Research Information System
13th Biennial Husse Conference, Eger, Hungary, 26 - 28 January 2017, pp.41
Abstract
Charles Percy Snow’s The Conscience of the Rich as a Mirror of English Society[1]
One of the most prolific yet underrated novelists, Charles Percy Snow wrote novels in which he reflects the social, political and cultural atmosphere of his time. As Georg Lukacs suggests, Snow used typical characters in his fiction as a mirror of the English society in order to show the realistic representations of life. Snow’s novel The Conscience of the Rich (1958) contains the story of Lewis Eliot’s close friendship with the Charles March family, a powerful Jewish family as close to the British ruling elite as a wealthy family could get. Young March does not want to represent the qualities that his father burdens him. In this novel, Snow explores the borders of the ruling class and the strict rules of the ‘old’ Jewish families embedded within the British financial system. He also displays the fringes of the left and right wings of 1940’s Britain. As a matter of fact, this paper not only does elaborate on how The Conscience of the Rich reflects the life in Britain through the eyes of a young oppressed man but also the political atmosphere of the era is explained.
Key Words: Snow, Lukacs, Politics, English Society
[1] Yrd. Doç. Dr. Yıldırım Özsevgeç Recep Tayyip Erdogan University/ Department of English Language and Literature