Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Life

• Family→ he was the son on a naval clerk, at 1st they had the money to send Charles to school, but after they had a bankrupt and Charles was obliged to leave school and to work.
• Occupations→ he was a worker in a blacking factory (were he was fascinated by orphans) when he was young, then after the school Dickens became a clerk in a lawyer’s office, a journalist and a lecturer.
• Education→ he studied in a school in Chatham until 1823 when he began to work. He continued to study at Hampstead (a school for boys of the lower middle class) in 1825 when the condition of his family improved.
• Prison→ He was put in prison where he had known the condition of the prisoners and he fascinated by these persons.
• Love→ In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth but the marriage wasn’t happy and they separated in 1856. He fell in love with a girl of 18 years old Ellen Ternan and this relationship caused to Dickens a sort of depression because he was influenced by the Victorian moral principles. Charles probably fall in love with his sister in law whom he described in some of his work.
• Travels→ He went to America where he obtained enormous success. At 1st he was fascinated by America (he called it “treasure land”), but then he change his opinion because in America there where a lot of Pauperism.

Features and Themes

• Realism→ Dickens included in his works a lot of details especially when he described London slums. He never mentioned repugnant objects but they were replaced by the generic term “dirt” or by a redundancy of adjectives.
- Dostoevsky: There were criminals in his books and their most frequent crime were a murder or a rape.
- Dickens: There are criminals in his books, but the crimes they committed were only murders, in fact rape was connected with sex and was avoided.
• Dualism→ Dickens created “specular characters” i.e. 2 characters symbolizing respectively good and evil. He at 1st used only flat characters, from 1850 he began to use round ones. Each characters of Dickens was drawn from the observation of real people and it was an individual (different from the other one). The author was not interest in the inner life of his character but in the external qualities.
• 2 Types of children→
1. Sentimental and idealized children: a product of the Romanticism, he is an uncorrupted child, he is responsible of his parents or relatives, they think about death as a kind of Eden. They are very religious (Oliver Twist and Little Dorrit)
2. Realistic child: an accurate kind closer to Dickens’s experiences (David Copperfield and Pip). They haven’t comprehension of death at all, they get bored when they go to Church.
• Humour→ It was used by Dickens especially when he described some aspects of the lower-classes. It was now gentle and subtle, now paradoxical and sarcastic.
• Metaphorical style→ Dickens used a lot of metaphor:
- “Dombey and sons”→ the locomotive symbolized commercial progress.
- “Little Dorrit”→ the debtors’ prison symbolized the Victorian society.
- “Hard Times”→ the shaft into which Blackpool died represented the industrial system, which destroyed human lives.
- “Bleak House”→ the fog symbolized the oppression of the Victorian Age.
• Limitations:
- The earlier plots lacked a real organic unity and were too full of unlikely events.
- His main characters were often superficially portrayed.
- His sentimentalism was often excessive.
- His comic scenes were often exaggerated.
- His sentimentalism was often excessive.
- His comic scenes were often exaggerated.
- His tragic scene were often too melodramatic.
• Merits:
- His powerful imagination had created an inexhaustible number of incidents.
- His characters cover a wide range of people and in particular the minor ones with
their foibles and eccentricies.
- His plots could hold the reader’s attention till the end.
- His style was fluent and effective.
- His use of symbolism was striking.

Works

➢ Stretches by Boz→Journalistic Sketches that talked about episodes of everyday
London life. (1836)
➢ The Pickwick Papers→A series of adventures of a club of amateur sportsmen. It
was published serially. (1836/1837)
➢ Martin Chuzzlewit→Satire of American vulgarity, it was written after Dickens’s 1st
visit in USA. (1843/1844)

➢ Barnaby Rudge→ Set during the anti-Catholic riots in 1780. (1841)
➢ A tale of Two Cities→ It was published in serial form in 1859 in 8 montly instalments. It is set in London and Paris and covers 18 years from 1775 to 1893, when Louis XVI was executed.
It is divided in 3 books:
- Book 1→ The story opens in 1775 when Dr. Manette, who was imprisoned in 1757 by order of the Marquis of St. Evrémonde, is released and goes to London with his daughter Lucie.
- Book 2→ Lucie and Dr. Manette had to testify in a trial against Charles Darney, an English speaking Frenchman who is the nephew of the Marquis of St. Evrémonde. Thanks to their testimony and to his resemblance to an English barrister, Sydney Carton, Darney is freed. He falls in love with Lucie (who was also loved by Carton) and he married her in 1783. Meanwhile in France the Revolution moves forward in the Reign of Terror.
- Book 3→ Darney goes to Paris to save an old family servant but he is imprisoned in the Bastille. In the trial against him is revealed his real identity (a member of the aristocrat family) and he is sentence to death. But Carton decides to replace him, because they are very similar, and he died at the guillotine in stead of Darney. So Carton expiates his wasted life.

➢ A Christmas Carol→ A ghost story with a moral. There are 2 interpretation: a tale for children and a critic on the social evil (bad condition of the humble people and of the criminals).
➢ David Copperfield→ autobiographic novel. The protagonist was the alter ego of Dickens.

➢ Oliver Twist→ It was at 1st published instalments in 1837-38 then in a single volume edition in 1838. The novel is set in London in the early 19th cent. The protagonist is Oliver whose mother, a member of a well-off family of the middle class, died when he was born so he was left in a Workhouse. He is starved and brutalized by Bumble, the parish beadle, who apprentices him to an undertaken. For a rebellion Oliver is drive out the Workhouse and is sold to a grave digger. Then Oliver goes to London where he enters in a gang of pickpockets. Their leader is Fagin, a Jewish dealer who lives on Jacob’s island (one of the most poor quarters in London). During this period Oliver met a girl who died to defend him. Mr. Brownlow tries to rescue the boy but Oliver is kidnapped by the gang thanks to the help of a mysterious person called Monk. Finally the gang is punished, Oliver discovers that Monk is his half brothers and Mr. Brownlow adopts the boy and starts to educate him.
- Targets: Dickens wanted to show the real life of the criminals (he didn’t want to idealize them), to criticize the Poor Law and the Workhouses and to draw the attention of the middle class to the corrupt administration and to the inhumanity of certain law.
- Themes: Pauperism, Criminality, opposition between Fat characters (men in the workhouses) who symbolized the richness and Slim characters (the children) who symbolized the misery and poverty.
➢ The Old Curiosity Shop→ a story about the ill-treatment of children in the industrial age.
➢ Bleak House→ Symbolic story against the abuses of the law.
➢ Hard Time→ Talked about the bad condition of the industrial worker.
➢ Little Dorrit→ It was a story of a girl and it denouncing the horrible condition of the prisoners.
➢ Great Expectations→ It appeared in weekly instalment in 1860, then was published in 3 volumes in 1861 and in a single volume edition in 1862. It talks of Philip Pirrip (Pip) a boy who had great expectation to became a gentleman (he is accused of snobbery). He is an orphan who lives in a village with his sister (who tortures psychologically Pip because she doesn’t want her brother in her house) and her husband Joe Gargery (who is a Blacksmith). Pip frequents the house of Miss Havisham who is leaved by her lover on their wedding night so she has since that day stopped all the clocks in her house. In this house Pip meets Estella who doesn’t consider him because he works in Joe’s blacksmith shop and who represents the revenge of Miss Havisham to all the men (she has to attracts the men and to leave them). Pip obtains a fortune by an unknown benefactor to receive a gentleman’s education. He goes to London where he meets Abel Magwitch and the protagonist helps this convict to escape from prison. Pip discovers that Abel is his benefactor, the father of Estella and also the lover of Miss Havisham. Pip helps Magwitch escape the death penalty but fails. The men is imprisoned and is sentence to death and finally he died. Pip goes to the East and he returns to England 11 years later where he meets Estella, who now is a widow, and he is finally re-united with her.
- Autobiographical elements: There are the introduction of some experience of Dickens (the blacking factory is reproposed in the blacksmith shop) and it is narrates in 1st person.
- Themes: apprenticed to life, fading away of hope and illusions and the sense of isolation and loneliness, solitude.
- Endings: Dickens created 2 ending→
1. Pip come back to his own village but he isn’t re-united with Estella.
2. Pip is re-united with Estella. The author chooses this ending because he has to satisfied the expectation of the time.
➢ The Mystery of Edwin Drood→ a novel of mystery and sensation which was unfinished.

Novel of Formation (Bildungsroman)→ “David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations”. Story of the characters from the infancy to the adult age.