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

Following this definition, prison literature deals with the experience of imprisonment and its consequences. Indeed, this book concentrates on novels that centrally address the prison experience, i.e., the dynamic interrelationship between the prisoner and his surroundings, the prison world. More specifically, it focuses on narratives that deal with “the crucial position of the prison subject” as well as the subject’s resulting “identity crisis” (Fludernik “Carceral Topography” 46).

This takes me to a definition of the prison film. As Paul Mason has shown (“Screen Machine” 282), the prison film is not a proper genre like the western or the science fiction film. Following Mike Nellis (“British Prison Movies” 2), one may characterize prison films as fiction films which take the experience of imprisonment and its consequences as a primary theme, and which are usually (but not always) set in a penal institution. Hence, western films or science fiction movies may qualify as prison films if they centrally address the prison experience and/or its consequences.

Which prison novels and films serve as the book’s corpus First of all, this study focuses on Dickens’ mature fiction because in novels like Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, prisons, prisoners, and prison metaphors are of paramount importance. Generally speaking, and in comparison with other nineteenth-century novels, it is in Dickens’ fiction that the prison figures most prominently.⁴ Charles Dickens’ father John Dickens was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824, and many of his books deal with the subject at length. But even without any knowledge of the biographical background, the dominance of the prison theme in Dickens’ work is obvious. The decision to concentrate on Dickens was also motivated by the lack of film adaptations of other nineteenth-century novels. Dickens’ novels, on the other hand, appear perennially attractive to filmmakers. According to Marsh, “more films have been made of works by Dickens than of any other author’s” (204).

In comparison with nineteenth-century texts, prison novels of the twentieth century focus much more extensively on inside views of prisoners. Many ‘newer’ prison novels are written from the perspective of an imprisoned first-person narrator and offer us access to the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations.