Charles Dickens


A Brief Introduction
Charles Dickens was born
on February 7, 1812 in
Portse, England. His father
was a Navy Pay clerk and
was horrible at handling
finances. At the age of 12,
Dickens was sent to work at
the Warrens Blacking
Factory, where he hated
working.
2015/4/13

His father rescued him from
work and was able to send
him to day school in London
from 1824 to 1827.
1
• At age fifteen Charles found
employment as an office
boy for an attorney. In 1829
he became a reporter at
Doctor's Commons Courts.
• By 1832 he became a
shorthand reporter of
Parliamentary debates in
the House of Commons and
a reporter for a newspaper
and adopted his famous
name “Boz”.
2015/4/13
2
• He wrote a series of texts called
Sketches by Boz, which were
published in 1836. He was also hired
to write short texts called The
Pickwick Papers to accompany
humorous sports illustrations
designed by artist Robert Seymour.
• The Pickwick Papers
were published
through November
1837 and became an
enormous success.
2015/4/13
3
• Dickens became a fulltime
novelist after the success of
The Pickwick Papers. In
1837 he started writing
Oliver Twist and it
continued in monthly parts
through April of 1839. In
1838 he began Nicholas
Nickleby and it was
completed in 1841. In July
of 1844, A Christmas Carol
was published and proved
to be another successful
work.
2015/4/13
4
• A few works were published between
A Christmas Carol and David
Copperfield. In 1859 parts of A Tale of
Two Cities was published in his weekly
paper All the Year Round. At about the
same time Great Expectations also
appeared weekly until August of 1861.
2015/4/13
5

Gradually his health
worsened and in 1869 he
experienced a mild stroke.
He began working on the
Mystery of Edwin Drood. His
final weekly reading took
place in London in 1870. On
June 8, he suffered another
stroke and died the next
day. He was buried at
Westminster Abbey on June
14 and the last episode of
Mystery of Edwin Drood
appeared in September of
1870.
2015/4/13
6
• As one of the greatest
critical realist writers of the
Victorian Age, Dickens has a
serious intention to expose
and criticize all the poverty,
injustice, hypocrisy and
corruptness he sees all
around him.
2015/4/13
• But he bears very
complicated social attitudes.
On one hand, he hates the
state apparatus. On the
other, he can in no way
supply any fundamental
solution to the social plights,
as a bourgeois writer.
7
• It seems that the best he can do is to
try to retain optimism, as is shown in
his early works, or to express a helpless
indignant protest, as is shown in his
later novels. At the same time he
hopes to call people's attention to the
existing social problems and bring
about some reform or amelioration.
• And yet, whatever his
limitations, he is loved and
admired by millions of
people.
2015/4/13
8

His early novels (up to 1850)
are attacks on specific social
evils. Oliver Twist attacks
the dehumanizing
workhouse system and the
dark, criminal underworld
life; Nicholas Nickleby is an
attack of the Yorkshire
School where children are
not taught anything but
actually treated as slaves at
the master's house.
2015/4/13
9
• The Pickwick Paper criticizes
legal fraud; David
Copperfield exposes the
debtor's prison.
• Martin Chuzzlewit and
Dombey and Son exposes
the money-worship that
dominates people's life,
corrupts the young and
brings tragedy to Mr.
Dombey's family.
2015/4/13
10
• A full map and a large-scale criticism of the nineteenth
century England can be found in these works. Most of these
works are deeply rooted in his knowledge of that pettybourgeois urban world which he knows from its prestigious
absurdity to its most sordid squalor.
2015/4/13
11
• We may find a combination of
optimism about people and
realism about the society. Here,
the techniques are
comparatively straightforward
and the objects of his attack are
easily recognizable.
• Once the abuse has been
overcome, the way is open to a
happy conclusion. This youthful
brightness and optimism is also
manifest in the constant jokes
and laughers.
2015/4/13
12
• His later works show his
development towards a
highly conscious artist of the
modem type. The physical
settings are sometimes a
mixture of the contemporary
and the recollected past.
• The stories, though usually
double- or multiple-plotted,
are much better structured,
and the institutions are
important not only in
themselves but as metaphors
for a repressive social
psychology.
2015/4/13
13
• All of the works, except A Tale of Two
Cities, criticize a more complicated and
yet most fundamental social institutions
and morals of the Victorian England.
Bleak House (1852 ～ 1853) criticizes the
legal system and practices that aim at
devouring every penny of the clients.
• Little Dorrit criticizes the
governmental branches
which run an indefinite
procedure of management
of affairs and keep the
innocent in prison for life.
2015/4/13
14
• Hard Times criticizes the
Utilitarian principle that
rules over the English
education system and
destroys young hearts and
minds.
• Great Expectations and Our
Mutual Friend criticize the
overwhelming social
environment which brings
moral degeneration and
destruction to people.
2015/4/13
15

The attack now becomes
more urgent and passionate,
and this urgency creates
novels of great
compactness and
concentration.
2015/4/13


As Dickens “explores more
bleakly a bleaker world,”
there are fewer jokes and
the comedy becomes
harsher.
His laughter ceases to be
free, or rather, carefree; it
becomes constantly
inhibited by the
consciousness of the
unfunny side of life. The
happy ending is there no
more.
16

In story-telling, Charles
Dickens is a master. He
engages the reader's
attention with his first
sentence, and holds it to
the end. As a result of years'
intimacy and rich
imagination, the settings of
his stories have an
extraordinary vividness.
2015/4/13
17

In language, he is often compared with Shakespeare for his
adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary with
which he brings out wonderful verbal picture of man and
scene. His humor and wit seem inexhaustible.
2015/4/13
18
• The most distinctive feature
of his works is characterportrayal. Among a vast
range of various characters
marked out by some
peculiarity in physical traits,
speech or manner, are both
types and individuals.
• His best-depicted
characters are those
innocent, virtuous,
persecuted, helpless child
characters such as Oliver
Twist, Little Nell, David
Copperfield and Little Dorrit.
2015/4/13
19
• And he is also famous for
the depiction of those
horrible and grotesque
characters like Fagin, Bill,
and Quilp, and those
broadly humorous or
comical ones like Mr.
Micawber and Sam Weller.
• However, these characters are impressive not only because
they are true to life, but also because they are often larger
than life. They are, in a way, the embodiments of human
beings, with some particular features exaggerated and
highlighted, exposed to the degree of extremity.
2015/4/13
20
• Dickens' works reveal a mingling of humor and pathos.
Perhaps he believes that life is itself a mixture of joy and
grief. Life is delightful because it is at once comic and
tragic.
• He is a humorist. Whether
he exaggerates a person's
physical traits to achieve a
dramatic effect or to
ridicule his personal defects,
to be light-heartedly jocular
or bitterly satirical, he is
sure to produce roaring
laughter or understanding
smiles.
2015/4/13
21
• To match his humorous
genius, Dickens is also
noted for his pictures of
pathos. The pain strikes
people to the heart. People
can't help shedding tears.
• No one who has ever read
the death-bed scenes of
little Nell (The Old Curiosity
Shop) and little Paul
(Dombey and Son) can
forget them.
2015/4/13
22

2015/4/13
Nonetheless, here also lies
the danger for Dickens.
Sometimes the artist seems
so anxious to wring an extra
tear from the readers that
he indulges himself in
excessive sentimental
melodrama and spoils the
story. Yet, for all that,
Charles Dickens is one of
the greatest Victorian
writers, and one of those to
be remembered forever.
23