Features of the realistic method in Dickens's early novels (The Adventures of Oliver Twist).

Charles Dickens(1812-1870) at the age of twenty-five already had in his homeland the fame of “inimitable”, the best of modern novelists. His first novel, Posthumous Notes Pickwick Club" (1837), a brilliant masterpiece of comic prose, made him the favorite writer of the English-speaking world. Second novel "Oliver Twist"(1838) will be the subject of our consideration as example of a Victorian novel.

This is the defiantly improbable story of a pure orphan boy, illegitimate, who miraculously survives in a workhouse, as an apprentice to a ferocious undertaker, in the darkest dens of thieves in London. The angelic Oliver wants to be destroyed by his brother, the secular young man Monks, who does not want to fulfill the will of his late father, who before his death bequeathed half of his fortune to his illegitimate son Oliver. According to the terms of the will, the money will go to Oliver only if, before he comes of age, he does not stray from the straight path and does not tarnish his name. To destroy Oliver, Monks enters into a conspiracy with one of the lords of the London underworld, the Jew Fagin, and Fagin lures Oliver into his gang. But no forces of evil can prevail over good will honest people, who sympathize with Oliver and, despite all the machinations, restore his good name. The novel ends traditionally for English classical literature a happy ending, a “happy ending” in which all the scoundrels who sought to corrupt Oliver are punished (the buyer of stolen goods Fagin is hanged; the murderer Sikes dies while escaping from police pursuit and an angry crowd), and Oliver finds his family and friends, regains his name and fortune.

Oliver Twist was originally conceived as a crime novel. In English literature of those years, the so-called “Newgate” novel, named after the London criminal prison Newgate, was very fashionable. This prison is described in the novel - Fagin spends his last days there. The “Newgate” novel necessarily described criminal crimes that tickled the reader’s nerves, and weaved a detective intrigue in which the paths of the lower classes of society, the inhabitants of London’s bottom, and the very top crossed—aristocrats with an impeccable reputation, who in fact turned out to be the masterminds of the most monstrous crimes. The sensational "Newgate" novel obviously owes much to its poetics of deliberate contrasts romantic literature, and thus in early work Dickens reveals the same measure of continuity in relation to romanticism that we noted for " Shagreen leather", an early novel by Balzac. However, at the same time, Dickens opposes the idealization of crime characteristic of the Newgate novel, against the charm of Byronic heroes who penetrated the criminal world. The author's preface to the novel indicates that the main thing for Dickens as a Victorian novelist was the exposure and punishment of vice and service to public morality:

It seemed to me that to portray real members of a criminal gang, to draw them in all their ugliness, with all their vileness, to show their wretched, miserable life, to show them as they really are - they are always sneaking, overcome with anxiety, along the dirtiest paths life, and wherever they look, a black, terrible gallows looms before them - it seemed to me that to depict this means to try to do what is necessary and what will serve society. And I did it to the best of my ability.

The “Newgate” features in “Oliver Twist” consist in the deliberate thickening of colors in the description of dirty dens and their inhabitants. Hardened criminals and escaped convicts exploit the boys, instilling in them a kind of thieves' pride, from time to time betraying the less capable of their students to the police; They also push girls like Nancy onto the panel, torn by remorse and loyalty to their lovers. By the way, the image of Nancy, a “fallen creature,” is characteristic of many novels of Dickens’s contemporaries, being the embodiment of the feeling of guilt that the prosperous middle class. The most vivid image of the novel is Fagin, the head of a gang of thieves, a “burnt beast,” according to the author; Of his accomplices, the most detailed image of the robber and murderer Bill Sikes is drawn. Those episodes that unfold in the thieves' environment in the slums of the East End are the most vivid and convincing in the novel; the author as an artist here is bold and diverse.

But in the process of work, the concept of the novel was enriched with themes that indicate Dickens’ attention to the urgent needs of the people, which make it possible to predict its further development as a truly national realist writer. Dickens became interested in workhouses, new English institutions created in 1834 under the New Poor Law. Before that, local church authorities and parishes took care of the weak and poor. The Victorians, for all their piety, did not give very generously to the church, and new law ordered to gather all the poor from several parishes in one place, where they had to work as hard as they could, paying for their maintenance. At the same time, families were separated, they were fed so that the inhabitants of the workhouses died of exhaustion, and people preferred to be imprisoned for begging than to go to workhouses. With his novel, Dickens continued the heated public controversy surrounding this newest institution of English democracy and strongly condemned it in the unforgettable first pages of the novel, which describes the birth of Oliver and his childhood in the workhouse.

These first chapters stand apart in the novel: the author writes here not a criminal, but a socially revealing novel. Description of Mrs. Mann's "baby farm" workhouse shocking modern reader cruelty, but completely reliable - Dickens himself visited such institutions. The artistry of this description is achieved by the contrast of the dark scenes of Oliver's childhood and the humorous tone of the author. The tragic material is shaded with a light comic style. For example, after Oliver's "crime" of asking for more of his meager porridge in desperation of hunger, he is punished with solitary confinement, which is described as follows:

As for the exercises, the weather was wonderfully cold, and he was allowed to take a bath every morning under the pump, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who took care that he did not catch cold, and used a cane to create a feeling of warmth throughout his whole body. As for society, every two days he was taken to the hall where the boys dined, and there he was flogged as an example and warning to everyone else.

In the novel, which is diverse in material, the connecting link is the image of Oliver, and in this image the melodramatic nature of the art of early Dickens, the sentimentality so characteristic of Victorian literature as a whole, is most clearly manifested. This is melodrama in in a good way words: the author operates with enlarged situations and universal human feelings, which are perceived very predictably by the reader. Indeed, how can one not feel sympathy for a boy who did not know his parents and was subjected to the most severe trials; how not to be filled with disgust for villains who are indifferent to the suffering of a child or push him onto the path of vice; how not to sympathize with the efforts of the good ladies and gentlemen who snatched Oliver from the hands of the monstrous gang. Predictability in the development of the plot, a given moral lesson, the inevitable victory of good over evil - character traits Victorian novel. In this sad story intertwined social problems with features of a criminal and family novels, and from the novel of education Dickens takes only general direction development plot outline, because of all the characters in the novel, Oliver is the least realistic. These are Dickens's first approaches to the study of child psychology, and the image of Oliver is still far from the images of children in Dickens's mature social novels, such as Dombey and Son, Hard Times, and Great Expectations. Oliver in the novel is called upon to embody Good. Dickens understands the child as an unspoiled soul, an ideal being; he resists all the ills of society; vice does not stick to this angelic creature. Although Oliver himself does not know about it, he is of noble birth, and Dickens is inclined to explain his innate subtlety of feelings, decency precisely by the nobility of blood, and the vice in this novel is still in to a greater extent property of the lower classes. However, Oliver would not have been able to escape the persecution of evil forces alone if the author had not brought to his aid the cloying images of “good gentlemen”: Mr. Brownlow, who turns out to be the closest friend of Oliver’s late father, and his friend Mr. Grimwig. Another defender of Oliver is the “English rose” Rose Maylie. The lovely girl turns out to be his own aunt, and the efforts of all these people, wealthy enough to do good, lead the novel to a happy ending.

There is another aspect of the novel that made it especially popular outside of England. Dickens here for the first time showed his remarkable ability to convey the atmosphere of London, which XIX century was largest city planets. Here he spent his own difficult childhood, he knew all the districts and nooks and crannies of the giant city, and Dickens paints it differently than was customary before him in English literature, without emphasizing its metropolitan façade and signs cultural life, and from the inside out, depicting all the consequences of urbanization. Dickens biographer H. Pearson writes on this occasion: “Dickens was London itself. He merged with the city together, he became a particle of every brick, every drop of mortar. To what other writer does any other city owe so much? This, after him humor, his most valuable and original contribution to literature. the greatest poet streets, embankments and squares, but in those days this unique feature of his work escaped the attention of critics."

Perception of Dickens's work beginning of XXI century, naturally, is very different from the perception of his contemporaries: what brought tears of emotion to the reader of the Victorian era, today seems to us strained, overly sentimental. But Dickens's novels, like all great ones, realistic novels, will always show examples of humanistic values, examples of the struggle between Good and Evil, and inimitable English humor in creating characters.

The plot of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is structured in such a way that the reader’s focus is on a boy who is faced with an ungrateful reality. He is an orphan from the first minutes of his life. Oliver was not only deprived of all the benefits of a normal existence, but also grew up very lonely, defenseless in the face of an unfair fate.

Since Dickens is an enlightenment writer, he never focused on the inhuman conditions in which the poor people of that time lived. The writer believed that poverty itself is not as terrible as the indifferent attitude of other people towards this category of people. It was because of this misperception by society that the poor suffered, as they were doomed to eternal humiliation, deprivation and wandering. After all, workhouses, the creation of which was intended to provide ordinary people shelter, food, work, were more like prisons. The poor were separated from their families and imprisoned there by force, fed very poorly, and forced to do backbreaking and useless labor. As a result, they simply slowly died of starvation.

After the workhouse, Oliver becomes an undertaker's apprentice and a victim of bullying by the orphanage boy Noe Claypole. The latter, taking advantage of his advantage in age and strength, constantly humiliates the protagonist. Oliver escapes and ends up in London. As you know, such street children, whose fate no one cared about, for the most part became the dregs of society - vagabonds and criminals. They were forced to engage in crime in order to somehow survive. And cruel laws reigned there. Young men turned into beggars and thieves, and girls made a living with their bodies. Most often, they did not die a natural death, but ended their lives on the gallows. IN best case scenario they faced imprisonment.

They even want to drag Oliver into the criminal world. Ordinary boy from the street, whom everyone calls the Artful Rogue, promising the main character protection and overnight accommodation in London, takes him to a buyer of stolen goods. This is the godfather of local scammers and thieves, Fagin.

In this crime novel, Charles Dickens portrayed London's criminal society in a simple way. He considered it an integral part of the then metropolitan life. But the writer tried to convey to the reader main idea that the soul of a child is not initially prone to crime. After all, in his mind, a child personifies unlawful suffering and spiritual purity. He is simply a victim of that time. The main part of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is devoted to this idea.

But at the same time, the writer was worried about the question: what influences the formation of a person’s character, the formation of his personality? Natural inclinations and abilities, origin (ancestors, parents) or still the social environment? Why does someone become noble and decent, while others become vile and dishonest criminals? Can he not be soulless, cruel and vile? In order to answer this question, Dickens introduces storyline the novel's image of Nancy. This is a girl who got into the criminal world back in early age. But this did not stop her from remaining kind and sympathetic, capable of showing empathy. She is the one who tries to prevent Oliver from going down the wrong path.

Charles Dickens's social novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is a true reflection of the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. That is why this work very popular among readers and since its publication has managed to become popular.

In the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist,” Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy’s encounter with an ungrateful reality. Main character novel - a little boy named Oliver Twist. Having been born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he was left an orphan, and this meant in his situation not only a future full of hardships and deprivations, but also loneliness, defenselessness in the face of the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive.

Dickens, as an educational writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses help and support to those who were born poor and are therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.

Workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, and shelter, were in fact similar to prisons: the poor were forcibly imprisoned there, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, doomed to a slow death of starvation. It was not for nothing that the workers themselves called workhouses “bastilles for the poor.”

From the workhouse, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker; there he encounters the orphanage boy Noe Claypole, who, being older and stronger, constantly subjects Oliver to humiliation. Oliver soon escapes to London.

Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy life in prisons or on the gallows.

This novel is a crime novel. Dickens portrays the society of London criminals simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street, nicknamed the Artful Rogue, promises Oliver an overnight stay and protection in London and leads him to a buyer of stolen goods, godfather London thieves and swindlers to the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path.

For Dickens, it is important to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not inclined to crime. Children are the personification of spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A considerable part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned with the question: what is most important in shaping a person’s character, his personality - the social environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble or vile, dishonest and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl who fell into the criminal world at an early age, but retained a kind, sympathetic heart and the ability to sympathize, because it is not in vain that she is trying to protect little Oliver from the vicious path.

Thus we see that social novel Charles Dickens's “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is a lively response to the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. And judging by the popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.

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In the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist,” Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy’s encounter with an ungrateful reality. The main character of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist. Having been born in a workhouse, from the first minutes of his life he was left an orphan, and this meant in his situation not only a future full of hardships and deprivations, but also loneliness, defenselessness in the face of the insults and injustice that he would have to endure. The baby was frail, the doctor said that he would not survive.
Dickens, as an educational writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses help and support to those who were born poor and are therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.
Workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, and shelter, were in fact similar to prisons: the poor were forcibly imprisoned there, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, doomed to a slow death of starvation. It was not for nothing that the workers themselves called workhouses “bastilles for the poor.”
From the workhouse, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker; there he encounters the orphanage boy Noe Claypole, who, being older and stronger, constantly subjects Oliver to humiliation. Oliver soon escapes to London.
Boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows.
This novel is a crime novel. Dickens portrays the society of London criminals simply. This is a legitimate part of the existence of capitals. A boy from the street nicknamed the Artful Rogue promises Oliver an overnight stay and protection in London and brings him to the buyer of stolen goods, the godfather of London thieves and swindlers, the Jew Fagin. They want to put Oliver on a criminal path.
For Dickens, it is important to give the reader the idea that the soul of a child is not inclined to crime. Children are the personification of spiritual purity and unlawful suffering. A considerable part of the novel is devoted to this. Dickens, like many writers of that time, was concerned with the question: what is most important in shaping a person’s character, his personality - the social environment, origin (parents and ancestors) or his inclinations and abilities? What makes a person what he is: decent and noble or vile, dishonest and criminal? And does criminal always mean vile, cruel, soulless? Answering this question, Dickens creates in the novel the image of Nancy - a girl who fell into the criminal world at an early age, but retained a kind, sympathetic heart and the ability to sympathize, because it is not in vain that she is trying to protect little Oliver from the vicious path.
Thus, we see that Charles Dickens’s social novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” represents a lively response to the most pressing and pressing problems of our time. And judging by the popularity and appreciation of readers, this novel can rightfully be considered a folk novel.

(No ratings yet)

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2. The problem of education can be called one of the leading ones in English literature. Charles Dickens was not a pioneer in this, but he found his way to solve the problem by showing the bottom of London without romance. In the preface to one of the editions of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” Dickens Read More ......
3. Charles Dickens's novel about the adventures of a boy, from whom even his mother's name was taken away, is a work of high humanistic meaning. The writer forces us to take a fresh look at the generally accepted concepts of decency and respectability, which his contemporaries were so proud of. Of course, the external manifestations of a good upbringing are important, but Read More......
4. The English realist writer Charles Dickens in his novel “Oliver Twist” fully reveals the problem of the plight of the mass of people. Through the story of the main character - a child and the people around him - the writer outlined the fate of English people, destroyed, forced to survive with lies, theft, Read More......
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Philosophical analysis of the novel
Charles Dickens
"The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

Performed:
3rd year student
groups 2306
full-time education
Faculty of Finance
Tutaeva Zalina Musaevna

Scientific adviser:
Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy
Ponizovkina Irina Fedorovna

Moscow, 2011
Philosophical analysis of Charles Dickens's novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"

"The Adventures of Oliver Twist" is Charles Dickens's most famous novel, the first in English literature in which the main character was a child. The novel was written in England, in 1937-1939. It began to be published in Russia in 1841, when an excerpt from the novel (Chapter XXIII) appeared in the February issue of Literary Gazette (No. 14). The chapter was entitled “On the influence of teaspoons on love and morality.” ».
In the novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens builds a plot centered on a boy's encounter with an ungrateful reality.
The main character of the novel is a little boy named Oliver Twist, whose mother died during childbirth in a workhouse.
He grows up in an orphanage at a local parish, whose funds are extremely meager.

Starving peers force him to ask for more for lunch. For this obstinacy, his superiors sell him to the undertaker's office, where Oliver is bullied by the senior apprentice.

After a fight with an apprentice, Oliver flees to London, where he falls into the gang of a young pickpocket nicknamed the Artful Dodger. The den of criminals is ruled by the cunning and treacherous Jew Fagin. The cold-blooded killer and robber Bill Sikes also visits there. His 17-year-old girlfriend Nancy sees a kindred spirit in Oliver and shows him kindness.

The plans of the criminals include training Oliver to be a pickpocket, but after a robbery goes wrong, the boy ends up in the house of a virtuous gentleman - Mr. Brownlow, who over time begins to suspect that Oliver is the son of his friend. Sykes and Nancy bring Oliver back into the underworld to take part in a heist.

As it turns out, behind Fagin is Monks, Oliver's half-brother, who is trying to deprive him of his inheritance. After another failure of the criminals, Oliver first ends up in the house of Miss Meili, who at the end of the book turns out to be the hero's aunt. Nancy comes to them with the news that Monks and Fagin are not giving up the hope of kidnapping or killing Oliver. And with this news, Rose Meili goes to Mr. Brownlow’s house to resolve this situation with his help. Oliver then returns to Mr. Brownlow.
Sikes becomes aware of Nancy's visits to Mr. Brownlow. In a fit of anger, the villain kills the unfortunate girl, but soon dies himself. Monks has to open his dirty secrets, come to terms with the loss of his inheritance and go to America, where he will die in prison. Fagin goes to the gallows. Oliver lives happily in the house of his savior Mr. Brownlow.
This is the plot of this novel.
This novel fully reflected Dickens's deeply critical attitude towards bourgeois reality. "Oliver Twist" was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the situation created for the people in the story of a boy born in a charity home.
Oliver's life path is a series of terrible pictures of hunger, want and beatings. By depicting the ordeal that befalls the young hero of the novel, Dickens develops a broad picture of English life of his time.
Charles Dickens, as an educational writer, never reproached his unfortunate characters with either poverty or ignorance, but he reproached a society that refuses help and support to those who were born poor and are therefore doomed from the cradle to deprivation and humiliation. And the conditions for the poor (and especially for the children of the poor) in that world were truly inhuman.
Workhouses, which were supposed to provide ordinary people with work, food, and shelter, were in fact similar to prisons: the poor were forcibly imprisoned there, separated from their families, forced to do useless and hard work and practically not fed, doomed to a slow death of starvation. It was not for nothing that the workers themselves called workhouses “Bastilles for the poor.”
And boys and girls who were of no use to anyone, who by chance found themselves on the streets of the city, often became completely lost to society, as they ended up in the criminal world with its cruel laws. They became thieves, beggars, girls began to sell their own bodies, and after that many of them ended their short and unhappy lives in prisons or on the gallows. From the above, we can conclude that the plot of this work is permeated with the problem of that time, as well as the present, a problem that concerns the moral education of a person. The writer believes that the problem of human upbringing is a matter for the whole society. One of the tasks of the novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” is to show the harsh truth in order to force society to be fairer and more merciful.
The idea of ​​this novel, I believe, can be attributed to one of the ethical problems studied in philosophy, to the problem of morality, morality.
The importance of moral education was emphasized by outstanding thinkers of different eras, from antiquity to our time. Speaking about philosophers who studied ethical issues, it is worth highlighting Pythagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Bruno - the harbinger of classical bourgeois philosophy and ethics, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Aristotle, etc. Each of them had their own special point of view on this problem, their own views.
In order to understand the essence of the problem that permeates the work, I would like to turn to the period in which this work was written.
So, let's delve into the history of England. 1832, the adoption of parliamentary reform, which entailed, I would say, largely negative consequences for the lower class of society in England at that time.
The reform of 1832 meant a political compromise between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. As a result of this compromise, as Marx wrote, the bourgeoisie was “recognized as the ruling class also in political terms.” (K. Marx, The British Constitution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 11, ed. 2, p. 100.) However, its dominance did not become complete even after this reform: the landed aristocracy retained significant influence on the general government of the country and legislative bodies.
Soon after the reform, the bourgeoisie, having gained access to power, passed a law in parliament that worsened the already difficult situation of the working class: in 1832, the tax for the benefit of the poor was abolished and workhouses were established.
For 300 years in England there was a law according to which the poor were given “relief” by the parishes in which they lived. Funds for this were obtained by taxing the agricultural population. The bourgeoisie was especially dissatisfied with this tax, although it did not fall on them. The issuance of cash benefits to the poor prevented the greedy bourgeois from receiving cheap labor, since the poor refused to work for low wages, at least lower than the cash benefits they received from the parish. Therefore, the bourgeoisie has now replaced the issuance of cash benefits by keeping the poor in workhouses with a hard labor and humiliating regime.
In Engels’s book “The Condition of the Working Class in England” we can read about these workhouses: “These workhouses, or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, are such that they should scare away anyone who has even the slightest hope of getting through. without this benefit of society. In order for the poor man to seek help only in the most extreme cases, so that before he decides to do so, he exhausts all possibilities of doing without it, such a scarecrow was made from the workhouse, which only the refined imagination of a Malthusian can come up with (Malthus (1776 - 1834) - an English bourgeois economist, covering up the real causes of poverty and misery underlying the capitalist system, tried to prove that the source of poverty is a faster growth of population in comparison with the growth of means for its subsistence. Based on this completely false explanation, Malthus. recommended to workers abstinence from early marriage and childbearing, abstinence in food, etc.)
The food in them is worse than that of the poorest workers, and the work is harder: otherwise the latter would prefer staying in the workhouse to their miserable existence outside it... Even in prisons, the food is on average better, so that the inmates of the workhouse often deliberately commit some kind of crime. some offense to go to prison... In a workhouse in Greenwich in the summer of 1843, a five-year-old boy, as punishment for some offense, was locked in the dead room for three nights, where he had to sleep on the lids of coffins. At the Hearn workhouse the same thing was done to a little girl... The details of the treatment of the poor in this institution are shocking... George Robson had a wound on his shoulder, the treatment of which was completely neglected. They put him at the pump and forced him to move it with his good hand, fed him the usual workhouse food, but, exhausted by his neglected wound, he could not digest it. As a result, he became more and more weak; but the more he complained, the worse he was treated... He fell ill, but even then his treatment did not improve. Finally, at his request, he was released with his wife and left the workhouse, parted with the most insulting expressions. Two days later he died in Leicester, and the doctor who witnessed his death certified that death occurred from a neglected wound and from food, which, due to his condition, was completely indigestible for him” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England). The facts presented here were not isolated; they characterize the regime of all workhouses.
“Can one be surprised,” continues Engels, “that the poor refuse to resort to public assistance under such conditions, that they prefer starvation to these Basstilles?...”

Thus, it can be concluded that the new poor law deprived the unemployed and the poor of the right to public assistance; from now on, receiving such help was conditioned by staying in a “workhouse”, where the inhabitants were exhausted by backbreaking and unproductive work, prison discipline, and starvation. Everything was done to force the unemployed to be hired for pennies.
The legislation of the early 30s exposed the class essence of English bourgeois liberalism. The working class, which took an active part in the struggle for parliamentary reform, became convinced that the bourgeoisie had deceived it and appropriated for itself all the fruits of the victory won over the landed aristocracy.
From the above, we can say that the Great French Revolution was truly great in the depth of socio-economic and political changes that it caused in its homeland and throughout Europe. But its moral results turned out to be truly insignificant.
Bourgeois political republics, if they improved morals in one respect, then worsened them in many other respects. The commodity economy, freed from the restraining shackles of feudal power and traditional - family, religious, national and other “prejudice”, stimulated the unlimited rampant of private interests, left the stamp of moral decay on all areas of life, but these countless private vices could not be summarized into one common virtue . The bourgeoisie, according to the vivid characterization of K. Marx and F. Engels, “has not left any other connection between people except bare interest, heartless “purity.” ice water selfish calculation drowned the sacred thrill of religious ecstasy, knightly enthusiasm, and bourgeois sentimentality. It turned a person's personal dignity into exchange value..."
In a word, the real course of the historical process has revealed that capitalism, suitable for many large and small matters, is absolutely incapable of providing such a synthesis of the individual and the race, happiness and duty, private interests and public duties, which was theoretically substantiated, although in different ways, by philosophers New time. This, in my opinion, is the main philosophical idea of ​​the work.
Also, from the above, one can see that the ideas of the novel were close to many philosophers and in more detail the development of ethical and philosophical thought relevant to that period of time can be traced in the ideas of I. Kant, I.G. Fichte, F.V.I. Schelling, G.V.F. Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, etc.
Kant in his ethical writings constantly refers to the relationship between morality and law. It is precisely when analyzing this problem that the philosopher’s critical attitude towards bourgeois society is especially acutely revealed. Kant reveals the very specificity of morality to a large extent by distinguishing it from law. He distinguishes between external, positive, and internal, subjective, driving principles of social behavior.
etc.................