Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [15]
But there are people of so refined and delicate a nature that they cannot bear the contemplation of these horrors. Not that they turn instinctively from crime, but that criminal characters, to suit them, must be, like their meat, in delicate disguise. A Massaronie in green velvet is quite an enchanting creature, but a Sikes in fustian is un-supportable. A Mrs. Massaroni, being a lady in short petticoats and a fancy dress, is a thing to imitate in tableaux and have in lithograph on pretty songs; but a Nancy, being a creature in a cotton gown and cheap shawl, is not to be thought of. It is wonderful how Virtue turns from dirty stockings, and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and becomes Romance.
Now, as the stern and plain truth, even in the dress of this (in novels) much exalted race, was a part of the purpose of this book, I will not, for these readers, abate one hole in the Dodger’s coat or one scrap of curl-paper in the girl’s dishevelled hair. I have no faith in the delicacy which cannot bear to look upon them. I have no desire to make proselytes among such people. I have no respect for their opinion, good or bad, do not covet their approval, and do not write for their amusement. I venture to say this without reserve; for I am not aware of any writer in our language having a respect for himself, or held in any respect by his posterity, who ever has descended to the taste of this fastidious class.
On the other hand, if I look for examples and for precedents, I find them in the noblest range of English literature. Fielding, Defoe, Goldsmith, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie—all these for wise purposes, and especially the two first, brought upon the scene the very scum and refuse of the land. Hogarth, the moralist, and censor of his age—in whose great works the times in which he lived and the characters of every time will never cease to be reflected—did the like, without the compromise of a hair’s breadth, with a power and depth of thought which belonged to few men before him and will probably appertain to fewer still in time to come. Where does this giant stand now in the estimation of his countrymen? And yet, if I turn back to the days in which he or any of these men flourished, I find the same reproach levelled against them every one, each in his turn, by the insects of the hour, who raised their little hum and died and were forgotten.
Cervantesf laughed Spain’s chivalry away by showing Spain its impossible and wild absurdity. It was my attempt, in my humble and far-distant sphere, to dim the false glitter surrounding something which really did exist by showing it in its unattractive and repulsive truth. No less consulting my own taste than the manners of the age, I endeavoured, while I painted it in all its fallen and degraded aspects, to banish from the lips of the lowest character I introduced, any expression that could by possibility offend, and rather to lead to the unavoidable inference that its existence was of the most debased and vicious kind than to prove it elaborately by words and deeds. In the case of the girl in particular I kept this intention constantly in view. Whether it is apparent in the narrative, and how it is executed, I leave my readers to determine.
It has been observed of this girl that her devotion to the brutal housebreaker does not seem natural, and it has been objected to Sikes in the same breath—with some inconsistency, as I venture to think—that he is surely overdrawn, because in him there would appear to be none of those redeeming traits which are objected to as unnatural