SOME WORDS ABOUT DICKENS'S NOVELS ( Nekaj besed o Dickensovih romanih)
The Pickwick Papers
were stories about a group of rather odd
individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath, and
elsewhere. Dickens's novels first appeared in monthly
installments, including OLIVER
TWIST (1837-39), which depicts the London
underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, whose
right to his inheritance is kept secret by the villainous Mr. Monks. Oliver
suffers in a poorfarm and workhouse. He outrages authorities by
asking a second bowl of porridge. From a solitary confinement he
is apprenticed to a casket maker, and becomes a member of a gang
of young thieves, led by Mr.
Fagin. Finally Fagin is hanged at Newgate
and Mr. Barnlow adopts Oliver. NICHOLAS
NICKELBY (1838-39) was a tale of young
Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
(1943) is one of Dickens's most loved works, which has been
adapted into screen a number of times. The character of Ebenezer Scrooge,
the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching" miser, has attracted such actors as Seymour
Hicks, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, George C. Scott and Alastair
Sim. In a pornography version from 1975 Mary Stewart was
"Carol Screwge".
Among Dicken's later works are DAVID
COPPERFIELD (1849-50),
where Dickens used his own personal experiences of work in a
factory. David's widowed mother marries the tyrannical Mr. Murdstone.
David becomes friends with Mr. Micawber and his family. "I
went in, and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a
brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon
his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is
upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full
upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing
short-collar on." Dora, David's first wife, dies and he
marries Agnes. He pursues his career as a journalist and later as
a novelist. A TALE OF TWO
CITIES (1859) was set in the years of the
French Revolution. The plot circles around the look-alikes Charles Darnay, a
nephews of a marquis, and Sydney
Carton, a lawyer, who both love the same
woman, Lucy.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1860-61)
began as a serialized publication in Dickens's periodical All
the Year Round on December 1, 1860. The
story of Pip (Philip
Pirrip) was among Tolstoy's and
Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. G.K. Chesterton wrote that the
story had "a quality of serene irony and even sadness,"
which separates it from Dickens's other works. "Ours was the
marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound,
twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression
of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a
memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found
out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was
the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and
also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that
Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant
children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that
the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with
dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the
river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was
rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers
growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip." Pip,
an orphan, lives with his old sister and her husband. He meets an
escaped convict named Abel
Magwitch and helps him against his will.
Magwitch is recaptured and Pip is taken care of Miss Havisham. He
falls in love with the cold-hearted Estella, Miss
Havisham's ward. With the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip is
properly educated, and he becomes a snob. Magwitch turns out to
be the benefactor; he dies and Pip's "great
expectations" are ruined. He works as a clerk in a trading
firm, and marries Estella, Magwitch's daughter.
Dickens participated energetically in all forms of the
social life of the time, "light and motion flashed from
every part of it," wrote his friend and future biographer
John Forster. From the 1840s Dickens spent much time travelling
and campaigning against many of the social evils of his time. In
addition he gave talks and reading, wrote pamphlets, plays, and
letters. In the 1850s Dickens was founding editor of Household
World and its successor All
the Year Round (1859-70). In 1844-45 he
lived in Italy, Switzerland and Paris, and from 1860 one his
address was at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent, where he
lived with his two daughters and sister-in-law. He had also other
establishments - Gad's Hill, and Windsor Lodge, Peckham, which he
had rented for Ellen Ternan. His wife Catherine lived at the
London house. In 1858-68 Dickens gave lecturing tours in Britain
and the United States. By the end of his last American tour,
Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne
and eggs beaten in sherry. In an opium den in Shadwell, Dickens
saw an elderly pusher known as Opium Sal, who then featured in
his novel THE
MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. He collapsed at
Preston, in April 1869, after which his doctors put a stop to his
public performances. Dickens died at Gadshill on suddenly of a
stroke on June 8, 1870. Some of his friends later thought the
readings killed him. Dickens had asked that he should be buried
"in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private
manner".
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
was published in 1870, but Dickens did
not manage to finish it. He planned to produce it in 12 monthly
parts, but completed only six numbers. The story is chiefly set
in the cathedral city of Cloisterham and opens in an opium den.
"Ye've smoked as many as five since ye come in at
midnight," the woman goes on, as he chronically complains.
"Poor me, poor me, my head is so bad. Them two come in after
ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen
about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these
say! Here's another ready for ye, deary." The choirmaster of
the cathedral, John Jaspers, lives a double life, as an opium
addict and a respected member of society. His ward, Edwin Drood,
disappears on Christmas Eve, after a quarrel with Neville
Landless. However, there is no trace of Edwin's body. Dick
Datchery, a disguised detective arrives to investigate the case.
"It is the complex nature of Dickens's evil men, not their
merited fate, that makes them the peers of Dostoyevsky's lost
souls. For this reason, I have always been irked by the critical
treatment of his last novel as a pure whodunit. ''Endings'' were
not his strong suit." (Angus Wilson in The
New York Times, March 1, 1981)