3。1 Dickens’ ambivalence about the Revolution and the revolutionaries

Dickens had a swinging attitude towards the French Revolution and the revolutionaries, mainly owing to his bourgeois ideology and social status, and the Glorious Revolution Britain had gone through。 Dickens sympathized with the oppressed。 However, while he exalted the overthrow of the incapable aristocracy and the corrupt system of feudal France, he detested the violent means, moral disorder and dehumanization about which the revolution has brought。

At first, Dickens championed the Revolution with enthusiasm due to ordinary people rising up against oppression, throwing away outdated traditions and worthless pomp and ceremonies that had once surrounded the old regime, and the heroes coming up from the ordinary regarded as the savior of this old decadent country, hence he spoke highly of this revolution as the spirit of that age。 He depicted the preparation before the Revolution in an epic way, such as “As a whirlpool of boiling water has a centre point,, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat,, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar。”(Dickens 221) But as the time passed and the revolutionaries became increasingly crazy, the revolution culminated in the execution of the royal family and the notorious Reign of Terror, a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the Revolution and marked by mass execution of enemies of the revolution。 Dickens, then, became shocked and was at a loss, wondering and afraid of revolutionary spirit being tainted with darkness and human blood。来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-

As for the revolutionaries, Dickens did sympathized with their sufferings and showed great admiration for their courage, faith, spirit of rebellion and perseverance at the first hearing of the revolution。 However, as the Revolution became more and more malicious, the aggregate of distress and sorrow preserved since pre-revolutionary time had only to be collectively converted into its opposite and more extreme form, acting as an angry mob。 Swept up by the terror, Dickens’ sympathy and applaud had been diluted and finally given up by himself, despising and abhorring the viciousness and mindlessness as the revenge becoming unavoidable, “their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep。”(Dickens 271)