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A comparison of the treatment of the lower classes in the novels of Charles Dickens and in those of Pío Baroja Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Schmiedendorf, Isabel Morgan Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 11/10/2021 12:09:53 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553341 A CCMPAfllSOJf OF THE TREATMENT OF THE LOWER CLASSES IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS AND IN THOSE OF PIO BAROJA bjr Isabel Morgan Sohmledendorf A Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate College University of Arizona 1 9 3 7 Approved: Ilajor Professor £ 979/ 993 7 5-f z~ TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter Page INTHODUCTION . ...................... 1 I. CHARACTERS ....................... ..... 8 II. INCIDENTS ...................... ...... 66 III. PLACES ........ ..... ........ ..... 90 IT. IDEAS ON R E P O R K .............................101 T. STYLE . ......................... 116 CONCLUSION ............................... 122 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................. 125 11 rv 11174 -w XlfRODUGflOI A reader who eomparos the works of Charles Dlskens, the English novelist* and the works of Rio Baroja, the Spanish novelist, oannot but be impressed by the great similarity of the material in whioh they ehoose to work* and by the great difference in the effoots which they produce with that material* Both writers deal with tho lower classes of society; both use a large number of characters many of them unimportant to the pmgross of the story; both use very loose structure, very slender plots; both are fond of describing places at length; both are exceedingly pro- 2 ' . lifio writers. Eere the similarity ends* for in portrayal of character and incident, and in the emotional reaction which they produce* one author is as different from the other as poseible* Hor does the same purpose animate the two. Share are some three hundred of these memorable personages in Pickwick alone; and, it has been estimated, upward of fifteen hundred in his complete w w k s , ” says Biohard Burton In his Charles Biokens, Bow to Enow Him (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Morrill Company, 1919}* p . E^O. Baroja*s pages are crowded with oharaoters. ^"Apart from hie tales and short stories, Dickens wroto sixteen major pieoos of fiction,” says Burton, in ibid., p. 249. Barojars works number some forty-odd* al­ though him works contain usually some 260 pages* Dickens'# some 800-l<Xto* «# 2 ** Diokens desoribes his people voluminously; m leave them feeling that they are intimates of ours. We never be­ come sufficiently acquainted with Baroja's oharaoters to think of them as more than aoquaintanoes. In sotting oat his action, Mokens is font of what Hr. Chesterton terms "the Eogarthlan i n c i d e n t w h i e h "carries on that tradition of startling and shocking platitude,"3 from.which ho ex­ tracts every possible thrill, carrying the reader along with the participants through sash stirring moment. There is no lack of tho startling and the shocking in Baroja, but it is not allied to the platitudinous« With a few de­ tails, he touches upon a dramatic moment and is off to some­ thing else. ^As to their purpose in writing, there is no doubt that Dickens wished to awaken the English people to a sense of responsibility for existing abases, especially for those perpetrated against children.^ Baroja denies any feeling about the evils of life. He-says: I am convinced that life is neither good nor bad., It is like nature — necessary. lor is society either good or bad. A man who is too sensitive to the time in whloh he is living finds sooioty bad, but a man in harmony with his surroundings finds it good. .... A negro can walk naked in a jungle where every drop of water is filled with millions of deadly germs, where there are - Chesterton, Aupcsoiationa and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. 4th ed. tNew York: E. p. imttan airiJwpu5y7TM117^p7'42-4g . s inaeots ^h#se sting prodwea an aboees, where the temperature is over a imnared in the shade . A European aeouetomed to the sheltered life ®f cities amdunprotested from the assaults of nature will die in the tropics. A man should possess as much sensibility as he needs to cope with his epoch and his surroundings. If he has too little sensibility, he will lead the life of a moron; if he has the necessary amount of sensibility, he will lead the life of an adult; and if he has too much, he will go read.4 There is also the possibility which occurs to the thought- ful reader, that the very sensitive person may become an artist or a reformer, or a combination of both as in the oaao of tho Englishman under discussion. The tears and the laughter of his pages betray a sensibility to his environ­ ment quite out of proportion to that of the average English­ man of him epooh. As to the sensibility of Baroja, while it is elear that no desire for reform animates him, and no vision of a happier future _enlivens his mind, it must be oonoluded that he is not immune to the appeal of his sur­ roundings, sine# he is pricked at least to the extent of being impelled to set down what he sees.^ Biokens hoped that by revealing the things whieh wounded hie sensibility, he could horrify his world into a desire for improvement^ Baroja has no such hope, but ho drags into the open fully as terrible exhibits and lays them before his public. The stylo of the two writers is dissimilar, QDleksns uses euphonious words, varied sentences, many modifiers. 4wMyself,w Living Ago. Vol. 337 (Sept. 15, 1929), p. 114. long paragraphs, significant dialogueBaroja, apparently soornlng any attempt at euphony, ms as ordinary words, rather unifora sentences, few modifiers, short paragraphs, dialogue which is often trivial. The early life of a writer must always be considered in forming an estimate of his work, or searching for the foundation of his philosophy of life. However, tha back­ ground of these two is apparently of little help in de­ termining what causes the difference in their outlook, since ^tokens, the optimist, the reformer^ was roared in poverty and deprivation, while Baroja, the pessimist, the cynic, enjoyed comparative freedom from economic stringency. Charles Dickens was born in the island of Pertsea, February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk In the Savy De­ partment , with pay always inadequate for the needs of hie family of eight children. He went from bad to worse and finally landed in the prison of the Karshalsea, where his family lived with him for a time, with the exception of Charles, who was entirely self-supporting at the age of ten.® Charles had had little schooling, and the foundation of his later large and colorful vocabulary was very likely v laid by such books as his father owned: Roderick Bandom. Peregrine Pickle. Humphrey Clinker. Tom Jones, the Vicar of ^Stephen Leacock, Charles Dickena (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1934), chap. I, "Child­ hood and Youth of Dickens•* 6 Wakefield. Don Quixote. Gil Bias. Robinson C m s o e . .irabian lights, and 3&lea of the Genii* His father finally earn into a legally of several hundred pounds; and whan Charles • was twelve, he w e sent to Wellington House Aeademy, where he remained for two years. At fourteen,.he became an at­ torney's clerk; and at this time develeped sueh a passion for the theatre that he went every night; once he decided to become an actor and learned some parts preparatory, to this career, but by the time opportunity came for .him to go forward in this field he had embarked upon the vocation of shorthand reporter in the old House of Commone, and upon the avoeation of writer under the name of Bos. Seacock says: People w h o .seek for the literary background on which'Diokens's work was based will find it part­ ly in the books he read thus for himself as a child; these books" and presently the streets and sounds of Tendon and the glittering gaslight of the cheap Tendon stage. But the real basis and background was his instinctive observation of the life about him,* 7 Pio Baroja was bora in 1872, in a little village in the Basque country near San Sebastian on the north coast of Spain• His father was a mining engineer and a poet of some talent, He began his education at the age of four jears. After a memorably torturous seoozSary schooling, he studied medicine, failed his fourth-year examinations at the diversity of Valencia, and ^Leacock, op, cit. 7ma., p. 5. - 6 - finally obtaiaeft his degree in Madrid in 1893. For two years he practiced as the municipal physician in Ge®tona, in the Basque province of Guipaaooa• But despite the alluring opportunities with widely variod types, and despite the leisure to put his original observations into short sketches which : he later published in his first book (Vidas Sotnbrias, 1900), the profession of medicine was distasteful to hi® and he abandoned it to rent a bakery in T&drid with his brother Ricardo. Business was bad enough to enable him to continue to write, and particularly to extend his education as a realist by intimacy not only with the working classes of Madrid but with the lowest life of its cafes, back-streets and gutters.

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