2023年4月浙江自考英美文学选读复习笔记：Charles Dickens

Son of a petty navy office clerk, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) hardly knew comfort or luxury as a child. At the age of ten, he was forced to leave school to work at a blacking factory, because his father had been taken into prison for debt. Pasting labels on blacking bottles twelve hours by day and sleeping under the counter at night, the child always felt hungry, lonely, and ignored. The hardship and suffering inflicted upon the sensitive young Charles had left an everlasting bitter remembrance in his later life. In 1827, Charles entered a lawyer's office, and two years later he became a Parliamentary reporter for newspapers. The journalistic experience not only enabled him to get acquainted with some inside knowledge of the British legal and political system, and gave him a chance to meet people of all kinds, but also laid a good foundation for his coming literary career.

From 1833 Dickens began to write occasional sketches of London life, which were later collected and published under the  Sketches by Boz (1836). Soon The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837) appeared in monthly installments. It at once lifted him into a position of fame and fortune. And since then, his life became one of endless hard work. Besides the 17 novels he wrote and published in installments, Dickens was editor or owner of several newspapers and magazines. Often he was an enthusiastic participant or organizer of some charity activities. Twice he traveled to America, and widely on the Continent. In his last years, he did a lot of recitation of his own works before the public and even took part in the performance of his works. In 1870, this man of great heart and vitality died of overwork, leaving his last novel unfinished.

Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. It is his serious intention to expose and criticize in his works all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness he sees all around him. But his social attitudes are very complicated. He hates the state apparatus, especially the Parliament, but as a bourgeois writer, he can in no way supply any fundamental solution to the social plights. The best he can do seems to try to retain an optimism with wishful thinking, as in his early works, or to exss a helpless indignant protest, as in his later novels. At the same time, he hopes to call people's attention to the existing social problems, thus effecting some reform or amelioration. And yet, whatever his limitations, this man is loved and admired by the millions, not only for the practical reform his works have helped to bring about but also for that heart which is ready to love and sympathize.

In his works, Dickens sets out a full map and a large-scale criticism of the nineteenth century England, particularly London. Most of his works, even if they may be products of bursting fantasy, are deeply rooted in his knowledge of that petty-bourgeois urban world which he knows under tile skin, from its stigious absurdity to its most sordid squalor. A combination of optimism about people and realism about the society is sent from the very beginning. In his early novels (up to 1850), he attacks one or more specific social evils in each: for example, the dehumanizing workhouse system and the dark, criminal underworld life in Oliver Twist (1837-1838); the Yorkshire School where children are not taught anything but actually enslaved at the master's house in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839); legal fraud in The Pickwick Paper; the debtor's prison in David Copperfield (1849-1850); the money-worship that dominates people's life, corrupts the young and brings tragedy to Mr. Dombey's family in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1845) and Dombey and Son (1846-1848), etc. Here, the techniques, both of the fiction itself and of the social criticism embodied within it, are relatively straightforward and the objects of his attack are easily recognizable, and 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 laughter.

The later works show the development of Dickens towards a  highly conscious artist of the modern type. The physical settings here 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 ressive social psychology. All of the works, with the exception of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), sent a criticism of the more complicated and yet most fundamental social institutions and morals of the Victorian England, such as the legal system and practices that aim at devouring every penny of the clients in Bleak House (1852-1853), the governmental branches which run an indefinite procedure of management of affairs and keep the innocent in prison for life in Little Dorrit (1855- 1857), the Utilitarian principle that rules over the English education system and destroys young hearts and minds in Hard Times (1854), and the overwhelming social environment' which brings moral degeneration and destruction to people as in Great Excpectations (1860-1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). The attack now becomes more urgent and passionate, and this urgency creates novels of great compactness and concentration. 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.

Charles Dickens is a master story-teller. With his first sentence, he engages the reader's attention and holds it to the end. The settings of his stories, e.g. London, have an extraordinary vividness, a result of years' intimacy and rich imagination. In language, he is often compared with Shakespeare for his adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary with which he brings out many a wonderful verbal picture of man and scene. His humor and wit seem inexhaustible. Character portrayal is the most distinguishing feature of his works. Among a vast range of various characters, marked out by some peculiarity in physical traits, speech or manner, are both types and inspaniduals. His best-depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted, helpless child characters such as Oliver Twist, Little Nell, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. Dickens writes best when he writes from the child's point of view. And he is also famous for the depiction of those horrible and grotesque characters like Fagin, Bill Sikes, and Quilp, and those broadly humorous or comical ones like Mr. Micawber, Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp.  However, these characters are imssive 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.

Dickens' works are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos. He seems to believe 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, whether he means to be light-heartedly jocular or bitterly satirical, he is sure to produce roaring laughter or understanding smiles. To match his humorous genius, Dickens is also noted for his pictures of pathos. 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. The pain strikes people 1o the heart. Tears are shed unashamedly by men, literate or illiterate. Nonetheless, here also lies the danger for the artist. Sometimes Dickens seems so anxious to wring an extra tear from the audience 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 his name one of those to be remembered forever.