SOME GENERAL COMMENTS
I have listed a few general characteristics
of Dickens's novels:
The title of a novel was extremely important to
Dickens. He could not get to work on a novel until he had found the
right title.
In constructing his novels, Dickens used suspense and
mystery, like the source of Pip's great expectations. His plots
effectively hold the reader's interest, for something is always
happening, even if the something is not connected with the main plot.
He
gives little space to exposition (exposition: background
information about the characters,
history, earlier events). His stories tell themselves, and what
background the reader needs to know is generally revealed as the novel
unfolds.
Similarly, his characters typically reveal their natures through action
and conversation, rather than long passages of exposition and
interpretation.
The effect and meaning of his later novels rely heavily
upon his use of symbolism. Douglas Bush called him "a highly
sophisticated molder of symbolic patterns." Consider, for example, how
he uses fire, hands, the
mist, the river, the signpost, and the casts in Jaggers's office in Great
Expectations.
Dickens uses comedy as relief from the serious and
unhappy sections of his novel; the contrast between the serious and the
comic also intensifies the serious sections. Similarly, one character's
cruelty toward another contrasts with Dickens's sentimentality and
provides balance, like Estella's abuse of Pip.
Dickens is one of the first novelists to write from the
point of view of the lowest classes living in a large city. His
descriptions of London are accurate, even when heightened for emotional
effect. Little Britain is an actual street and still exists. (Dickens
knew London neighborhoods from the long walks–sometimes over twenty
miles–which he regularly took as a relief while writing and as a way to
work off pressure and energy.)
Dickens habitually gives life to inanimate objects and
attributes human qualities to animals. Jaggers's casts express the
brutality and callousness of the legal system; Pip's fear and guilt are
projected onto the banks, gates, dikes, and cattle as he sneaks food to
the convict. This technique contributes to the nightmarish quality of
many passages and also is one way he convincingly creates the point of
view of a child, like Pip when sneaking food.
Dickens is a master of his prose, skillfully varying it
to fit the occasion. At times, when his feelings carry him away,
particularly when writing of a child's death, his prose becomes overly
emotional and repetitious; it may even fall into an iambic rhythm. To
get the full sense of his prose, try reading him aloud, as the
Victorians did.
Dickens's fondness for coincidence is not a result of
faulty plotting or lack of imagination; it reflects his view of the
world. John Forster, Dickens's close friend and biographer, wrote:
On the
coincidences, resemblances, and surprises of life, Dickens liked
especially to dwell, and few things moved his fancy so pleasantly. The
world, he would say, was so much smaller than we thought; we were all
so connected by fate without knowing it; people supposed to be far
apart were so constantly elbowing each other; and to-morrow bore so
close a resemblance to nothing half so much as yesterday.
Apart from the protagonists, his characters have
distinct speech patterns, so that it is easy to tell who is speaking,
even if the character is not identified. Dickens thought that
characteristic speech was necessary in a novel: "I have been trying
other books; but so infernally conversational, that I forget who the
people are before they have done talking, and don't in the least
remember what they talked about before when they begin talking again."
However, Dickens's heroes and heroines, who are usually ladies and
gentlemen, have a less distinct style of speech, as befits their
gentility.
His comic characters have one outstanding trait,
which may be a physical attribute, an attitude, or a behavior. Dickens
told a friend that
an expression or a part of a face "would acquire a sudden ludicrous
life of its own" and overshadow the whole person. Mrs. Joe's apron with
the pins sticking out characterizes her, just as Wemmick's mechanical
post office mouth characterizes his Little Britain self.
Edmund Wilson's comment that Dickens was usually unable
"to get the good and bad together in one character" has become almost a
cliche in Dickens criticism. Dickens gives some of his villains
dimension or complexity by presenting them humorously, that is, by
making them funny as well as evil, but not by giving them any virtues.
The existence of a shadow or dark side in his heros is sometimes
suggested by
the use of a double; the most obvious–and literal–example is Charles
Darnay and Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
Of the many unlikable widows, wives, and spinsters in
Dickens's novels, Gissing felt "they must be held among his finest
work." There are also many abused husbands.
Dickens's novels are marked by a large number of deaths
and violence, as perceptive contemporary readers observed. Also
noteworthy is the concern with food and drink which runs through his
novels and the various ways they are used. Great Expectations
opens with a convict demanding food and then moves on to a Christmas
feast and Miss Havisham's wedding cake.
DISCUSSION OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS
March
23, 2011
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