There has been plenty of commentary about concerning Charles Dickens, as it is the 200th year of his birth. Here is an entry, written back in 2006 at The Freeman, about him, which looks pretty interesting, and some of the comments (not all of which are very praiseworthy) are worth reading.
I never really quite got into reading Dickens. At school, I had to study such books as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, but the books were studied in such a way that my teacher – very much a man of the Left – was so keen to use Dickens as an examplar of socialist fury that I was turned off. I can, of course, admire one of Dickens’ trademarks – his ability to give crazy names to his characters.
Writers such as George Orwell, GK Chesterton and the late Christopher Hitchens have written memorably about Dickens. In fact, an essay on Dickens was the last thing that the Hitch ever wrote.
I am not really sure, though, whether it is right to claim that Dickens was a man of the Left, or at least not in the terms that contemporary writers might assume. He lacked, as far as I could tell, a clear-cut system of political philosophy. Dickens was certainly a hater of what he would have called “Manchester Liberalism”, and his prose certainly helped build up that picture of the Industrial Revolution, with its ugly factories and images of downtrodden workers, that is very much how people often view the tumultuous changes in 19th Century Britain. There is, as is often the case with such people, a bit of a reactionary streak in him, too. For me, when I do come across his writings or see plays or films based on his books, there is a strong theme of sentimentality, which has tended to put me off, it has to be said. But maybe I should dust off one of his novels and see if I can see what many others have seen. At least he’s not quite as exhausting to read as Tolstoy.
I think that the Left read into Dickens what they wanted to read – as they do. I could be wrong, but I didn’t take any clear political or even philosophical stance from his works. The only thing I did take from them is his deep interest in human nature and a resultant great understanding of it. Add to that his ability to portray and explain that nature in writing, the ability to spin a great yarn, and a great sense of humor – and you get one of the best (if not the best) fiction writers of all time.
only thing I’ve ever taken from Dickens is complete mind crushing boredom
Dickens was, of course, a Fabian, along with Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Marie Stopes. He had a deep and abiding love for his fellow men – which modern Fabians would find hard to live with.
I read most of his novels aged around 13, possibly to young to fully appreciate them.
I think you have touched his central core though Johnathan, by calling him a Sentimentalist. His inbuilt sense of right and wrong, Justice and fear of debt, stemmed from his own father having being imprisoned for debt. And it is a recurrent theme in his writings.
He was also what our modern Literati intelligensia hate most, but in his case stay shtum about, namely a Populist.
His work was episodic, being printed first in installments in magazines, rather than full book form, and he was the master of the cliffhanger. It has been said that if he were alive today, he would be writing Soaps or Hollywood blockbusters, or be a stand up comedian. I’m sure that is true, as he was a very funny writer (and performer) with a brilliant ear for dialogue. I like to think that if he were writing today, he would have done something as brilliant as Steptoe and Son or Only Fools and Horses.
Well he certainly wasn’t a member Grumpy. Dickens died in 1870, and the Fabian Society was founded in 1884.
As for this deep abiding love that Wells and Shaw supposedly had for their fellow, men, have you ever read any of their more extreme comments, rather than just their works?
I never actually READ Dickens (as opposed seeing and hearing numerous TV and radio adaptations) until my mid-40s, when I had to, as part of studying for an English degree as a mature student.
In addition to the various qualities mentioned above, I found him to be, above all, wonderfully funny.
But he was certainly no socialist. For instance, for all its rich complexity and portrayal of the many absurd and low-life characters, the plot of Bleak House revolves around Lady Dedlock’s desperate need to preserve her honour – which even Inspector Bucket seems to put above most other considerations.
Personally, I don’t rate him. I was forced to read Great Expectations and found it very dull and forced. I’m sure he must be good by some measure but not by any of mine.
Hard to say what his actual political leanings were from just that work and I haven’t really cared to study him more deeply but by my understanding, if nothing else, his hyperbole and misrepresentation of reality (escaping the colonies was not a capital offense cf Magwitch) certainly gave the statists plenty of ammunition to advance their agenda.
I can’t like Dickens: he seems to me to sneer at his lesser characters’ weaknesses – and Gawd, he’s verbose. Give me Pratchett, who has an Austen-like tolerance for human failings and far better names than Dickens.
Great Expectations is not among his greatest works, in my truly humble opinion. OTOH, Beak House certainly is.
I do mean to get around to Bleak House sometime as it has a theme that may resonate.
Thus far, the best Dickens has done for me is that his birthplace has a free car park that is handy for Commercial Rd in Portsmouth. It’s somewhat been superseded by Safeway.
We are used to a briefer style now, and I very much have to be in the mood to stick with his novels – yet individual scenes and characters have moved me very much.
Statists have certainly made great use of his depictions of poverty and have succeeded in making Scrooge the exemplar of laissez faire. Yet I see this as the use that was made of Dickens, not of Dickens himself. I don’t think he thought much about politics or economics generally, only concentrating on those things which outraged himself. That leads to a characteristic type of erroneous thinking, closely linked to his sentimentality.
Yet if one does end up concentrating all one’s outrage on a few selected causes, his choice of slavery as an evil to passionately oppose was a good call.
A minor point, I read somewhere that the funny names arose because in those days the law of libel allowed people to sue if their names had been used for a baddie character even if there was no resemblance between the real person and the fictional character.
First and last: Pickwick Papers and Edwin Drood.
I certainly can’t take credit for this saying, but it sure resonates:
“Dickens was paid per word he wrote, and it certainly shows.”
Any set of metrics can and will be gamed for maximal profit. Even if the result is bloated well past what it reasonably could be.
Yeah, and Mozart wrote too many notes. We really have come a long way, baby.
“Dickens was paid per word he wrote, and it certainly shows.”
Specious argument, and always was. Every Journalist/writer was paid by the word back then, but the common people loved what he wrote. Name three of his contemporaies anywhere near as famous to us today?
Yes, but Dickens is now famous for being famous, not for being read. I can’t think of any early/mid-Victorian author who’s actually read today, except by specialists. Kipling and Conan-Doyle, I suppose, but they’re a bit later.
Utterly wrong PFP.
Dickens isn’t famous for being famous, he has never been out of print or off the screen. He wasn’t a Victorian Celebrity Big Brother winner you know, but a bloody good and popular writer, the number of words he wrote for profit doesn’t matter a jot, it was the quality of them. They resonated then, and they resonate still.
Let’s take an older example… Shakespeare.
I can tell you of three of his contemporaries that are still read and their plays performed today, but obviously not as often or the writers as famous. Why? because they wern’t anywhere near as good.
But if you are really struggling for a contemporary of Dickens still read today (which rather exposes your lack of reading) try Edgar Allan Poe or Mark Twain.
And Dickens’s chum Wilkie Collins, who wrote the odd blockbuster or two.
Dear PersonFromPorlock,
I’m really curious about your adopted nomme de guerre.
It’s a relatively obscure literary reference (the chap who allegedly interrupted Coleridge’s flow as he was composing Kubla Khan), which argues some degree of reading on your part, yet you represent yourself as a near philistine.
Is there an element of Devil’s Advocacy here?
As I say, just curious.
Natalie Solent at February 7, 2012 10:19 PM: in those days the law of libel allowed people to sue if their names had been used for a baddie character…
Mark Twain had an experience of that sort. His co-author for The Gilded Age suggested the name “Eschol Sellers” for the novel’s absurd protagonist.
“…when the book had been out about a week, one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic looking white men that ever lived called around, with the most formidable libel suit in his pocket that ever–”
Nowadays the opposite attitude seems to be in force, vide the practice of Tuckerization; some authors have offered Tuckerization as a raffle prize or charity auction item.
I recall reading A Tale of Two Cities in middle school. What little remains in my memory doesn’t quite place Dickens in the ideological company of modern liberals. The passage involving the nobleman and the four servants who serve him his daily chocolate certainly appeals to the sorts who whine about income inequality, but the fact that his opulence was (like all other pastimes of the nobility) funded by the taxpayers resonates with libertarians and conservatives.
Where he really contrasts with modern liberals is his presentation of the French Revolution. IIRC, the modern Left tends to think that the Revolution was more good than bad. One does not get that impression reading Dickens: one sees a bloodthirsty French mob repay evil with evil.
Orwell was another writer whose professed political views might sometimes seem at odds with the tenor of his writing.
I wonder if he would be amused by this picture(Link).
A sentimentalist he certainly was, the death of little Nell being only the most glutinous of many glutinous scenes.
Wasn’t that very one, in fact, the original prompt for the now well-worn quote “it would take a heart of stone not to laugh”?
Indeed it was, Andrew, courtesy of Wilde, who gave rise to that other great aphorism, this time courtesy of Whistler:
Wilde: “I wish I’d said that”
Whistler: “Don’t worry, Oscar, you will.”
For my money, Dickens is by some distance the greatest of our novelists (AN Wilson, by the way, disagrees; he says Thackeray wrote better novels but far fewer of them. It’s a bit like pitting Fawlty Towers against Frasier/Cheers/Mash). As a master of the language he is equalled in my view only by Greene and Wodehouse, but overall his range and depth far exceeds that of any other writer in English that I know of, although individual achievements (Wilson’s point, really) such as Vanity Fair (societal panorama), Wuthering Heights (grand romance), Atlas Shrugged (scope, ambition) sometimes match Dickens’.
As to his politics, I have Ackroyd’s biography languishing on my shelves, unread, in which condition it has been for a decade, so I coudn’t say with any great amount of knowledge or conviction but my sense from his novels is that Dickens was a coercive interventionist but, like most people, also a man ultimately without coherent principles.
Poe is also unreadable except by Lit majors, and Clemens was a generation later than Dickens.
Gah! If you are over the age of 30 and don’t get something out of Dickens then you should address your own inadequacies.
Much of it is magnificent-particularly when read aloud.
If you don’t like the early and light-hearted Pickwick Papers or the sentimental but beautifully-turned A Christmas Carol why not try the glorious products of his maturity like Our Mutual Friend?
Yes, he was a sentimentalist; yes, he was not philosophically consistent let alone being a philosopher, but he liked and cared about people and wrote with rage about what he perceived as their abuse.
Like Shakespeare, there is comedy in his tragedy and dark shadows in his comedy.
Although I agree with Oscar Wilde about Little Nell, tastes and underlying precepts change.
Have you read The Taming Of The Shrew recently or laughed again at the persecution unto madness of Malvolio in Twelfth Night? They are not comfortable even to the most libertarian of modern sensibilities.
Now go and bloody read David Copperfield if you haven’t already!
Honestly!
Poe is also unreadable except by Lit Majors?
Balls. How dare you. Try Lovecraft. Or Henry James. And if Young Werther is anything to go by, Goethe’s unbearable.
Actually, I have a tiny soft spot for Lovecraft.
Among novels, unreadable are: War & Peace, Rob Roy (literally unreadable), High Rise (Ballard at his most flatulent).
“But if you are really struggling for a contemporary of Dickens still read today (which rather exposes your lack of reading) try Edgar Allan Poe or Mark Twain”
I just finished Julves Vernes Around the world in 80 days, I have to say its one of the best books I’ve ever read. Bought his next one about a baloon trip to Africa
Anybody for Eden Phillpotts?
It simply represents my conviction that the world is a pretty prosaic place and that intellectuals rather often need to be reminded of the fact lest they fly up their own arses and disappear.
And what do you mean, near philistine?
RAB: Dickens never out of print? Of course not, he is on the reading list of English Literature courses worldwide, in perpetuity. Lets see how he fares in a free market instead of being enforced by state monopoly.
Among novels, unreadable are: War & Peace
Unless you are on a year-long assignment in Kuwait.
Poe is unreadable? Dickens is unread? Your stock just dropped significantly, PFP.
Or unless you read it in Russian.
Twain was 35 when Dickens died, that’s contemporary enough for me, PFP.
If anyone wants “unreadable” look no further than James Joyce’s Ulysses, quite literally. When the publishers went back to the original manuscript to produce a special edition in the 80s, the original book was found to be so full of typos as to make no sense whatsoever.
Yet the original version was hailed as a masterpiece. Critics eh? Tee Hee!
Poe and Dickens unreadable??? Obviously this person is not a writer. I might add some other names from the era that pop into my mind are Alexandre Dumas (I devoured every one of his huge novels when I was a teenager) and of course Victor Hugo. I certainly agree on the comments about Verne as well. He knew how to spin a bloody good yarn! And he fired his moon shot off not many miles from where the real one took place many decades later…
Dumas, yes, and Stendhal. And, um, wossname, Trollope. And, notwithstanding Rob Roy’s unreadability, Scott, the British Dumas (has anyone else ever made that observation; now I think about it, it seems obvious).
Mind you, all this approbation of a select few just might have about it the whiff of ideological conformity…
My sense of morality and to a large extent my sense of humour were formed by the fiction of that era. I don’t quite know how I would see the world if it weren’t for Dickens, George Eliot (who I vaguely remember being bored by in Daniel Deronda, but who makes up for it in Middlemarch, which is fiction for actual grown-ups, a rare achievement), Twain and a host of others. And Dickens creates London for me much in the same way that Quijote creates Spain. It’s that basic. I can’t even imagine myself going to London and not having a copy of Bleak House or David Copperfield in my trusty Tescos bag, to be taken out and browsed while having tea in a Greek caff in some back street. Dickens and London go together. He pretty much dreamed the entire city into being.
I agree that Dickens wasn’t a systematic thinker politically. But then, what halfway decent writer ever was? The question is irrelevant. One doesn’t choose a novelist for his or her politics (although there are a few I tend to avoid for theirs – Ken Follett would be an example).
I assume that “Poe is unreadable” was some weird kind of joke or boutade. Any secondary school Lit teacher will tell you that Poe is one of those rarest of writers who actually makes teenagers want to read, I would say because of rather than in spite of his peculiar stylistic foibles. You’d be hard pressed to find another writer who inspires such universally positive reactions among teenagers. Maybe Salinger but he only wrote one book (to speak of, anyway). And Twain is grand but kids tend to write off Huck Finn as a children’s book and only discover much later, if ever, that it isn’t at all.
Did someone mention Atlas Shrugged? If you haven’t read it, and you care at all for good writing, don’t bother: it’s utterly dire (even though, admittedly, Rand does have quite a nice line in set-piece descriptions). The characters are laughable, the story is ridiculous, and the monologues cringe-making in the way they preach to the reader. Rand is as good an example as you can get of how having all the right political opinions is no recommendation at all for a writer. HG Wells was a complete turd but Mr Polly is a rollicking read (and the film, with John Mills, is a little known gem). That’s just the way it goes.
If Dickens were alive now he would be writing Final Fantasy VII fan-fiction.
The power of Tifa Lockhart’s sexiness would compel him.
A writer who has not written Lemon has not truly written at all.
Perhaps it’s just me but I always thought there was something Smithian (perhaps even libertarian!) in this passage from David Copperfield. In it, David is admonishing his wife for not pushing for lower prices and being too generous in business transactions.
– ‘The fact is, my dear,’ I began, ‘there is contagion in us. We infect every one about us.’
…
‘It is not merely, my pet,’ said I, ‘that we lose money and comfort, and even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we incur the serious responsibility of spoiling every one who comes into our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out ill because we don’t turn out very well ourselves.’
…
‘ unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented… We are positively corrupting people…’
This is just a small aside in the book and I don’t know Dickens politics at all but it sounds like a good criticism of the welfare state in miniature.
Envidio-
You did it now. I touched off a riot here once by saying that Atlas Shrugged had enough substance to deserve a better writer than Rand.
As for Dickens…
He has a lot of inertia in the US. “Great Expectations” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Oliver Twist,” and “David Copperfield” are on probably every high school reading list in this country. And The Kingdom of the Rat make an animated “A Christmas Carol” that runs in heavy rotation every year.
That ruined it for me. I hated high school, and the beardy leftie walking liberal guilt complexes that passed for teachers at my school ruined a lot of authors for me.
Steinbeck and Twain, IMHO, were both good enough to recover from the savagery inflicted upon their work by AP English teachers. Dickens, OTOH, may have been great but he’s not that great. Or too much damage has been done.
Sunfish, when I was in school back in the Workers’ Paradise, at the beginning of each quadmester I would find out what was the literature-class curriculum for that term, and made sure I read everything on the list before they got to it in class. That way I was able to form my own opinion on each book, and it also allowed me to pay no attention in class, while still being able to pass the exams. I know it’s too late for you now – my condolences.
Alisa, I was told many years ago, that schools in the Soviet Union used to teach Dickens as if the London, and indeed the whole of the UK he described, was contemporary and not historical, to illustrate the glories of Communism. Any truth in that?
No idea, RAB. I left just after 7th grade, and up to that time we were not taught any foreign literature at all (I read Dickens and others on my own). They may have taught him to older students though.
You can put that question on my FB page though, and there’s a good chance that some of my Russian friends would be able to answer that. I’m curious myself.
Even Fox News (admittedly the deeply unreliable Shep Smith) said that Dickens spent his life “campaigning for social justice”.
Charles Dickens (as far as I know) never used the term “SOCIAL JUSTICE” in his entire life.
He wanted rich people to help poor people – directly and by their own voluntary choice.
As for literature…..
As one of my favourate novels is Atlas Shrugged (which I read in one day – back in my security guard youth) I am clearly not entitled to an opinion about literature.
Paul, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, everybody is. I have never read Rand, because I keep getting told by people who’s opinion I trust on literary matters, that her writing style is crap, and as writing style is very important to me, and as I have a fairly good grasp on the ideas expressed in her books, I’m not about to rush out and buy one now.
I’ll try that then Alisa, unless anyone round here knows the answer.
Sunfish, now if you’d have seen this…
http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/page/3028/Dr+Marigold+&+Mr+Chops/197
as I did last year, it would have put Dickens in a whole different light for you. To say Callow was utterly fuckin brilliant is an understatement.
I’m surprised that you read Atlas Shrugged in a day, Paul. It took me at least three.
I’ve read an entire page. Honest.
Alisa, did you read that page in the original American?
Dickens, like Shakespeare and Conan Doyle, actually had an imagination and was creative. All the above knew how to write entertaining and intelligent stories.
Conan Doyle, were he alive, would likely adore the BBC’s Sherlock, and detest the period adaptations (especially the Guy Riitchie crap) as uninspired. Dickens, too, would likely despise the “faithful” “heritage tv/cinema” adaptations of his novels.
Most of today’s British novelists think that creativity is a dirty word, and cannot write popular fiction, because they are obsessed with pandering to critics or writing trashy brain-dead crap.
You’ll find more writing talent in a slash-fiction/Lemon website than you will in any British publisher.
Actually, the world only recovered from the 97 financial crisis for the same reason that it had another crisis in 2008- JKK Rowling was writing Harry Potter between those dates! Those books persuaded kids to read books and literature- and to spend money whilst doing so! Think of all those tree plantations, now idle because no-one is writing great literature that the world wants to buy! Maybe someone could persuade her to take up the further adventures of the Potter family? for the sake of the world economy???
I see someone had to mention Rand. FWIW, I enjoyed We The Living, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, apart from the Galt speech, and regarded all of them as good to read. The books got my undivided attention, not just because of the ideas, but the narrative and the suspense, especially in AS when I read it the first time. The only duff note is the speech and the Galt character, which lacks definition. (Rearden is my favourite character). Even my wife, who is a Catholic and not in sympathy with some of Rand’s ethics, was impressed.
So I guess it comes down to all kinds of variables and opinion. I am currently working through PG Wodehouse and the collected short stories of Kipling. Pure gold.
A good point was made about HG Wells. Brilliant writer, even though his collectivist ideas were revolting.
Nuke: yes, of course – what else? And, to my defense, Laird made me do it.
Jonathan: indeed. Writing is art, and art is always a matter of taste.
Mendicant makes an interesting “what if” point, and “Sherlock” is indeed brilliant.
Oh, and if only Rowling would let put HP on Kindle, life would be perfect.
…*in* my defense…
Mr Willmar these days I could most likely not read such a long book at all.
Getting old is not fun.