Charles Dickens' protagonists are almost always solid, hard-working middle-class types, such as would appeal in the Victorian reading public. Excepting Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, none of his novels has a central working-class hero or heroine. Even Oliver is found to come from solid stock in the end, and Pip is taken far beyond his lowly origins.
What his novels express above all, though, is the distaste the new aspiring middle-class have for traditional elites; either narrow in vision, like Sir Leicester Deadlock in Bleak House; predatory and treacherous, like Sir Mulberry Hawk in Nicholas Nickleby, or foppish and stupid, like Sir Mulberry's friend, Lord Frederick Verisopht. Even Steerforth, whom Dickens’s treats with a degree of sympathy in David Copperfield, has a languid and amoral quality that the author always associates with a certain kind of decadent upper-class seducer.
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ReplyDeleteHe was also the man who defined, if anyone did, cosy domisticity and family values, well, with a little help from Vikky and Bert. :-)
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ReplyDeleteThere are possiblities there, I suppose. :-)
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ReplyDeleteOh, yes, I remember that; it was shown a couple of Christmases ago, with Jim Broadbent, I think as Albert.
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ReplyDeleteNo wonder Orwell enjoyed reading Dickens.
ReplyDeleteNobby, you must read his essay if you have not already done so. It's a brilliant piece of literary, cultural, sociological and political analysis.
ReplyDeleteAna, In the early 1990's I read most of Orwell's essays including his famous 'Killing an Elephant' but also those relating to Germany's invasion of Russia which, in detail, is prophetic stuff.
ReplyDeleteI have never read Animial Farm or the 2nd half of 1984 which I found almost unreadable.
Oh, you simply must read Animal Farm. Gosh, how I wish I was coming to it for the first time again. :-)
ReplyDeleteAna, Maybe I should but someone also once said I ought to read Hemingways, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and what a disappointment that was. Nevertheless, I will add this to my reading list forthwith :-)
ReplyDeleteNobby, I hate to make predictions but I would be surprised if you didn't like it, especially as you have some knowledge of the course of Soviet history. It's a simple tale, well-told and beautifully written, one of the finest political satires in the English language.
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