{"id":700,"date":"2013-09-23T15:38:14","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T13:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=700"},"modified":"2013-09-23T15:38:14","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T13:38:14","slug":"infinite-layers-to-the-cake-something-else-on-oliver-twist-and-the-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2013\/09\/23\/infinite-layers-to-the-cake-something-else-on-oliver-twist-and-the-death-penalty\/","title":{"rendered":"INFINITE LAYERS TO THE CAKE: SOMETHING ELSE ON OLIVER TWIST<\/em> AND THE DEATH PENALTY <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re-reading for the umpteenth time Oliver Twist<\/em> I finally paid attention to something I\u2019d ignored in the prologue by Philip Horner to the Penguin Classics edition (2002). This refers to Dickens\u2019 publicly expressed opinions on capital punishment and how they should colour our reading of Fagin\u2019s paradoxically unseen public execution. <\/p>\n

Intriguingly, both Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray attended the hanging in 1840 of one Fran\u00e7ois Courvoisier, a valet who had murdered his aristocratic master. Anticipating Foucault\u2019s seminal Discipline and Punish<\/em>, Thackeray gives a very direct testimonial of the loss of effectiveness of public executions. He describes in his article \u201cGoing to see a man hanged\u201d (http:\/\/www.exclassics.com\/newgate\/courv.htm<\/a>) how the 40,000 members of the crowd enjoyed the proceedings as a grim holiday. Deeply shocked by the scene, Thackeray closed his eyes and thus missed the prisoner\u2019s actual death. When he writes that \u201cI came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for the murder I saw done,\u201d he sounds as appalled by the callousness of the crowd towards Courvoisier\u2019s ugly punishment as by the state\u2019s cruel assassination of a citizen. Do read the whole text, it is certainly a magnificent chronicle.<\/p>\n

Dickens, Horner informs us, first manifested his negative view of capital punishment in a letter of 1845 to Macvey Napier, editor of the prestigious Edinburgh Review<\/em>. Do read the letter (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/25854\/25854-h\/25854-h.htm<\/a>) and see how for Dickens the death penalty \u201cproduces crime in the criminally disposed, and engenders a diseased sympathy\u2014morbid and bad, but natural and often irresistible\u2014among the well-conducted and gentle,\u201d as all feel its fascination. Dickens also worries that the rabble that attends executions may be tempted to read them as martyrdom rather than exemplary punishment and, so, glamorise crime. Gentlemen are supposed to feel horror, though Thackeray and Dickens were actually among the pioneers to turn the tide against public executions, and not really representative of their (professional) middle-class background.<\/p>\n

Horner mentions in passing a set of letters to the editor on capital punishment that Dickens wrote in 1846, as he revised Oliver Twist<\/em>. Have a look at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/home.earthlink.net\/~bsabatini\/Inimitable-Boz\/etexts\/dickens_on_capital_punishment.html.<\/a> <\/p>\n

and read Beppe Sabatini\u2019s extensive analysis. Basically, as he says, \u201cDickens had become more conservative on Capital Punishment, and changed his stand from demanding total abolition (1846) to advocating private executions (1849).\u201d<\/p>\n

Returning to the theme he had failed to develop for Napier\u2019s Edinburgh Review<\/em>, and in view of the popular craze for a series of executions, Dickens finally published his opinions in the Daily News<\/em> after his own very brief editorship. The letters, which amount to more than 13,000 words, are quite a substantial consideration of the matter, although, essentially, they expand on the arguments advanced to Napier. Dickens writes \u201cin no spirit of sympathy with the criminal\u201d but believes that \u201ca firm and efficient stand may be made against the punishment of Death.\u201d He disputes vehemently the reality of last-minute repentance and religious reformation, questions the right of the state to kill, and, a well-known argument today, prefers that \u201chundreds of guilty persons should escape scot-free\u201d rather than kill a single innocent by mistake. <\/p>\n

The second letter refers directly to Courvoisier\u2019s execution. Like Thackeray, he describes an \u201codious\u201d mob: \u201cNo sorrow, no salutary terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness; nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes.\u201d In the third letter, Dickens insists that the gallows is no deterrent at all, whether the crime is impulsive or deliberate. Stopping to consider what he calls hate crimes, and we call domestic violence, he claims that the threat of the gallows is by no means women\u2019s ultimate defence but even \u201cthat which lures and tempts him on.\u201d Dickens further argues that since executions are no good to prevent crime, they should be stopped. With impeccable logic, he rejects the eye-for-an-eye argumentation, claiming that if we obey the Mosaic law in this, perhaps \u201cit would be equally reasonable to establish the lawfulness of a plurality of wives on the same authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1849, after attending a second execution, that of Frederick and Maria Manning, Dickens wrote two more letters, in this case to The Times<\/em>. In the second he defends for the first time, private rather than public execution \u201cwithin the prison walls.\u201d Sabatini explains how the report of the Royal Commission (1864-6) \u201cleading to new legislation in 1868\u201d which ended public executions borrowed some arguments from Dickens himself. The last persons executed in Britain (always by private hanging) were murderers Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans, in 1964. The death penalty, Wikipedia confirms, \u201cwas abolished in all circumstances in 1998\u201d all over Britain. Just yesterday.<\/p>\n

Dickens finished Oliver Twist<\/em> in 1839, before he attended Courvoisier\u2019s hanging. Now I need to think why he showed in this novel a negative attitude regarding the application of the death penalty to Fagin (as it is obvious from the fact that his execution is not narrated) whereas, in contrast, he imagined for the murderer Sikes an accidental public hanging in the course of his getaway. Fagin, remember, has killed none but clearly prompts Sikes to kill Sikes\u2019 own disloyal girlfriend Nancy and is condemned as an accessory to the crime.<\/p>\n

Is this a case of poetic justice? Or is this, rather, hypocrisy? Let the novelist do what the judge should never do…<\/p>\n

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Re-reading for the umpteenth time Oliver Twist I finally paid attention to something I\u2019d ignored in the prologue by Philip Horner to the Penguin Classics edition (2002). This refers to Dickens\u2019 publicly expressed opinions on capital punishment and how they should colour our reading of Fagin\u2019s paradoxically unseen public execution. Intriguingly, both Dickens and William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oliver-twist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}