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| Charles Dickens was born in 1812. He had a difficult time in childhood, being sent to work in a blacking factory when he was twelve. He never had a proper education. These early experiences left an indelible impression, and greatly influenced his writing. His first characteristic work was The Pickwick Papers (1837), and he went on to write such famous novels as David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853) and Great Expectations (1861). A great deal of his work appeared in serial form, and it had wide appeal with a great public following. The relationship with his public remained very important to Dickens. Perhaps his popularity at the time stemmed from his capacity to entertain the reader. His astonishing ability to create characters across the whole spectrum of society, seemingly without effort, his ability to vividly impress his characters upon the mind of the reader, and his powers of anecdote, story and plot, all delight the reader and can command attention as though in a vice. Also, influenced by his childhood experiences, Dickens has an enormous sympathy with ordinary people. He was involved with many of the social issues of his time, as reflected in the attack upon the legal system in Bleak House, for example. Dickens' social concerns were practical; he did not have a philosophical attitude to society, but identified and attacked evils as he saw them. All of this immediacy contributed to the attention and popularity which he enjoyed, deservedly in my view.
Dickens' can, however present a problem for his modern readers, as described by Angus Wilson in The World of Charles Dickens (Secker & Warburg, 1970): This is the tone of much of Dickens' work--intuitive at one level, rational and didactic at the next, but finally imparting the lesson that only the intuitive life can make a deadened materialistic world flower again. His ordinary readers no doubt responded to it directly and unconsciously in his lifetime. It is not easy for us to do so. We do not expect such a mixture of artistry, clowning and propaganda, such a web of sharp observations, shrewd comment, uncontrolled hamming and profound insight. It is hard for us to accept it, it is harder perhaps for the trained literary critic and the scholar, who necessarily seek clear shapes and patterns, than it is for the general reader who is less disturbed by asking for a mixed response.Indeed, Dickens has presented a general problem for the literary critics. His characters are often perceived as being caricatures, as falling too simply into the categories of "good" or "bad" and, when he does attempt a more rounded and mature character, as he does with David in David Copperfield, the result does not engage or convince the reader with the usual Dickensian intensity. This type of criticism of Dickens rests on a perception that we see the surface and the superficial traits of his characters, rather than their inner depth. On such matters, E. M. Forster seems to me to show insight, as he writes in "Aspects of the Novel" (Penguin, 1962): Nearly every one [of his characters] can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth. Probably the immense vitality of Dickens causes his characters to vibrate a little, so that they borrow his life and appear to lead one of their own..... Part of the genius of Dickens is that he does use types and caricatures, people whom we recognize the instant they re-enter, and yet achieves effects that are not mechanical and a vision of humanity that is not shallow. Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad. He is actually one of our big writers....A rather more combative response to criticisms of Dickens was taken by Bernard Levin (in Speaking Up, Cape 1982): Dickens is a good test of a real understanding of literature as Haydn is of a real feeling for music. If a man says Haydn wrote a lot of pretty tunes, but that his music is of no real significance, you may confidently dismiss the speaker as one who knows not whereof he speaks. And if another man (although it is all too likely to be the same one) declares that Dickens is nothing but a sentimentalist with a talent for thinking up characters and sub-plots, you need not fear that if you cudgel him soundly I shall report you to the police. But whatever reservations one might hold about his writing, Dickens was a literary genius whose could create memorable characters with immense profusion and, by some miracle of writing, could convince the reader of the reality of the most fleeting and obscure of them. The world of Dickens' fiction is wide and takes in huge tracts of society. He was under no illusions about the evil in the human heart, but nearly always looked beyond it, trusting in the prevailing of human fellowship. It may be of interest to contrast Dickens with another writer, Henry James. James has novels that are near-perfect works of art. His characters are refined, or at least any coarseness they possess is hidden, and they move in a world where fine shades of emotion, behaviour, thought, judgment and manipulation are paramount. Admirable and moving as they are, even tragic, the perfection of his novels and their limited social range remove him, we could say, from a fuller span of life although, in its place, we have a highly complex and refined artistic achievement. In a work of art, especially in literature, there is a balance between life and art and, with Henry James, this balance is at one extreme. On the other hand, with Dickens, the balance tends towards the opposite extreme. Dickens' novels are not, of course, without art, just as James' novels are not dissociated from life. But Dickens' work, taken as a whole, presents us with a choice of response, between life, with all its messiness and lack of artistic coherence, and art. One might say that with Dickens, life triumphs over art while, with James, art triumphs over life. But the question of Dickens' artistic development is an interesting one. There is a huge difference between, say, an early work like Nickolas Nickleby, and the far greater artistic unity of Great Expectations. R. C. Churchill considered (The Pelican Guide to English Literature volume 6, Penguin 1963) that the writing of the later novels took longer because of the greater care which Dickens deliberately gave to them. Churchill also commented that the favourite Dickens' novels probably would continue to be, despite imperfections, The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. In this sense, he said that Dickens is one of the rare writers whom criticism cannot affect. Thus, while Dickens may create reservations in the artistic sensibilities of the ultra-refined, this can be carried much too far. Rather, we should respond as Bernard Levin did, when he referred to being "swept along in the flood of Dickens' stupendous genius". It is that full flood that gives Dickens, virtually alone amongst other English writers, his Shakespearian quality and imagination. Other writers may give us a greater sense of structural coherence and artistic unity, but few can match his sense of, and feeling for, a broad and potentially united humanity.
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