Transcription
[Music] Hello everybody. Ready to talk about Charles Dickens? He must be a favorite author for most of us. Born in 1812, he lived a long life, up to 1870. He was born in a poor family in Portsmouth. His father was rather irresponsible with financial affairs, and the family suffered because of it.
Charles had an unsettled childhood in Chatham and London, and in his childhood itself, he began reading a load of books. He had a great interest in stories: Smollett, Fielding, Cervantes, Arabian Nights—all this he got inspired by. He was interested in play-acting, lantern displays, magic lantern displays—the early form of movies at that time. And when his father really went to prison at Marshalsea for debt, Charles had a really traumatic time. When his father returned, he put Charles in Warren's blacking factory. It is a very filthy place where he had to do the terrible job of painting a miniature with tar, and he was abused by supervisors and authorities. It was a very traumatic incident in his life, which later John Forster, his biographer, has written about.
Then Charles Dickens became a pewn, or an assistant office boy, in a firm of attorneys. He began working in Doctors' Commons, which also he did not like. The first break, good break, in his life came when he began to work as a reporter. He ventured into journalism; he started reporting for some local newspapers like the True Sun, the Morning Chronicle, etc., and he began writing for these journals. He began studying London life; he came to know every nook and corner of the city, the lives of the local people. The monthly magazine he began to work for was an indeed a turning point in his life. Later, all these sketches that he wrote for the magazines were collected and published as Sketches by Boz—that is, in 1836. That is a very important collection, subtitled Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People. It belongs to the genre called urban sketch. He minutely describes people and situations here, and some of these stories that he wrote in Sketches by Boz have the earliest germ for his later fiction writing. He depicted London in very great detail in these early works.
1836 is also the year in which his first novel came to be serially published in a characteristic blue-green cover. Parts of the novel appeared in installments: The Pickwick Papers, the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. It is a novel that belongs to the Victorian picaresque genre. It is about the trials and misadventures, the journeys, of the members of the fictitious Pickwick Club, a club modeled on the 18th-century clubs of the—uh—writings of Addison, Steele, etc. It is a very fragmentary novel, an episodic novel, loosely structured, but characters are well-drawn, situations are hilarious. Sam Pi- or Samuel Pickwick is the chairman of the Pickwick Club. Sam Weller, a boot cleaner, becomes his clerk; he's a witty character, a very important character. Other characters are Tracy Tupman, who is a ladies' man who never made a conquest of any woman. So there are these characters; they're not heroes; they're all failed people, ordinary people, petty people—Samuel Pickwick like that, Tracy Tupman is like that. Then Augustus Snodgrass is a poet who never wrote a successful poem. Nathaniel Winkle is a sportsman who never won a prize, talk about sports. There is a very famous incident in Pickwick Papers where there is a cricket match; that is a very famous incident. So the adventures, romance, uh, relationships of these characters, and how finally Samuel Pickwick even lands up in prison—he's put in Fleet Prison, and that is because he couldn't uh pay his debts. Finally, even though these characters are very petty and undergoing very silly adventures, it is seen that they are all people who are good at heart; you see, there is a Tom Jones-like streak in this novel. Apparently, uh, these characters are all, you know, not great; they're like petty criminals, but there is something good in all of them; that is how it ends up. So it is like a true realistic picture of London. You can see, starting from the Pickwick Papers, social realism, realism of the society, especially the underprivileged classes of the society; that is what you see here. And from this time onwards, Dickens started working with an illustrator to illustrate his novels. At first, he worked with the illustrator Seymour, but Seymour committed suicide, and later he uh got associated with Hablot K. Browne. Dickens took the pen name Boz—Sketches by Boz, remember—Dickens took the pen name Boz, and Hablot K. Browne took the pen name Phiz. Phiz-Boz tie-up started, and then Dickens started a periodical after this. After Pickwick Papers came Oliver Twist, then Nicholas Nickleby, then he started a periodical called Master Humphrey's Clock, where he published two of his novels: Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop. In all these early novels, you can see Dickens's perceptions on life: people who are not very great performers or very great successful people, ordinary people's struggles to survive—these are all important.
In the 1850s came his mature novels that began to deal with life and relationships in much deeper ways. While he was writing all his early novels, Dickens became a very busy man. He started giving readings; he was working in some public relief or social projects, public relief projects or social projects, and he was part of the Athenaeum Club. He was making money, saving his parents from financial ruin. At this time, he began traveling; he went to America. Some of his novels show his American experiences, and he became more and more busy; he was also even writing plays, etc. So in this time, he became very famous; people began reading his novels, and it took a heavy toll on his health also. At the end, Dickens suffered from a stroke because of overwork, and eventually he died uh towards the end of his career. Also, two more periodicals he started: Household Words first, and then All the Year Round. Household Words and All the Year Round—those are two periodicals that he published later. Now I will tell you more about the novels. I will tell you the early novels in this video, and I will put the mature novels in another video so that we can deal with it in more detail.
First, after Pickwick Papers in 1836, came in 1837 Oliver Twist. Pickwick Papers 1836, Oliver Twist 1837. Oliver Twist is subtitled The Parish Boy's Progress, and it was serialized in Bentley's Miscellany. It was a novel written against the New Poor Law of 1834, which really did not help the poor people. During this time, the middle-class people were very hypocritical; they were very hypocritically appearing to help the poor people, but they were actually swindling money; they were robbing the poor people of their livelihoods. And there was also a very strong class division; poor people were regarded as criminals, good-for-nothing people; middle-class people thought they are better off. In novels like Oliver Twist, Dickens is showing that this is not entirely true; the poor people need not be such criminals always; there are good people among the poor people also, and all middle-class people are not so great; there are criminals among the middle-class people as well. This is the story of Oliver Twist, as you know. Oliver Twist is an orphan, and he is born in an orphanage, and then he works in a workhouse. From there, he's taken to Mr. Sowerberry's; he's an undertaker's house. From there, Oliver runs away and goes to London. He's taken to Fagin's school by Artful Dodger or Jack Dawkins. There he gets into pickpocketing, is caught by Mr. Brownlow. Then later after that, he's with Mrs. Maylie and Rose Brownlow. Mrs. Maylie, Rose—these are good middle-class people; they help him. But uh Fagin's school people, like Bill Sikes, they are very horrible people. Oliver's own half-brother, Monks, joins with and tries to destroy Oliver, and then at the end he is saved. Mr. Brownlow realizes that Oliver is a—fr—is a uh an illegitimate son of his own friend. Oliver's parent had just discovered; Oliver is adopted by Brownlow; Monks is hanged. So it all ends well. So this is a novel that did not want to romanticize criminals, but there is a criticism that it shows criminals as in a romantic manner only. Anyway, this is a novel that gives a new, tries to give a new perception on uh poor people's lives and their image in Victorian society, and I should say it was largely successful.
1838 saw the publication of Nicholas Nickleby. It is a novel that exposes the drawbacks of Yorkshire schools. Nicholas Nickleby is tortured by his own uncle, Ralph Nickleby. Nicholas Nickleby is put in Dotheboys Hall as a school; he becomes a schoolmaster there. And this backwoods uh Squeers is the headmaster of Dotheboys Hall. Wackford Squeers is a very cruel man. Nicholas Nickleby saves one boy, Smike, from there, and they become companions. Smike is a poor boy with tuberculosis; eventually he dies of it after a lot of travels and struggles. When Smike dies, Ralph Nickleby, after Smike's death, realizes that Smike was, after all, his son, long-lost son. Ralph Nickleby is a cruel uncle, but at this time Ralph Nickleby has a change of heart, and he also kills himself. So like Oliver Twist, this is a novel that shows poor people struggling against the wealthy and the villainous rich, and ultimately things turn all right for uh Nicholas Nickleby, but the struggles form the main part of the novel. It combines—this novel, Nicholas Nickleby, combines elements of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist; that means there are picaresque elements in this novel; picaresque elements are there; it is a Victorian picaresque novel. There is a theme in Nicholas Nickleby that is explored later: what does it mean to be a gentleman? Who is a gentleman? That theme is later taken up in novels like Great Expectations. Being a gentleman is not a matter of wealth; it is not a matter of birth; it is not a matter of position; a gentleman is defined by his acts; that is the meaning.
Then I told you that uh Master Humphrey's Clock is kind of a periodical that he started; it is actually a frame story. Master Humphrey is getting stories from the grandfather clock; that is the meaning. Grandfather clock—haven't you seen big clock? Master Humphrey is getting some antique stories from a magical clock, and that story is presented in the book Master Humphrey's Clock. Dickens's own novels, Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, are presented as stories that Master Humphrey got from the grandfather clock. The Old Curiosity Shop, which came in 1841, is the story of little Nell Trent. She's a 14-year-old girl who lives with her grandfather, who is a drunkard, and this grandfather has borrowed a lot of money from Daniel Quilp, who is a dwarf, and he's a very cruel man. He wants to destroy the family; he wants to marry the little girl, Nell Trent. Nell and her grandfather undergo so many struggles; ultimately Nell dies; grandfather also dies. You know, in Dickens's novels, being popular fiction, being serialized, and being popular fiction, these novels show a lot of pathos as well as robust humor. Nell Trent, or little Nell's pathetic death, is described with a lot of pathos. Haven't you heard of Q Shop? Q Shop is the company where we have lot of fun books and lots of lifestyle products, and Q Shop conducts many of our courses. Q Shop stands for Curiosity Shop. I got the idea from The Old Curiosity Shop, and I put Q for Quilp, you know, it—it is a shop not only for the heroes but also the villains of life; it is a shop not only for the central figures but also the marginal characters; that is why I made it Q Shop. I thought it will be a queer name or a curious name. Now, coming back to Charles Dickens, the second novel to be published in Master Humphrey's Clock is Barnaby Rudge. Barnaby Rudge is a historical novel—Dickens's first historical novel, in fact—set against the Gordon Riots of the 1780s. In fact, Barnaby Rudge is subtitled A Tale of the Riots of '80. Barnaby Rudge is a local idiot boy; he walks around with a pet raven on his shoulder, and this whole story turns around who killed one Reuben Haredale 22 years ago. It turns out that Barnaby Rudge's father, who is also called Barnaby Rudge, is the murderer. So it is a murder story. In 1843, both Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge came in 1841; in 1843 came A Christmas Carol. Dickens had written a series of Christmas stories, of which the most famous is A Christmas Carol. Everybody must be familiar with the character Ebenezer Scrooge. He's a miserly man, a very stingy man who doesn't help anybody, who doesn't love anybody, who cares only for money. Just after the death of Jacob Marley, his associate, business associate, Scrooge is getting some supernatural visitations of Christmas. Christmas comes as small children: Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet to Come. These are three small children who visit Ebenezer Scrooge, show him his evil deeds from the past, show him what is going to happen to him in the future. Ebenezer Scrooge, at the end, has a change of heart because Christmas is about love, sharing. He learns the lessons of Christmas from this experience. And then one more novel: Dombey and Son. Dombey and Son was published in 1848, a very important year; that was the year in which uh Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed; the Communist Manifesto was written. Dombey and Son is a novel set against the Industrial Revolution and railways. It has a very long title: Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation—that is the full title. Paul Dombey, the protagonist, is an industrialist; he has a company, and he wants a son so that there will be somebody to carry his company forward. He doesn't like his daughter; he doesn't take care of his daughter, Florence. His daughter, Florence, is a very important character in Dickens's oeuvre itself. Florence marries a poor man, and Paul Dombey also marries a rich girl, a rich woman called Edith Granger. He hopes to get a son by that woman, by that second wife. Edith Granger turns out to be a good woman; she realizes that Dombey is materialistic; she does not like Dombey's ill treatment of his own daughter, and Edith Granger actually despises Dombey for his pride. Dombey gets a son, but that child also dies very soon. But that—that—that child was with his first wife; he did get a son with his first wife; that boy died. But he did—Granger, then he later—he married, and at the end he realizes his folly; he understands that it is wrong to treat his wife and daughter—to have treated his wife and daughter like this. She was a very good, innocent girl, and he reunites with her at the end of Dombey and Son. He also has grandchildren now. So the evils of an industrial world, evils of a materialistic world, evils of a utilitarian world—that is what Dickens shows in Dombey and Son, 1848. There is a novel similar to this: Hard Times, which is also a critique of materialism and industrialization, but that came a little later, in 1854. We have in the 1850s Dickens's mature novels, but I think these mature novels I will deal with in another video because I need more time to deal with them in detail. So please read a little bit on your own; do your own research if possible; try to read the novels themselves—if not the entire novel, at least a chapter, at least a page—because it's extremely important to know the style of the author. So until the next video on the greatest novels of Charles Dickens, bye-bye guys, happy reading.