Charlotte ElizabethのHelen Fleetwoodに描かれた事実 : 新救貧法と1833年工場法の実態
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A novelist, Charlotte Elizabeth, has scarcely been mentioned except at footnotes in the history of the English novel. When occasionally mentioned, she is described as a severe critic, not as an artist, demanding to better the condition of child and female labour in the factory. That is partly true, since she achieved a modest reputation as a demonstrator of industrial chaos among her contemporaries, and what she wrote might indirectly affect labour legislation. Nevertheless, her Helen Fleetwood is one of the most impressive works of art above all things. In this novel the Green family are touchingly drawn through their lives under the influence of two acts, the New Poor Law and the Factory Law. The New Poor Law is relentlessly applied to the Greens composed of a grandmother, four grandchildren and adopted Helen Fleetwood, a sixteen-year-old girl in the village L. Therefore the Greens except the eldest grandchild Richard Green are driven out to the industrial town M. that is modeled after Manchester. A twelve-year-old girl Mary Green and Helen are employed at a cotton factory, and an eight-year-old boy Willy Green is at a silk mill. Another infirm grandchild James Green does some work at home, making small articles to sell which his grandmother the widow Green peddles. But they are destitute of the necessaries of life more in M. than in the village L. As Helen suffers from intolerable conditions under which she works in the factory, her health breaks down and she dies. So Richard loses his lover. The younger members of the Green family in the factory town are also under practically no protection of factory acts and in grave danger of losing their lives or injuring their morality. Charlotte Elizabeth calls attention to the same helplessness of many factory workers neglected by factory owners who are keen to just increase their own profits. This novel shows the author's attitude toward two current laws, the 1834 Poor Law and the 1833 Factory Act. She harshly criticizes the New Poor Law, indicating that it lacks humanity. She also exposes many failures in the administration of factory acts of 1833, and, as one of factory reformers, emphasizes that effectual factory acts should be enacted. One of her followers Elizabeth Gaskell too writes factory novels such as Mary Barton. Her non-problem novel 'Lois the Witch', however, is also like Helen Fleetwood. The plot of the former is borrowed a great deal from one of the latter. Gaskell replaces a factory of Manchester which symborizes virtual lawlessness with Salem in America where many poor persons were committed for Witch Trial. Lois is accused as a witch and is hanged in spite of innocence. The author, like Charlotte Elizabeth, insists on the importance of doing justice especially to wretched persons.
- 2000-09-01
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