CHARLES DICKENS

His life is meanful even to understand the work of the author.

LIFE AND WORKS
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on the southern coast of England, in 1812. He had an
unhappy childhood. His father was imprisoned for debt and at the age of 12 he was put to work
in a factory. This is a very important event because after this personal experience will condition
him a lot and, in his novels, he will strongly reflect this experience.
When the family finances improved and his father was released, he was sent to a school in
London. At 15, he found employment as an office boy at a lawyer's and studied shorthand
(stenografia: tipo di scrittura veloce fatta di simboli, fa prendere appunti velocemente. In parlamento si
utilizzavano gli stenografi perché veniva trascitto tutto ciò che veniva detto. Lo stenografo era un vero e
proprio mestiere) at night. By 1832 he had become a very successful Shorthand reporter of
parliamentary debates in the House of Commons, and began to work as a reporter for a
newspaper.

 So, Dickens learned shorthand, and this permitted him to become a parliamentary reporter
afterwards, which is to say that Dickens, first, before being a novelist was a journalist.
In 1833 his first story appeared and in 1836, still a newspaper reporter, at first, he adopted the
pen name "Boz", publishing Sketches by 'Boz' (only to publish these issues, a temporary thing
when he go to novels he was Charles Dickens) a collection of articles and tales describing London's
people and scenes, written for the periodical Monthly Magazine.
It was immediately followed by The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The
Pickwick Papers, which is the abbreviation of this work), which was published in instalments (in
serial form) and revealed Dickens's humoristic and satirical qualities. Dickens married Catherine
Hogarth in April 1836, and during the same year he became editor of Bentley's Miscellany and
published the second series of ‘Sketches by Boz'. After the success of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens
started a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible
rate, although he also continued his journalistic and editorial activities
Why the complexity of this novels?
It is a little bit the same as happened in the Augustan Age because when authors published in
instalments in serial form of course had advantages and disadvantages:

 It had advantages because people could read a novel without spending so much money,
the same that happened in the Augustan Age, at the same time, however, the author in
order to make the story more appealing and attractive for the readers, as happened with
Defoe, he continuously introduces new characters in the novel, because if one copy was
boring it could happen that readers didn't buy the newspaper anymore.

 Negative aspect: the introduction of continuous new characters made the plot more
complex, that's why this complexity.
  At the same time, he continued his activity as a journalist, this activity as journalist will
permit him to describe facts in his novels with the eyes of the journalist, which is to say in a
very analytical way, analyzing all the situations and presenting it in their reality, we are
inside realism now. So, when he wrote novels he continued to write in a sort of journalistic
style, very analytical, and so he presented reality as it was.
Oliver Twist was begun in 1837 and continued in monthly instalments until April 1839. Although he
was a republican, Dickens took strongly against the United States when he visited the country in
1842. In October, because he went the United States for a series of lectures, all his novels are set
in England expect two of them:

 one is American Notes, his American experience,

 the other is Martin Chuzzlewit of that year his American Notes appeared, in which he
advocated international copyright and the abolition of slavery. Martin Chuzzlewit, part of
which was set in America, appeared in 1844
 one year after the publication of A Christmas Carol, the first of Dickens’s successful
Christmas books.
The protagonists of his autobiographical novels, Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1850) and
Little Dorrit (1857), became THE SYMBOLS OF AN EXPLOITED CHILDHOOD confronted with
the bitter realities of slums and factories.
Other works are the novels of his MATURITY: (there is also a difference between his early and
later production).

 Bleak House (1853),

 Hard Times (1854) and
 Great Expectations (1861), which deal with the conditions of the poor and the working
class in general. These last.
By the time of his sudden death in Kent, in 1870, Dickens had drawn adoring crowds to his public
appearances in England, Scotland and Ireland; he had met princes and presidents and had
amassed a fortune. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. In Westminster abbey you find all the
most important intellectuals buried there.
Lots of his novels, especially the early production deal with the problem related to the
exploitation of children, infact

 childhood will be one of his main themes,

 the other is social criticism.
These two main themes belonged two different periods of his production. He deals with the
exploitation of children because he himself experienced that, he was set to work in a blacking
factory, (fabbrica di lucido da scarpe), and he remained that until 12, even when his father was
realised from prison, infact he was very angry with his mother because she had kept him there
even when his father was out. The experience of work in factory and the experience that he
personally lived marked him forever, that's why this becomes one of the main themes of his
novels.
CHARACTERS
Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th century realistic, upper-middle-class
world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. He was the creator of characters and
caricatures who live immortally in the English imagination: Mr Pickwick, Mr Gradgrind, Scrooge
and many others.
His aim was to arouse the reader’s interest by exaggerating his characters’ habits as well as
the language of the London middle and lower classes, like lodging-house keepers, shopkeepers
and tradesmen, whose social peculiarities vanity and ambition he ridiculed freely, though
without sarcasm. He was always on the side of the poor, the outcast and also the working class.
Children are often the most important characters in Dickens’s novels
A lot of instances of good, wise children as opposed to worthless parents and other grown-up
people illustrate in fiction their verse of the natural order of things:

 CHILDREN become the moral teachers instead of the taught, the examples instead of the
imitators. The novelist’s ability lay both in making his readers love his children and putting
them forward as models of the way people ought to behave to one another.

A DIDACTIC AIM
This didactic stance was very effective, since the result was that the more educated, the wealthier
classes acquired knowledge about their poorer neighbours, of whom they previously knew little or
nothing. Dickens’s task was never to get the most wronged and suffering to rebel, or even
encourage discontent, but to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems without
offending his middle-class readers.

STYLE AND REPUTATION

Dickens employed the most effective language and accomplished the most graphic and powerful
descriptions of life and character ever attempted by any novelist. He did so with his careful choice
of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures, juxtapositions of images and ideas, hyperbolic
and ironic remarks. He is considered as the greatest novelist in the English language.

NOVELS: SETTING
With a few exceptions, all Dickens novels deal with the degraded urban setting of the English
industrial towns of the first half of the 19th century. The most remarkable exception is Pickwick
Papers which, in keeping with its quality of picaresque novel is set in a variety of places, mostly in
the countryside. And infact all the rest are set in the industrial towns, and this is set in the
countryside and describes the process of transformation in England in time.

 The protagonists, in fact, move from one place to another by stage-coach (carrozza), and
see the last examples of the "merry" England of the 18th century, sill untouched by
industrialisation.
  The second exception is Martin Chuzzlewit, which is partly set in America.
Most of Dickens' characters belong to the lower-middle class, the class which Dickens knew best
and from which he was the first to draw the role of protagonist in fiction.
He gave voice to their economic worries, their fear of social instability, their anguish about
poverty, their small ambitions, with a sympathy that betrays his early sharing of the same
experiences.

 The fact that he was part of this society and he had shared their destiny made him feel very
close to these people whose conditions he knew very well.
When he creates characters belonging to other social classes, either the aristocracy or the
workers, his knowledge of their problems is less secure and more stereotyped. So, he was just in
the middle as these people that's why he did not support the aristocracy, and that's why he
attempts at writing about them he writes stereotypes.

PLOTS AND CHARACTERIZATION

The plots of Dickens' novels show the effects of having had to comply with the taste of his readers
and with the requirements of serialization When he wrote he had always to take into account
that the novel was destined to a publication in serial form
Broadly speaking, his readers belonged to two categories.

 On the one hand, there were lower-middle class readers who found their lives and
problems mirrored by his novels. They enjoyed seeing themselves as protagonists of stories
that followed patterns they knew from direct experience, but at the same time they
expected that the novels would have that happy ending they could rarely expect in real
life.

 On the other hand, there were his well-off readers of the upper classes, who began to
develop a humanitarian feeling towards the less lucky majority and who accepted being
moved by the sad stories he told them. This soothed their consciences while their
sentimental social remorse and the assurance provided by the happy endings in his novels,
authorised their political choice to leave society as it was.
Why dickens became very successful during his lifetime?
These are the reasons for Dickens became very successful during his lifetime, generally authors
become successful after death, instead Dickens was already famous during his life because he was
able to satisfied both these social classes:
the lower middle classes, the poor people who were exploited who for the first time saw
themselves protagonist in literature, because there was someone who was describing their stories
who was reflecting their discontent, writing their exploitation and so they were happy also
because Dickens always gave a happy ending to his stories. So, these people not only saw
themselves reflected in the novels, but Dickens made them dream because they dream that one
day a happy ending could also happen to themselves.
On the other hand, even if Dickens denounced exploitation, this never made the upper classes feel
guilty or responsible, because Dickens also described their philanthropic activities and attitude
towards the lower middle class. Philanthropy was one of the ingredients of respectability, in order
to be respectable, you also had to do philanthropic activities, but this was more to keep their
conscience in peace. So, the upper middle class did not feel attack by Dickens and so they kept
their conscience in peace, and they continued to do as they always did so the situation never
change and that's why Dickens became famous also among all the social classes.

THE CHARACTER OF DEUS EX MACHINA

Serialization, moreover, required the use of sudden changes, of unexpected revelations, of
complicated subplots to keep the readers' interest alive,

 while a DEUS EX MACHINA was often introduced to solve the intricacies of a plot that had
become impossible to bring to an end.
DEUS EX MACHINA = nella commedia latina era un personaggio al di fuori di tutti quelli che venivano
presentati sulla scena, soprattutto perché le commedie avevano molti intrecci ed era il personaggio che
veniva a sciogliere gli intrecci e quindi a presentare poi la fine. Questo personaggio esiste anche nei
racconti di Dickens come un Deus ex machina é un personaggio aldifuori della complessità della
narrazione , diventava complessa la narrazione perché per vendere introduceva continuamente nuovi
personaggi per rendere la lettura più interessante ma questo intreccio a un certo punto diventava
troppo complicato, e allora lo scioglimento dell'intreccio per dare lieto fine, nella commedia latina c'è
sempre un lieto fine, lui utilizza questo stratagemma, che é un personaggio esterno che all'improvviso
viene calato all'interno della narrazione per risolvere the intrecacis of the plot.

Plots are therefore extremely complex and some of the characters exist only to make their
mechanism work. But Dickens created a gallery of extraordinary portraits, Dickens' facility for
characterization in few strokes can be observed in a number of minor characters. He makes them
unforgettable while providing them with an individual style of speech, as is the case with Mr
Jingle's broken, apodictic way of speaking. As for his excesses in portraying pathetic or wicked
characters, they are accounted for by Dickens' choice to combine the realism of the social setting
with his romantic vision of life as a battlefield between good and evil.

 NEGATIVE ASPECT OF DICKENS: in order to portrait in a vivid and realistic way the weaker
characters he becomes very often PATHETIC and this depends on the need and attempt of
Dickens of combining realism and social setting with his romantic vision of life as a sort of
fight between good and evil.
(Quello che proponevano i romantici nasceva da una consapevolezza da quelli che erano i mali di quelli che
erano i mali dell'industrializzazione, ma loro proponevano soluzioni, non applicabili nella realtà ed ecco
perché il romanticismo fallisce. Ora il background é sempre lo stesso, più si va avanti più l'Inghilterra
diventa prima potenza industriale. Lo sfruttamento assumerà forme diverse, ma ora siamo all'interno del
realismo motivo per cui la prosa la fa da protagonista, motivo per cui anche gli intellettuali prendono
posizione, diversa rispetto a quella dei romantici, cominciano a presentare le cose così come sono.
Ovviamente anche Dickens presenta contraddizioni, così come i romantici).
THEMES
The most frequently recurring themes in his novels can be grouped under two headings:
• childhood
• social criticism

 Children occupy a remarkable portion of his novels, first of all because many novels follow the
protagonist from his childhood to his maturity David Copperfield, for example, begins with the
protagonist's birth;

 secondly because the age of the Industrial Revolution, which authorised children's work from
the age of five or six, was re-discovering their misery and sufferings in the form of sentimental
benevolence; finally, because Dickens' own hard experience as a child had marked him
forever.
(David Copperfield è il ribaltamento delle sue iniziali Charles Dickens (CD), è uno dei suoi romanzi
autobiografici)

In his novels there are children who work in factories, children, whose mothers are insensitive or
only interested in money and whose fathers have been unable to provide for their families.
Dickens himself had worked in a blacking factory, had accused his mother of having insisted on
him working even when it was no longer necessary, and had had a father who had been shut in a
debtors' prison.

 His children, especially in his first novels, are pathetic creatures, sometimes destroyed by life
and sometimes miraculously rescued by somebody's unexpected intervention after they have
suffered all sorts of misadventures. An example of the first group is Little Nell, the victim of the
cruelty and indifference of the world; examples of the second group are Oliver Twist, Nicholas
Nickleby and David Copperfield. The presence of children accounts also for descriptions that
verge on the distorted or grotesque, because children's vision of the reality surrounding them
is distorted not only by their fears or dreams, but also by their physical inadequacy in the
adults' world.
The second group of themes is dealt with both in the novels of the first period in which social
criticism is addressed to specific forms of injustice and exploitation, and in the last novels in which
Dickens expressed a total rejection of the principles on which an industrial society is based:
money and individualism. In the novels written before David Copperfield he denounced the
monstrosity of children's work in mines and factories for fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and of
orphanages which constituted a private education system that let loose the adults sadistic
tendencies and legalised systematic cruelty and exploitation of orphan children. He also showed
the inhumanity of workhouses in which the poor were shut up until they proved that they could
support themselves and their families. Until then they were kept separated
• the men in one house, the women and children in another, and often that was forever.
DEBTORS' PRISONS were the subject of more than one novel, as well as the legal system and the
bureaucratic system. When he wrote Bleak House, Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend, Dickens
was under the influence of the philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle, a declared enemy of the
Industrial Revolution and of Victorian philistinism and utilitarianism.
In these novels Dickens attacked the economic and social systems more deeply, after getting in
touch with the ghastly conditions of housing and sanitation in Manchester, the center of the
capitalists' ruthless exploitation of workers. His criticism of society also underwent another
change: in his first novels he accused specific institutions of taking no account of the needs of the
individual, or the individuals working inside them of asserting their authority at poor people's
expense.
In the last novels, however, he saw the root of all evil in the very essence of capitalism with its
unrestrained chase alter money and material satisfaction.

STYLE
• If Dickens' first novels were written with inaccuracies:
Dickens's style is full of INACCURACIES because Dickens has most of Victorian writers
published in instalments and the writing in instalments was in serialised forms. He had to had
continuously new characters to the stories to make the stories more appealing for the
readers because if one number was boring people couldn't buy anymore and so he didn't have
the time to revise what he wrote. His style which is a journalistic style because Dickens starts
his carrier as a journalist. So, together with Orwell, they will share this attitude they will depict
the reality in which they lived with the eyes of journalism, so they tried to describe reality as it
was, but when he wrote he continuously added new characters to the story to make the story
more interesting and this didn't permitted him to revise, the same happened to Defoe, in the
Augustan Age, because sterilisation started at that time, so he didn't have time to revise what
he wrote and then the work is full of inaccuracies, the same happens to Dickens.

• the mature novels are characterized by a greater attention to stylistic and artistic
requirements. You have seen the precision and the icastic quality of his descriptions of both
places and characters. But here the evocation of reality is enhanced by the symbolic value with
which he charges it, as with the London fog in Bleak House.

• It is humor, however, that crosses all his novels, even the gloomiest, and that constitutes the
greatest merit of his style. It consists of an absolutely original use of the language and of the
capacity to see the most improbable relationships between different things or persons. The
following may serve as examples of the inexhaustible quality of Dickens' humour. In one of the
episodes with the "fat boy, he writes: "As he said it, he glanced from the cod fish lo the oyster
barrels and chuckled joyously - He was fatter than ever". Or another occasion: "Nothing", replied that
gentleman, who had had a short man standing on each of his feet for the quarter of an hour
immediately preceding". Or finally - but there could be hundreds of similar quotations: "Mr Tupman (..)
had frightened the old lady into palpitations of the heart by impressing her with the unalterable
conviction that the kitchen chimney was on fire - a calamity which always presented itself in glowing
colours to the old lady's mind, when anybody about her evinced the smallest agitation"
THE SENSE OF GROTESQUE is present in Dickens' novels because as children were the protagonists
of his stories, these children who lived in a world of adults and they themselves worked as adults,
so the description sometimes stresses this border between seriousness and hardship and even his
sense of humour.

So, the stories of the world depicted throw the children experience becomes grotesque because
Dickens makes the reader smile through tears. So, he describes the situation which sometimes
became humors. That's why the world depicted was a grotesque world which is something out
way between
• hardship and humour, between his seriousness and his sense of humour
So, the vision of the world appeared through the children eyes a sort of distorted vision because it
was shown through these eyes of children who were practically inadequate to the world in which
they lived. So, the world of exploration the world of work that the children lived was something
that should not belong to a child.
• However, the reader has this perception of the world through the children's eyes, it his
them vision of the world, through their inadequacy and often it appears a distorted vision.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIS FIRST AND LATER WRITING

• Of course, the idea of social criticism, at the beginning Dickens starts with a criticism to
utilitarianism, to what was Bentham's philosophy

• which turned after, in his later writing, in a criticism to capitalism because he found the
roots of the evils of his time in capitalism that Marx had strictly criticized.

THERE ARE OF COURSE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS:

• Among the negative aspects of dickens work: there is the fact that Dickens had this
romantic vision of life, sometimes the stories he described made his characters
stereotypes and also his characters sometimes are pathetic creatures
One more negative aspect is that he criticized his lifetime, but he didn't propose any
solution to solve the problems. Also, inaccuracies in writing style is another negative
aspect
• Among the positive aspects of Dickens' work: there is great sense of humour and his
journalistic capacity to describe reality.

Despite that he remains one of the greatest authors among the English novelists.
Hard Times: A very famous work of Dickens because all the protagonists of his novels are children and,
there is always a happy ending in his stories, these made people dream. It is divided into three sections, or
books, and each book is divided into separate chapters.