Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T15:55:46.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The critique of sentimentalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Luc Boltanski
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Get access

Summary

The indulgence of sentiment

Descriptions of the heart touched by an unfortunate's suffering, or of tears shed on hearing a story of an act of kindness, are not confined to the novels of Richardson. By becoming linked to the social question with the development of pauperism, such descriptions continue and even flourish in the next century. The privileged objects of tender-hearted tears are always innocent and persecuted young girls in distress, but their misfortunes are now placed in an urban setting. Similarly, their condition of economic poverty prevails over their domestic dereliction. They suffer because they are poor, lacking resources, lost in the jungle of the towns, like Eugène Sue's heroine Fleur de Marie, of whom Anne Vincent-Buffault justly remarks that she ‘is almost always in tears, either because she is moved by the kindness of her benefactors or because she is tormented by the memory of her past life. Naive and melancholic, her angelic figure is never more touching than when she is bathed in tears’. But without doubt it is Dickens who establishes the closest connection between sentimental tender-heartedness and social denunciation by placing creatures with a natural capacity for sympathy in the hostile and artificial environment of the big industrial town.

Type
Chapter
Information
Distant Suffering
Morality, Media and Politics
, pp. 96 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×