to the bank without any further delays. However, he sees that Mr. Gradgrind has been kind to Sissy, and agrees to detain and divert Bitzer whilst Tom leaves for Liverpool.
　　
　　Returning to Coketown, Mrs. Sparsit is relieved of her duty to Bounderby who has no qualms about firing a lady, however "highly connected" she may be. The final chapter of the book details the fates of the characters. Mrs. Sparsit returns to live with her aunt, Lady Scadgers. The two have feelings of acrimony towards each other. Bounderby dies of a fit in a street one day. Tom dies in the Americas, having begged for penitence in a half-written letter to his sister, Louisa. Louisa herself grows old and never remarries. Mr. Gradgrind abandons his Utilitarian stance, which brings contempt from his fellow MPs, who give him a hard time. Rachael continues to labour while still consistently maintaining her work ethic and honesty. Sissy is the moral victor of the story, as her children have also escaped the desiccative education of the Gradgrind school and grown learned in "childish lore."
　　Major characters
　　Mr. Gradgrind
　　
　　Thomas Gradgrind is a utilitarian who is the founder of the educational system in Coketown. "Eminently practical" is Gradgrind's recurring description throughout the novel, and practicality is something he zealously aspires to. He represents the stringency of Fact, statistics and other materialistic pursuits. He is a "square" person and this can be seen not only through Dickens´description of his personality but also through the description of his physical appearance, "square shoulders".
　　
　　Only after his daughter's breakdown does he come to a realisation that things such as poetry, fiction and other pursuits are not "destructive nonsense." In the third book, not only does he notice the existence of the unknown thought of "fancy" but he ironically asks Bitzer (one of his students in book the first, who gives a perfect description of a horse) if he has a heart (to save Tom) and in this situation, Bitzer again gives a very scientific response.
　　Mr. Bounderby
　　
　　Josiah Bounderby is a business associate of Mr. Gradgrind. A thunderous merchant given to lecturing others, and boasting about being a self-made man. He employs many of the other central characters of the novel, and his rise to prosperity is shown to be an example of social mobility. He marries Mr. Gradgrind's daughter Louisa, some 30 years his junior, in what turns out to be a loveless marriage. They then had no children. Bounderby is the main target of Dickens' attack on the supposed moral superiority of the wealthy, and is revealed to be an hypocrite in his sensational comeuppance at the end of the novel. He is the " bully of humility" as he tells everyone that he is a "self made man" and that his mother left him to be looked after by his grandmother but then, due to Mrs. Sparsit's wrong accusation of thinking that Mrs. Pegler was the bank robber, we find that he has been lying.
　　
　　He uses Mrs. Sparsit in order to give him status as she belonged to the "Powlers" a very important family in the same way as Bounderby takes advantage of Mrs. Sparsit expecting people of a lower status to respect her presence.
　　Louisa
　　
　　Louisa (Loo) Gradgrind, later Louisa Bounderby, is the unemotional, distant and eldest child of the Gradgrind family. She has been taught to abnegate her emotions, and finds it hard to express herself clearly, saying as a child she has "unmanageable thoughts." She is married to Josiah Bounderby, in a very logical and businesslike manner, representing the emphasis on factuality and business pathos of her education. Her union is a disaster and she is tempted into adultery by James Harthouse, yet she manages to resist this temptation with help from Sissy.
　　
　　All her life she has been "gazing into the fire" "wondering" in the first book we find that she wonders not knowing what it is she is wondering about, in book two with Mrs. Gradgrind's death we get the impression that she well will find out as Mrs. Gradgrind (another victim of the system) says: "there is something wrong" she dies without knowing what it is. It is at the end of book two after Harthouse's love declaration when Louisa understands the meaning of love, fancy, everything that until that moment her life had lacked. She realizes how immature the decision of marrying Bounderby was (only because of Tom's insistence). She then goes to complain to her father and all he says is: "I never knew you were unhappy my child". This shows how Louisa has made him recognize the existence of fancy. Fancy is transmitted through a chain, as Harthouse does to Louisa and Louisa to Gradgrind. The chain breaks at the end of the novel when Gradgrind tries to pass it onto Bitzer.
　　Sissy Jupe
　　
　　Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is the embodiment of imagination, hope and faith. Abandoned by her father, a circus performer at Sleary's circus. Gradgrind offers Sissy the chance to study at his school and to come and live at Stone Lodge with the Gradgrind children. Sleary also offers her a place and tells her she will be treated like one of the family, but Sissy follows her father's wishes of her having a good education, goes to live with Gradgrind. She goes through "hard times" when she is with the Gradgrinds at the beginning because she does not understand the difference between a life based upon facts and one based upon fancy, like hers. When she does notice this, she leaves school in order to look after ill Mrs. Gradgrind. She always asks Mr. Gradgrind if a letter from her father arrived.
　　
　　Due to Sissy's high morals and natural warm-heartedness she has a huge influence on the Gradgrind family. When Mrs Gradgrind dies she largely takes over the role of mothering the younger Gradgrind Children: Jane, Adam Smith and Malthus.
　　
　　She is the biggest representative of fancy in the novel. She offers the contrast between fact and fancy. She finishes happy and surrounded by children.
　　Tom
　　
　　Thomas (Tom) Gradgrind, Junior is the eldest son and second child of the Gradgrinds. Tom develops as a thoroughly contemptible character. Initially sullen and bitterly resentful of his father's Utilitarian Gradgrindian education, Tom has a very strong relationship with his sister Louisa. At length, Tom starts work in Bounderby's bank (which he later robs), and descends into sybaritic gambling and drinking - he is indiscreet over Louisa's marriage to Bounderby with James Harthouse. Nonetheless Louisa never ceases to deeply adore Tom, and she aids Sissy and Mr. Gradgrind in saving her brother from arrest. It is also hinted that Tom has romantic feelings for Sissy that are partly reciprocated. He is, ultimately, an insecure wastrel.
　　
　　Known as "the whelp" (small puppy) this is the way of Dickens mocking this character. He takes advantage of his loving sister in order to get out of the life that his father is giving him which he doesn't like. We might feel sympathy towards him at some points of the novel (mostly in book one) as he has the same kind of feelings as Louisa.
　　
　　He tells Blackpool to wait for him outside the bank and if he has something to give him, he will make sure Bitzer gives it to him. He tricks him by doing so as he only does so in order to make him look as if it was him who robbed the bank, maybe as a form of revenge after Bounderby sacking him. He is found out in book three where Blackpool is shown to be innocent. Mr. Gradgrind makes signs to put them up in the whole town clearing Blackpool's name and putting the blame on his own son.
　　Old Stephen
　　
　　Stephen Blackpool, or "Old Stephen" as he is referred to by his fellow Hands, is a worker at one of Bounderby's mills. His life is immensely strenuous, and he is married to a constantly inebriated wife who comes and goes throughout the novel. She remains anonymous and unidentified throughout the novel. He forms a close bond with Rachael, a co-worker. After a dispute with Bounderby, he is dismissed from his work at the Coketown mills and is forced to find work elsewhere. Whilst absent from Coketown he is accused of a crime for which he has been framed. Tragically, on his way back to vindicate himself, he falls down a mine-shaft. He is rescued but dies of his injuries.
　　
　　Stephen is a man "of perfect integrity", a man who will never give up his moral standpoint to follow along with the crowd, a quality which leads to the conflict with Slackbridge and the Trade Union.
　　Other characters
　　
　　Bitzer – is a very pale classmate of Sissy's and brought up on facts and is taught to operate according to self-interest. He takes up a job in Bounderby's bank, and later tries to arrest Tom.
　　
　　Mrs. Sparsit – is a "classical" widow who has fallen upon despairing circumstances. She is employed by Bounderby, yet her officiousness and prying get her fired in a humorous send-off by Bounderby.
　　
　　James Harthouse – enters the novel in the 2nd book. James is an indolent, languid, upper-class gentleman, who attempts to woo Louisa, and gets sent away by Sissy.
　　
　　Mrs. Pegler – a "mysterious old woman" who turns out to be Bounderby's mother.
　　
　　Slackbridge – trade union leader
　　
　　Various circus folk", including Signor Jupe (Sissy's father, who never actually appears in the novel), his dog Merrylegs, Mr. Sleary (the lisping manager of the circus) and Cupid, used to represent that the world of the circus is not always as pure as is represented by Sissy and Sleary.
　　
　　Mrs. Gradgrind – the wife of Mr. Gradgrind, who is an invalid and complains constantly. Her marriage to Thomas is a precursor of Louisa's marriage to Bounderby.
　　
　　Mr. M'Choakumchild – the teacher of the class containing Sissy Jupe and Bitzer, says very little but his name suggests a cold personality that stifles imagination.
　　Major themes
　　
　　Relating back to Dickens' aim to "strike the heaviest blow in my power," he wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston. Relating to this also, Dickens wished to expose the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality, something which is cruelly shattered in this novel by his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby, and James Harthouse, the cynical aristocrats. Dickens was also campaigning for the importance of imagination in life, and not for people's life to be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistical analyses. Dickens' favourable portrayal of the Circus, which he describes as caring so "little for Plain Fact", is an example of this.
　　Fact vs. Fancy
　　
　　This theme is developed early on, the bastion of Fact being the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, and his model school, which teaches nothing but Facts. Any imaginative or aesthetic subjects are eradicated from the curriculum, but analysis, deduction and mathematics are emphasised. Conversely, Fancy is the opposite of Fact, encompassing, fiction, music, poetry, and novelty shows such as Sleary's circus. It is interesting that Mr. Sleary is reckoned to be a fool by the Fact men, but it is Sleary who realises people must be "amuthed" (amused). This is made cognisant by Tom's sybaritic gambling and Louisa, who is virtually soulless as a young child, and as a married woman. Bitzer, who has adhered to Gradgrind's teachings as a child, turns out to be an uncompassionate egotist.
　　Officiousness and spying
　　
　　Prying and knowledge is key to several characters, namely Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Bounderby. Mr. Bounderby spends his whole time fabricating stories about his childhood, covering up the real nature of his upbringing, which is solemnly revealed at the end of the novel. While not a snooper himself, he is undone by Sparsit unwittingly revealing the mysterious old woman to be his own mother, and she unravels Josiah's secrets about his upbringing and fictitious stories. Mr. Bounderby himself superintends through calculating tabular statements and statistics, and is always secretly rebuking the people of Coketown for indulging in conceitful activities. This gives Bounderby a sense of superiority, as it does with Mrs. Sparsit, who prides herself on her salacious knowledge gained from spying on others. All "superintendents" of the novel are undone in one way, or another.
　　Honesty
　　
　　This is closely related to Dickens' typical social commentary, which is a theme he uses throughout his entire œuvre. Dickens portrays the wealthy in this novel as being morally corrupt. Bounderby has no moral scruples; he fires Blackpool "for a novelty". He also conducts himself without any shred of decency, frequently losing his temper. He is cynically false about his childhood. Harthouse, a leisured gent, is compared to an "iceberg" who will cause a wreck unwittingly, due to him being "not a moral sort of fellow", as he states himself. Stephen Blackpool, a destitute worker, is equipped with perfect morals, always abiding by his promises, and always thoughtful and considerate of others, as is Sissy Jupe.
　　Literary significance & criticism
　　
　　Critics have had a diverse range of opinions on the novel. Renowned critic John Ruskin declared Hard Times to be his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions. However, Thomas Macaulay branded it "sullen socialism", on the grounds that Dickens did not fully comprehend the politics of the time. This point was also made by George Bernard Shaw, who decreed Hard Times to be a novel of "passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world." Shaw criticized the novel for its failure to provide an accurate account of trade unionism of the time, deeming Dickens' character of Slackbridge, the poisonous orator as "a mere figment of middle-class imagination."
　　
　　F. R. Leavis, in his controversial book, The Great Tradition, described the book as essentially being a moral fable, and awarded it the distinction of being a work of art, decreeing it the only significant novel of Dickens worth scrutinizing.
　　
　　Walter Allen, in an introduction to an alternative edition, characterised Hard Times as being an unsurpassed "critique of industrial society", which was later superseded by works of D. H. Lawrence. Other writers have described the novel as being, as G. K. Chesterton commented in his work Appreciations and Criticisms, "the harshest of his stories"; whereas George Orwell praised the novel (and Dickens himself) for "generous anger."

董贝父子

　　Dombey and Son is a novel by the Victorian author Charles Dickens. It was first published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848 with the full title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. Dickens started writing the book in Lausanne, Switzerland, but travelled extensively during the course of its writing, returning to England to begin another work before completing Dombey and Son.
　　
　　Plot summary
　　
　　The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book begins when his son is born, and Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. Following the advice of Mrs Louisa Chick, his sister, Dombey employs a wet nurse named Mrs Richards (Toodle). Dombey already has a daughter, Florence, whom he neglects. One day, Mrs Richards, Florence and her maid, Susan Nipper, secretly pay a visit Mrs Richard's house in Stagg's Gardens in order that she can see her children. During this trip, Florence becomes separated and is kidnapped for a short time by Good Mrs Brown before being returned to the streets. She makes her way to Dombey and Son's offices in the City and is guided there by Walter Gay, an employee, who first introduces her to his uncle, the navigation instrument maker Solomon Gill, at his shop the Midshipman.
　　
　　The child, also named Paul, is weak and often ill, and does not socialize normally with others; adults call him "old fashioned". He is intensely fond of his elder sister, Florence, who is deliberately neglected by her father as irrelevant and a distraction. He is sent away to Brighton, first for his health, where he and Florence lodge with the ancient and acidic Mrs Pipchin, and then for his education to Dr and Mrs Blimber's school, where he and the other boys undergo both an intense and arduous education under the tutelage of Mr Feeder, B.A. and Cornelia Blimber. It is here that Paul is befriended by a fellow pupil, the amiable Mr Toots.
　　
　　Here, Paul's health declines even further in this 'great hothouse' and he finally dies, still only six years old. Dombey pushes his daughter away from him after the death of his son, while she futilely tries to earn his love. In the meantime, Walter, who works for Dombey and Son, is sent off to work in Barbados through the manipulations of the firm's manager, Mr James Carker, 'with his white teeth', who sees him as a potential rival through his association with Florence. His boat is reported lost and he is presumed drowned. Walter's uncle leaves to go in search of Walter, leaving his great friend Captain Edward Cuttle in charge of the Midshipman. Meanwhile, Florence is now left alone with few friends to keep her company.
　　
　　Dombey goes to Leamington Spa with a new friend, Major Joseph B. Bagstock. The Major deliberately sets out to befriend Dombey in order to spite his neighbour in Princess's Place, Miss Tox, who has turned cold towards him owing to her hopes - through her close friendship with Mrs Chick - of marrying Mr Dombey. At the spa, Dombey is introduced via the Major to Mrs Skewton and her widowed daughter, Mrs Edith Granger. It is here that he develops an affection for Edith, encouraged by both the Major and the avaricious mother. After they return to London, Dombey remarries, effectively 'buying' the beautiful but haughty Edith as she and her mother are in a poor financial state. The marriage is loveless; his wife despises Dombey for his overbearing pride and herself for being shallow and worthless. Her love for Florence initially prevents her from leaving, but finally she conspires with Mr Carker to ruin Dombey's public image by running away together to Dijon. They do so after her last final argument with Dombey in which he once again attempts to subdue her to his will. When he discovers that she has left him, he blames Florence for siding with her step-mother, striking her on the breast in his anger, and she is forced to run away from home. Highly distraught, she finally makes her way to The Midshipman where she lodges with Captain Cuttle as he attempts to restore her back to health. They are visited frequently by Mr Toots and his boxing companion, the Chicken, since Mr Toots has been desperately in love with Florence since their time together in Brighton.
　　
　　Dombey sets out to find his wife. He is helped in this by Mrs Brown and her daughter, Alice, who, it turns out, was a former lover of Mr Carker. After being transported as a convict after he involved her in some criminal activities, she is seeking her revenge against him now she is returned to England. Going to Mrs Brown's house, Dombey overhears the conversation between Rob the Grinder - who is in the employment of Mr Carker - and the old woman as to the couple's whereabouts and sets off in pursuit. In the meantime, in Dijon, Mrs Dombey informs Carker that she sees him in no better a light than she sees Dombey, that she will not stay with him and she flees their apartment. Distraught, with both his financial and personal hopes lost, Carker flees from his former employer's pursuit. He seeks refuge back in England but, being greatly overwrought, accidentally falls under a train and is killed.
　　
　　After Carker's death, it is discovered that he had been running the firm far beyond its means. This information is gleaned by Carker's brother and sister, John and Harriet, from Mr Morfin, the assistant manager at Dombey and Son, who sets out to help John Carker. He often overheard the conversations between the two brothers in which James, the younger, often abused John, the older, who was just a lowly clerk and who is sacked by Dombey because of his filial relationship to the former manager. Meanwhile, back at the Midshipman, Walter reappears, having been saved by a passing ship after floating adrift with two other sailors on some wreckage. After some time, he and Florence are finally reunited - not as 'brother' and 'sister' but as lovers, and they marry prior to sailing for China on Walter's new ship. This is also the time when Sol Gills returns to the Midshipman. As he relates to his friends, he received news whilst in Barbados that a homeward-bound China trader had picked up Walter and so had returned to England immediately. He said he had sent letters whilst in the Caribbean to his friend Ned Cuttle c/o Mrs MacStinger at Cuttle's former lodgings, and the bemused Captain recounts how he fled the place, thus never receiving them.
　　
　　Florence and Walter depart and Sol Gills is entrusted with a letter, written by Walter to her father, pleading for him to be reconciled towards them both. A year passes and Alice Brown has slowly been dying despite the tender care of Harriet Carker. One night Alice's mother reveals that Alice herself is the [illegitimate]] cousin of Edith Dombey (which accounts for their similarity in appearance when they both meet). In a chapter entitled 'Retribution', Dombey and Son goes bankrupt. Dombey retires to two rooms in his house and all its contents are put up for sale. Mrs Pipchin, for some time the housekeeper, dismisses all the servants and she herself returns to Brighton, to be replaced by Mrs Richards. Dombey spends his days sunk in gloom, seeing no-one and thinking only of his daughter:
　　“ He thought of her as she had been that night when he and his bride came home. He thought of her as she had been in all the home events of the abandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had never changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into a polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed into the worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls that sheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned the same, mild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest and the last. She had never changed to him - nor had he ever changed to her - and she was lost. ”
　　
　　However, one day Florence returns to the house with her son, Paul, and is lovingly reunited with her father.
　　
　　Dombey accompanies his daughter to her and Walter's house where he slowly starts to decline, cared for by Florence and also Susan Nipper, now Mrs Toots. They receive a visit from Edth's Cousin Feenix who takes Florence to Edith for one final time - Feenix sought Edith out in France and she returned to England under his protection. Edith gives Florence a letter, asking Dombey to forgive her her crime before her departure to the South of Italy with her elderly relative. As she says to Florence, 'I will try, then to forgive him his share of the blame. Let him try to forgive me mine!'
　　
　　The final chapter (LXII) sees Dombey now a white-haired old man, 'whose face bears heavy marks of care and suffering; but they are traces of a storm that has passed on for ever, and left a clear evening in its track'.. Sol Gills and Ned Cuttle are now partners at the Midshipman, a source of great pride to the latter, and Mr and Mrs Toots announce the birth of their third daughter. Walter is doing well in business, having been appointed to a position of great confidence and trust, and Dombey is the proud grandfather of both a grandson and grand-daughter of whom he dotes on, and the book ends with the highly moving lines:
　　“ 'Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?'
　　
　　He only answers, 'Little Florence! Little Florence!' and smooths away the curls that shade her earnest eyes.
　　 ”
　　Source
　　
　　Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens, Wordsworth Classics, 1995, ISBN 1 85326 257 9
　　Critical appreciation
　　
　　Dombey and Son was conceived first and foremost as a continuous novel. A letter from Dickens to Forster on 26th July, 1846 shows the major details of the plot and theme already substantially worked out. According to the critic George Gissing, 'Dombey was begun at Lausanne, continued at Paris, completed in London, and at English seaside places; whilst the early parts were being written, a Christmas story, The Battle of Life, was also in hand, and Dickens found it troublesome to manage both together. That he overcame the difficulty -- that, soon after, we find him travelling about England as member of an amateur dramatic company -- that he undertook all sorts of public engagements and often devoted himself to private festivity -- Dombey going on the while, from month to month -- is matter enough for astonishment to those who know anything about artistic production. But such marvels become commonplaces in the life of Charles Dickens.'
　　
　　As with most of Dickens' work, a number of socially significant themes are to be found in this book. In particular the book deals with the then-prevalent common practice of arranged marriages for financial gain. Other themes to be detected within this work include child cruelty (particularly in Dombey's treatment of Florence), familial relationships, and as ever in Dickens, betrayal and deceit and the consequences thereof. Another strong central theme, which the critic George Gissing elaborates on in detail in his 1925 work The Immortal Dickens, is that of pride and arrogance, of which Paul Dombey senior is the extreme exemplification in Dickens' work.
　　
　　Gissing makes a number of points about certain key inadequacies in the novel, not the least that Dickens's central character is largely unsympathetic and an unsuitable vehicle and also that after the death of the young Paul Dombey the reader is somewhat estranged from the rest of what is to follow. He notes that 'the moral theme of this book was Pride -- pride of wealth, pride of place, personal arrogance. Dickens started with a clear conception of his central character and of the course of the story in so far as it depended upon that personage; he planned the action, the play of motive, with unusual definiteness, and adhered very closely in the working to this well-laid scheme'. However, he goes on to write that,'Dombey and Son is a novel which in its beginning promises more than its progress fulfils' and gives the following reasons why:
　　“ Impossible to avoid the reflection that the death of Dombey's son and heir marks the end of a complete story, that we feel a gap between Chapter XVI and what comes after (the author speaks of feeling it himself, of his striving to "transfer the interest to Florence") and that the narrative of the later part is ill-constructed, often wearisome, sometimes incredible. We miss Paul, we miss Walter Gay (shadowy young hero though he be); Florence is too colourless for deep interest, and the second Mrs. Dombey is rather forced upon us than accepted as a natural figure in the drama. Dickens's familiar shortcomings are abundantly exemplified. He is wholly incapable of devising a plausible intrigue, and shocks the reader with monstrous improbabilities such as all that portion of the denouement in which old Mrs. Brown and her daughter are concerned. A favourite device with him (often employed with picturesque effect) was to bring into contact persons representing widely severed social ranks; in this book the "effect" depends too often on "incidences of the boldest artificiality," as nearly always we end by neglecting the story as a story, and surrendering ourselves to the charm of certain parts, the fascination of certain characters.' ”
　　
　　Characters in the novel
　　
　　Karl Ashley Smith (the University of St Andrews) in his Introduction to Wordsworth Classics' Dombey and Son makes some reflections on the novel's characters. He believes that Dombey’s power to disturb comes from his belief that human relationships can be controlled by money, giving the following examples to support this viewpoint:
　　“ He tries to prevent Mrs Richards from developing an attachment to Paul by emphasising the wages he pays her. Mrs Pipchin’s small talk satisfies him as ‘the sort of think for which he paid her so much a quarter’ (p.132). Worst of all, he effectively buys his second wife and expects that his wealth and position in society will be enough to keep her in awed obedience to him. Paul’s questions about money are only the first indication of the naivety of his outlook'. ”
　　
　　However, he also believes that the satire against this man is tempered with compassion.
　　
　　Smith also draws attention to the fact that certain characters in the novel 'develop a pattern from Dickens's earlier novels, whilst pointing the way to future works'. One such character is Little Paul who is a direct descendant of Little Nell. Another is James Carker, the ever-smiling manager of Dombey and Son. Smith notes there are strong similarities between him and the likes of Jaggers in Great Expectations and, even more so, the evil barrister, Mr Tulkinghorn, in Bleak House:
　　“ From Fagin (Oliver Twist) onwards, the terrifying figure exerting power over others by an infallible knowledge of their secrets becomes one of the author’s trademarks ... His gentlemanly businesslike respectability marks him out as the ancestor of Tulkinghorn in Bleak House and even of Jaggers in Great Expectations. And his involvements in the secrets of others leads him to as sticky an end as Tulkinghorn’s. The fifty-fifth chapter, where he is forced to flee his outraged employer, magnificently continues the theme of the guilt-hunted man from Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist and Jonas’s restless sense of pursuit in Martin Chuzzlewit. There is always a strong sense in Dickens of the narrative drive of discovery catching up with those who deal in darkness...' ”
　　
　　Gissing looks at some of the minor characters in the novel and is particularly struck by that of Edward (Ned) Cuttle.
　　“ Captain Cuttle has a larger humanity than his roaring friend [Captain Bunsby], he is the creation of humour. That the Captain suffered dire things at the hands of Mrs. MacStinger is as credible as it is amusing, but he stood in no danger of Bunsby's fate; at times he can play his part in a situation purely farcical, but the man himself moves on a higher level. He is one of the most familiar to us among Dickens's characters, an instance of the novelist's supreme power, which (I like to repeat) proves itself in the bodying forth of a human personality henceforth accepted by the world. His sentences have become proverbs; the mention of his name brings before the mind's eye an image of flesh and blood -- rude, tending to the grotesque, but altogether lovable. Captain Cuttle belongs to the world of Uncle Toby, with, to be sure, a subordinate position. Analyse him as you will, make the most of those extravagances which pedants of to-day cannot away with, and in the end you will still be face to face with something vital -- explicable only as the product of genius. ”
　　
　　The growth of the railways
　　
　　A strong theme is the destruction and degradation (of people and places) caused by industrialisation, illustrated in particular by the building of the new railway through Camden Town (assumed to represent the London and Birmingham Railway constructed between 1833 and 1837). This reflects Dickens's apparent antipathy towards railways[citation needed], later reinforced by his involvement in a train crash in 1865. Soon after this incident he wrote two short stories (Mugby Junction and The Signal-Man) which projected a morbid view of the railways.
　　
　　Final thoughts
　　
　　Gissing refers to Dickens's instinctive genius for reflecting the thoughts and morals of the common man in his writing. He observes that the author was in constant communication with Forster,
　　“ ... as to the feeling of his readers about some proposed incident or episode; not that he feared, in any ignoble sense, to offend his public, but because his view of art involved compliance with ideals of ordinary simple folk. He held that view as a matter of course. Quite recently it has been put forth with prophetic fervour by Tolstoy, who cites Dickens among the few novelists whose work will bear this test. An instinctive sympathy with the moral (and therefore the artistic) prejudices of the everyday man guided Dickens throughout his career, teaching him when, and how far, he might strike at things he thought evil, yet never defeat his prime purpose of sending forth fiction acceptable to the multitude. Himself, in all but his genius, a representative Englishman of the middle-class, he was able to achieve this task with unfailing zeal and with entire sincerity. ”
　　
　　Karl Smith, in his turn, gives his specific reasons for what makes Dombey and Son - and the works of Dickens as a whole - worth reading again and again. He observes that this is based in part on Dickens's 'recognition that solemn themes require humour and verbal vigour to accompany and complement them' and goes on to conclude:
　　“ Grim psychological realism, social commentary, comic absurdity and symbolic transcendence are here brought together more than in any previous novel with the possible exception of Oliver Twist. Dombey and Son not only prepares the ground for Dickens’s later masterpieces, but demands to be enjoyed for its own energy and richness. ”
　　Characters in "Dombey and Son"
　　The "Wooden Midshipman" of Uncle Sol's nautical instrument shop of the same name. Statue in the Charles Dickens Museum.
　　
　　 * Mr Paul Dombey – the wealthy owner of the shipping company
　　 * Edith Granger – proud widowed daughter of Mrs Skewton, becomes second Mrs Dombey
　　 * Mrs Fanny Dombey – Mr Dombey's first wife, mother of Florence and Paul, dies soon after Paul is born
　　 * Master Paul Dombey (Little Dombey) – the son, is weak and often ill
　　 * Miss Florence (Floy) Dombey – the elder daughter whom Mr Dombey neglects
　　 * Mrs Louisa Chick – Mr Dombey's sister
　　 * Mr Chick – husband of Mrs Chick
　　 * Miss Lucretia Tox – friend of Mrs Chick, great admirer of Mr Dombey, and neighbour of Major Joseph Bagstock
　　 * James Carker (Mr Carker the Manager) – devious manager in Mr Dombey's business
　　 * John Carker (Mr Carker the Junior) – disgraced older brother of James, lower level employee in Dombey's business
　　 * Miss Harriet Carker – sister of James and John
　　 * Mr Morfin – assistant manager in Mr Dombey's business
　　 * Mr Perch – messenger in Mr Dombey's business
　　 * Solomon (Uncle Sol) Gills – ships' instrument maker and owner of the "Wooden Midshipman", a shop
　　 * Walter Gay – nephew of Gills, friend to Florence, employee of Mr Dombey, sent away by Carker the Manager
　　 * Captain Edward (Ned) Cuttle – retired sea captain, friend of Gills
　　 * Major Joseph Bagstock (Josh, Joe, J.B., Old Joe) – conceited retired army major, admirer of Miss Tox, friend of Mr Dombey until his downfall
　　 * Briggs – schoolmate of Paul's
　　 * Tozer – schoolmate of Paul's
　　 * Mr P. Toots – schoolmate of Paul's, later a dandy in love with Florence
　　 * The Game Chicken – rowdy companion of Mr Toots
　　 * Miss Susan Nipper – Florence's loyal nurse, later marries Mr. Toots
　　 * Mrs Cleopatra Skewton – Edith Dombey's infirm mother and former lover of Bagstock
　　 * Mr Toodle – a railway engineer
　　 * Polly Toodle (Mrs Richards) – wife of Mr Toodle, engaged as nurse to Paul under the name Mrs Richards (by Mr Dombey's order)
　　 * Robin Toodle (Rob the Grinder, Biler) – son of Mr Toodle and Polly, sent to Charitable Grinders school, later engaged in service to Captain Cuttle and Mr. Carker the Manager
　　 * Good Mrs. Brown – an elderly rag dealer
　　 * Alice – daughter of Brown, former lover of Carker's, recently returned from transportation
　　 * Jack Bunsby – commander of a ship, and regarded as an oracle by Captain Cuttle. Eventually is wedded to Mrs MaacStinger.
　　 * Mrs MacStinger – Captain Cuttle's landlady and nemesis
　　 * Mrs Pipchin – stern widow who keeps an 'infantine Boarding-House of a very select description' in Brighton, where Paul is sent for his health
　　 * Master Bitherstone – a fellow-boarder at Mrs. Pipchin's, much later a student at Doctor Blimber's
　　 * Miss Pankey – a fellow-boarder at Mrs. Pipchin's
　　 * Sir Barnet Skettles –
　　 * Lady Skettles –
　　 * Master Skettles – Brighton school pupil
　　 * Doctor Blimber – runs a school in Brighton which Paul briefly attends
　　 * Mrs Blimber – Doctor Blimber's wife
　　 * Miss Cornelia Blimber – Doctor Blimber's daughter, teacher at the school
　　 * Mr Feeder, B.A. – Doctor Blimber's assistant, teacher at the school
　　 * Diogenes (Di) – A dog from the school, befriended by Paul and adopted by Florence after Paul's death
　　
　　Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
　　
　　The novel has been adapted for the screen at least three times:
　　
　　 * 1917 - a silent starring Norman McKinnel as Paul Dombey and Hayford Hobbs as Walter Gay
　　 * 1969 - a television mini-series starring John Carson as Paul Dombey and Derek Seaton as Walter Gay
　　 * 1983 - a television mini-series starring Julian Glover as Paul Dombey and Max Gold as Walter Gay
　　
　　There have also been BBC radio adaptations.
　　
　　In 2007, a two-part French miniseries, Dombais et Fils, was produced by France 3, directed by Laurent Jaoui and starring Christophe Malavoy as "Charles Dombais" (Paul Dombey).
　　
　　It was announced in September 2009 that Andrew Davies would no longer be writing a proposed television adaptation for the BBC.
　　Original publication
　　
　　Dombey and Son was originally published in 19 monthly instalments; each cost one shilling (except for the last, which cost two shillings, being a double issue) and contained 32 pages of text with two illustrations by Phiz:
　　
　　 * I - October 1846 (chapters 1-4);
　　 * II - November 1846 (chapters 5-7);
　　 * III - December 1846 (chapters 8-10);
　　 * IV - January 1847 (chapters 11-13);
　　 * V - February 1847 (chapters 14-16);
　　 * VI - March 1847 (chapters 17-19);
　　 * VII - April 1847 (chapters 20-22);
　　 * VIII - May 1847 (chapters 23-25);
　　 * IX - June 1847 (chapters 26-28);
　　 * X - July 1847 (chapters 29-31);
　　 * XI - August 1847 (chapters 32-34);
　　 * XII - September 1847 (chapters 35-38);
　　 * XIII - October 1847 (chapters 39-41);
　　 * XIV - November 1847 (chapters 42-45);
　　 * XV - December 1847 (chapters 46-48);
　　 * XVI - January 1848 (chapters 49-51);
　　 * XVII - February 1848 (chapters 52-54);
　　 * XVIII - March 1848 (chapters 55-57);
　　 * XIX-XX - April 1848 (chapters 58-62).
　　
　　Trivia
　　
　　 * The motto of the publication Notes and Queries, "When found, make a note of", comes from the novel.
　　 * In the illustrated plate, "Major Bagstock is delighted to have that opportunity," the lettering "HOTEL" on the central building in the background is written in mirror-writing. Phiz, the illustrator, evidently forgot to reverse the lettering so that it would read correctly when the plate was printed. (However, strangely, he got the other lettering in the same plate correct.)
　　 * Sir Harry Johnston wrote a sequel to Dombey and Son in about 1920, titled The Gay-Dombeys.
　　 * In the novel Velocity by Dean Koontz, the comatose wife of the main protagonist often makes incoherent references to the works of Dickens, the 'most mysterious' coming from Dombey and Son, "I want to know what it says, the sea. What it is that it keeps on saying."

远大前程

　　Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.
　　
　　Great Expectations is written in the style of bildungsroman, which follows the story of a man or woman in their quest for maturity, usually starting from childhood and ending in the main character's eventual adulthood. Great Expectations is the story of the orphan Pip, writing about his life and attempting to become a gentleman along the way. The novel can also be considered semi-autobiographical of Dickens, like much of his work, drawing on his experiences of life and people.
　　
　　The main plot of Great Expectations takes place between Christmas Eve 1812, when the protagonist is about seven years old (and which happens to be the year of Dickens' birth), and the winter of 1840.

雾都孤儿

　　Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress (commonly known as Oliver Twist) (1838) is Charles Dickens' second novel. It is about a boy named Oliver Twist, who escapes from a workhouse and meets a gang of pickpockets in London. The novel is one of Dickens's best-known works, and has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations.
　　
　　Background
　　
　　Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. The book also exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis". This was the astounding number of orphans in London in the Dickens era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress".
　　
　　An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including the Poor Law, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.
　　
　　Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful musical play and the multiple Academy Award winning motion picture Oliver!.
　　Publications
　　Cover, first edition of serial, entitled "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" January 1846
　　Design by George Cruikshank
　　
　　The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a serial, in monthly instalments that began appearing in the month of February 1837 and continued through April 1839. It was originally intended to form part of Dickens's serial The Mudfog Papers. It did not appear as its own monthly serial until 1846. George Cruikshank provided one steel etching per month to illustrate each installment. The first novelization appeared six months before the serialization was completed. It was published in three volumes by Richard Bentley, the owner of Bentley's Miscellany, under the author's pseudonym, "Boz" and included 24 steel-engraved plates by Cruikshank.
　　Plot summary
　　Workhouse and first jobs
　　
　　Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune in a workhouse in an unnamed town (although when originally published in Bentley's Miscellany in 1837 the town was called Mudfog and said to be within 75 miles north of London). Orphaned almost from his first breath by his mother’s death in childbirth and his father’s unexplained absence, Oliver is meagerly provided for under the terms of the Poor Law, and spends the first eight years of his life at a baby farm in the 'care' of a woman named Mrs. Mann. Along with other juvenile offenders against the poor laws, Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts. Around the time of the orphan’s ninth birthday, Mr. Bumble, a parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking oakum at the main workhouse (the same one where his mother worked before she died). Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months, until the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots; the loser must ask for another portion of gruel. The task falls to Oliver, who at the next meal tremblingly comes forward, bowl in hand, and makes his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more."
　　Oliver; "Please, sir, I want some more."
　　
　　A great uproar ensues. The board of well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse, while eating a meal fit for a mighty king, offer five pounds to any person wishing to take on the boy as an apprentice. A brutal chimney sweep almost claims Oliver, but, when he begs despairingly not to be sent away with "that dreadful man" a kindly old magistrate refuses to sign the indentures. Later, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker employed by the parish, takes Oliver into his service. He treats Oliver better, and, because of the boy's sorrowful countenance, uses him as a mourner, at children's funerals. However, Mr. Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife takes an immediate dislike to Oliver—primarily because her husband seems to like him—and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an oafish but bullying fellow apprentice who is jealous of Oliver's promotion to mute, and Charlotte, the Sowerberry's maidservant, who is in love with Noah.
　　
　　One day, in an attempt to bait Oliver, Noah insults the orphan’s late mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad 'un". Oliver flies into an unexpected passion, attacking and even beating the much bigger boy. Mrs. Sowerberry takes Noah's side, helps him subdue Oliver, punches and beats Oliver, and later compels her husband and Mr. Bumble, who has been sent for in the aftermath of the fight, into beating Oliver again. Once Oliver is sent to his room for the night, he does something that he hadn't done since babyhood—breaks down and weeps. Alone that night, Oliver finally decides to run away. He wanders aimlessly for a time, until a well-placed milestone sets his wandering feet towards London.
　　The Artful Dodger and Fagin
　　George Cruikshank original engraving of the Artful Dodger (centre), here introducing Oliver (right) to Fagin (left)
　　
　　During his journey to London, Oliver encounters Jack Dawkins, more commonly known by the nickname the "Artful Dodger", although Oliver's innocent nature prevents him from recognising this hint that the boy may be dishonest. Dodger provides Oliver with a free meal and tells him of a gentleman in London who will "give him lodgings for nothing, and never ask for change". Grateful for the unexpected assistance, Oliver follows Dodger to the "old gentleman"'s residence. In this way, Oliver unwittingly falls in with an infamous Jewish criminal known as Fagin, the so-called gentleman of whom the Artful Dodger spoke. Ensnared, Oliver lives with Fagin and his gang of juvenile pickpockets in their lair at Saffron Hill for some time, naively unaware of their criminal occupations. He believes they make wallets and handkerchiefs.
　　
　　Later, Oliver innocently goes out to "make handkerchiefs" because of no income coming in, with two of Fagin’s underlings: The Artful Dodger and a boy of a humorous nature named Charley Bates. Oliver realises too late that their real mission is to pick pockets. Dodger and Charley steal the handkerchief of an old gentleman named Mr. Brownlow, and promptly flee. When he finds his handkerchief missing, Mr. Brownlow turns round, sees Oliver, and pursues him. Others join the chase and Oliver is caught and taken before the magistrate. Curiously, Mr. Brownlow has second thoughts about the boy—he seems reluctant to believe he is a pickpocket. To the judge's evident disappointment, a bookstall holder who saw Dodger commit the crime clears Oliver, who, by now actually ill, faints in the courtroom. Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver home and, along with his housekeeper Mrs. Bedwin, cares for him.
　　Bill Sikes
　　
　　Oliver stays with Mr. Brownlow, recovers rapidly, and blossoms from the unaccustomed kindness. His bliss, however, is interrupted when Fagin, fearing Oliver might "peach" on his criminal gang, decides that Oliver must be brought back to his hideout. When Mr. Brownlow sends Oliver out to pay for some books, one of the gang, a young girl named Nancy, whom Oliver had previously met at Fagin's, accosts him with help from her abusive lover, a brutal robber named Bill Sikes, and Oliver is quickly bundled back to Fagin's lair. The thieves take the five pound note Mr. Brownlow had entrusted to him, and strip him of his fine new clothes. Oliver, dismayed, flees and attempts to call for police assistance, but is ruthlessly dragged back by the Dodger, Charley and Fagin. Nancy, however, is sympathetic towards Oliver and saves him from beatings by Fagin and Sikes.
　　
　　In a renewed attempt to draw Oliver into a life of crime, Fagin forces him to participate in a burglary. Nancy reluctantly assists in recruiting him, all the while assuring the boy that she will help him if she can. Sikes, after threatening to kill him if he does not cooperate, sends Oliver through a small window and orders him to unlock the front door. The robbery goes wrong, however, and Oliver is shot. After being abandoned by Sikes, the wounded Oliver ends up under the care of the people he was supposed to rob: Rose Maylie, her guardian Mrs. Maylie (unrelated to Rose and raising her as her own niece), and Harry Maylie (Mrs. Maylie's son who loves Rose). Convinced of Oliver’s innocence, Rose takes the boy in and nurses him back to health.
　　Mystery
　　
　　Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Monks has found Fagin and is plotting with him to destroy Oliver's reputation. Monks denounces Fagin's failure to turn Oliver into a criminal and the two of them agree on a plan to make sure he does not find out about his past. Monks is apparently related to Oliver in some manner, although it's not mentioned until later.
　　
　　Back In Oliver's hometown, Mr Bumble has married Ms Corney, the wealthy matron of the workhouse, only to find himself constantly arguing with his unhappy wife. After one such argument, Mr Bumble walks over to a pub, where he meets Monks, who informs him about a boy named Oliver Twist. Later the two of them arrange to take a locket and ring which had once belonged to Oliver's mother and toss it into a nearby river. Monks relates this to Fagin as part of the plot to destroy Oliver, unaware that Nancy has eavesdropped on their conversation and gone ahead to inform Oliver's benefactors.
　　
　　Nancy, by this time ashamed of her role in Oliver's kidnapping, and fearful for the boy's safety, goes to Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow to warn them. She knows that Monks and Fagin are plotting to get their hands on the boy again and holds some secret meetings on the subject with Oliver's benefactors. One night Nancy tries to leave for one of the meetings but Sikes refuses permission when she doesn't state exactly where she's going. Fagin realizes that Nancy is up to something and resolves to find out what her secret is.
　　
　　Meanwhile Noah Claypole has fallen out with the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry, stolen money from him and moved to London. Charlotte has accompanied him—they are now in a relationship. Using the name "Morris Bolter", he joins Fagin's gang for protection. During Noah's stay with Fagin, the Artful Dodger is caught with a stolen silver snuff box, convicted (in a very humorous courtroom scene) and transported to Australia. Later, Noah is sent by Fagin to "dodge" (spy on) Nancy, and discovers her secret: she has been meeting secretly with Rose and Mr. Brownlow to discuss how to save Oliver from Fagin and Monks. Fagin angrily passes the information on to Sikes, twisting the story just enough to make it sound as if Nancy had informed on him (in reality, she had shielded Sikes, whom she loves despite his brutal character). Believing her to be a traitor, Sikes beats Nancy to death in a fit of rage, and is himself killed when he accidentally hangs himself while fleeing across a rooftop from an angry mob.
　　Resolution
　　Fagin in his cell.
　　
　　Monks is forced by Mr. Brownlow (an old friend of Oliver's father) to divulge his secrets: his real name is Edward Leeford, and he is Oliver's paternal half-brother and, although he is legitimate, he was born of a loveless marriage. Oliver's mother, Agnes, was their father's true love. Mr. Brownlow has a picture of her, and began making inquiries when he noticed a marked resemblance between her face, and the face of Oliver. Monks has spent many years searching for his father's child—not to befriend him, but to destroy him (see Henry Fielding's Tom Jones for similar circumstances). Brownlow asks Oliver to give half his inheritance (which proves to be meagre) to Monks because he wants to give him a second chance; and Oliver, being prone to giving second chances, is more than happy to comply. Monks then moves to America, where he squanders his money, reverts to crime, and ultimately dies in prison. Fagin is arrested and condemned to the gallows; in an emotional scene, Oliver goes to Newgate Gaol to visit the old reprobate on the eve of his hanging, (where Fagin's terror at being hanged has caused him to come down with fever).
　　
　　On a happier note, Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Oliver's mother Agnes; she is therefore Oliver's aunt. She marries her long-time sweetheart Harry, and Oliver lives happily with his saviour, Mr. Brownlow. Noah becomes a paid, semi-professional informer to the police (a "stoolie", or "stoolpigeon" in American terminology). The Bumbles lose their jobs (under circumstances that cause him to utter the well-known line "The law is a ass") and are reduced to great poverty, eventually ending up in the same workhouse where they once lorded it over Oliver and the other boys; and Charley Bates, horrified by Sikes's murder of Nancy, becomes an honest citizen, moves to the country, and works his way up to prosperity.
　　Major themes and symbols
　　Introduction
　　
　　In Oliver Twist, Dickens mixes grim realism, and merciless satire as a way to describe the effects of industrialism on 19th-century England and to criticise the harsh new Poor Laws. Oliver, an innocent child, is trapped in a world where his only options seem to be the workhouse, Fagin's thieves, a prison or an early grave. From this unpromising industrial/institutional setting, however, a fairy tale also emerges: In the midst of corruption and degradation, the essentially passive Oliver remains pure-hearted; he steers away from evil when those around him give in to it; and, in proper fairy-tale fashion, he eventually receives his reward—leaving for a peaceful life in the country, surrounded by kind friends. On the way to this happy ending, Dickens explores the kind of life an orphan, outcast boy could expect to lead in 1830s London.
　　Poverty and social class
　　
　　Poverty is a prominent concern in Oliver Twist. Throughout the novel, Dickens enlarges on this theme, describing slums so decrepit that whole rows of houses are on the point of ruin. In an early chapter, Oliver attends a pauper's funeral with Mr. Sowerberry and sees a whole family crowded together in one miserable room.
　　
　　This ubiquitous misery makes Oliver's few encounters with charity and love more poignant. Oliver owes his life several times over to kindness both large and small. The apparent plague of poverty that Dickens describes also conveyed to his middle-class readers how much of the London population was stricken with poverty and disease. Nonetheless, in Oliver Twist he delivers a somewhat mixed message about social caste and social injustice. Oliver's illegitimate workhouse origins place him at the nadir of society; as an orphan without friends, he is routinely despised. His "sturdy spirit" keeps him alive despite the torment he must endure. Most of his associates, however, deserve their place among society's dregs and seem very much at home in the depths. Noah Claypole, a charity boy like Oliver, is idle, stupid, and cowardly; Sikes is a thug; Fagin lives by corrupting children; and the Artful Dodger seems born for a life of crime. Many of the middle-class people Oliver encounters—Mrs. Sowerberry, Mr. Bumble, and the savagely hypocritical "gentlemen" of the workhouse board, for example; are, if anything, worse.
　　
　　Oliver, on the other hand, who has an air of refinement remarkable for a workhouse boy, proves to be of gentle birth. Although he has been abused and neglected all his life, he recoils, aghast, at the idea of victimizing anyone else. This apparently hereditary gentlemanliness makes Oliver Twist something of a changeling tale, not just an indictment of social injustice. Oliver, born for better things, struggles to survive in the savage world of the underclass before finally being rescued by his family and returned to his proper place—a commodious country house.
　　
　　In a recent film adaptation of the novel, Roman Polanski dispenses with the problem of Oliver's genteel origins by making him an anonymous orphan, like the rest of Fagin's gang.
　　Oliver is wounded in a burglary.
　　Symbolism
　　
　　Dickens makes considerable use of symbolism. The many symbols Oliver faces are primarily good versus evil, with evil continually trying to corrupt and exploit good, but good winning out in the end. The "merry old gentleman" Fagin, for example, has satanic characteristics: he is a veteran corrupter of young boys who presides over his own corner of the criminal world; he makes his first appearance standing over a fire holding a toasting-fork; and he refuses to pray on the night before his execution. The London slums, too, have a suffocating, infernal aspect; the dark deeds and dark passions are concretely characterised by dim rooms, and pitch-black nights, while the governing mood of terror and brutality may be identified with uncommonly cold weather. In contrast, the countryside where the Maylies take Oliver is a pastoral heaven.
　　
　　Food is another important symbol; Oliver's odyssey begins with a simple request for more gruel, and Mr. Bumble's shocked exclamation, represents he may be after more than just gruel. Chapter 8—which contains the last mention of food in the form of Fagin's dinner—marks the first time Oliver eats his share and represents the transformation in his life that occurs after he joins Fagin's gang.
　　
　　The novel is also shot through with a related motif, obesity, which calls attention to the stark injustice of Oliver's world. When the half-starved child dares to ask for more, the men who punish him are fat. It is interesting to observe the large number of characters who are overweight.
　　
　　Toward the end of the novel, the gaze of knowing eyes becomes a potent symbol. For years, Fagin avoids daylight, crowds, and open spaces, concealing himself in a dark lair most of the time: when his luck runs out at last, he squirms in the "living light" of too many eyes as he stands in the dock, awaiting sentence. After Sikes kills Nancy, he flees into the countryside but is unable to escape the memory of her dead eyes. Charley Bates turns his back on crime when he sees the murderous cruelty of the man who has been held up to him as a model.
　　
　　Nancy’s decision to meet Brownlow and Rose on London Bridge reveals the symbolic aspect of this bridge in Oliver Twist. Bridges exist to link two places that would otherwise be separated by an uncrossable void. The meeting on London Bridge represents the collision of two worlds unlikely ever to come into contact—the idyllic world of Brownlow and Rose, and the atmosphere of degradation in which Nancy lives. On the bridge, Nancy is given the chance to cross over to the better way of life that the others represent, but she rejects that opportunity, and by the time the three have all left the bridge, that possibility has vanished forever.
　　
　　When Rose gives Nancy her handkerchief, and when Nancy holds it up as she dies, Nancy has gone over to the "good" side against the thieves. Her position on the ground is as if she is in prayer, this showing her godly or good position.
　　Characters
　　The Last Chance.
　　
　　In the tradition of Restoration Comedy and Henry Fielding, Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. Oliver himself, though "badged and ticketed" as a lowly orphan and named according to an alphabetical system, is, in fact, "all of a twist." Mr. Grimwig is so called because his seemingly "grim", pessimistic outlook is actually a protective cover for his kind, sentimental soul. Other character names mark their bearers as semi-monstrous caricatures. Mrs. Mann, who has charge of the infant Oliver, is not the most motherly of women; Mr. Bumble, despite his impressive sense of his own dignity, continually mangles the king's English he tries to use; and the Sowerberries are, of course, "sour berries", a reference to Mrs. Sowerberry's perpetual scowl, to Mr. Sowerberry's profession as an undertaker, and to the poor provender Oliver receives from them. Rose Maylie’s name echoes her association with flowers and springtime, youth and beauty, while Toby Crackit’s is a reference to his chosen profession–housebreaking.
　　
　　Bill Sikes’s dog, Bull’s-eye, has “faults of temper in common with his owner” and is an emblem of his owner’s character. The dog’s viciousness represents Sikes’s animal-like brutality, while Sikes's self-destructiveness is evident in the dog's many scars. The dog, with its willingness to harm anyone on Sikes's whim, shows the mindless brutality of the master. Sikes himself senses that the dog is a reflection of himself and that is why he tries to drown the dog. He is really trying to run away from who he is.[citation needed] This is also illustrated when Sikes dies and the dog does immediately also. After Sikes murders Nancy, Bull’s-eye also comes to represent Sikes’s guilt. The dog leaves bloody footprints on the floor of the room where the murder is committed. Not long after, Sikes becomes desperate to get rid of the dog, convinced that the dog’s presence will give him away. Yet, just as Sikes cannot shake off his guilt, he cannot shake off Bull’s-eye, who arrives at the house of Sikes’s demise before Sikes himself does. Bull’s-eye’s name also conjures up the image of Nancy’s eyes, which haunts Sikes until the bitter end and eventually causes him to hang himself accidentally.
　　
　　Dickens employs polarised sets of characters to explore various dual themes throughout the novel;[citation needed] Mr. Brownlow and Fagin, for example, personify 'Good vs. Evil'. Dickens also juxtaposes honest, law-abiding characters such as Oliver himself with those who, like the Artful Dodger, seem more comfortable on the wrong side of the law. 'Crime and Punishment' is another important pair of themes, as is 'Sin and Redemption': Dickens describes criminal acts ranging from picking pockets to murder (suggesting that this sort of thing went on continually in 1830's London) only to hand out punishments with a liberal hand at the end. Most obviously, he shows Bill Sikes hounded to death by a mob for his brutal acts, and sends Fagin to cower in the condemned cell, sentenced to death by due process. Neither character achieves redemption; Sikes dies trying to run away from his guilt, and on his last night alive, the terrified Fagin refuses to see a rabbi or to pray, instead asking Oliver to help him escape. Nancy, by contrast, redeems herself at the cost of her own life, and dies in a prayerful pose.
　　
　　Nancy is also one of the few characters in Oliver Twist to display much ambivalence. Although she is a full-fledged criminal, indoctrinated and trained by Fagin since childhood, she retains enough empathy to repent her role in Oliver's kidnapping, and to take steps to try to atone. As one of Fagin's victims, corrupted but not yet morally dead, she gives eloquent voice to the horrors of the old man's little criminal empire. She wants to save Oliver from a similar fate; at the same time, she recoils from the idea of turning traitor, especially to Bill Sikes, whom she loves. When he was later criticised for giving a "thieving, whoring slut of the streets" such an unaccountable reversal of character, Dickens ascribed her change of heart to "the last fair drop of water at the bottom of a dried-up, weed-choked well".

怎么办

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

　　What is to be Done? (Russian: 'Что делать') (alternatively translated as "What Shall we Do?") is a novel written by the Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky when imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg. It was written partly in response to "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev. The novel's hero, named Rakhmetov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism. The novel also expresses, in one character's dream, a society gaining "eternal joy" of an earthly kind.
　　
　　Chernyshevsky offered an ideological vision that promised to resolve the tensions produced by educational reform, Western European competition and cultural intrusion, and the advent of secularization and impact of science in a still predominantly agrarian Christian community. By pursuing these ideals from a materialist and scientific perspective, he undoubtedly persuaded the younger generation of the intelligentsia of the possibility as well as the nobility of acting to overcome Russia's great social and economic problems - thus providing declasse intellectuals with a social role that gave them considerable self-esteem regardless of the success or failure of their actions. For this very reason, the novel has been called "a handbook (or bible) of radicalism" and led to the founding of a Land and Liberty society.

少女开眼

Kawabata Yasunari

　　本篇创作于1936—1937年，是作者创作高峰期的一部长篇力作。作品通过对艺妓阿岛的女儿初枝眼睛复明的故事的讲述，再现了日本社会中贵族阶层对平民阶层的压抑、歧视和侮辱，反映了日本平民尤其是艺妓及其子女的坎坷遭遇与不公命运，寄托了作家对被压迫与被欺辱者深刻的同情

彩虹几度

Kawabata Yasunari

　　《彩虹几度》是川端康成战后的一部中间小说，该作以四季之虹作为象征物，谱写了同父异母三姐妹战后各自不同的命运，并以东方的“虚无”精神使战后痛苦的灵魂获得了拯救，深刻体现了川端康成在战后力图通过传统之美恢复民族自信力的祈愿。
　　
　　关键词：虹；象征；传统美；拯救
　　
　　中图分类号：1106.4 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1009-8135(2010) 01-0088-04
　　
　　川端康成是日本第一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的作家，他的小说创作从形式来说以纯文学为主，此外，其小说的重要组成部分还有中间小说、少男少女小说等。中间小说是介于纯文学与大众小说之间的一种小说形式，代表作品有《彩虹几度》、《日兮月兮》、《河边小镇的故事》、《玉响》等。这类作品在研究川端康成的文章中较少被提及，但这些作品多以战后为背景，在字里行问隐现了作者对战后美军占领日本的现实的不满，同时也体现了川端康成对拯救民族沦落的灵魂、恢复民族自信力的祈愿。
　　
　　《彩虹几度》写的是水原——一名战后建筑家与其三名同父异母的女儿麻子、百子和小若的人生故事。百子为长女，也是该小说的主要人物，其母生下她后自杀，水原遂与麻子生母结婚，此后又与另一名女子生下第三个女儿小若。因为在母亲自杀及继母、继女、父亲的家庭中长大，百子对感情极度不信任，自初恋男友夏二在二战中作为空军而献身后，便开始玩起危险的感情游戏，与一名叫小宫的少年玩起恋爱的游戏并怀孕，而双方都无法接受现实，小宫最终自杀，百子也放弃了孩子。在这部作品中，川端康成并没有用曲折的故事情节来吸引读者，相反，川端康成用日本传统审美意识中的“季语”来暗示作品的内容。这部小说又被译为“几次出虹”，整篇以 “虹”作为核心意象，通过其在不同季节中的形象表现，深刻反映了同父异母三姐妹（百子、麻子和若子）在战后环境中各自不同的命运。
　　
　　一、“虹”的内涵
　　
　　川端康成在不少作品中都用“虹”来象征人物的情感和命运，并赋予美丽的七彩之“虹”以复杂的内涵。在川端康成作品中，“虹”首先是希望和憧憬的象征。“东京也出彩虹吗？这镜子里也会出彩虹吗？幼小的她站在彩虹的小河边。”这里的“虹”是《水晶幻想>中的女主人公在作为小姑娘时的希望，表达了她对东京和未来的美好向往。《虹》中，美少年木村曾梦想成为飞行家，但在战后混乱的时代中，他整天和舞女们混在一起，醉生梦死。于是他对生活感到了厌倦，进而想逃避现实，“想飞到彩虹里”。在他眼里，虹是超越现实的理想世界的象征。
　　
　　其次，“虹”还是吉凶的象征。七彩之虹是绚丽多姿的，人们往往把虹的出现当作吉利的象征，认为它会给人们带来幸福和希望。但七彩之虹又是虚幻的、瞬息即逝的，幸福和“虹”一样也多是短暂无常的。因此，在特定情境下，川端康成小说中的“虹”又是不吉利的象征。在小说《美丽与悲哀》中，坂见庆子是个富有魅力的妖女，并与自己的师傅音子陷入同性恋之中。出于嫉妒，庆子主动勾引音子的初恋情人大木年雄和他的儿子太一郎。她腰系一条自己有意画了“无色的虹”的腰带，在天快黑时诱惑太一郎与她一起去乘汽艇。结果汽艇发生了事故，庆子被救了上来，太一郎却身陷湖底，她终于达到了复仇的目的。庆子腰带上的“无色的虹”是蕴含着其预谋的。“只是水墨浓淡的曲线，也许谁都看不出来吧，但我想让夏天的虹绕在身上，这是时近黄昏悬在山上的虹。”黄昏喻示着生命之晚期，而 “时近黄昏悬在山上的虹”、“无色之虹”分明是一条妖气十足的夺命勾魂之虹。它比贯日白虹更加不吉利，它凝聚了庆子的妖气、魔性，把年轻、单纯的太一郎引向了一个无人知晓的黄泉世界。
　　
　　二、四季之虹与人的命运
　　
　　在《彩虹几度》中，川端康成把季节的轮回与“虹”的复杂意蕴紧密结合起来，并在此基础上，含蓄地表现了三姐妹的悲欢离合与情感命运。
　　
　　《彩虹几度》以“冬天的彩虹”开篇。岁暮年初时节，麻子独自一人去京都寻找自己的妹妹若子，在失望而归的路上，她望见了琵琶湖上空美丽的彩虹。此时在麻子的眼中，彩虹是吉利的象征，是幸福和希望的象征。她说：“我们大人年末看见大彩虹，来年该是个好年，幸福要来了。”于是，她的“心飞到湖水对面的彩虹那边，似乎想要到那彩虹之国去。”她相信经过自己的努力，妹妹若子会回到自己的身边，也很快会有一个充满爱的家庭出现。但与麻子同座的大谷却说：“冬天的彩虹有点疹人。热带的花在寒带开放，真有些像废王之恋呢。也许因为彩虹下端猛然断开……”。果然，美丽的七彩之虹很快就变换了它的姿影，失去了其优美的弓形曲线，成为无法跨越的断虹。这样，虹就以大自然的语言带给麻子一丝不祥的预感。她们姐妹之间的情感或许就像这冬天不合时宜的断虹，是根本无法跨越的。也许姐姐百子的极端说法更为真实：“人有各种各样的游泳方法，有适合本人性情的水池的水，……兄弟姐妹早晚也要成为外人，那样更好。就任她随便谋生算了。”毕竟若子是在作为艺妓的母亲身边长大，而麻子和百子则是在作为建筑师的父亲身边长大，不同的生活环境造成了她们身份的悬殊，注定了她们终将分离的命运。因此，冬天的断虹也就成为不吉利的预兆，成为理想无法实现的象征。
　　
　　在接下来万物萌生的春天，小说中没有出现“春天的虹”，却出现了“桥”。弓形的桥与彩虹的形状是非常相似的，因此，“桥”在川端康成笔下也就成为 “虹”的化身。在春花烂漫的时节，青木夏二的出现对百子和麻子姐妹而言，可以说是一石激起千层浪。百子曾与启太相爱，但启太后来在战争中牺牲，夏二恰是启太的弟弟。因此，百子从夏二的举手投足间清晰地看到了已死去的恋人的影子，过去的情感和悲伤也如同春天万物的复苏，破土而出。与此同时，麻子与夏二也在春天邂逅，他们随同万物的生机萌生了新的情感。这样，在百子和死去的启太之间，在麻子和夏二之间就建立了不同的“桥”。百子与启太的桥“像是一座没有对岸的桥。活着的人架起了桥，对岸没有支柱，桥的那一端就会悬空。而且，这桥无论延伸多长，也是到不了对岸的。”启太死了，但百子的爱却并没有因恋人生命的终结而终止，反而愈加浓厚。百子独自架起的这座“没有对岸的桥”无疑象征了百子“单向通行”之爱的痛苦与徒劳。麻子与夏二渴望建立“像彩虹一样美丽的桥”，这一方面象征了他们对爱的美好憧憬，但彩虹的虚幻无常，无疑也象征了他们内心的不安，因为他们根本无法跨越启太和百子之爱的阴影。因此，“没有对岸的桥”如同“断虹”，依旧是理想无法实现的象征，是不吉利的象征：“像彩虹一样美丽的桥”，也依然是虚幻无常的象征。
　　
　　百子与死去的启太之间、麻子与夏二之间的沉重情感随着夏天的到来而更加浓郁。因无法承受失去启太的痛苦，百子与少年竹宫陷入更加病态的爱恋中，并孕育了不该孕育的生命。麻子也因恋情的折磨，原本健康的身体垮了下来，住进了医院。等麻子出院时已到了万物开始沉寂的秋天。在秋天萧瑟的季节里，秋叶开始的凋零，万物也都收藏生命的热望。川端康成依然用大自然的语言，对少年竹宫的夭折及百子的流产作出了预示：“银杏的叶子还不是落叶的颜色，才刚刚开始发黄。这样的叶子也许很脆。”竹宫自杀，孩子流产，百子也逐渐熄灭了心中的火焰，陷入任人摆布的无为状态。麻子也随着病愈消除了内心的痛苦，熄灭了对夏二复杂的爱。在医院流产期间，百子收到了麻子的信，信中说东京的天空又出现了彩虹，或许这就是两姐妹获得“无心”之后，预示着她们明媚未来的“彩虹之路”吧。“秋天的彩虹”在这里终于成为吉利与幸福的象征。
　　
　　三、战后民族灵魂的失落与拯救
　　
　　在《彩虹几度》中，川端康成以“虹”与季节的轮回作为作品的暗线，并且以“虚无”美作为解除精神痛苦的良药并非偶然，这与战后川端康成对传统美的执著追求是紧密相连的。川端康成认为“‘古人均由插花而悟道，’就是受禅宗的影响，由此也唤醒了日本人的美的心灵。大概也是这种心灵，使人们在长期内战的荒芜中得以继续生存下来吧”。
　　
　　二战后，作为战败国，巨大的悲哀、无助与怀疑笼罩着整个日本民族，他们在随之涌入的美国文明面前不胜惊恐。有不少人对民族的传统失去信心，认为传统的就是应予以抛弃的；有的人甚至认为欧美人在人种上就优越于大和民族；还有的人看到儿童用日本国旗从美军那里换糖吃，也不去干涉。在黑市猖獗、物价飞涨，到处都是一片废墟的情形下，战后的多数日本人是难得想到国家的。文化是一个民族的灵魂，但是战后的日本却陷入了自我否定的风潮中，忘却了民族的传统。传统的失落必然意味着民族灵魂的失落，这会进一步加深战败的亡国情绪，并使整个民族陷入痛苦的虚脱之中。在《彩虹几度》中，川端康成借一位高僧之口阐述了这样的观点：“战后颓废派的孩子，也都是些胡作非为的家伙，尽情胡闹，尽情捣乱，谁说什么也不听。他们非常错误地理解了自由。”《山音》中的信吾也这样感叹道：“啊，前佛即去，后佛未至，梦中来临，应以何为现实？无意中竟承受了难以承受的人的身躯……”。
　　
　　“当举世都在追随西欧的时刻，他却非常平静而且充满信心地说‘让我们继承日本的美的传统吧’，这种带有发言者的性格的意见，强烈地冲击着人们的心灵”。战后，川端康成更加坚定了继承传统的信念。“民族的兴亡无常，兴亡之后留存下来的，就是这个民族具有的美”，在荒芜、凄惨和穷困中，东山战乱时期却依然能保存、执着和创造美的传统，川端康成深深为之感动。于是，他决定“把战后自己的生命作为我的余生。余生已不为自己所有，它将是日本美的传统的表现。”在致横光的悼词的结尾，川端康成这样写道：
　　
　　横光君，我将以日本山河为灵魂，在你身后活下去，唯愿君之遗族无后顾之忧，则幸甚。
　　
　　在新潮社为他出版的全集后记中，川端康成也这样写道：
　　
　　即使现实的生活基本上结束了，即使对生活的兴味越来越淡薄了，我的精神自觉和愿望也就更为坚定。这就是我作为一个日本作家的自觉，和继承日本美的传统的愿望。我愿意坚持它直到除此以外的一切完全消失……
　　
　　《彩虹几度》虽然是川端康成战后的一部中间小说，但在季节美与虚无美的层面上也充分体现了川端康成对传统美的执着追求及其对沦落的民族灵魂的拯救。
　　
　　首先，日本民族是一个对自然、对季节非常敏感的民族。日本著名的风景画家东山魁一说：“春天萌芽，夏天繁茂，秋天妖娆，冬天清净一我们日本人早在佛教传来以前，不就已经观察这种大自然的变迁的世故，并且切肤地感受到人的生死宿命及其悲喜了吗？而且这种感情在其后时代的日本人心中都继承下来了，仿佛是刻印在日本人的心中似的。”自古以来，日本作家以自然为友、以四时为友，他们的心与生命的搏动和大自然息息相通。因此，在他们看来，一片树叶“不仅是它，而且是地球上一切有生命的东西的命运，……一片叶有其诞生和衰亡，它使人们看到四季不断流转，万物生生不息。”就是说，日本的诗人、作家能从一草一木的细微变化中，敏锐地掌握四季时令的变化，感受到自然生命的律动、万物的生生不息。季节感已成为日本民族文化心态的一部分，它并不仅仅是对物理性的时间推演的感知，而是在日本传统文化土壤中孕育、培植和繁衍起来的人类精神与自然风物的交织融合。
　　
　　川端康成在1968年的获奖演说《我在美丽的日本》中，他以道元禅师的和歌起笔：“春花秋月夏杜鹃，冬雪皑皑寒意加。”
　　
　　川端康成认为“以‘雪、月、花’几个字来表现四季时令变化的美，在日本这是包含着山川草木，宇宙万物，大自然的一切，以至人的感情的美，是有其传统的。”在后期代表作《古都》中，川端康成则将人物作为自然的一部分来描写。千重子和苗子这对孪生姐妹由起初的分离到重逢，再到最终的分离，她们的悲欢离合与四季的自然更替紧密相连。故事从樱花烂漫的春天开始，经过杉林葱翠的夏天、冷雨骤降的秋天，一直写到雨雪交加的初冬，人物的情感与自然的四季景观共生而构成一个美丽而悲哀的故事。川端康成很理解自然的心，他敏感地把握住自然生命的律动，使人间的悲欢离合与自然万物的生息紧密相连。因此，在《彩虹几度》中，川端康成用“虹”的几次出现作为小说的暗线，并以四季之虹来暗示人物的情感与命运，也就不是偶然的了，它包含了川端康成战后对民族传统之美的执著追求。
　　
　　其次，“虚无”美是日本民族的传统审美观，也是川端康成战后的核心思想，在1968年诺贝尔获奖演说《我在美丽的日本》中，川端康成对此也作了具体的阐述。
　　
　　“这种‘无’，不是西方的虚无，相反，是万有自在的空，是无边无涯无尽藏的心灵宇宙。”在中间小说《日兮月兮》中，川端康成以少女松子与宗广的爱情为主线，写了战争给朝井一家造成了夫妻离散、儿子战死的不幸，还写了在美军占领下，日本传统的茶道、传统的纺织工艺，以及传统的生活习惯失去了真正的精髓，感叹日本文化遗产失去了光彩，大大地动摇了战后日本人的心灵世界。与此同时，川端康成在小说中塑造了一位超脱的人物，那就是手拿山茶花的木崎老人，他和自己的少妻居住在铁道边的小院里，尽管外面纷乱嘈杂，安静祥和却一直洋溢在这个小屋的周围。正因为“无常迅速”，木崎才深晓“生死事大”，并以豁达、超脱的心灵珍爱自己的少妻，珍惜周围的一切。木崎“虚无”、超脱的精神时刻敲打着陷入失恋漩涡的松子的灵魂，使这位不幸的少女逐渐摆脱了宗广的阴影，重新面对与宗广之弟——幸二的爱情。
　　
　　在《彩虹几度》中，春天是万物复苏的季节，但小说并没有写象征幸福和希望的春天之虹，却代之以现实中的“断桥”。秋天是万物凋零的季节，然而东京的天空却出现了美丽的彩虹。这看似矛盾，其中却蕴藏着深层内涵。在川端康成看来，执着于现实的情感复苏或过度膨胀都会给人带来极大的痛苦，相反，徒劳之爱的熄灭才会给人带来幸福和安宁，这包含着川端康成对“虚无”美的探求。因此，在小说中，“秋天的虹”才是幸福和希望的象征。
　　
　　目前，国内大概还没有一篇有关《彩虹几度》的专门评论。这部作品用哀婉、细腻而生动的笔触，叙说了像彩虹那样虚幻而美丽的异母三姐妹的爱恋与生命的悲哀，尤其是展示了姐姐百子由于恋人死于战争而蒙受莫大的心灵创伤和扭曲的畸形心态，具有浓厚的时代气息。此外，该作以不同季节的彩虹作为象征物，暗示姐妹的不同命运，并且以“秋天的虹”所蕴含的“虚无”精神作为百子摆脱精神痛苦良药，展现了川端康成战后的重要思想——对传统美的执着追求。这部作品或许没有《古都》那样典雅，但也不应受到读者、评论者的冷漠，希望该评论能起到抛砖引玉的作用，引起热爱川端康成文学者的兴趣。
　　
　　参考文献：
　　
　　川端康成，再婚的女人[M]．叶渭渠，郑民锨译．桂林：漓江出版社，1998.
　　
　　川端康成．美丽与悲哀·蒲公英[M].叶渭渠译，北京：中国社会科学出版社，1996.
　　
　　川端康成，彩虹几度[M].孔宪科等译．桂林：漓江出版社，1996．
　　
　　川端康成．美的存在与发现[M]，叶渭渠译．北京：中国社会科学出版社，1996.
　　
　　川端康成．山音·湖[M]．叶渭渠译，北京：中国社会科学出版社，1996.
　　
　　吉田精一，日本现代文学史[M]．齐干译，上海：上海人民出版社，1976．
　　
　　川端康成，独影自命[M]．叶渭渠译，北京：中国社会科学出版社，1996.
　　
　　横光利一．感想与风景[M]．李振声译．南宁：广西师范大学出版社，2005.
　　
　　[日]东山魁夷．美的情愫[M]．唐月梅译．北京：中国青年出版社，1991．

河边小镇的故事

Kawabata Yasunari

　　川端康成以《雪国》、《古都》、《千只鹤》三作获得1968年诺奖，是日本第一位获该奖的作家。在西方人看来，川端的东方审美方式，尤其是其《雪国》中所表现出来的日式物哀之美，或许是一道亮丽的风景；再者——这可能是更重要的理由——在他们看来，川端文学“受到欧洲近代现实主义的影响”。《河边小镇的故事》讲述了战后日本一个年轻的住院医生义三与三位女子（在经济上支持他的表妹桃子、在思想和生活上理解他的同事民子、他所爱的孤苦无依的房子）的情感纠葛；义三的爱情选择体现了道德与伦理方面的思考。若以《河》论，川端康成的唯美主义，其所诠释的“日本的美”在我看来却是一种难以忍受的“丑陋”：自恋、过分含蓄。这部小说可以说通俗得没有棱角，说俗不可耐也不为过。

1973年的弹子球

Murakami Haruki

　　Pinball, 1973 (1973年のピンボール, 1973-nen no pinbōru?) is a novel published in 1980 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series, it is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), and is the second novel written by Murakami.
　　
　　All three books in the Trilogy of the Rat have been translated into English, but Pinball, 1973, and Hear The Wind Sing, the first two books in the trilogy, were only printed as English translations in Japan by Kodansha under their Kodansha English Library branding, and both only as A6-sized pocketbooks. Before being reprinted in 2009, these novels were difficult to locate and quite expensive, especially outside of Japan. Murakami is alleged to have said that he does not intend for these novels to be published outside of Japan. Whether or not this is true, both novels are much shorter than those that follow and make up the bulk of his work, and are less evolved stylistically. The title, 1973-nen no Pinbōru (1973年のピンボール) reflects the title of the well-known Oe Kenzaburo novel, Man'en Gannen no Futtoboru (万延元年のフットボール).
　　Plot introduction
　　
　　Despite being an early work, Pinball shares many elements with Murakami's later novels. It describes itself in the text as "a novel about pinball," but also explores themes of loneliness and companionship, purposelessness, and destiny. As with the other books in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series, three of the characters include the protagonist, a nameless first-person narrator, his friend The Rat, and J, the owner of the bar where they often spend time.
　　Plot summary
　　
　　The plot centers on the narrator's brief but intense obsession with pinball, his life as a freelance translator, and his later efforts to reunite with the old pinball machine that he used to play. Many familiar elements from Murakami's later novels are present. Wells, which are mentioned often in Murakami's novels and play a prominent role in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, occur several times in Pinball. There is also a brief discussion of the abuse of a cat, a plot element which recurs elsewhere in Murakami's fiction, especially Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (in which the search for a missing cat is an important plotline). Rain and the sea are also prominent motifs.
　　Major themes
　　
　　Similar to many of Murakami's other novels, the narrator is a detached, unintentionally apathetic character whose deadpan demeanor stands either in union or, more often, starkly in contrast with the attitudes of other characters. The narrative, detached from the tangible world but highly introspective, sets a surreal tone for the novel, in which the narrator seems to find little unusual about such things as living with a pair of twins whom he cannot distinguish and whose names he does not know, or performing a funeral for a telephone circuit box. While the novel hints vaguely at supernatural occurrences (which often appear in Murakami's fiction), the plot is not intended to be interpreted allegorically.

新人呵，醒来吧

Kenzaburō Ōe

　　《个人的体验》和《万延元年的足球队》这两部诺贝尔文学奖的获奖作品都有一条相同的贯穿始终的情节线索：即主人公在现实困境中苦苦挣扎，力图寻找一条自我解救的新生之路。值得注意的是，这两部作品与他更早期的作品相比，主人公生存困境的性质和他们最后的结局已经有了重大的变化。在《奇妙的工作》、《死者的奢华》等这类大江早年的作品中，主人公们的生活一般没有遇上什么天大的灾难，他们只是对自己所处的境况感到困惑，无从进行自我存在的确认。他们虽然心犹不甘，拼命地狼奔豕突，作困兽犹斗，如《性的人》中的J和《我们的时代》中的“不幸的年轻人”们，但是最终的结局，还是徘徊于一片茫然的困境里无从解脱，使人感到沉重的压抑，感到更大的迷惘，而鸟和蜜三郎们则都能在看似彻底绝望的困境中，摇摇晃晃地挺起身来，并在自我确认后从心底里滋生直面人生的信心和勇气，进而获得了自我的新生，作品也因此有了一个鼓舞人心的光明结局。产生这种光明结局的根本原因，可能并不在于主人公的自身性格，而是由于鸟和蜜三郎们所面对的，是一个以与自己血肉相连的残疾儿为具体表征的存在困境。为了充分挖掘残疾儿主题的审美价值，大江健三郎对残疾儿形象有点锲而不舍的执着。这个残疾儿有时以 “迅儿”的名字出现在《洪水涌上我的灵魂》，有时则以“义么”身份在《新人啊，醒来吧》中登场，包括大江晚近创作的长篇巨制《燃烧的绿树》、《空翻》中，他仍频繁现身。

日常生活的冒险

Kenzaburō Ōe

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

　　作者在1963年以后发表的作品大多以残疾人和核问题为主要题材，具有较浓厚的人道主义倾向。就其艺术特色而言，在更成熟地借鉴西方现代派文学技巧的同时，充分运用日本文学传统中的想象，把现实与虚构巧妙地结合在一起。这一时期的主要作品还有《日常生活的冒险》(1964年)、《核时代的森林隐遁者》(1968年)、《洪水淹没我的灵魂》(1968年)等长篇小说。

拙劣的笑话