ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the heart of the author analysis, beyond the works under examination, is of four of Miller’s texts: Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels, The Form of Victorian Fiction, Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire and Fiction and Repetition. Some of the details of Miller’s readings of particular novels the author include briefly to give a sense of how Miller interprets Dickens. Miller asserts that by demonstrating that escape from prison of the city to a divinized nature and a divinized past is identical past, The Old Curiosity Shop functions as a radical criticism of Oliver Twist, as does the death of Smike in Nicolas Nickleby. Miller provokes thought for consideration of Dickens. Thomas Hardy gives a window into Miller’s ways of reading. In the chapter on the refusal of involvement, Miller begins with a declaration: “NOWHERE IN HARDY’S WRITINGS is there a description of an originating act in which the mind separates itself from everything but itself”.
