Charles Dickens

Charles

Dickens

LIFE

Dickens was born on the South Coast of England in 1812. He was a son of a clerk in the Navy Pay Office.

childhood: At the age of 12 an event marked him deeply: because of debts, his father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea (the debtors' prison), and Charles was obliged to leave school and to go working in a blacking factory. This experience contributed to identificate himself with poors and oppresseds.

education: After four months he left the factory and retourned at school.

employments:

clerk in a lawyers'office;

he learnt shorthand and became a parliamentary reporter;

journalist.

travels: He travelled in America, Switzerland, France and Italy, and he wrote accounts of his journeys.

family: He married the daughter of a colleague, Mary Hogarth, but they separated after 22 years. When he was 46 he felt in love with an 18 years old actress, Ellen Ternan, and set-up an establishment for her. But this fact, for his Victorian mind, was often a source of doubt and depression.

interests: Dickens was also an amateur actor and theatrical producer.

social commitment: He commited himself to a variety of social causes, as the rehabilitation of prostitues or the improvement of London sewerage.

He died prematurely in June 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

WORKS

He wrote:

14 novels: He is the best representative of the Victorian Novel: infact his production is mainly made up of novels, all published in serial form.

Oliver Twist: It is the story of an orphan boy. By this novel, Dickens makes a critic of the workhouse system and denounces the degradation of slum life.

Nicolas Nickleby: It is an adventure novel which represents an attack on the mismanagement of private school.

The Old Curiosity Shop: It is a pathetic story about the ill-treatment of children in the industrial age.

Barnaby Rudge: It is a historical novel set in 18^th century.

Martin Chuzzlewit: It was written after Dickens's visit to the United States and it is a satire on American vulgarity.

Dombey and Son: It talks about the decline and fall of a capitalist who loses his money but finds his heart.

David Copperfield: It is an autobiographical novel, based on his painful experiences during the hard work in factory.

Bleak House: This novel is against the law's delays. For this novel he drawed from his experience in the Law Courts.

Hard Times: It is a denunciation of the wrongs of society and the terrible conditions of industrial workers.

Little Dorrit: Is is mainly set in the Marshalsea prison and represents a denunciation of prisoners' sufferings, because they lived in horrible conditions.

A Tale of Two Cities: It takes place in London and Paris during French Revolution.

Great Expectations: It is considered his masterpiece; it talks about the dramatic experiences of a young boy during his life.

Our Mutual Friends: It represents a protest against the poor laws.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: It's a crime story left unfinished because of his death.

short stories

A Christmas Carol: It is a ghost story set in Christmas time.

two periodicals:

Household Words;

All the Year Round.

FEATURES AND THEMES

humour: Dickens had a natural sense of humour, remarkable in character drawing, in dialogue and in whole episode. His greatest comic novel is The Pickwick Papers: each episode is pure humour, he put characters in funny situations. His characters are endowed with common sense and with a certain philosophy of life.

pathos: Often humour is mingled with pathos: this makes the reader smiling through the tears.

characters: Dickens's characters are not heroes and heroines. He drew most of them from reality.

portrayat of English life: In Dickens's works sets are always richly detailed, because of the personal observation of the author. He particulary observated the parts of Londons where the poors lived, and he described the British homelife, the school system, the domestic life, the middle-class people, with every detail of manners, appearance and dress.

Christmas: In many of his novels we find the recreation of the merry atmosphere, with all the traditional feature (music, dancing, the holly, the turkey, the ghost stories).

VALUES

Dickens's novels are defined as social or humanitarian novels, because he used the fiction to denounce the injustices if Victorian society. But he didn't suggest any specific means of reform, because he never questioned the basic values of his time. For him the happiness consisted in hard work, romantic love and family life.

LIMITATION AND MERITS

Negative aspects:

stories are often too full of unlikely events;

main characters are often superficially portrayed;

there is an excessive sentimentalism;

comic scenes are often exaggerated, so as to became grotesque;

too melodramatic tragic scenes.

Positive aspect:

his powerful imagination has contributed to create a large number of situations;

a large variety of characters, expecially the minor ones;

the style is fluent and effective;

his occasional use of symbolism is striking;

he created vivid and memorable pictures.

REASONS FOR POPULARITY

Charles Dickens is the most representative writer of the Victorian Novel. His typical victorian profile and his genius as a story-teller, made him appreciated by millions of people all over the world.