Charles Dickens (1812—1870)
by Robert W. Watson
(5 October 1998)

Charles Dickens offers an excellent example why literary criticism should centre on the text and not on the author himself. No one knows for sure what an author thinks while writing his work except for the words used in the text. The complexities of the poet's or author's psychological process is beyond the reach of everyone, regardless of the claims by various schools of critical thought. As a very complex author, Charles Dickens could be exacting with his art to please the intellectual, while he could appeal to the common reader with his more popular, down-to-earth novels.

A popular author even during his lifetime, Dickens remains a favourite among readers around the world. His characters are unforgettable due to their exaggerated qualities like Pecksniff's hypocrisy and Sydney Carton's self-sacrifice. Dickens wrote many of his works as episodes that appeared in monthly periodicals. This was a popular method used by publishers to ensure steady and repeat sales of their papers. By having the action stop at a critical point of the story, readers anxiously awaited for the next edition of the story. In addition to this, even though this writing of a series does create a lengthy novel, the action seldom slows or becomes stale. The latest remake of "Little Women" has the March girls anxious for the arrival of the paper so that they can read Dickens. The girls even formed their own literary club called "The Pickwick Society," in honor of Dickens' The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836). It was the Pickwick Papers that gave Dickens his initial success as an author.

Dickens' genius is the result of his early childhood and work experiences. Born in a family of eight children, Dickens had to accept employment as a child. His kind father, John Dickens, proved to be financially irresponsible, which caused the family to be put in Marshalsea prison for his mounting debt. Regarding his employment as a child, Dickens writes later to John Forster, his biographer, "My whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such considerations, that even now, famous and caressed and happy, often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time of my life."

His novel, David Copperfield (1849), perhaps best reflects this "grief and humiliation." London was well into its industrial development. Dickens certainly believed that he was the norm and not the exception of children who are thrust into the dehumanisation of industrialism and urban competition. For a little less than twenty cents a week, Dickens pasted labels on blacking bottles while the rest of the family remained in prison. Constantly cold, lonely, and hungry, Dickens would recount many of these experiences in his works, the vehicle by which he could affect social reform regarding child labour, prisons, and education. His Tale of Two Cities (1859) attacked the excesses of the nobility and democracy; his Hard Times (1854) mocked utilitarianism; and his Great Expectations (1861) revealed the failings of the leisure class and the penal system.

While Dickens was clearly conscious of the social conditions of England, he learned the unfortunate truth that if an author is writing to the masses, then he must conform to the demands of the public taste, which generally is not concerned with the loftier issues of life. Hence, some critics suggest that the novels of Dickens are merely for entertainment and are therefore no different than any modern cheap novel produced for the masses. Cheap novels are written for consumption and not for elevating the common reader. However, the novels by Dickens have proven themselves worthy of deep reflection and criticism, and the fact that they have endured for over a century show that the works are more than superficial.

Fortunately for the Dickens family, John Dickens received a small inheritance to repay his debts. Afterwards, Charles Dickens became a court and political reporter for a London periodical. Since Dickens had little schooling, his duties as a reporter helped to discipline his writing and his observing other people. While his poverty gave him material to write about, Dickens was influenced by the writers he read as well. Included among the influential works that he read were the Bible, Arabian Nights, the works of Ben Jonson, and especially the essays of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle held sway over both Tennyson and Dickens with his belief in Transcendentalism and the "Great Man." Indeed, since the intellectuals believed that Rationalism had discredited the Bible, Carlyle was confident Tennyson would convert the world to his new spiritual values through the poet laureate's verse, while Dickens would spread the gospel of social reform through his novels.

In addition to writing, Dickens was also an actor, who gave public readings in both England and the United States. Even though he was the father of ten children, Dickens did not have a very happy marriage. A prolific writer, Dickens wrote nearly seven thousand letters to his friends. In 1870, with a pen in his hand, Charles Dickens died at his desk while writing his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.