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Write a note on Charles Dickens as a novelist.

Dickens is a delineator of low life. Humour is his supreme quality. Humour and pathos are the most outstanding features of Dickens’s novels, and it is this twin virtue that makes their author humane at heart, liberal in his sympathies social in his zeal, and universal in his appeal. Though his works mirror the contemporary conditions of life and society, no other author except Scott and Shakespeare has made so much out of the common frailities of man, yet at the same time wrought for our sympathy with them. There is so much evil that exists in his pages, but soon the moral scales restore the balance and virtue is never allowed to go out and sooner or later installed in its place. We always rise on reading a novel of Dickens with a sense of gratitude for the fund of mirth and hillarity that humanizes our outlook.

His Humour – Dickens is essentially a humorist who achieves his object through fun and laughter and thus expresses his sympathy with the seamy side of things. He perceives some oddity in a character and laughs at it, but never allows that character to lose our sympathy. His characters appear ludicrous they often are even grotesque…. but we get retain in our hearts a soft corner for them. Dickens is not a satirist who satiriges and lashes the weaknesses of his characters till we are sick of them. But though he holds them up to ridicule, we feel, greateful to them for providing an opportunity to entertain and instruct us and ultimately we rise to be the better, wiser and humaner person. It is this quality or humour which has made his novels so enjoyable and popular and given us such admirable characters as Pickwick and Weller in Pickwick Papers, Mrs. Sara Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit, Joe Bargery in Great Expectations, and Micawber, Betsey Trotwood, Peggothy, Dick, and Tommy Traddles in David Copperfield.

His Pathos – Pathos arouses the sense of tears in things human when any innocent character suffers unmeritted punishment and hard treatment. Our sense of justice is wounded and our spring of tears is touched. Dickens puts his characters, particularly the children, in the most pathetic circumstances and thereby awakens our sympathy for them. Oliver Twist becoming the martyr for the sufferings of his school mates, Pip living under the martrydom of his sister and harsh treatment in Great Expectations, David suffering under Murdstone and smarting under the humiliation of a base employment at Murdstone and Grinby in David Copperfield, Sydney Carton fatally substituting himself in place of Charles Darney in ‘A Tale of Two Cities and thus choosing a martyrdom for his immortal love are characters that shall always stir in our imagination.

His Humanity – Such an artist as Dickens would not but be a friend and a champion of the poor, the down trodden the scum of the society or as masefield would Bay “The dirt and the dross, the maimed, the halt in the rain and the cold: That is why while Thackeray his contemporary brother-novelist wrote of the ‘vanity fair’ of the richer and upper class. Dickens delighted to confine himself to the lower and poorer classes, for his sense of fine perception recognised examples of essential worth and humanity in the midst of what was common, sordid and base. For him “the rude forefathers of the Hamlet” had a greater appeal than “Portly potentates, goodly in birth”. No writer thus has contributed so much to raise the morality and dignity of man and has preserved for us the sanity of human life. The patience and fortitude with which little Nell in The story of Nell, Florence Dombey in Dombey and Son and David in David Copperfield brave their sufferings and torturous life shine as ports or would say like a candle in a naughty world.”

His Reforming Zeal – Dickens chose to harness the art of fiction to the service of society and life. As such he wrote his novels with a purpose. And that purpose was to promote the social weal in more ways than one what Lord Shaftsbury did in the Parliament, Charles Kingsley through his book Water Babies, that Dickens achieved through his novels. No vice in the social and legal world could escape his searching eye and he conducted his crusade against the sorry functioning of workhouses in Oliver Twist, the Chancy courts in Bleak House, severe laws and consequent imprisonment for debts in Little Dorrit, and the hopeless state of education in Nicholas Nickle by and David Copperfield itself wherein he has drawn upon his personal experiences.

His Creative Imagination and Style – and He achieved all this by his gift of fertile imagination and picturesque expression. There is a wonderful variety of characters in Dickens. Young and old, rich and poor, mighty and mained, normal and abnormal types, all fill his world; wherein we meet persons of various tastes and trades. Though at times he is charged with mannerisms his style is vigorous, apt, and picturesque to enable his characters to live in our fancy. Dickens is a master of description. In the words of a writer he does not like Meredith or Hardy give the poetry of a scene; he gives the scene itself. The creation of Mr. Pickwick, Mrs. Gamp, Sidney Carton, Joe, Betsey Throtwood Micawber and the other members in that galaxy, and the description of the storm in the seat at Yarmouth in David Copperfield could alone be possible with a writer like Dickens.

The novels of Dickens show the dark side of Victorian life. His social criticisms, helped to improve school and jail conditions while his lively characters and moving stories touched the hearts of readers all over the world. ‘Oliver Twist’ is the story of a poor orphan boy. In it, Dickens does not just tell a tale but points out the horrors of a life lived in vice, and the misery and despair to which evil leads. The lonely miserable, starning Oliver suffers at the hands of Fagin, the master criminal and finally learns his true identity.” The novel reveals that Dickens is determined to make me conscious of the rotten social structure and injustices by creating characters so vivid that they are almost like people we know. He puts everything before the readers, eyes and seems to be saying, “These things have stirred my feelings. I write them in the hope that they will also stir yours.”