Stylistic Features of Charles Dickens’s works
MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY
«Stylistic Features of Charles Dickens’s works»
Gulistan‑2008
1. Charles Dicken’s works
1.1 General Notes on Charles Dicken’s works
Charles Dickens was born at Land-port, then a suburb of Portsmouth, where his father held a clerkship in the Navy Pay Office. He spent his youth at Chatham and London where he had to submit to a life of great hardship. His father being imprisoned for debt, the boy was, for a time, packer in a London blacking warehouse. Later he was placed in a solicitor's office, where he acquired the knowledge of legal affairs afterwards displayed in his novels. The boy's education was mainly achieved by extensive reading and keen observation of people and things around him. In 1831 Dickens obtained an engagement as parliamentary reporter. Before long he tried his hand at original composition, and wrote short descriptive essays on the London scenes familiar to him, collected as Sketches by Boz in 1835. The success of the Sketches decided the course of his life. The immense popularity of his next publication The Posthumous Papers of tlie Pickwick Club (1836–37) spread his fame all over Europe. The remainder of his life's story is a record of literary triumphs and of his visits to America (1842 and 1867), Italy, France and Switzerland. In 1858 Dickens began to give public readings from his works, which, due to his great histrionic talent, proved an extraordinary success.
Dickens created a series of novels, specially notable for critical and for comic talent, for critical treatment of Victorian England. All Dickens's great works – Oliver Twist (1837–38), Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1843–44), Mar-tin Chuzzlewit (1843–44), Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son (1846–48), The Personal History of David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times for These Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855–57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860–61) – carry a profound moral message. At the same time Dickens is bent on Correcting public grievances, like the defects of the new outrageous Poor Law and the workhouse system, the miseries of the debtors' prisons, the clumsiness and injustice of the governmental and legal systems. Dickens-is at his best at depicting low and middle-class life and at inventing unforgettable striking characters. A great many of them have become recognized types in English fiction.
Dickens also tried his hand at the historical novel, as in Barnaby Radge (1840–41) and A Tale of Two Cities, at a vast number of short stories and also at writing for the stage. His last novels include Our Mutual Friend (1864–65) and the unfinished detective story of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
Among the most popular and productive novelist as Charles Dickens, whose combined social Critism with comedy and sentiment to create a tone that the world identifies as Victorian lake chancer and Shakespeare before him. Dickens enjoyed inviting or vast array of memorable character in novels such as «Olive Twist (1837 -39), «A Tale of Two Cities» (1899) and «Great expectative (1860–61) His heart felt Critism helped to change British institution that badly needed reform, especially prisons and schools Charles Dickens was the most popular British author of the Victorian Age, the more than a hundred years after his death his work is still popular both in print and in dramatic and musical versions. The magic that millions still find in Dickens novels can be traced at least in part to the eccentric, colorful array of characters that he created, the gullible Rickwick of «The Rickwick Papers». (1836–37) the villainous Fagin of «Oliver Twist» (1837–39) the pathetic little Nell of «The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) the misetly zeroage of «A Christmas Card» (1843) the Shiffles Micarofer of «David Copperfield» (1849–50), the bite Miss Havisham of «Great Expectations» (1860–1861).
The basis for many of these characters lies in Dickens own experience. In fact many people believe that his father was the model for Micawber and his mother inspired Mrs Nickleby in «Nicholas Rickelby» (1838–39).Dickens was born in Portsmouth in Southern England, the second of eight children. His father was a clerk who worked or the navy. The family repeatedly moved in order to escape creditors. When his father was finally sent to a debtor’s prison Charles, then twelve begun working in a warehouse pasting labels on pots of shoe blacking. After a sudden inheritance improved the family’s fortunes, Charles found work at a lawyer’s clerk and then as a reporter. His literary career begum with the success of «Secteles by Bor», a collection of vulgates about life in the city that he wrote for a London newspaper:» Bor» led to «The Pickwick Paper» his first novel.
While Dickens has entertained millions with his novels, he also intended them as mean of social reform, Human welfare could not keep place with the technological advances of his time, and Dickens did much to expose evil by products of industrializing: child labor, debtors prisons, ruinous financial speculation, inhuman legal procedures, and mismanagement of schools, orphanages, prisons, and hospitals.
Dickens many novels add up to a vast panorama of human nature and specifically of Victorian life. One except from one novel is very small simple indeed.
The following selection from «Oliver Twist «, however, can be read as a serial installment. When Charles Dickens was ten years old his taken to prison for dept.
Little Charles Dickens was the second of eight children had to go to work in a blacking factory, where he worked from early morning till late at night. When his father came out school. But at15 he left school to work as or clerk in lawyer’s office. As a reporter in Parliament made him acquainted with the government, and aroused in him or deep contempt for the English parliamentary systems contempt that lasted all his life and reflected in many of his life and reflected in many of his works becoming with «The Pickwick Club» (1836–37).In his work there is much humor. But flu humor is often turned info irony and satire. Which the author used as powerful weapon with which to criticize and expose various evils in English social and political life, the capitalist exploiting system of workhouses in «Oliver Twist» (1838), bourses, so-called education in «Nicholas Nicely «(1839)» David Copperfield» (1850) and others, capitalist cruelty and injustice in all his works. In 1836 dickens was asked by a firm of publishers to write a letter for a series of etchings. His work exceeded the stimulated task and thus «The Dartmouth Papers of the «Pickwick Club «solo publications. This work at once lifted Dickens info the foremast rank as popular writers of fictions. He followed up this triumph with a quick succession of costuming novels in which he mastery depicted the life of contemporary society. His «Oliver Twist «deals with social problems. The novel ends in a happy issue which has become a characteristic feature of the greater part of Dickens works. His next novel «The book deals with another burning question of the day that of the education of children in English private schools. Immediately after the publication of the novel Dickens was bombarded with letters protesting the statement. But the facts being ascertained, a school reform was carried out in England. Dickens next publication was «The old Curiosity Shop «.
In 1841 he visited the USA and Canada to lecture on his works on his works. On his return he wrote «American Notes «and a novel «Martin Chuzzlewit «.In these two books Dickens gives a highly realistic picture of American bourgeoisie society its hypsography, ignorance and greed. He shows the disgusting in influence of money and directs all the force of his satire against False American democracy against slavery, and the corruption of the American press.
Although Dickens never rose to the revolutionary level he was one of those writers who all his life used his pen in the fight against the evils of the capitalist system.
1.2 Charles Dickens' periods
Much of our modern difficulty, in religion and other things, arises merely from this: that we confuse the word «indefinable» with the word «vague.» If some one speaks of a spiritual fact as «indefinable» we promptly picture something misty, a cloud with indeterminate edges. But this is an error even in commonplace logic. The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are indefinable. The indefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is indefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some to whom spiritual things have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined.
But there is a third c) ass of primary terms. There are popular expressions which every one uses and no one can explain; which the wise man will accept and reverence, as he reverences desire or darkness or any elemental thing. The prigs of the debating club will demand that he should define his terms. And, being a wise man, he will flatly refuse. This first inexplicable term is the most important term of all. The word that has no definition is the word that has no substitute. If a man falls back again and again on some such word as «vulgar» or «manly,» do not suppose that the word means nothing because he cannot say what it means. If he could say what the word means he would say what it means instead of saying the word. When the Game Chicken (that fine thinker) kept on saying to Mr. Toots, «It's mean. That's what it is – it's mean,» he was using language in the wisest possible way. For what else could he say? There is no word for mean except mean. A man must be very mean himself before he comes to defining meanness. Precisely because the word is indefinable, the word is indispensable.
In everyday talk, or in any of our journals, we may find the loose but important phrase, «Why have we no great men to-day? Why have we no great men like Thackeray, or Carlyle, or Dickens?» Do not let us dismiss this expression, because it appears loose or arbitrary. «Great» does mean something, and the test of its actuality is to be found by noting how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to some men and not to others; above all, how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to four or five men in the Victorian era, four or five men of whom Dickens was not the least. The term is found to fit a definite thing. Whatever the word «great» means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious and unhappy who cannot read his books without a continuous critical exasperation, would use the word of him without stopping to think. They feel that Dickens is a great writer even if he is not a good writer. He is treated as a classic; that is, as a king who may now be deserted, but who cannot now be dethroned. The atmosphere of this word clings to him; and the curious thing is that we cannot get it to cling to any of the men of our own generation. «Great» is the first adjective which the most supercilious modern critic would apply to Dickens. And «great» is the last adjective that the most supercilious modern critic would apply to himself We dare not claim to be great men, even when we claim to be superior to them.
Is there, then, any vital meaning in this idea of «greatness» or in our laments over its absence in our own time? Some people say, indeed, that this sense of mass is but a mirage of distance, and that men always think dead men great and live men small. They seem to think that the law of perspective in the mental world is the precise opposite to the law of perspective in the physical world. They think that figures grow larger as they walk away. But this theory cannot be made to correspond with the facts. We do not lack great men in our own day because we decline to look for them in our own day; on the contrary, we are looking for them all day long. We are not, as a matter of fact, mere examples of those who stone the prophets and leave it to their posterity to build their sepulchers'. If the world would only produce our perfect prophet, solemn, searching, universal, nothing would give us keener pleasure than to build his sepulcher. In our eagerness we might even bury him alive. Nor is it true that the great men of the Victorian era were not called great in their own time. By many they were called great from the first. Charlotte Brontë held this heroic language about Thackeray. Ruskin held it about Carlyle. A definite school regarded Dickens as a great man from the first days of his fame: Dickens certainly belonged to this school.
In reply to this question, «Why have we no great men to-day?» many modern explanations are offered. Advertisement, cigarette-smoking, the decay of religion, the decay of agriculture, too much humanitarianism, too little humanitarianism, the fact that people are educated insufficiently, the fact that they are educated at all, all these are reasons given. If I give my own explanation, it is not for its intrinsic value; it is because my answer to the question, «Why have we no great men?» is a short way of stating the deepest and most catastrophic difference between the age in which we live and the early nineteenth century; the age under the shadow of the French Revolution, the age in which Dickens was born.
The soundest of the Dickens critics, a man of genius, Mr. George Gissing, opens his criticism by remarking that the world in which Dickens grew up was a hard and cruel world. He notes its gross feeding, its fierce sports, its fighting and foul humour, and all this he summaries in the words hard and cruel. It is curious how different are the impressions of men. To me this old English world seems infinitely less hard and cruel than the world described in Gissing's own novels. Coarse external customs are merely relative, and easily assimilated. A man soon learnt to harden his hands and harden his head. Faced with the world of Gissing, he can do little but harden his heart. But the fundamental difference between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the end of it is a difference simple but enormous. The first period was full of evil things, but it was full of hope. The second period, the fin de siécle, was even full (in some sense) of good things. But it was occupied in asking what was the good of good things. Joy itself became joyless; and the fighting of Cobbett was happier than the feasting of Walter Pater. The men of Cobbett's day were sturdy enough to endure and inflict brutality; but they were also sturdy enough to alter it. This «hard and cruel» age was, after all, the age of reform. The gibbet stood up black above them; but it was black against the dawn.
This dawn, against which the gibbet and all the old cruelties stood out so black and clear, was the developing idea of liberalism, the French Revolution. It was a clear and a happy philosophy. And only against such philosophies do evils appear evident at all. The optimist is a better reformer than the pessimist; and the man who believes life to be excellent is the man who alters it most. It seems a paradox, yet the reason of it is very plain. The pessimist can be enraged at evil. But only the optimist can be surprised at it. From the reformer is required a simplicity of surprise. He must have the faculty of a violent and virgin astonishment. It is not enough that he should think injustice distressing; he must think injustice absurd, an anomaly in existence, a matter less for tears than for a shattering laughter. On the other hand, the pessimists at the end of the century could hardly curse even the blackest thing; for they could hardly see it against its black and eternal background. Nothing was bad, because everything was bad. Life in prison was infamous – like life anywhere else. The fires of persecution were vile – like the stars. We perpetually find this paradox of a contented discontent. Dr. Johnson takes too sad a view of humanity, but he is also too satisfied a Conservative. Rousseau takes too rosy a view of humanity, but he causes a revolution. Swift is angry, but a Tory. Shelley is happy, and a rebel. Dickens, the optimist, satirises the Fleet, and the Fleet is gone. Gissing, the pessimist, satirises Suburbia, and Suburbia remains.
Mr. Gissing's error, then, about the early Dickens period we may put thus: in calling it hard and cruel he omits the wind of hope and humanity that was blowing through it. It may have been full of inhuman institutions, but it was full of humanitarian people. And this humanitarianism was very much the better (in my view) because it was a rough and even rowdy humanitarianism. It was free from all the faults that cling to the name. It was, if you will, a coarse humanitarianism. It was a shouting, fighting, drinking philanthropy – a noble thing. But, in any case, this atmosphere was the atmosphere of the Revolution; and its main idea was the idea of human equality. I am not concerned here to defend the egalitarian idea against the solemn and babyish attacks made upon it by the rich and learned of to-day. I am merely concerned to state one of its practical consequences. One of the actual and certain consequences of the idea that all men are equal is immediately to produce very great men. I would say superior men, only that the hero thinks of himself as great, but not as superior. This has been hidden from us of late by a foolish worship of sinister and exceptional men, men without comrade-ship, or any infectious virtue. This type of Cesar does exist. There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
The spirit of the early century produced great men, because it believed that men were great. It made strong men by encouraging weak men. Its education, its public habits, its rhetoric, were all addressed towards encouraging the greatness in everybody. And by encouraging the greatness in everybody, it naturally encouraged superlative greatness in some. Superiority came out of the high rapture of equality. It is precisely in this sort of passionate unconsciousness and bewildering community of thought that men do become more than themselves. No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature; but a man may add many cubits to his stature by not taking thought. The best men of the Revolution were simply common men at their best. This is why our age can never understand Napoleon. Because he was something great and triumphant, we suppose that he must have been something extraordinary, something inhuman. Some say he was the Devil; some say he was the Superman. Was he a very, very bad man? Was he a good man with some greater moral code? We strive in vain to invent the mysteries behind that immortal mask of brass. The modern world with all its subtleness will never guess his strange secret; for his strange secret was that he was very like other people.
And almost without exception all the great men have come out of this atmosphere of equality. Great men may make despotisms; but democracies make great men. The other main factory of heroes besides a revolution is a religion. And a religion again, is a thing which, by its nature, does not think 6Ј men as more or less valuable, but of men as all intensely and painfully valuable, a democracy of eternal danger. For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King. This fact has been quite insufficiently observed in the study of religious heroes. Piety produces intellectual greatness precisely because piety in itself is quite indifferent to intellectual greatness. The strength of Cromwell was that he cared for religion. But the strength of religion was that it did not care for Cromwell; did not care for him, that is, any more than for anybody else. He and his footman were equally welcomed to warm places in the hospitality of hell. It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.
Carlyle killed the heroes; there have been none since his time. He killed the heroic (which he sincerely loved) by forcing upon each man this question: «Am I strong or weak?» To which the answer from any honest man whatever (yes, from Caesar or Bismarck) would «weak.» He asked for candidates for a definite aristocracy, for men who should hold themselves consciously above their fellows. He advertised for them, so to speak; he promised them glory; he promised them omnipotence. They have not appeared yet. They never will. For the real heroes of whom he wrote had appeared out of an ecstacy of the ordinary. I have already instanced such a case as Cromwell. But there is no need to go through all the great men of Carlyle. Carlyle himself was as great as any of them; and if ever there was a typical child of the French Revolution, it was he. He began with the wildest hopes from the Reform Bill, and although he soured afterwards, he had been made and mounded by those hopes. He was disappointed with Equality; but Equality was not disappointed with him. Equality is justified of all her children.
But we, in the post-Carlylean period, have be come fastidious about great men. Every man examines himself, every man examines his neighbors, to see whether they or he quite come up to the exact line of greatness. The answer is, naturally, «No.» And many a man calls himself contentedly «a minor poet» who would then have been inspired to be a major prophet. We are hard to please and of little faith. We can hardly believe that there is such a thing as a great man. They could hardly believe there was such a thing as a small one. But we are always praying that our eyes may behold greatness, instead of praying that our hearts may be filled with it. Thus, for instance, the Liberal party (to which I belong) was, in its period of exile, always saying, «For a Gladstone!» and such things. We were always asking that it might be strengthened from above, instead of ourselves strengthening it from below, with our hope and our anger and our youth. Every man was waiting for a leader. Every man ought to be waiting for a chance to lead. If a god does come upon the earth, he will descend at the sight of the brave. Our prostrations and litanies are of no avail; our new moons and our Sabbaths are an abomination. The great man will come when all of us are feeling great, not when all of us are feeling small. He will ride in at some splendid moment when we all feel that we could do without him.
We are then able to answer in some manner the question, «Why have we no great men?» We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious, that is, we are small. When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great. Now, the error of Diogenes is evident. The error of Diogenes lay in the fact that he omitted to notice that every man is both an honest man and a dishonest man. Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern; but he never thought of looking inside the thief And that is where the Founder of Christianity found the honest man; He found him on a gibbet and promised him Paradise. Just as Christianity looked for the honest man inside the thief, democracy looked for the wise man inside the fool. It encouraged the fool to be wise. We can call this thing sometimes optimism, sometimes equality; the nearest name for it is encouragement. It had its exaggerations – failure to understand original sin, notions that education would make all men good, the childlike yet pedantic philosophies of human perfectibility. But the whole was full of a faith in the infinity of human souls, which is in itself not only Christian but orthodox; and this we have lost amid the limitations of a pessimistic science. Christianity said that any man could be a saint if he chose; democracy, that any man could be a citizen if he chose. The note of the last few decades in art and ethics has been that a man is stamped with an irrevocable psychology, and is cramped for perpetuity in the prison of his skull. It was a world that expected everything of everybody. It was a world that encouraged anybody to be anything. And in England and literature its living expression was Dickens.
We shall consider Dickens in many other capacities, but let us put this one first. He was the voice in England of this humane intoxication and expansion, this encouraging of anybody to be anything. His best books are a carnival of liberty, and there is more of the real spirit of the French Revolution in «Nicholas Nickleby» than in «The Tale of Two Cities.» His work has the great glory of the Revolution, the bidding of every man to be himself; it has also the revolutionary deficiency: it seems to think that this mere emancipation is enough. No man encouraged his characters so much as Dickens. «I am an affectionate father,» he says, «to every child of my fancy.» He was not only an affectionate father, he was an over-indulgent father. The children of his fancy are spoilt children. They shake the house like heavy and shouting schoolboys; they smash the story to pieces like so much furniture. When we moderns write stories our characters are better controlled. But, alas! our characters are rather easier to control. We are in no danger from the gigantic gambols of creatures like Mantalini and Micawber. We are in no danger of giving our readers too much Weller or Wegg. We have not got it to give. When we experience the ungovernable sense of life which goes along with the old Dickens sense of liberty, we experience the best of the revolution. We are filled with the first of all democratic doctrines, that all men are interesting; Dickens tried to make some of his people appear dull people, but he could not keep them dull. He could not make a monotonous man. The bores in his books are brighter than the wits in other books.
I have put this position first for a defined reason. It is useless for us to attempt to imagine Dickens and his life unless we are able at least to imagine this old atmosphere of a democratic optimism – a confidence in common men. Dickens depends upon such a comprehension in a rather unusual manner, a manner worth explanation, or at least remark.
The disadvantage under which Dickens has fallen, both as an artist and a moralist, is very plain. His misfortune is that neither of the two last movements in literary criticism has done him any good. He has suffered alike from his enemies, and from the enemies of his enemies. The facts to which I refer are familiar. When the world first awoke from the mere hypnotism of Dickens, from the direct tyranny of his temperament, there was, of course, a reaction. At the head of it came the Realists, with their documents, like Miss Flite. They declared that scenes and types in Dickens were wholly impossible (in which they were perfectly right), and on this rather paradoxical ground objected to them as literature. They were not «like life,» and there, they thought, was an end of the matter. The realist for a time prevailed. But Realists did not enjoy their victory (if they enjoyed anything) very long. A more symbolic school of criticism soon arose. Men saw that it was necessary to give a much deeper and more delicate meaning to the expression «like life.» Streets are not life, cities and civilizations are not life, faces even and voices are not life itself Life is within, and no man hath seen it at any time. As for our meals, and our manners, and our daily dress, these are things exactly like sonnets; they are random symbols of the soul. One man tries to express himself in books, another in boots; both probably fail. Our solid houses and square meals are in the strict sense fiction. They are things made up to typify our thoughts. The coat a man wears may be wholly fictitious; the movement of his hands may be quite unlike life.
This much the intelligence of men soon perceived. And by this much Dickens's fame should have greatly profited. For Dickens is «like life» in the truer sense, in the sense that he is akin to the living principle in us and in the universe; he is like life, at least in this detail, that he is alive. His art is like life, because, like life, it cares for nothing outside itself, and goes on its way rejoicing. Both produce monsters with a kind of carelessness, like enormous by-products; life producing the rhinoceros, and art Mr. Bunsby. Art indeed copies life in not copying life, for life copies nothing. Dickens's art is like life because, like life, it is irresponsible, because, like life, it is incredible.
Yet the return of this realization has not greatly profited Dickens, the return of romance has been almost useless to this great romantic. He has gained as little from the fall of the realists as from their triumph; there has been a revolution, there has been a counter revolution, there has been no restoration. And the reason of this brings us back to that atmosphere of popular optimism of which I spoke. And the shortest way of expressing the more recent neglect of Dickens is to say that for our time and taste he exaggerates the wrong thing.
Exaggeration is the definition of art. That both Dickens and the Moderns understood. Art is, in its inmost nature, fantastic. Time brings queer revenges, and while the realists were yet living, the art of Dickens was justified by Aubrey Beardsley. But men like Aubrey Beardsley were allowed to be fantastic, because the mood which they overstrained and overstated was a mood which their period understood. Dickens overstrains and overstates a mood our period does not understand. The truth he exaggerates is exactly this old Revolution sense of infinite opportunity and boisterous brotherhood. And we resent his undue sense of it, because we ourselves have not even a due sense of it. We feel troubled with too much where we have too little; we wish he would keep it within bounds. For we are all exact and scientific on the subjects we do not care about. We all immediately detect exaggeration in an exposition of Mormonism or a patriotic speech from Paraguay. We all require sobriety on the subject of the sea-serpent. But the moment we begin to believe a thing ourselves, that moment we begin easily to overstate it; and the moment our souls become serious, our words become a little wild. And certain moderns are thus placed towards exaggeration. They permit any writer to emphasize doubts for instance, for doubts are their religion, but they permit no man to emphasis dogmas. If a man be the mildest Christian, they smell «cant» but he can be a raving windmill of pessimism, «and they call it 'temperament.» If a moralist paints a wild picture of immorality, they doubt its truth, they say that devils are not so black as they are painted. But if a pessimist paints a wild picture of melancholy, they accept the whole horrible psychology, and they never ask if devils are as blue as they are painted.
It is evident, in short, why even those who admire exaggeration do not admire Dickens. He is exaggerating the wrong thing. They know what it is to feel a sadness so strange and deep that only impossible characters can express it: they do not know what it is to feel a joy so vital and violent that only impossible characters can express that. They know that the soul can be so sad as to dream naturally of the blue faces of the corpses of Baudelaire: they do not know that the soul can be so cheerful as to dream naturally of the blue face of Major Bagstock. They know that there is a point of depression at which one believes in Tintagiles: they do not know that there is a point of exhilaration at which one believes in Mr. Wegg. To them the impossibilities of Dickens seem much more impossible than they really are, because they are already attuned to the opposite impossibilities of Maeterlinck. For every mood there is an appropriate impossibility – a decent and tactful impossibility – fitted to the frame of mind. Every train of thought may end in an ecstasy, and all roads lead to Elfland. But few now walk far enough along the street of Dickens to find the place where the cockney villas grow so comic that they become poetical. People do not know how far mere good spirits will go. For instance, we never think (as the old folk-lore did) of good spirits reaching to the spiritual world. We see this in the complete absence from modern, popular supernaturalism of the old popular mirth. We hear plenty to-day of the wisdom of the spiritual world; but we do not hear, as our fathers did, of the folly of the spiritual world, of the tricks of the gods, and the jokes of the patron saints. Our popular tales tell us of a man who is so wise that he touches the supernatural, like Dr. Nikola; but they never tell us (like the popular tales of the past) of a man who was so silly that he touched the supernatural, like Bottom the Weaver. We do not understand the dark and transcendental sympathy between fairies and fools. We understand a devout occultism, an evil occultism, a tragic occultism, but a farcical occultism is beyond us. Yet a farcical occultism is the very essence of «The Midsummer Night's Dream.» It is also the right and credible essence of «The Christmas Carol.» Whether we understand it depends upon whether we can understand that exhilaration is not a physical accident, but a mystical fact; that exhilaration can be infinite, like sorrow; that a joke can be so big that it breaks the roof of the stars. By simply going on being absurd, a thing can become godlike; there is but one step from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Dickens was great because he was immoderately possessed with all this; if we are to understand him at all we must also be moderately possessed with it. We must understand this old limitless hilarity and human confidence, at least enough to be able to endure it when it is pushed a great deal too far. For Dickens did push it too far; he did push the hilarity to the point of incredible character-drawing; he did push the human confidence to the point of an unconvincing sentimentalism. You can trace, if you will, the revolutionary joy till it reaches the incredible Sapsea epitaph; you can trace the revolutionary hope till it reaches the repentance of Dombey. There is plenty to carp at in this man if you are inclined to carp; you may easily find him vulgar if you cannot see that he is divine; and if you cannot laugh with Dickens, undoubtedly you can laugh at him.
I believe myself that this braver world of his will certainly return; for I believe that it is bound up with the realities, like morning and the spring. But for those who beyond remedy regard it as and error, I put this appeal before any other observations on Dickens. First let us sympathies, if only for an instant, with the hopes of the Dickens period, with that cheerful trouble of change. If democracy has disappointed you, do not think of it as a burst bubble, but at least as a broken heart, an old love-affair. Do not sneer at the time when the creed of humanity was on its honeymoon; treat it with the dreadful reverence that is due to youth. For you, perhaps, a drearier philosophy has covered and eclipsed the earth. The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, «Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,» over the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of to-day have written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an artistic atmosphere If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning that you think so clear; deny that deadly knowledge that you think you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture; give up the very jewel of your pride; abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here.
2. Main part
2.1 Repetitions Used by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born at Land port, in Port Sea on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay-office, and was temporarily on duty in the neigh boarhound. Very soon after the birth of Charles Dickens, however, the family moved for a short period to Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then fur along period to Chatham, which thus became the real home, and for all serious purposed the native place of Dickens. The whole story of his life moves like a Canterbury pilgrimage along the great roads of Kent.
But if they had not been lifted in the air by the enormous accident of a man of genius, the Dickens’s, I fancy, would have appeared in poorer and poorer places, as inventory clacks, as caretakers, as addressers of envelopes, until they melted into the masses of the poor.
All expressive stylistic means of the language are used by the author in order to reveal the content of the text better.
In a good fiction we usually have the of the unity of the expressive means and what is expressed otherwise the artistic creativity cart exist.
In this selection we see the worldview of the writer of course. Mind is an endless source in underlining ideas, concepts so is the language endless in its opportunities of expressing words which serve the writer’s aims. «All the words are in the lexicon-dictionary of the nation but it doesn’t mean that they are simply repeated minute-after-minute», noted once the great Russian writer A.S. Pushkin (1. Пушкин.А.С. Полное собрания сочинений. 1949, том12, стр. 100)
Many authors use a number of stylistic devices very often and writhingly but in some cases they use some of them especially often-gladly. In such cases we say that the writer likes the stylistic device better than other ones.
So, in our case, Charles Dickens uses many times repetitions. The essence of it is the usage of repetition in language unites two more times. Peculiar features of repetition is that it has many functions and the writer uses them in combinations with other words frequently. Repetitions serve for Charles Dickens to open new possibilities in telling his artistic ideas and thoughts more clearly and poetically, emotionally, to escape from dry language. The roots of repetitions goes far deeply into oral folk poetry: the works of folklore were meant to improve its people and to help people to remember the material easily: they were passed from generation to generation without changing the content of the poem. Repetitions helped people to keep in their memory the content and the form to remember better, the role of repetitions was great. Theoretical basis of repetitions existed already in antique rhetorical works. Working out the theory of repetitions antique stylists meant the apply of the revisions in oral speech. As the beginning and the end of the clauses or periods had more effect on the listeners special interest was paid to the place of repetitions. From there we have the classification of repetitions, on the bases of which there lie the structural order of the repetition in the periods.
Of course, not all the enumerated by the rhetoric’s structural types could be found in Charles Dickens’s books.
Anaphora – the repetition of one and the same lexical unite at the beginning of the sentence or lexical unite at the beginning of the sentence or clause is used in different exceedingly many-sided variety. Well the court be clime with wasting candles here and there the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out, well may the stained glass windows lose their color and admit un light of day into the, well may the unstated.
Repetitions helped to keep in their memory the content and the form to remember better, the role of petitions was great. Theoretical basis of repetitions existed already in antique rhetorical works. Working out the theory of repetitions antique stylists meant the apply of the revisions in oral speech. As the beginning and the end of the clauses or periods, had more effect on the listeners special interest was paid to the place of repetitions. From there we have the classification of repetitions, on the bases of which there lie the structural order of the repetition in the periods.
Of course, not all the enumerated by the rhetoric structural types could be found in Charles Dickens’s books.
Anaphora – the repetition of one and the same lexical unite at the beginning of the sentence or clause is used in different exultingly many snidely.
Well man the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there, well may the fag hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained glass windows lose their color and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets be detached from the entrance by its owlish aspect.
Here the repeated word combination is characterized by its comparatively little semantic and role of repetition is to unite, to fasten together separate parts of the thought. Such uniting function other is failed by anaphoric repetition, especially when auxiliary words are used as the repeated unites.
In a number of cases the repeated word is semantically more substantial, its role is not only in the function of uniting its meaning also plays certain role, but it is not the main or decisive for the important of the whole statement. In majority of cases it is an introductory word or a part of a couples sentence; repeated, they create certain background for the whole statement.
Supposing his head had been under water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled. Supposing this way, that way, the other way. Supposing anything but getting unchained from the one idea for that was inexorable impossible.
Supposing is not sense backbone of the statement, but the word plays certain role in creating the background of the statement, in expressing the emotional state of he image, of the character.
«I shouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t so ridiculous. I was ridiculous enough to have a stranger coming over to marry me, whether he liked or not. It was ridiculous enough to know what an embarrassing meeting it would be… It was ridiculous enough to know I shouldn’t like him» (Our Mutual Friend. P 55).
Here we must note some semantic shifts which take place in those frequent statements which follow after the repeated unites but they themselves are not repeated.
The center of sense heaviness of the extract falls on the notion, picked out by anaphoric repetition, both the force and the dependence of the following words become more lessened, they would turn into concepts, which are adopted not independently from the specific nature, as in some of equal value, synonymical.
Usually in the research works on stylistics anaphora as a repetition, in which the beginning of the extract excerpt is subjected to increase. As the above sited examples show anaphora does not always pick out semantically important part of the statement. The same can be said about epithermal the repetition of the ends or their parts.
By the way however the less the tie-link between the repeated unit with the general content of sentence, the lesser lexical weight will it have, the less then we can speak about the increasing of the taken part of the statement by means of repetition for example:
– Dear me- I quite forgot, – replied the other. What will you take Sir? Will you take part wine, Sir? A cherry wine, sir? I can recommend the ales.
The repeated sir turned into the form of politeness, it influences only on the stylistic coloring of the statement, giving it the shade of politeness. But more often, there are cases, when epithermal underlines the thought, important for the content of the excerpt.
Ring= round repetition influences rather sufficiently on the semantics of the repeated word combinations appearing for the second time, completing the paragraph, it turns out to be more full semantically than in the beginning of the paragraph, as in the circling framed set off ring of the extract there are descriptions of many phenomena, characteristic traits or situation, more fully discovering the content of the repeated unites.
Yet more was a miss with him than Miss Peecher’ simply arranged little workbox of thoughts could hold. For, the state of man was murderous. The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it.
In very significant quantity of cases changes Dickens uses meeting point in the statements of the hero, which was interrupted in his speech its author’s commentary: «Still wasting the precious hours» – said the monk at length, turning to the elder sister as he spoke. «Still wasting the precious hours on this vain trifling.» (Nicholas Nickleby, I. 81)
In such cases repetition formally keeps the signs of the point repeated unites are situated at the end of one sentence and the beginning of another one, but the nature of the repetition changes, there is no the end of one and the beginning of the other thought, as such sentences we have at meeting point in it one section of one and the same thought is repeated, gaining formal signs of a meeting point. That is the reason we can name such phenomenon as false meeting point. Often Charles Dickens places his remark after one word, pronounced by the acting person in the very beginning of this remark. The meaning of this repetition is not clear, as it is spoken as cut off pram context and it is explained interpreted only in the second half of the to be at hand «Unless», interposed the man with the campstool» unless Mr. Winkle feels himself aggrieved by the challenge»
Especially should we analyze one of the types kinds of catch up, which is used by Dickens glad. This kind of repetition is met at the end of the first sentence, is repeated at the beginning of the second one, at the end of the second and at the beginning of the third one, at the end of the third at the beginning of the fourth and (further). We shall have uninterrupted chain of catch was, as if they are wounded one on the other, forming chain repetition for example:
«To think better of it» returned the gallant Blando is, would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character».
Chain repetition does not premed more fully discovery of the meaning of the repeated word or word combination. Fastenings, formed by repetition at the end of one sentence at the beginning of the following sentence cement the unity of the statement, as a rule give the sequence of thoughts or actions, which follow each other immediately. Sometimes Dickens intertwines the chain of catch ups in the system, which looks like similar chain repetitions, but with more complex pictures; «He Saw» the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel shelf, in which she is represented on a terrace with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase, upon the pedestal and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
Here the fastening are stretched out seizing between their repeated ends the whole sentence, the beginning of which enters a new word or a word combination, which is repeated through one sentence at the end of the following sentence, seizing in its turn, when repeated another part with the newly introduced repeated unites.
Chain repetition is one of the types of repetitions a significant part of whole are kept in the works of folklore. Sometimes Dickens especially indicates points to a definite concrete
2.2 Stylistic Devices used in «Nicholas Nickleby»
This book is best, out of all the Dickens books. If you should just read one of Dicken's, it should be this one. This captures all of the suspense that he creates in any of his books. I reccomend this boook to anyone who is looking for a long and satisfying read.
Money versus virture, poverty set against wealth, hero against the ills of society, plus the combined forces of the duty to family and bond between sister and brother. Any Dickens novel will bring you the perfection of character, the ordinary individual through thought and deed becomes the extraordinary.
Throw in a sarcasm still alive today, mainly through the use of superlatives which over emphasize the importance of «Lord somebody» and deftly turn these titled aristocrats from dieties of fortune into over inflated balloons. Dickens, in a time of Victorian sensibility, turned to an arsenal of adjectives for dealing with the long engrained antediluvian British nobility. Exquisite descriptions allowing the reader to visit each character as if you were in the literal sense, sitting in their living rooms observing their lives right down to the tea kettle whistle.
All Dickens novels are loaded with the stuff of glory, but never too far fetched that he can't drive home the plight of the impoverished, the cycles of poverty and the deep suffering he witnesses daily in the streets of London. What better way to emphasize injustice than to contrast sick and orphaned children with rich old misers?
Comparing his observations on injustice, you will find it relevant today, in a different guise perhaps, from Lord Somebody and his buffoons in parliament to our corporate welfare state and over saturated market economy.
How does one survive a world as cruel as one directed by a corrupt guardian uncle in the money lending business? Only Nicholas Nickelby can answer that. With nothing but youth on his side and a good upbringing in the country, Nicholas learns his values will need to be tested at the risk of his own safety and reputation. As he defends his character and the honor of his family, not to mention saving a few lives of those much worse off than he, he gains enough good karma to last several lifetimes as he follows his heart to the wealth that awaits him like a holy grail. Like any hero, he sets off a chain reaction of good luck for his family and aquaintances, until the book exhausts itself in becoming one riotous, joyous celebration of life. As one last task, Nicholas with all his honor, attracts the only one thing he is missing, an equally flawless damsel to be rescued from a cruel, self centered father.
Unlike his later works, this one is brimming with sweet hyperbolic idealism and exageration, like youthful optimism, it does not carry the same intimate character intropsection he develops later.
It is worth it to settle into this novel to witness the sharp black and white juxtapose of the good character versus corrupt.
Whereas Dickens balanced this with gray areas between rich and poor in other novels, this work is direct, simple and explicit in it's quest for moral ground. Wealth matches wealth of spirit and Dickens can make it infectious with his keen observations of human behavior and his absolute dedication to matching his words to his heart.
Fresh from his success on «Oliver Twist» as a political satirist of note, Dickens turns his sights toward the abuse of Yorkshire schools – a national disgrace – in which children were effectively abandoned for a fee. Neglect, physical abuse, malnourishment, cold, and ill health were endemic. This political attack becomes the setting for an expansive tale of the Nickleby family and their ongoing struggle against the evil of their uncle Ralph. The usual collection of sub-plots, comedy and Dickensian characters rounds out a lengthy but fulfilling read that nobody will be sorry they started.
2.2.1 Other StylisticFeatures Used by Charles Dickens in «Oliver Twist»
Dickens s novels first appeared in monthly installments, including «Oliver Twist» (1837–1839), which depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist.
Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest English novelists of the period. Dickens works are characterized by alters on social evils, injustice and hypocrisy.
In the thirties of the XIX century English capitalism entered a new stase of development. England become a classical capitalist country. At the some time England was experiencing on, acclamation of contradiction both at home and abroad. In India and Ireland national-liberation monuments were developing while the metropolis itself witnessed powerful upsurge of labor movement known as chartist. The period of this tense stresses was attended by the appearance of a new literary current-critical realism. The critical realism of the 19th centre flourished in the 1840s and in the beginnings of the1850s. One of the greatest writers of this period was Charles Dickens a brilliant novelist who revealed truths of his time «Hard Time» he called this time.
Oliver Twist is one of the best works of Charles Dickens, Belinsky V.G a well-known Russian critic wrote. The merit of the novel is in its truth to reality, sometimes arousing indignation, always full of every and humor, its fault is in the ending which is in the mourner of the sentimental hovels of the past centre…
All the of «Oliver Twist», of the good cranks and villains in particular, and delaine sharply and ritually».
The novel was written in 1837–38. It tells the story of an orphan boy of unknown parentage. Born in a workhouse, brought up under cruel conditions, the hero runs away from the workhouse to London, were he falls into the hands of a song of thieves. He is resented from them by the benevolent rich Mr. Brownlow, but the thieves make him join the once again and partake in their foul dealings. The novel ends with Oliver Twist being adapted by Mr. Brownlow. The adventures of the boy-hero were used by Dickens to describe the lower depth of London. He makes his readers awes at the in humanity of city life under the conditions of capitalism. The main hero of the novel is a kind boy but he is thrown into the awful conditions under which the children of the poor were brush-up. The novel exposes he cruelth of the bourgois philathopists.
1. Topicality of the theme
Charles Dickens life was very hard. His childhood was an unhappy period. His childhood passed in stresses for surviving in difficult conations of the XIX century England. His novel «Little Darrit» is about miserable life of his parents.
One of the creators of characters in all the world s literature is the British novelist Charles Dickens. His novel «David Copperfield» describes one of D… tourist character named Uriah Heep. The story is harried by its win hero, David Copperfield a young boy. He has arrived at Mr. Wickfield s, were he is to board while altitudes school. Mr. Wickfield has allowed practice. The story is set in the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Dickens stile is very unique and original. He uses in some time he uses short sentences, especially when he wants deemphasize something important. It is repetition are also interesting and we have them almost in all his book. «Oliver Twist» can give us some imagination about its author s style. Here we have many examples of using polysemantic words. One of such wage we come across in chapter II. Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an hour, and had scarily completed the devolution of second slice of bread, when Mr. Bambel, who had handed him over to the core of an old woman, returned, and telling him it was board had said hi was to happen before it forth word.
In this sentence one should pay attention to his to the words «workhouse» and «board». The first is public institution for reception of paupers in a parish or group of parishes. The inhabitants of workhouses were selected to most brutal exploitation. In «Oliwer Twist» Dickens gives a realistic picture of the horrible existence in workhouse.
The word board has many meanings the meaning is
Oliver Twist» is an excellent, fascinating and compelling novel which I had the pleasure of reading. This book is exceptionally well narrated which distinguishes Dickens as one of the greatest English story writers. The issues he raised are timeless particularly societal issues pertaining to dealing with poverty, class differences, child labour, orphans and the disadvantaged in society. He highlights the need to care for others and not to be selfish. Dickens did a good job of enlightening the middle class in Britain of the hardships that the poor had to endure during his time.
Oliver Twist is a very young, innocent orphan who lost his mother at birth. He is thrust into the cruel and unforgiving world. I was moved by the numerous hardships and challenges that he had to endure at such a tender age, including being shot at. He was moved away from the workhouse when he innocently asks for some more food, taken to as an apprentice undertaker and after some trouble runs away only to get into a group of thieves and robbers.
Dickens paints a grim, dark and horrifying picture of life of the poor in Victorian England. The author produced some memorable characters like Fagin the miser and the gang of thieves that included The Artful Dodger, Mr Bumble at the workhouse, Nancy the kind hearted whore with motherly instincts, Mr Grimwig who is always threatening to eat his head and those of others, Sikes the murderer and others.
Thankfully the book has a happy ending for Oliver. However, Nancy touched my heart and I felt that she should not have met such a grisly demise. Some unfortunate anti-Semitic references taint an otherwise exceptional novel.
This is excellent reading for those who like a well written story with exciting twists and turns.
I have read a number of Dickens books and can certainly call myself a big fan of his work. Considering the overwhelming popularity of «Oliver Twist,» it's a bit surprising that it took a graduate class to present the first opportunity for my getting to read it. While the book is good, it is not without its problems. I found the character of Oliver to be a little flat and a whole lot of unbelievable. Furthermore, Dickens played around with a lot of themes dealing with knots and mazes which was mildly tiresome.
And while I got a couple of big belly laughs out of Bumble's character, I was really peeved with Nancy's outcome. For those who have not read it, I am being cryptic for a reason.
All in all it is a clever little book, though it is clear it is one of his first. However, when you compare this one to the likes of «David Copperfield» and «Dombey and Son,» it leaves a bit to be desired.
For those who have never read Dickens and are afraid to pick up one of his many novels that are half a foot thick, start with «A Christmas Carol» or «Great
Expectations»….and then give «Twist» a whirl.
Oliver Twist was Dickens's first serious novel, after the comic Pickwick Papers. It is trash but his potential shows through.
The Penguin Classics version seen here gives us the book as it was originally serialized in magazines, and it is filthily anti-semitic, as is The Merchant Of Venice by Shakespeare and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, two other filthily anti-semitic British pieces of work. We have an established tradition here of Jew hatred in jolly old England.
The characters in Oliver Twist are caricatures given to us as pure good or pure evil. I don't know which are worse. Rose Maylie is so sickeningly sweet and good as to be worse than the bad uns. So is Oliver Twist for that matter. Reading about either of them is like eating french toast with gobs of maple syrup but leaving out the french toast. Just spoon that maple syrup into your mouth straight.
Beauty and goodness are equivalent to each other. Rose Maylie is so pretty, pretty as a picture, pretty as two pictures, and so is our pansy goody two shoes Oliver Twist. Perfection is too weak a word for them.
Meanwhile, the Jew is a despicably ugly character, both physically and morally. And when Oliver wakes up and looks out a window he spies the Jew, and he wakes up screaming The Jew! The Jew!
This edition of Dickens's viciously anti-semitic work identifies its primary villain as The Jew perhaps 300 times. It's The Jew this, The Jew that. If someone tried to get this garbage published today, the only publishing house that would take it would be from Aryan Nation.
The problem with completely slamming this trash is that even though the characters are one dimensional, either goody goody good or bad uns, and even though it is a sledgehammer of constant Jew hatred, you still have a fledgling Dickens, a neophyte Dickens, which is like having a rookie Reggie Jackson on your team. He is going to hit some homers and win some World Series games. He has awesome talent and it does show.
There is a confirmed tendency to hero-worship the famous. Dickens or Shakespeare could have written any old garbage, and often did, and still most people would praise it to the skies because they really aren't looking past the name.
Do you have the independence and the true taste to really tell the wheat from the chaff? Very few people do. And Reggie Jackson struck out an awful lot, and had a big mouth which his foot fit easily into, and was never accused of being a nice guy.
This early version of Oliver Twist reeks. Get the musical instead. Or look for a later version, one that doesn't scream about The Jew ten times a page.
The introduction tells us that Dickens had Jewish friends who told him that this book was anti-semitic, and Dickens answered basically «yes, but most Fagin type criminals ARE Jews». Even so, he deleted some of his references to The Jew and added a nice Jew as a minor character in one of his later books. Big deal. That doesn't balance Fagin. Oh, I've ripped out your liver? Here, have a twinkie.
NOTES ON «OLIVER TWIST»
As Angus Wilson says,
… the somber tone of Oliver Twist, coming after Pickwick Papers, was a surprise, though no disappointment, to contemporary readers… With Oliver Twist Dickens the master of grand social vision, and Dickens the journalist, come to the front of the stage, while Dickens the comedian of Pickwick Papers retires into comparative shadow.
It is as if Dickens were eager to demonstrate his own versatility and to avoid beign typecast as the author of a particular kind of fiction: in the context of the 1830s it is hard to think of a more abrupt change…
Dickens drew on various literary and dramatic models in his second novel. The Gothic novel may well have contributed 'a certain supernatural element implied in the diabolic character of Fagin, and in the mysterious absence of his footprints after he has peered in upon Oliver in his country retreat, and in the whole phantom character of Monks'. The eighteenth-century picaresque novel may have suggested 'the disputed – inheritance – cum – illegitimate – son plot' (cf. Tom Jones and Humphery Clinker). Popular melodrama of the kind that Dickens enjoyed in the London theaters made its contribution, notably to the stylized and implausible dialogue a