Crime And Punishment In Charles Dickens’ Novels

Charles Dickens(1812-1870)is known as "the greatest novelist of the19 th century".His works were closely linked with The British society and people,and he used humor,satire and true expression to show the social style of Victorian Britain.Dickens was deeply influenced by Christian culture,together with his meticulous observation of social system,social environment,combined with their own ideal describes the portraits of the confrontation between good and evil characters,personal crime,social problems appear in almost every one of his works,the author through the characters of life experience to solve the issues of social order.Dickens believed that in the era of secularization of religion,law played some role of religion to some extent.Due to the prominent crime problem,the author wanted to emphasize that there were loopholes in law when it became the mainstream system to regulate the behavior of social members,and religious morality should play a role of remedy at this time.His novels express his social ideal,that is,a fusion of law and religious morality,so as to establish a benign social environment.This paper takes Dickens’ novels as the research object and analyzes them in three parts:The first part summarizes that in the era of secularization of religion,law became the main tool to regulate and manage the society,but Dickens found problems existing in the process of law governance,which led to the intensification of social contradictions.While criticizing the law,he also placed hope on the law and thought it was an indispensable part of social management.Due to the deficiency of law,he wanted to let religion return.The second part mainly discusses the necessity of the return of religion in the Victorian era,how his religious thoughts are reflected in his novels,and the problems caused by his lack of religious belief.At the same time,there are some problems that cannot be solved by religion,such as the wicked who cannot be saved.The frustration of religious ideals forced him to think about making up for it from the perspective of morality.In the third part,after discovering the defects of law and the inadequacy of religion,Dickens established a harmonious society in which religion,law and morality were integrated and formed a "ring" to make up for their shortcomings.As a realistic writer full of humanitarian thoughts,he pointed out a mild way for the reform and development of British society at that time.