The magazine article “Lazarus Lotus Eating” is often mentioned in academic literature as the first published Victorian nineteenth-century journalistic article which was indicative of a shift in the portrayal of opium dens.
The article is especially noteworthy it is still more ambiguous and complex in its attitude towards the Orient than the journalistic articles and fictional opium-den-portrayals that would follow it. Hence, in “Lazarus Lotus Eating” the narrator undergoes a great change as his initial racist and xenophile attitude towards the Oriental foreigners changes drastically in the course of the story to feelings of pity and empathy for the poor, pathetic and miserable Oriental opium addicts.
However, there are very few academic texts which provide detailed analysis of Dickens's “Lazarus Lotus Eating” which is necessary to understand the article in its full extent. Academic research has thus not yet fully spotted the article’s ambiguous attitude towards the Orient which constantly alternates between fear and fascination.
The paper seeks to close this gap in research by analyzing how Dickens depicts the ambivalent British attitude towards the Orient in his article “Lazarus Lotus Eating” through the portrayal of Lazarus, the opium den, the Oriental opium smokers, the opium master Yahee and the English women in the opium den.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Opium, the Orient and the British Empire - Fears Relating to Matters of Imperialism, British Culture and National Identity
3. Fear and Fascination in Dickens’s “Lazarus Lotus Eating”
3.1. The Narrator’s Xenophobic Attitude towards the Beggar Lazarus and his Chinese Countrymen
3.2. Revealing Racial Stereotypes, Prejudices and Xenophobia in Victorian Society - The Narrator’s Fascinating Journey through London’s East End to the Opium Den .....
3.3. The Description of the Opium Den as a Place of Delight and Trepidation and the Ambiguous Portrayal of the Pitiful and Dangerous-looking Oriental Opium Smokers
3.4. The Secrets of the Mysterious Old Opium Den Owner Yahee
3.5. English Woman in the Opium Den - Anxieties about Racial Purity and the Destabilization of English Domestic Life
3.6. An Attitude of Tolerance and Understanding - The Narrator’s Changed Perception of Lazarus and the Oriental Opium Smokers
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography
5.1. Primary Literature
5.2. Secondary Literature
- Quote paper
- Sabrina Rutner (Author), 2016, Dickens's Early Portrayal of a Victorian Opium Den in "Lazarus Lotus Eating" (1866), Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/369942
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