Hello readers!!
I am Divya jadav a student of English Department in MKBU. This blog is part of Assignment writing for the paper 104 : Literature of Victorians
Characteristics of Charles Dickens Novels
👉Table of contents:-
Personal Information
Assignment Details
Abstract
Introduction
Dickens and his interesting technique of characterization
Dickens's Realism
Dickens's Idealism
Dickens 's Humour
Dickens 's master hand of depicting child characters
Dickens 's sentimentalism
The Humanitarian note in Dickens novel
Variety and range of Dickens Novels
Dickens and social Reform
Dickens narrative and Descriptive power Dickens: A Moralist
Conclusion
References
👉Personal Information:-
Name:- Divya Bharatbhai Jadav
Batch :- M.A.sem 1 ( 2023- 2025)
Email Address:- divyajadav5563@gmail. com
Roll number:- 8
👉Assignment Details:-
Topic:- Characteristics of Charles Dickens Novels
Paper:- Literature of Victorians
Subject code:- 22395
Submitted to:- Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar
Date of Submission:- 1 December 2023
About Assignment:- In this assignment I will try to define various characteristics of Charles Dickens Novels.
👉Abstract:-
Charles Dickens is a distinguished novelist and influential figure in the Victorian period. One of the achievements that Dickens possesses in connection with art of his novels is obvious success in creating memorable characters in his substantial novels.The power that lies under his striking success is that uses so many interesting techniques to describe character in detail. Based on action and the manner characters seen with these objects are easily recognised and remembered by readers at the end of the particular novel. The vivid, colourful, credible and lifelike character and the technique used for their creation prove the matchless mystery of the writers.
👉Introduction:-
The characters are indispensable elements of fiction.certain techniques are used to create and develop a character representative of an individual. Indirect characterization, the writer may create a character through simple reports.In indirect characterization , the character reveals his personality in his actions, emotion and conduct . The author shows his character performing some kind of action. The reader makes definite inference about the personality of the character when put in this situation.
👉Dickens 's and his interesting technique of characterization:-
Some critics hold a common observation that Dickens's characters seem to be types or caricatures rather than individuals. Orwell says the following assertion about his characterization.
" Dickens 's character have no mental life.they say perfectly the thing that they have to says, but they cannot convinced as talking about anything else. They never learn , never speculative "
Generally speaking, Dickens' characters are not fully developed in a single page or a chapter. Dickens goes on conferring new particular and new dramatic features to them until the last chapter of his novels.
👉Dickens's Realism:-
He appeared to know all the different classes except the higher classes. So far as the external features of manners, surroundings, and the particularities of different classes go, especially in the humbler walks of life, he was not only omniscient but extremely faithful. His pictures are crammed with the rich detail gathered by an untiring observer. Nothing seems to have escaped his eye; nothing was beneath his sympathy and affection.
👉Dickens’s Idealism:-
His genius was essentially creative, humorous, and fantastic. He was an idealist and a poetic dreamer. What he had observed of human nature served him as raw material. His sleepless imagination exaggerated the comic side of everything, and developed the suggestions of reality into humorous idealism far transcending the proportions of ordinary life. David Copperfield is richer in personal experience than the work of any other novelist.
👉Dickens’s Humour:-
The main ingredient of Dickens’s outlook on life is humor and as a humorist, he takes rank with Chaucer, Shakespeare and Lamb and all those masters of the typically English humor which springs from humanity and easily blends with the pathos. Dickens’s novels abound in all the varieties of humor, farcical situations, grotesque descriptions, verbal twists and mannerisms of speech and above all, the sympathetic laughter which bathes a character and illuminates its inmost depth of heart and nature. But there is a remarkable flexibility in the distribution of this sympathetic laughter among the different kinds of characters. It is at its tenderest in the sketches of the good and generous figures, such as Mrs. Gamp, Mrs. Micawber and Joe Gregory who stand transfigured in a poetic light because they have been conceived with tender love and sympathy blended with a sweet smile.
👉Dickens’s Master Hand at Depicting Child Characters:-
Charles Dickens was a great expert at drawing child characters. In fact, no figure of English literature can compare with Charles Dickens in this regard. In depicting a child persecuted by the society he excelled everyone else. Gissing remarks: “A third type of character which Dickens developed, and which in his time made immensely for his popularity was that of the victim of the society, usually a child. The possibilities of childhood for romance or pathos had been suggested by Shakespeare, by Fielding and by Blake; but none of these had brought children into the very center of the action or had made them highly individual”.
👉Dickens’s Sentimentalism:-
Dickens’s imaginative sympathy gave a rare tenderness and a compassionate insight to his drawing of poor human creatures; his idealism tended to dwell on the beauty of human pathos, and to evolve sentimental types akin in imaginative scope to his humorous creation. We owe not a little to Dickens for arousing this very sense of fellowship, even with the meanest and commonest.
👉The Humanitarian Note in Dickens’s Novels:-
The humanitarian novel with which the name of Dickens is preeminently associated is the popular section of an extensive humanitarian literature, and as such it is a very valuable record of a deep and far-reaching philosophic movement, which had its beginning in the eighteenth century, and rose to its sentimental culmination in the nineteenth century The humanitarian movement gave us the humanitarian novel and in turn, the novel probably accelerated the movement. Dickens became a sort of professor of humanitarianism, and he held this position for nearly thirty years. The light of that knowledge which was indeed somewhat false and misleading, and the light of an imagination of strange and alluring splendor, he turned upon a great variety of English scenes and characters, but especially upon workhouse, debtor’s prisons, pawnbroker’s shop, hovels of the poor, law offices, dark streets and dark alleys, all the London haunts the lurking places of crime and vice and pain. His theme was always the downtrodden and the oppressed.
👉Variety and range of Dickens Novels:-
Dickens never lost his sympathy for the poor and the mistreated. His best novels are of victims of the slums, the poor houses, the debtors’ prisons, and of the seamy sides of London life. The novels of Dickens are filled with stark realism and with a kind humor. He never became bitter or bitingly satirical, but even when dealing with the most miserable of social conditions, his tone is one of idealism and his situations are sketched with understanding and sympathetic feelings. He was a novelist of the people and his creations have had a continuous popularity with all classes of people to the present day.
👉Dickens and Social Reform:-
In his novels, Charles Dickens has tried to satirize the social, political and economic evils of the time. We know that he has caricatured the working of the law and the courts, educational institutions and the cruelties of the teachers and other such evil practices. In fact he wanted to make evil a vehicle of justice and morality. That is why we also see that he has succeeded in portraying those characters more successfully that have virtues in them. On the other hand, characters with vices have not been portrayed so successfully
👉Dickens’s Descriptive and Narrative Power:-
Charles Dickens was a very successful story-teller. He had a very strong power of description. The power exhibited itself in the best form in the description of nature and countryside. To quote George Gissing: “This power of suggesting country atmosphere is remarkable in Dickens. He hardly even mentions a tree of flowers by its name; he never elaborates, perhaps never scales a landscape, yet we see and feel the open-air surroundings. The secret is his own delight in the road and the meadow, and has an infinite power of suggestion in seemingly unconsidered words”.
👉Dickens: A Moralist
We have seen it more than once that Charles Dickens was essentially a moralist. His novels are, in fact, means of preaching his morals. In fact, he wanted to establish moral virtues. To quote George Gissing: “Dickens may be disappointing, considered purely as an artist. But he is something more than an artist. He is also a prophet. He is out to expound a gospel, a view of life, a scale of values which he wishes his fellowmen to accept.”
👉Conclusion:-
In conclusion, Charles Dickens’ works stand out as some of the most remarkable literature ever written. In no small part due to his skill for creating dynamic, multi-dimensional characters. He skillfully portrayed emotional, psychological, and behavioral development within his characters, leaving a lasting impact on the readers’ minds. Dickens’ characters became a model for other writers to follow in terms of character development.
References:
Dickens and His Memorable Characterization Corecore.ac.uk/download/pdf/153446833.pdf. Accessed 25 Nov. 2023.
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