Write a note on Dickens as a satirist.

The social criticism in the later novels became increasingly bitter with Dickens, own growing dissillusionment about the behaviour of human beings. He was no longer able even to suggest any cure for the corruption he exposed yet his excoriation of this corruption and dishonesty became more savage. The consciousness of defeat in what he conceived as a personal struggle with society colours darkly all of Dickens’ last novels. In them he impels, on the skewer of his own bitterness, the bureacracy that had rebuffed his work as a reformer, the aristocracy that had rejected him as social equal, the friends and lovers who had failed to live in the fantasy-world of his creation. ‘Bleak House’ is primarily a study in decay. ‘Little Dorrit’ is a study in snobbery. The study of snobbery takes place on several levels. The same remorseless but hopeless radicalism is at work in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’.

This is a sense in which most of Dickens’ later works are a writing of the earlier ones, from the stand point of a disillusioned instead of an optimistic radical. A Tale of Two Cities’ is in many respects a maturer Barnaby Rudge, and ‘Great Expectations’, his next novel contains much of David Copperfield and something of ‘Nicholas Nickleby. His destructive criticism of snobbery ridden, money worshipping – society is abundant in his novels. Religious hypocrisy and snobbishness were widespread. In his novels Dickens lashes at hypocrisy of every kind and the snobbishness and indifference of the rich towards the poor is frequently emphasised. Dickens knew that much suffering is due to hypocrisy, ignorance and tyranny, and in one novel after another his whim is to arouse the sympathy of his readers for suffering and he does so both by moving them to tears and laughter.

Dickens was an avowed satirist and as such, he is sometimes guilty of over-emphasis and partiality. He criticies the work-homes, the entire system of poor relief and forgets the good that these institutions were doing. His range is not very wide, he paints only lower class London life. But within these limits, he is a very accurate painter of the social conditions that he saw around him. Dickens has depicted the general harshness of the age seen in the cruel treatment meted out to children at school. As it was a time of ugliness, Dickens satirises ugly religion, ugly law, ugly relations between rich and poor, ugly clothes and ugly furniture.

Dickens’ satire covers a wide range of English life, both private and public, education, charity, religion, social morality, genteel society, legal profession, the law’s delay, the machinery of politics all come within his range. His satire is amid at every glaring abuse of the day. He has given satiric portraits of school teachers. He has satirised religious hypocrites. He treats a thorough going humbug as though he loved him. Hypocrites of all kinds come within the lash of Dickens. As a satirist he makes a judicious use of emphasis and reiteration. In his satire on hypocrites from high life. Dickens was less successful than with the middle class. His hypocrites from high life are not memorable. He is equally a failure when he enters the field of political satire. Thus Dickens is one of the greatest satirists in the history of the English novel.