|
Legacy of Charles Dickens |
|
Written by Admin
|
|
Tuesday, 15 November 2005 |
Charles Dickens was a well known personality and his novels were
immensely popular during his lifetime. His first full novel The
Pickwick Papers brought him immediate fame and this fame continued
right through his career. He maintained a high quality in all his
writings and although never departing greatly from his typical
“Dickensian” style he did experiment with different themes, moods and
genres. Some of these experiments were more successful than others and
the public’s taste and appreciation of his various works have varied
over time. He was usually keen to give his readers what they wanted and
the monthly or weekly publication of his works in episodes meant that
the books could change as the story proceeded at the whim of the
public. A good example of this are the American episodes in Martin
Chuzzlewit which were put in by Dickens in response to lower than
normal sales of the earlier chapters. In Our Mutual Friend the
inclusion of the character of Riah was a positive portrayal of a Jewish
character after he was criticised for the depiction of Fagin in Oliver
Twist.
His popularity has waned little since his death and he is still one of
the best known and most read of English authors. At least 180 movies
and TV adaptations based on Dickens’ works help confirm his success.
Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime
and as early as 1913 a silent film of The Pickwick Papers was made. His
characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their
own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella
from the character Mrs Gamp and Pickwickian, Pecksniffian and Gradgrind
all entered the dictionary owing to Dickens’ perfect portrayal of these
kind of people. Sam Weller was an early superstar perhaps better known
than his author at first. It is likely that A Christmas Carol is his
best-known story, with new adaptations almost every year. It is also
the most-filmed of Dickens' stories, most versions dating from the
early years of cinema. This simple morality tale with humour and
pathos, for many, sums up the true meaning of Christmas and eclipses
all his other Christmas stories.
At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of
the world Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and
disadvantaged at the heart of empire. Through his journalism he
campaigned of specific issues such as sanitation and the workhouse but
his fiction was probably all the more powerful in changing opinion. He
revealed the harsh lives of the poor and satirised the people who
allowed abuses to continue, all in the context of a good-humoured,
entertaining story which sold widely. His works seem to have inspired
many more people to address problems and inequalities, even though he
poked fun at these well meaning philanthropists, and his influence is
often credited with having the Marshalsea and Fleet Prisons shut down.
Dickens may have hoped for the foundation of a literary dynasty through
his ten children and he named some of them after past writers but it
would have been difficult for them to be anywhere near as successful as
their father and some of them seem to have inherited their
grandfather’s lack of financial acumen. Several of his children wrote
of their memories of their father or prepared his surviving
correspondence for publication but his great-granddaughter, Monica
Dickens, would follow in his footsteps as a writer of novels.
His works, with their vivid descriptions of life at the time, mean that
the whole of Victorian society is often simply described as Dickensian.
Following his death in 1870 a greater degree of realism entered
literature probably in reaction to Dickens’ own tendency towards the
picaresque and ridiculous. Late Victorian novelists such as Samuel
Butler, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing owe much to Dickens but their
works are grittier and less sentimental. Writers continue to be
influenced by his books and, although his faults are criticized, few
writers can match his characterisation, gripping plots, social
commentary, popular, critical, and financial success, and his sense of
humour. |