ASSIGNMENT PAPER - 5
Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors'prison.Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education and other social reforms.
Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.
Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.
His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.
His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is his best-known work of historical fiction.
The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.Dickens has been praised by many of his fellow writers – from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G.K.Chesterton and Tom Wolfe – for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations and social criticism. However, Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing and a vein of sentimentalism.
The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
Charles Dickens is the most popular novelist of the Victorian era, he has written most of his works as a series in magazines, and he also worked on the post of manager in editor’s office. He was very famous because of his narrative style, which always reflects the real facts of society. Dickens is among those writers who have faced the harshness of society, the evil side of progress and modernism.
The narration of Dickens is most of the times in first person narration. In a very interesting way he projects the characters in such situations. By reading his most of the works we come to know that he has a great knowledge of society and how evils of society is connected with each person who lives in society.
He is deep knowledge of human life has various reasons, the very first is his life as a child, he has passed his childhood as his character Oliver Twist has passed, as a very lonely child and this is the reason that in his novels he reflects the problems of poor children. The very second reason is he has worked as a clerk in the office of lawyer in court, so he has good and enough knowledge of enemies of society as well as victims of society.
Third reason is he has worked as an editor as well as manager in the company of magazines, so he has a good knowledge of writing and expressing himself in a way that audience could accept him. The fourth and the last reason is his acting skills, he is good in expressing human emotions.
These experiences of Dickens have helped him a lot to express the cruel laws and reality of people in society. His novels have always a perfect narratives and the most important part is his general plan of writing he uses lots of humor in his novels, as per him the best way of telling the factual things is in humorous way. Dickens connects the element of humor with pathos. Dickens serves both imagination and sensitivity very well in his novels.
If we take a look of various characters of Dickens’s novels, the characters are two types, first is very innocent as Oliver and the other one is like devilish or we can say horrible like Fagin and Bill Sykes. We find them very promoting, they promotes their own time, their own era but not only the good element, we can say for characters and narration of Dickens that,
“They starts with defects and ends with perfection”
As in his novel “Oliver Twist” he has started the life of a child with all evilness around him, and the novel ends with the peaceful and happy life of child. The villains of his novels are also famous that they represent the life of criminals of their time and dark side of London. In “The Old CuriosityShop" there is another child but her life ends with a tragic end, she dies at the end.
Dickens clutches his public’s attention with combining joy and sorrow, laughter and tears. He provides both emotions in one as an organic wholeness.
The only limitation of his works is it lacks reality sometimes. We cannot accept such facts he has presented, because he always projects paradox in his characters and novels, he is not able to give proper justice to one part. For example we can take his projection of urban life which is sometimes highly imaginative rather than realistic.
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