On Charles Dickens

Steve Mitchelmore at In Writing bravely confesses to all of the "great" writers he hasn't read. The first one he mentions is Charles Dickens.

I suspect Steve isn't alone, if not in having read no Dickens then certainly in having read very little of his work. This is no doubt in large part, at least in the U.S., to the horrible way Dickens has been "taught" in American high schools. (The extent to which literature is actually taught at all in high schools, or even whether it ought to be, are entirely separate questions to be left for another day.) By and large, the Dickens novel most frequently thrust into the hands of high school students is A Tale of Two Cities, inarguably his least representative work, and arguably his weakest. It is used in this way, in fact, because it generally contains fewer of those characteristics that make Dickens Dickens: his picaresque abandon, his outsized characters, his exuberant and fluent style, above all his humor. In my opinion, no writer in any language is funnier than Charles Dickens.

Here's a passage that illustrates many of the features I've just mentioned. It's from Dombey and Son and introduces "Miss Tox":

The lady thus specially presented was a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-drapers call "fast colours" originally, and to have, by little and little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as the very pink of general propitiation and politeness. From a long habit of listening admirably to everything that was said in her presence, and looking at the speakers as if she were mentally engaged in taking off impressions of their images upon her soul, never to part with the same but with life, her head had quite settled on one side. Her hands had contracted a spasmodic habit of raising themselves of their own accord as an involuntary admiration. Her eyes were libale to a similar affection. She had the softest voice that ever was heard; and her nose, stupendously aquiline, had a little knob in the very centre or keystone of the bridge, whence it tended downwards towards her face, as in an invincible determination never to turn up at anything.

Miss Tox is a relatively minor character in the novel, but she's as absolutely vivid a character as many a protagonist in novels by lesser writers. And Dicken's novels are full of such characters, all of them at once both distinctive and colorful as well as fully recognizable as "types" that must have been instantly recognizable to readers in Victorian England--creating this sort of characterization itself being one of Dickens's great gifts, perhaps unrivaled by any other novelist. The humor of this passage is also typically "Dickensian": observant, tolerant of eccentricities, and devastating all at the same time. His comedy can sometimes be "gentle," but it is frequently also quite caustic, even dark. Here is the first paragraph of Dombey and Son: "Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new." This seems a homey enough scene, except that, as it turns out, Dombey's ultimate actions toward Son are indeed such (if unintentional) to "toast him brown." (And the fireside vignette is taking place at the same time Dombey's wife is dying after giving birth to Son.)

The ultimate effect of both the comedy and the characters in Dickens's novels is to convey a world that is utterly real and also completely removed from the "real world": a Dickens-world that no one could mistake for another writer's creation, or for that matter the usually banal world we all inhabit. This does not mean Dickens is for "escapist" readers. Few novelists have ever been as engaged with the social and cultural and economic conditions of his/her time as Dickens. Dombey and Son depicts the horrendous consequences of the mercantile mindset in a way that should make us ashamed to have sentimentalized A Christmas Carol as much as we have done. There's no more scorching indictment of "the law" as Bleak House. (Perhaps Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own.) Hard Times portrays the ill effects of utilitarianism with compact (for Dickens) precision. But his novels are first and foremost fully realized aesthetic creations in which the comedy and the satire and the characterization and the social commentary are all inextricably joined.

Which is not to say there are no flaws in Dickens's fiction. If we've sentimentalized Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, there's truth in the charge they're latently--maybe more than latently--sentimental figures to begin with. Florence Dombey is the Tiny Tim of Dombey and Son, and here's a description of her: "Florence was little more than a child in years--not yet fourteen--and the loneliness and gloom of such an hour in the great house where Death had lately made its own tremendous devastation might have set an older fancy brooding on great terrors. But her innocent imagination was too full of one theme to admit them. Nothing wandered in her thoughts but love--a wandering love, indeed, and cast away--but turning always to her father." This at a point in the novel when Florence's father could not be less deserving of her love. There's no getting around the fact that Dickens's novels are to some degree enfeebled by the too-frequent appearance of characters and scenes like this. Luckily, his best books are relatively free of them, and such characters as Florence Dombey do have a role to play in the overall moral dynamics at work in his fiction. (One of the consequences of assigning them this role, however, is that with these characters we are deprived of the great comic flourishes of which Dickens is otherwise such a master.) Furthermore, the great strengths of his work, the strengths I have tried here to indicate, however sketchily, vastly compensate for the emotional flaccidity the sentimental moments occasionally introduce.

In short, if there is an impression that Charles Dickens is old-fashioned, stodgy, associated with a now superseded approach to writing fiction, that assumption is totally wrong. Readers and writers can still learn much about what fiction is capable of achieving by reading him.

Nor should his immense popularity, both during his lifetime and subsequently, be held against him. It is merely one of the few examples of the public actually being right.

For the uninitiated--perhaps even Steve?--there are several ways of beginning with Dickens. Of the earlier, more loosely structured books, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby would be good choices. If you'd prefer to start with something briefer and more concentrated, Hard Times is the choice. If you want to go straight to the masterworks, these would be Bleak House and Great Expectations. (Dombey and Son falls just short of these books, as does Our Mutual Friend.) Although David Copperfield is perhaps Dickens's most popular book, it is also a great novel as well.

For a much longer appreciation of Dickens, see Edmund Wilson's "Dickens: The Two Scrooges" in The Wound and the Bow. If I can't persuade you to read Dickens, perhaps Wilson can.

Comments

[Steve]

Just reading the quotations makes me wince. You see, it's not that he is "associated with a now superseded approach to writing fiction" and that I can't learn anything from him, but that the style is - and this is going to sound odd - ethically repulsive to me. It's nothing to do with fashion. Kafka puts his finger on it:
"There is a heartlessness behind [Dickens'] sentimentally overflowing style. These rude characterizations which are artificially stamped on everyone and without which Dickens would not be able to get on with his story even for a moment."

Of course, Kafka loved and learnt from Dickens (which is why his novels aren't as good as the stories) and my favourite Thomas Bernhard has equally grotesque characters - but Bernhard always frames his characterisations through the narrator, so it's always in perspective. Dickens is just the precursor of the cruel caricatures of the modern, thought-controlling media.

And Dickens' popularity is a symptom of his heartlessness: the typically British mixture of pity and cruelty.

On a personal footnote, I was born within a few miles of Dickens' own birthplace. I've not visited that either. This isn't a "confession" if that means I'm slightly ashamed. I am not at all. Life's too short to read for anything but pleasure.

[Daniel Green]

Steve:

I never presumed you had anything to be ashamed about. Everyone's entitled to his own reading preferences. I did gather from your original posting that you hadn't actually read Dickens (my posting was largely aimed at those who had shyed away from him), but from your comment it sounds like you have read him but just don't care for his work.

[Steve]

I haven't read anything. Of course, one can't avoid SOME exposure, but I haven't seen more than a page or so, but I can't remember what pages. I'm not counting your quotations as having "read" Dickens!

[Chris L]

I think you need to read some more Dickens before painting such a one-sided picture of his "heartlesness" -- the Dickens you are describing is not the Charles Dickens I have read, by any stretch of the imagination.

[steve]

"Heartlessness" is Kafka word not mine, and he devoured Dickens' work.

[Stefanie]

Your musing on Dickens makes me want to go pull him down from my book shelf and get started. I had th luck of having Great Expectations foisted upon me in high school. I enjoyd it but it didn't have much of an impact until I read it again a few years ago. I have tried twice to read A Tale of Two Cities but can't get past the first chapter. I read Hard Times in college and maybe for that reason I don't have a good memory or impression about it

I don't find Dickens to be heartless at all. On the contrary, I find him to be full of warmth and humor. Sure, some of his characters are cruel as are some of his descriptions, but there seems to be a reason for it in terms of his story. Granted, I haven't read that much of him, but what I have read leads me to believe he was a man who cared.

[James]

I too had tried to get through Tale Of Two Cities a few times. My epiphany was to come across the Recorded Books edition read by Frank Muller. He brought the story to life in an amazing way. Don't forget Patrick Stewarts annual performance of A Christmas Carol, another wonderful event. After all, Dickens himself was a tireless performer. He would visit all of the local haunts as soon as he had finished a bit to regale his fans.

[Sarah]

The thing, I think, that gets lost in any Dickens discussion about novelistic merit is that really, they are serials in book form. So because he had to entertain an audience every week for fourteen months straight, there are flourishes, character detail, dialogue and description that I daresay wouldn't be there if he'd written the books as "pure novels". I think the serialization effect explains Dickens' penchant for long lost twin brothers and some of his other more melodramatic touches. It's one of the reasons I never felt bad about taking such a long time reading a Dickens novel--because his contemporaries took over a year to do so!

[Beth]

I am a recent Dickens fan after years of claiming to hate him. I feel a little silly now, because the things I thought I hated about Dickens were really just things I had read about Dickens; those issues have very little to do with the reality of his work.

I agree that the Frank Muller reading of A Tale of Two Cities is fantastic, probably my favorite audio book. In fact, I think Dickens is really perfect for audio. I read Great Expectations and Hard Times the old-fashioned way, but Bleak House on audio was so much fun that I plan to get through as many Dickens titles as possible that way. It really is pure pleasure if the reader is good.

[Maud]

I didn't realize Bleak House is on par with Great Expectations. The former is one of the few Dickens novels I haven't read. Now I can't wait to pick it up.