Narrating the Prison: Role and Representation in Charles Dickens ...

This book investigates the ideological underpinnings of prison narratives as well. However, in contrast to critics like Seltzer, Bender, Miller, Hale, and Grass, I do not link these understandings of the prison to narrative structures but to the way in which prison novels and films as a whole narrate the prison. More specifically, I analyse the representation of the prison experience, i.e., the interaction between prisons and their inmates, and the use of prison metaphors. In order to determine whether prison narratives critique or buttress the prison, questions like the following will be addressed: Is the major protagonist a criminal or not? Is he likeable or not? How is the relationship between the major protagonist and the ‘rest’ of the prison population depicted? How is the interaction between prisoners and prison officers envisioned? Which prison metaphors are used

This study also transcends the traditional Foucauldian or Panopticon-centered paradigm by demonstrating how narrations of imprisonment work in relation to the discursive delimitations of cultural categories like race and gender. More specifically, the book shows that in contrast to Dickens’ novels, most prison narratives of the twentieth century implicitly code colored and homosexual inmates as ‘real’ criminals. Hence, they sanction the existence of prisons because evil villains are argued to exist. In a second step, they also make relatively clear statements concerning the question of who belongs into prison and who does not. In other words, they do not only constitute a form of pro-prison propaganda. They additionally describe colored and homosexual prisoners as criminals, and are openly racist and homophobic systems of representation.

Since well-known prison novels and films are far more likely to be an important source of the public’s ideas about prisoners and prisons than government reports or campaigning documents, this book discusses fictional narratives that were read or viewed by a significant number of recipients. An investigation of the way in which they narrate the prison is necessary to demonstrate how prison novels and films construct popular ‘misunderstandings’ of the prison. The investigation of prison metaphors essentially follows the same purpose.