Why should you read Charles Dickens? - Iseult Gillespie

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The starving orphan seeking a second helping of gruel. The spinster wasting away in her tattered wedding dress. The stone-hearted miser plagued by the ghost of Christmas past. More than a century after his death, these remain recognizable figures from the work of Charles Dickens. But what are the features of Dickens’ writing that make it so special? Iseult Gillespie investigates.

Lesson by Iseult Gillespie, directed by Compote Collective.

The starving orphan seeking
a second helping of gruel.

The spinster wasting away
in her tattered wedding dress.

The stone-hearted miser plagued
by the ghost of Christmas past.

More than a century after his death,

these remain recognizable figures
from the work of Charles Dickens.

So striking is his body of work
that it gave rise to its own adjective.

But what are the features of Dickens's
writing that make it so special?

Dickens’s fiction brims with anticipation

through brooding settings,
plot twists, and mysteries.

These features of his work kept
his audience wanting more.

When first published,
his stories were serialized,

meaning they were released a few chapters
at a time in affordable literary journals

and only later reprinted as books.

This prompted fevered speculation
over the cliffhangers

and revelations he devised.

Serialization not only made fiction
available to a wider audience

and kept them reading,

but increased the hype
around the author himself.

Dickens became particularly popular
for his wit,

which he poured into quirky characters
and satiric scenarios.

His characters exhibit the sheer
absurdity of human behavior,

and their names often personify
traits or social positions,

like the downtrodden Bob Cratchit,

the groveling Uriah Heep,

and the cheery Septimus Crisparkle.

Dickens set these colorful characters
against intricate social backdrops,

which mimic the society he lived in.

For instance, he often considered

the changes brought about
by the Industrial Revolution.

During this period,

the lower classes experienced
sordid working and living conditions.

Dickens himself experienced
this hardship as a child

when he was forced to work in
a boot blacking factory

after his father was sent
to debtors' prison.

This influenced his depiction
of the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorrit,

where the titular character cares
for her convict father.

Prisons, orphanages, or slums
may seem grim settings for a story,

but they allowed Dickens to shed light

on how his society's
most invisible people lived.

In Nicholas Nickleby,

Nicholas takes a job with the schoolmaster
Wackford Squeers.

He soon realizes that Squeers
is running a scam

where he takes unwanted children
from their parents for a fee

and subjects them to violence
and deprivation.

Oliver Twist also deals with the plight
of children in the care of the state,

illustrating the brutal conditions of
the workhouse

in which Oliver pleads
with Mr. Bumble for food.

When he flees to London, he becomes
ensnared in a criminal underworld.

These stories frequently portray
Victorian life

as grimy, corrupt, and cruel.

But Dickens also saw his time
as one in which old traditions

were fading away.

London was becoming
the incubator of the modern world

through new patterns in industry,
trade, and social mobility.

Dickens's London is therefore
a dualistic space:

a harsh world that is simultaneously
filled with wonder and possibility.

For instance, the enigma
of Great Expectations

centers around the potential of Pip,

an orphan plucked from obscurity
by an anonymous benefactor

and propelled into high society.

In his search for purpose,

Pip becomes the victim
of other people’s ambitions for him

and must negotiate with
a shadowy cast of characters.

Like many of Dickens’s protagonists,

poor Pip's position
is constantly destabilized,

just one of the reasons
why reading Dickens

is the best of times for the reader,

while being the worst of times
for his characters.

Dickens typically offered clear
resolution by the end of his novels,

– with the exception of
The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The novel details the disappearance of the
orphan Edwin under puzzling circumstances.

However, Dickens died before the novel
was finished

and left no notes resolving the mystery.

Readers continue to passionately debate
over who Dickens intended as the murderer,

and whether Edwin Drood
was even murdered in the first place.

Throughout many adaptations,

literary homages,

and the pages of his novels,

Dickens’s sparkling language
and panoramic worldview

continue to resonate.

Today, the adjective Dickensian

often implies squalid working
or living conditions.

But to describe a novel as
Dickensian is typically high praise,

as it suggests a story in which true
adventure and discovery

occur in the most unexpected places.

Although he often explored bleak material,

Dickens’s piercing wit never failed
to find light in the darkest corners.