Buried Narratives: Exhuming the Mother's Story in Oliver Twist

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-266
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Maternal Inheritance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
First Time ◽  
Critical Consideration

Initially, Oliver Twist (1839) might seem representative of the archetypal male social plot, following an orphan and finding him a place by discovering the father and settling the boy within his inheritance. But Agnes Fleming haunts this narrative, undoing its neat, linear transmission. This reconsideration of maternal inheritance and plot in the novel occurs against the backdrop of legal and social change. I extend the critical consideration of the novel's relationship to the New Poor Law by thinking about its reflection on the bastardy clauses. And here, of course, is where the mother enters. Under the bastardy clauses, the responsibility for economic maintenance of bastard children was, for the first time, legally assigned to the mother, relieving the father of any and all obligation. Oliver Twist manages to critique the bastardy clauses for their release of the father, while simultaneously embracing the placement of the mother at the head of the family line. Both Oliver and the novel thus suggest that it is the mother's story that matters, her name through which we find our own. And by containing both plots – that of the father and the mother – Oliver Twist reveals the violence implicit in traditional modes of inheritance in the novel and under the law.

I. Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453 To 1509

1961 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Lander
Keyword(s):  
Married Woman ◽  
Maternal Inheritance ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time

Attainder was the most solemn penalty known to the common law. Attainder for treason was followed not only by the most savage and brutal corporal penalties and the forfeiture of all possessions, but in addition the corruption of blood passing to all direct descendants, in other words, by the legal death of the family. Before proceeding to an examination of the effects of parliamentary acts of attainder in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries it is necessary first of all to define the scope of forfeiture for treason as it affected landed property. Bracton's classic definition of forfeiture had involved for the traitor ‘the loss of all his goods and the perpetual disinheritance of his heirs, so that they may be admitted neither to the paternal nor to the maternal inheritance’. Feudal opinion had always been very much opposed to the stringency of this conception and the Edwardian statute De Donis Conditionalibus, confirmed implicitly by the treason statute of 1352, had protected entailed estates from the scope of forfeiture, thus leaving only the fee simple and the widow's dower within the scope of the law. The wife's own inheritance or any jointure which had been made for her, because they ante-dated her husband's treason, as distinct from her right to dower which did not, were not liable to ultimate forfeiture—though a married woman could claim them only when ‘her time came according to the common law’, that is after the death of her husband when she ceased to be ‘femme couvert’. This equitable principle was confirmed by a statute of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 which, however, included for the first time the rule that lands held to the use of a traitor were also included in the scope of forfeiture. Thus, by 1388, of the lands held by a traitor (as distinct from the wife's inheritance and jointure), only those held in fee tail fell outside the scope of the treason laws. This loophole was closed by Richard II in 1398 when Parliament declared forfeit entailed estates as well as lands held in fee simple and to the use of a traitor, thus reverting with one exception to Bracton's view of forfeiture.

scholarly journals PLOT ELEMENTS AND MOTIVES OF THE NOVEL “CHEVENGUR” IN PLATONOV’S SHORT STORY “POTUDAN RIVER”

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
N. Mikhaylovna Malygina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Planetary Scale ◽  
The Family ◽  
Analytical Review ◽  
Eugene Onegin ◽  
Intertextual Connections ◽  
First Time

The relevance of the article is determined by the researcher of the semantic poetics of Platonov’s story “Potudan River”. We carry out an analytical review of the lifetime criticism and articles of modern researchers about the story, on the basis of which we formulate the purpose of the study, due to the need for a new approach to the interpretation of the work and the identification of the principles of its poetics. The novelty of the article is determined by the identification of the multilayered symbolism of the title of the story, which allows to establish the insufficiency of the conclusions that the content of the “Potudan River” is limited to the family theme. At the level of micropoetics we reveal symbolic details that connect the content of the story with the motive of love for the distant, medical and construction subjects and revealing the planetary scale of the author’s thinking. For the first time, it was established that Platonov’s story “Potudan River” was written based on part of the plot of the novel “Chevengur” – the love story of Alexander Dvanov and Sonya Mandrova. We show that the heroes of the story “Potudan River” Nikita Firsov, Lyuba Kuznetsova and Nikita’s father are doubles of the characters in the novel “Chevengur” by Sasha Dvanov, Sonya Mandrova, and Zakhar Pavlovich. The connection of the image of Lyuba with the archetype of the bride is considered. The paper reveals for the first time the intertextual connections of the story “Potudan River” with the poem “The Bronze Horseman” and the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” by A. Pushkin, in the texts of which the writer found material for modeling the ordinary fate of the hero. Multi-level connections of the content of the story “Potudan River” with Platonov’s artistic world, which is a complete metatext, are found, which opens up new opportunities for determining the role of the editing technique and the principles of returning to the plots and motives of the works of the 1920s, as well as their transformation in the writer’s work of the 1930s.

Dickens’s National Novel

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Josephine McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
National Borders

Bleak House is a novel saturated with figures of unsettlement, in which characters uprooted by their social conditions operate within a plot animated by unsettlement, in an affective world dominated by feelings of pity and sympathy for those who have been displaced. Thresholds recur in the novel as privileged sites of heightened emotion. The novel’s preoccupation with unsettlement is best understood in the context of mid-century bourgeois aspirations to reimagine the nation as a place in which all citizens might enjoy freedom of movement. In framing this vision, Dickens draws on two contemporary discourses, one drawn from emigration, especially Caroline Chisholm’s popular ‘family emigration’ schemes; the other from public discussions about the law of settlement in the context of the New Poor Law. The latter were attempts to regulate where the poor could live, in the context of the bureaucratic reorganization of national geography that occurred at this time. Throughout, however, the novel displays profound ambivalence about Britain’s engagement with the wider world, expressed most clearly through its antagonism to overseas philanthropy, which it sees as a misdirection of national feeling. The novel’s vision of the nation, underpinned by its commitment to mobility and an ideology of freedom of movement within, but not beyond, the nation, produces its particular formal features and thematic emphases on mobility and movement, and its preoccupation with thresholds—doorsteps, entrances, and finally national borders—as places at which political decisions about inclusion and exclusion are made.

Dealing with Domestic Violence towards Complicating the Rights Discourse

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Suneetha ◽  
Vasudha Nagaraj
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Critical Consideration

The discourse on domestic violence in India is animated by the language of rights and empowerment in which domestic violence is seen as the condition that needs to be overcome. It imagines the women facing violence as would-be citizen-subjects, who can actualise their right against violence once the law and institutions are set in order. Inadequate institutionalisation of right against violence and inadequate individuation of women are understood to be the major problems here. In this article, we problematise these two assumptions by taking a close look at women’s interface with public institutions in the context of domestic violence. One, we point to the resources women need to mobilise in the family and community to actualise their right against this violence; two we argue that institutionalisation of this right has led to women being subject to governmental mode of power and three, we discuss the actual deployment of this right in everyday activism as a political goal, than a guarantee against violence. We suggest that a critical consideration of the working of this ‘right’ is required to understand the changing contours of women’s battles with this violence in the post-1990 period.

At Every Bloody Level: A Magistrate, a Framework-Knitter, and the Law

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Steedman
Keyword(s):  
Poor Law ◽  
The Family ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Village ◽  
Justice Of The Peace ◽  
The Way

In November 1806, Nottinghamshire magistrate Sir Gervase Clifton was visited at his house by one of his poorer neighbours, “a pauper of the village of Wilford.” (Wilford is about three miles from Clifton village and Clifton Hall.) William Kirwin was attempting to sort out complicated domestic arrangements within the framework of the law that governed his family's life. He told the magistrate about his mother-in-law, a widow, currently living in Tollerton. “She is in a very distressed state,” he said; he and his wife wanted her to come and live with them, “so that she may be better taken care of & kept from want.” He had asked the Wilford overseer for permission to take her in but had been refused. The family had tried to help after her husband died: her son (with wife and children) had moved into her cottage on the understanding that “they would take care of her during her Life & allow her good victuals drinks firing & good cloathing.” Something had evidently gone wrong with that arrangement, but we are not to know what, or how, as the entry in Clifton's notebook breaks off here (as is the case with many pieces of magisterial business he recorded). Kirwin was aware of local ratepayers and tensions between parishes in regard to their financial responsibilities under the old Poor Law: what he proposed would keep his mother-in-law from “troubling the … parish of Wilford,” he said. She was financially independent, or at least on marriage she had “brought a many good with her & such as a beds & other goods.” He knew that a justice of the peace was a point of appeal in the vast, complex edifice of ancient statutory law (poor and settlement law) that dictated the way he lived his life. We can discern something of William Kirwin's understanding of these matters from the fragmentary, incomplete account of what he said, and the strategies he used in telling his story; we can discern some of Sir Gervase's from the action he did not take in this case, and what he did not have his clerk record.

scholarly journals New Standards in the Application of the Law on Protection Against Violence in the Family in the Republic of Srpska

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Marić
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Criminal Protection ◽  
Republika Srpska ◽  
First Time

Criminal protection against domestic violence in the Republika Srpska was established by the enactment of the Criminal Code in 2000, when domestic violence was, for the first time, legally defined as socially unacceptable behavior with a criminal sanction. A few years later, in 2005 to be precise, the first Law on Protection from Domestic Violence was adopted, the provisions of which took the basic form of the criminal offense of domestic or family violence from the Criminal Code and defined it as a misdemeanor. In order to prosecute perpetrators of violence faster and more efficiently, as well as faster and better protection of victims of domestic violence, a new Law on Protection from Domestic Violence was passed in 2012, which is also the most important legal regulation in this area in Republika Srpska. The said law underwent several amendments, and as such was in force until May 1 of the current year, when the Law on Amendments to the Law on Protection from Domestic Violence, which was adopted by the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska on The sixth regular session held in September 2019, which prescribes new legal solutions, which will be discussed in the continuation of the paper.

scholarly journals De Roberto and Faenza: Ideological Shifts in I Viceré

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-266
Author(s):  
Annamaria Pagliaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Political System ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Family Saga ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between De Roberto’s I Viceré and Faenza’s film adaptation focusing on the two texts’ different ideological positions and narrative strategies. Both texts depict the mechanisms employed by a ruling caste to remain in power through a period of acute social change. The novel, through a multifocal narration, gives agency to individuals for shaping their environment and presents them in their alienating subjective deformation of reality, casting the historymaking process and any interpretation of it in an ambivalent light. The film focuses on the family saga and on the ongoing trasformismo of the Italian political system bringing to the fore its resonance with the present. The characters, particularly Consalvo as the principal voice, are represented as victims of a larger socio-political mechanism.

scholarly journals Próba analizy Rodziny wilkołaka Siemji wurdałaka Aleksieja K. Tołstoja, jej przekładu pióra René Śliwowskiego i adaptacji filmowych

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 247-288
Author(s):  
Wojciech Kajtoch
Keyword(s):  
Film Adaptations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Film Directors ◽  
The Family ◽  
Horror Story ◽  
First Time ◽  
Complementary Analysis

An attempt at a complementary analysis of The Family of the Vourdalak Siemja wurdałaka by Aleksey K. Tolstoy and its translation by René Śliwowski and its film adaptationsThe article discusses a classic horror story from 1839. It presents those elements of the novel typical of Romanticism, as well as the ones with which Tolstoy exceeded his era. The Polish translation of the piece, published for the first time in 1975, as well as four film adaptations of Tolstoy’s story were analyzed, trying to show how film directors interpreted its universal and timeless themes.

scholarly journals First records and a new genus of comb-tailed spiders (Araneae: Hahniidae) from Thailand with comments on the six-eyed species of this family

2020 ◽  
Vol 724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Andrés Rivera-Quiroz ◽  
Booppa Petcharad ◽  
Jeremy A. Miller
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
New Genus ◽  
New Combination ◽  
Phylogenetic Position ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Genus ◽  
The Family ◽  
Two New Species ◽  
First Time

The family Hahniidae is reported from Thailand for the first time. The genus Hexamatia gen. nov. and two new species, Hexamatia seekhaow gen. et sp. nov. and Hahnia ngai sp. nov., are described and illustrated. DNA sequences are provided for all the species reported here. The phylogenetic position of the novel genus Hexamatia gen. nov. and its relation to Hahnia are discussed. Based on these results, a new combination is proposed for Hexamatia senaria (Zhang, Li & Zheng, 2011) gen. et comb. nov. = Hahnia senaria. Known distribution of the species Hahnia saccata Zhang, Li & Zheng, 2011, originally described from China, is expanded. A brief review and notes on the taxonomy of the six-eyed hahniids are included.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fyodor Dostoevsky ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
The Family ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Law ◽  
Utopian Thought

In Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky uses the commission of a double-murder to initiate and organize a diverse set of philosophical reflections. This volume contains seven essays that approach the novel through philosophical themes in order to offer both readings of the text and continuations of its reflections. The topics addressed include Dostoevsky’s presentation of mind and psychological investigation, as well as the nature of self-knowledge; emotions, in particular guilt and love, and their role in overcoming ambivalence toward existence; the nature of agency; the metaphysical conditions of freedom and the possibility of evil; the family and the failure of utopian thought; individuality and the authority of the law; and Bakhtin’s conceptions of dialogue and polyphony and his views of the self and generative time.

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