In sixteen novels by Charles Dickens, in his numerous stories and sketches, notes and essays, the reader is presented with a monumental image of England from the 30s to the 70s. XIX century, which entered a most difficult period of economic and political development. An essentially realistic artistic picture of life in Victorian England, created by the great novelist, reflects the process of long evolution of Dickens as an artist. Being a convinced realist, Dickens at the same time, in the way he affirmed aesthetic and ethical ideals, always remained a romantic, even at the time of his mature creativity, when the writer created large social canvases and late psychological novels. In other words, “realism always existed in his work in close intertwining with romanticism.”
The work of Charles Dickens, taking into account its evolutionary development, can be divided into four main periods.
First period(1833-1837) At this time, “Sketches of Boz” and the novel “Posthumous Notes of the Pickwin Club” were created. In these works, one can already clearly see, firstly, the satirical orientation of his work, which anticipated the satirical paintings of the mature Dickens; secondly, the ethical antithesis of “good and evil”, expressed “in the dispute between Truth - the emotional perception of life based on the imagination, and Falsehood - a rational, intellectual approach to reality based on facts and figures (the dispute between Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Blotton )".
Second period(1838-1845) During these years, Charles Dickens acted as a reformer of the novel genre, expanding the scope of children's themes that had not been seriously developed by anyone before him. He was the first in Europe to depict the lives of children on the pages of his novels. Images of children are included as an integral part in the composition of his novels, enriching and deepening both their social meaning and artistic content. The theme of childhood in his novels is directly related to the theme of “great expectations,” which becomes central not only at this stage of Dickens’s work, but continues to sound with greater or lesser force in all subsequent works of fiction by the writer.
Charles Dickens’s turn to historical themes during this period of his work (“Barnaby Rudge”) is explained primarily by the writer’s attempt to understand modernity (Chartism) through the prism of history and to find an alternative to “evil” in fairy tales (“The Curiosity Shop,” the “Christmas Stories” series). . In fact, the book of essays “American Notes” is dedicated to the same goal, i.e., to comprehend modern England. Dickens's trip to America expanded the writer's geographical horizons and, very importantly, gave him the opportunity to look at England from the outside. The impressions he received as a result of communicating with America were depressing. “This is not the kind of republic I hoped to see,” Dickens wrote bitterly. - This is not the republic that I wanted to visit; not the republic I saw in my dreams. For me, the liberal monarchy - even with its nauseating ballots - is a thousand times better than the government here.”
This mature period of the writer’s work was marked by the creation of the following works: “Oliver Twist” (1838), “Nicholas Nickleby” (1839), “The Antiquities Shop” (1841), “Barnaby Rudge” (1841), “American Notes”, “Martin Chuzzlewit” "(1843) and the cycle of "Christmas stories" ("A Christmas Carol", 1843, "Bells", 1844, "The Cricket on the Stove", 1845, etc.).
Third period(1848-1859) is characterized by the deepening of the writer’s social pessimism. The technique of writing also changes: “it is distinguished by great restraint and thoughtfulness of techniques”; in the depiction of artistic paintings, “detail takes on special importance.” At the same time, the writer’s realistic research into child psychology also deepens. In general, the work of Charles Dickens during this period marked a qualitatively new stage in the history of the development of English realism - a psychological stage. A new ethical category, previously unexplored by him, also appears in the writer’s work - moral emptiness.
During this period of creativity, the following mature realistic novels of the writer were published: “Dombey and Son” (1848), “David Copperfield” (1850), “Bleak House” (1853), “Hard Times” (1854), “Little Dorrit” (1857), “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859).
The fourth period(1861-1870) During this last period, Charles Dickens created two masterpieces: Great Expectations (1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1865). In these works you will no longer find the gentle humor inherent in Dickens at the beginning of his creative career. Gentle humor gives way to ruthless irony. The theme of "great expectations" of the late Dickens turns, in fact, into Balzac's theme of "lost illusions", only there is more bitterness, irony and skepticism in it. Even Dickens's all-saving flame of the hearth cannot save broken hopes. But this result of the collapse of “great hopes” interests Dickens, the artist and moralist, no longer in a social sense, but rather in a moral and ethical sense. Material from the site http://iEssay.ru
In Dickens's last mature novels, the long-standing problem of art - the face and the mask that hides it - is subjected to deep philosophical and psychological understanding. In the early works of the writer we come across many mask images. This can be partly explained by the writer’s love for the theater, partly by a static-fairy-tale understanding of character. For example, the image of Quilp is the mask of a villain. In the early works of the writer, the mask “whether it was good or, on the contrary, evil, did not hide anything.” But already in Little Dorrit the true face is hidden under the mask. The face and mask in this Dickens novel are different aspects of the hero's personality. Charles Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, is based on the interplay between the mask and the hero's true face.
Dickens's last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, remained unfinished. He remains a mystery to readers, critics and literary scholars today. There is a lot of mysterious, parodic and even paradoxical in it. “Dickens’s later novels,” writes a modern English researcher of the writer’s work, “are not only more serious, gloomier in color, but also written at a higher level of skill, better compositionally constructed than the early novels.”
Charles Dickens belongs to those great writers who are the pride of national English culture; An entire era in the development of English literature is associated with his work. Among the remarkable galaxy of critical realists, whose performance in the 30s and 40s. had a wide socio-political resonance, Dickens was the most prominent representative.
Dickens's realism always had a democratic character - like other critical realists, he turned to a new hero - the common man in his everyday struggle for existence. Dickens strongly opposed the position of the so-called “reactionary romantics” (Collins, Reed, Tennyson), who led the reader away from the truth of life or deliberately embellished it. Dickens remained true to the basic principle of critical realism - to be true to life's truth: "But one of the purposes of this book is to show the hard truth ..."
Behind the exaggerated, grotesque figures of Dickens - both comic and tragic - lies the truth of the image, the truth of great art. The traditionally happy endings of Dickens's works inevitably come into some collision with the truth of life - for example, in Oliver Twist, Oliver's happy acquisition of a family and even some property collides with the logic of reality itself - the desire to prove the inevitability of the victory of good over evil is too obvious here; This is more the ending of a fairy tale than a realistic novel; in this case, Dickens the moralist clearly contradicts Dickens the artist. But Dickens's depictions of life in the workhouse and the London slums are deeply realistic. The story of Oliver Twist, who ended up in a workhouse, is a story about the cruelty with which the Victorian system suppressed the powerless, faceless lower classes of society, about how rude and ruthless this system, even carried out within the framework of the law: “... all poor people were provided the choice (for, of course, they did not want to force anyone) either to slowly starve to death in the workhouse, or to die quickly outside its walls."
According to the English critic, "Dickens was deeply connected in spirit with ordinary people ... unlike our newspaper demagogues, he did not write what the people wanted - he wanted what the people wanted." To portray the society of his time was Charles Dickens' conscious goal.
Traditionally, Dickens's work is divided into four main periods. The first includes his early humorous essays (“sketches”), published in 1836 as a separate book (“Sketches by Boz”) and attracting readers with humor and subtle observation. In his essays, Dickens acts as an urban writer, a writer of everyday life in London. Knowing and loving this huge city, striking in its contrasts, Dickens writes “pictures from life”: clerks, shop owners, cabmen, delivery boys - he tells many funny and sad stories about them. “Sketches of Boz” is called a kind of prologue to the work of Dickens the novelist: here he is not just a keen observer and a witty storyteller - he sympathizes with his heroes and loves them. The Pickwick Papers, a novel in which Dickens's skill as a humorist was demonstrated in all its brilliance, also dates back to this period. But Pickwick is not only a comic hero: he attracts with his kindness, honesty, trust in people, and unwillingness to put up with injustice. At the same time, the writer's early social novels were created - "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby" - after the publication of which Dickens rightfully took his place among the largest realist writers.
It is in "Oliver Twist" that a child becomes a hero - Dickens was one of the first to turn to a child as a positive hero, revealing his tragic fate in the bourgeois world, depicting his touching spontaneity and responsiveness.
In the preface to Oliver Twist, Dickens first formulates the program of his work, emphasizing that one of the tasks of his book is to show the “harsh truth” and be faithful to it to the end - this is the main principle of critical realism.
The second period of Dickens's work covers 1842-48, the most significant work created during this time is Dombey and Son. In this novel, the writer's realistic skill reaches its peak. The novel was created during the period of the highest rise of Chartism in England and at the height of revolutionary events in other countries. Life experience, a wealth of observations, and the tense atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Europe through which Dickens traveled allowed him to create a work with great ideological depth and artistic persuasiveness. In "Dombey and Son" a broad picture of the life of England is given - here everything, down to the smallest detail, is subordinated to the unity of design. The ideological and artistic center of the novel is the image of Mr. Dombey, which is one of the best in the gallery of Dickensian images. The main technique for creating Dombey's image is hyperbole - Dickens clearly exaggerates Dombey's character traits and behavior. This image embodies the power of money, which governs the life of bourgeois society.
The image of little Paul Dombey should be considered an undoubted success of the writer. This image opened new horizons in the study of the "children's view of life"; Paul's character, his inner world, the depth of his experiences, his instinctive rejection of lies, hypocrisy and hypocrisy are depicted with captivating skill. In the Dombey family, everything is subject to the harsh laws of the inhuman world of capital - great hopes are placed on Paul, but they are not destined to come true - Paul dies. He is a victim of the "economic" view of life. Dickens debunks the view of a child as a potential economic unit - Paul was destined for wealth and high position, but his father’s selfishness and pride ruined him; for Mr. Dombey, Paul was only an uncomplaining servant of the interests of his prosperous company.
50s - the third period of Dickens's work, when he addressed the acute social problems of the era, speaking primarily as a satirist. The gallery of children's images here continues with David Copperfield from the novel of the same name, which is largely autobiographical. The image of David is devoid of the one-sidedness and straightforwardness that were inherent in the image of Oliver Twist; the writer strives to show the hero in the process of formation and development of personality. Having gone through difficult life trials, David does not give up on life - he maintains kindness and responsiveness, faith in people. In its construction and general tone, "David Copperfield" differs from the rest of Dickens's works of the 50s - it is written in soft lyrical tones, and is characterized by subtle humor. This is a transitional work from the early periods of creativity to the later ones.
In 1853, Dickens completed the novel “Bleak House” - a multi-problem and multi-faceted work, distinguished by its boldness and sharpness of social generalizations, and the great impressive power of satirical images. The object of criticism here is English conservatism, the desire of the bourgeoisie to preserve the established order and routine that reigns in state institutions. The theme of the novel is a trial between representatives of the Jarndyce family, and all the characters in the novel are somehow involved in this process. Many generations of Jarndyces become witnesses and participants in the process, however, when the trial ends, it turns out that the inheritance over which the dispute was fought will not even be enough to cover legal costs. Clever businessmen from the Chancery Court profited from judicial red tape. The object of Dickens's angry satire is the senselessness and cruelty of orders of this kind: he boldly compares the Chancery Court with a rag-picker's rag shop, and the Lord Chancellor with the crazy rag-picker Crook. Crook's terrible and unusual death from spontaneous combustion symbolizes the inevitability of the collapse of an outdated state machine.
Dickens reveals the influence of the social situation on the formation of character in the image of Richard - cheerful and capable, he is also drawn into the Jarndyce process, and this fatally affects his entire subsequent life - he is obsessed with the expectation of wealth, becomes suspicious, makes his wife unhappy, undermines his health and accelerates its death. The gloomy flavor of the novel conveys the growing pessimism in the writer's views.
The last period of the writer’s work dates back to the 60s. XIX century, when the general tone of his novels becomes even more pessimistic, Dickens loses faith in the possibility of realizing his ideal in modern conditions. During these years, “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Great Expectations” were created.
The village boy Pip from Great Expectations is the focus of the author's attention throughout the entire story. Pip's character is dynamic - he is in constant movement and change. Before us is another “Dickensian child” with his childish inventions (his hopes for a large inheritance), childish arrogance and childish affections (his attitude towards little Emily and Joe). Joe, Pip's sister's husband, a blacksmith, is essentially also a big child: his dreams of happiness are unpretentious and fit into one exclamation: “This will be wonderful!” Everything will be “wonderful” for Joe if he has a job he loves and a peaceful family life. His simplicity and wisdom are the simplicity and wisdom of a big, naive, kind child. The life and views of the simple village blacksmith Joe is a kind of program that Dickens offers, contrasting it with the misconceptions and mistakes of Pip. Joe looks at life calmly and simply, believing that “you will never achieve anything by lying,” only by telling the truth “you will achieve your goal.” Joe firmly knows that his place is among ordinary people, in his village; in contrast to Pip, he wants to remain himself: “it would, perhaps, be better if ordinary people, that is, those who are simpler and poorer, would stick together” (7]. But Dickens in the last years of his work did not believe in the possibility of the existence of idyllic happiness in the family circle and in complete detachment from all life’s contradictions, therefore the general tone of the novel is pessimistic, the path of its heroes - Pip, Estella - is difficult and full of disappointments. The tone of the description changes as Pip grows and matures under the influence of tragic circumstances of his life, as his hopes and illusions collapse. In the second part of the novel, Pip looks at life soberly - hence the increasing tone of condemnation of his surroundings, the sharpness of his critical comments, the laconicism and clarity of the characteristics. In terms of the concept and skill of its implementation, the novel “Great Expectations” stands in on a par with the best works of Dickens, continuing the general line of his realistic work.
In the last decade of his life, the productivity of Dickens's work decreased significantly compared to previous years, and the writer appeared less and less often with new works of art. But he turned to a new form of communication with wide circles of readers - Dickens gave public readings of his works with great success; he read his works in almost all cities of England, in 1863 he performed in Paris, in 1868 - in the United States of America. Speaking before the public resulted in the triumph of the writer-reader, delivering great aesthetic pleasure to his listeners. Dickens's last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, remained unfinished - his sudden death prevented it. On June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens died.
So, in the 30-40s. XIX century The leading direction in English literature was critical realism, the main features of which were an inquisitive and tireless search for the truth, objectivity of the image, breadth of life pictures, sincerity of the author's position, humanism and democracy of ideological content, expressiveness of human characters.
Having published his novels in the mid-30s. XIX century, Dickens opened a brilliant page in the history of English critical realism. Dickens was one of the first in English literature to show the life of ordinary people in the conditions of bourgeois civilization. Dickens's humanism, his brilliant artistic skills as a humorist and satirist put his novels on a par with the best works of world literature. Dickens's realistic novels contain true and vivid pictures of life in England at that time. Addressing the fundamental problems of his era, Dickens created a wonderful gallery of artistic images, being one of the first to tell about the tragic fate of a child in the bourgeois world.
Dickens's literary heritage has entered the treasury of not only English but also world culture. For more than a century, the traditions of his art have continued to live on in the works of the best representatives of English realistic literature.
DICKENS, CHARLES(Dickens, Charles) (1812–1870), one of the most famous English-language novelists, a celebrated creator of vivid comic characters and social critic. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 at Landport near Portsmouth. In 1805, his father, John Dickens (1785/1786–1851), the youngest son of a butler and housekeeper at Crewe Hall (Staffordshire), received a position as a clerk in the financial department of the naval department. In 1809 he married Elizabeth Barrow (1789–1863) and was appointed to Portsmouth Dockyard. Charles was the second of eight children. In 1816 John Dickens was sent to Chatham (Kent). By 1821 he already had five children. Charles was taught to read by his mother, for some time he attended primary school, and from the age of nine to twelve he went to a regular school. Precocious, he greedily read his entire home library of cheap publications.
In 1822 John Dickens was transferred to London. Parents with six children huddled in Camden Town in dire need. Charles stopped going to school; he had to pawn silver spoons, sell off the family library, and serve as an errand boy. At the age of twelve he began working for six shillings a week in a blacking factory in Hungerford Stairs on the Strand. He worked there for a little over four months, but this time seemed to him a painful, hopeless eternity and awakened his determination to get out of poverty. On February 20, 1824, his father was arrested for debt and imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison. Having received a small inheritance, he paid off his debts and was released on May 28 of the same year. For about two years, Charles attended a private school called Wellington House Academy.
While working as a junior clerk in one of the law firms, Charles began to study shorthand, preparing himself to become a newspaper reporter. By November 1828 he had become a freelance court reporter for Doctor's Commons. On his eighteenth birthday, Dickens received a library card to the British Museum and began to diligently complete his education. Early in 1832 he became a reporter for The Mirror of Parliament and The True Sun. The twenty-year-old young man quickly stood out among the hundreds of regulars in the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons.
Dickens's love for the bank manager's daughter, Maria Beadnell, strengthened his ambitions. But the Beadnell family had no sympathy for a simple reporter, whose father happened to be in debtor’s prison. After a trip to Paris “to complete her education,” Maria lost interest in her admirer. During the previous year he had begun to write fictional essays about life and typical types of London. The first of these appeared in The Monthly Magazine in December 1832. The next four appeared during January–August 1833, the last under the pseudonym Bose, the nickname of Dickens's younger brother, Moses. Dickens was now a regular reporter for The Morning Chronicle, a newspaper that published reports on significant events throughout England. In January 1835, J. Hogarth, publisher of The Evening Chronicle, asked Dickens to write a series of essays about city life. Hogarth's literary connections - his father-in-law J. Thomson was a friend of R. Burns, and he himself was a friend of W. Scott and his adviser in legal matters - made a deep impression on the aspiring writer. In the early spring of that year he became engaged to Catherine Hogarth. February 7, 1836, on Dickens's twenty-fourth birthday, all his essays, incl. several previously unpublished works were published as a separate publication entitled Sketches by Bose (Sketches by Boz). In the essays, often not fully thought out and somewhat frivolous, the talent of the novice author is already visible; they touch on almost all further Dickensian motifs: the streets of London, courts and lawyers, prisons, Christmas, parliament, politicians, snobs, sympathy for the poor and oppressed.
This publication was followed by an offer from Chapman and Hall to write a story in twenty issues for the comic engravings of the famous cartoonist R. Seymour. Dickens objected that Notes of Nimrod, the theme of which was the adventures of unlucky London athletes, had already become boring; Instead, he suggested writing about a club of eccentrics and insisted that he not comment on Seymour's illustrations, but that Seymour make engravings for his texts. The publishers agreed, and the first issue was published on April 2 Pickwick Club. Two days earlier, Charles and Catherine had married and moved into Dickens's bachelor pad. At first, the response was lukewarm, and the sale did not promise much hope. Even before the second issue appeared, Seymour committed suicide, and the whole idea was in jeopardy. Dickens himself found the young artist H. N. Brown, who became known under the pseudonym Phys. The number of readers grew; by the end of the publication Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club(published from March 1836 to November 1837) each issue sold forty thousand copies.
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) are an intricate comic epic. Its hero, Samuel Pickwick, is a cheerful Don Quixote, plump and ruddy, accompanied by a clever servant Sam Weller, Sancho Panza of the London common people. The freely following episodes allow Dickens to present a number of scenes from the life of England and use all types of humor - from crude farce to high comedy, richly seasoned with satire. If Pickwick and does not have a sufficiently expressed plot to be called a novel, then it undoubtedly surpasses many novels in the charm of gaiety and joyful mood, and the plot in it can be traced no worse than in many other works of the same vague genre.
Dickens turned down a job at the Chronicle and accepted R. Bentley's offer to head the new monthly, Bentley's Almanac. The first issue of the magazine was published in January 1837, a few days before the birth of Dickens's first child, Charles Jr. The first chapters appeared in the February issue Oliver Twist (Oliver Twist; completed in March 1839), begun by the writer when Pickwick was only half written. Not finished yet Olivera, Dickens set to work Nicholas Nickleby (Nicholas Nickleby; April 1838 – October 1839), another series in twenty issues for Chapman and Hall. During this period, he also wrote a libretto for a comic opera, two farces and published a book about the life of the famous clown Grimaldi.
From Pickwick Dickens descended into a dark world of horror, tracing Oliver Twist(1838) the coming of age of an orphan, from the workhouse to the criminal slums of London. Although the portly Mr. Bumble and even Fagin's den of thieves are amusing, the novel has a sinister, satanic atmosphere that predominates. IN Nicholas Nickleby(1839) mixed gloom Olivera and sunlight Pickwick.
In March 1837, Dickens moved into a four-story house at 48 Doughty Street. His daughters Mary and Kate were born here, and his sister-in-law, sixteen-year-old Mary, to whom he was very attached, died here. In this house, he first hosted D. Forster, the theater critic of the Examiner newspaper, who became his lifelong friend, advisor on literary issues, executor and first biographer. Thanks to Forster, Dickens met Browning, Tennyson and other writers. In November 1839 Dickens took out a twelve-year lease on No. 1 Devonshire Terrace. With the growth of wealth and literary fame, Dickens's position in society also strengthened. In 1837 he was elected a member of the Garrick Club, and in June 1838 a member of the famous Athenaeum Club.
Frictions with Bentley that arose from time to time forced Dickens to refuse to work in the Almanac in February 1839. The following year, all his books were concentrated in the hands of Chapman and Hall, with whose assistance he began to publish the three-penny weekly Mr. Humphrey's Clock, in which he published Antiquities Shop(April 1840 – January 1841) and Barnaby Rudge(February – November 1841). Then, exhausted by the abundance of work, Dickens stopped producing Mr. Humphrey's Clock.
Although Antiquities Shop (The Old Curiosity Shop), when published, won many hearts, modern readers, not accepting the sentimentality of the novel, believe that Dickens allowed himself excessive pathos in describing the joyless wanderings and sadly long death of little Nell. The grotesque elements of the novel are quite successful.
In January 1842, the Dickens couple sailed to Boston, where a crowded and enthusiastic meeting marked the beginning of the writer's triumphant trip through New England to New York, Philadelphia, Washington and beyond - all the way to St. Louis. But the journey was marred by Dickens's growing resentment of American literary piracy and the failure to combat it and - in the South - openly hostile reactions to his opposition to slavery. American notes (American Notes), which appeared in November 1842, were greeted with warm praise and friendly criticism in England, but caused furious irritation overseas. Regarding even sharper satire in his next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (Martin Chazzlewit, January 1843 – July 1844), T. Carlyle noted: “The Yankees boiled like a huge bottle of soda.”
The first of Dickens' Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol, 1843), also exposes selfishness, in particular the thirst for profit, reflected in the concept of the “economic man”. But what often escapes the reader’s attention is that Scrooge’s desire to enrich himself for the sake of enrichment itself is a half-serious, half-comic parabola of the soulless theory of continuous competition. The main idea of the story - about the need for generosity and love - permeates the subsequent ones. Bells (The Chimes, 1844), Cricket behind the hearth (The Cricket on the Hearth, 1845), as well as less successful Battle of life (The Battle of Life, 1846) and Obsessed (The Haunted Man, 1848).
In July 1844, together with his children, Catherine and her sister Georgina Hogarth, who now lived with them, Dickens went to Genoa. Returning to London in July 1845, he plunged into the founding and publication of the liberal newspaper The Daily News. Publishing conflicts with its owners soon forced Dickens to abandon this work. Disappointed, Dickens decided that from now on books would become his weapon in the fight for reform. In Lausanne he began a novel Dombey and son (Dombey and Son October 1846 – April 1848), changing publishers to Bradbury and Evans.
In May 1846 Dickens published his second book of travelogues, Pictures from Italy. In 1847 and 1848 Dickens took part as a director and actor in charity amateur performances - Everyone in their own way B.Johnson and The Merry Wives of Windsor W. Shakespeare.
In 1849 Dickens began writing the novel David Copperfield (David Copperfield, May 1849 – November 1850), which was a huge success from the very beginning. The most popular of all Dickens's novels, the favorite brainchild of the author himself, David Copperfield more than others connected with the biography of the writer. It would be wrong to assume that David Copperfield just a mosaic of events in the writer’s life, slightly changed and arranged in a different order. The running theme of the novel is the “rebellious heart” of young David, the cause of all his mistakes, including the most serious one - an unhappy first marriage.
In 1850 he began publishing a two-penny weekly, Home Reading. It contained light reading, various information and messages, poems and stories, articles on social, political and economic reforms, published without signatures. Authors included Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, J. Meredith, W. Collins, C. Lever, C. Read and E. Bulwer-Lytton. “Home Reading” immediately became popular, its sales reached, despite occasional declines, forty thousand copies a week. At the end of 1850, Dickens, together with Bulwer-Lytton, founded the Guild of Literature and Art to help needy writers. Lytton wrote a comedy as a donation We're not as bad as we seem, premiered by Dickens with an amateur troupe at the London mansion of the Duke of Devonshire in the presence of Queen Victoria. Over the next year, performances took place throughout England and Scotland. By this time, Dickens had eight children (one died in infancy), and another, his last child, was about to be born. At the end of 1851, Dickens's family moved to a larger house in Tavistock Square, and the writer began work on Bleak House (Bleak House, March 1852 – September 1853).
IN Bleak House Dickens reaches the top as a satirist and social critic, the power of the writer revealed in all its dark splendor. Although he has not lost his sense of humor, his judgments become more bitter and his vision of the world becomes bleaker. The novel is a kind of microcosm of society: the dominant image is of a thick fog around the Chancery Court, signifying the confusion of legal interests, institutions and ancient traditions; the fog behind which greed hides fetters generosity and obscures vision. It was because of them, according to Dickens, that society turned into disastrous chaos. The Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce trial fatally leads its victims, and these are almost all the heroes of the novel, to collapse, ruin, and despair.
Hard times (Hard Times, April 1 – August 12, 1854) were published in editions in Home Reading to increase the falling circulation. The novel was not highly appreciated either by critics or by a wide range of readers. The fierce denunciation of industrialism, the small number of sweet and reliable heroes, and the grotesque satire of the novel unbalanced not only conservatives and people who were completely satisfied with life, but also those who wanted the book to make them only cry and laugh, and not think.
Government inaction, poor management, and the corruption that became apparent during the Crimean War of 1853–1856, along with unemployment, outbreaks of strikes and food riots, strengthened Dickens's belief in the need for radical reform. He joined the Association of Administrative Reforms, and in “Home Reading” he continued to write critical and satirical articles; During his six-month stay in Paris, he observed the excitement in the stock market. These themes - the hindrances created by bureaucracy and wild speculation - he reflected in Little Dorrit (Little Dorrit, December 1855 – June 1857).
Dickens spent the summer of 1857 in Gadshill, in an old house that he had admired as a child and was now able to purchase. His participation in charity performances frozen abyss W. Collins led to a crisis in the family. The writer's years of tireless work were overshadowed by a growing awareness of the failure of his marriage. While studying theater, Dickens fell in love with the young actress Ellen Ternan. Despite her husband's vows of fidelity, Catherine left his house. In May 1858, after the divorce, Charles Jr. remained with his mother, and the remaining children with their father, in the care of Georgina as mistress of the house. Dickens eagerly began public readings of excerpts from his books to enthusiastic listeners. Having quarreled with Bradbury and Evans, who took Catherine's side, Dickens returned to Chapman and Hall. Having stopped publishing “Home Reading,” he very successfully began publishing a new weekly magazine, “Round the Year,” publishing in it A Tale of Two Cities (A Tale of Two Cities, April 30 – November 26, 1859), and then Big hopes (Great Expectations, December 1, 1860 – August 3, 1861). A Tale of Two Cities cannot be considered one of Dickens's best books. It is based more on melodramatic coincidences and violent actions than on the characters. But readers will never cease to be captivated by the exciting plot, the brilliant caricature of the inhuman and refined Marquis d'Evremonde, the meat grinder of the French Revolution and the sacrificial heroism of Sidney Carton, which led him to the guillotine.
In the novel Big hopes The main character, Pip, tells the story of a mysterious boon that enabled him to leave his son-in-law, Joe Gargery's, rural blacksmith's shop for a gentlemanly education in London. In the character of Pip, Dickens exposes not only snobbery, but also the falsity of Pip's dream of a luxurious life as an idle "gentleman." Pip's great hopes belong to the ideal of the 19th century: parasitism and abundance due to the inheritance received and a brilliant life due to the labor of others.
In 1860 Dickens sold the house in Tavistock Square and Gadshill became his permanent home. He successfully read his works publicly throughout England and in Paris. His last completed novel, Our mutual friend (Our Mutual Friend), was published in twenty issues (May 1864 – November 1865). In the writer’s last completed novel, images that expressed his condemnation of the social system reappear and are combined: thick fog Bleak House and a huge, oppressive prison cell Little Dorrit. To these Dickens adds another, deeply ironic image of the London landfill - the huge heaps of garbage that created Harmon's wealth. This symbolically defines the target of human greed as dirt and scum. The world of the novel is the omnipotent power of money, admiration for wealth. Fraudsters are thriving: a man with the significant surname Veneering (veneer - external gloss) buys a seat in parliament, and the pompous rich man Podsnap is the mouthpiece of public opinion.
The writer's health was deteriorating. Ignoring the threatening symptoms, he undertook another series of tedious public readings, and then went on a grand tour of America. The income from the American trip amounted to almost 20,000 pounds, but the trip had a fatal impact on his health. Dickens was overjoyed at the money he earned, but it wasn’t the only thing that motivated him to take the trip; the ambitious nature of the writer demanded the admiration and delight of the public. After a short summer break, he began a new tour. But in Liverpool in April 1869, after 74 performances, his condition worsened; after each reading, his left arm and leg were almost paralyzed.
Having recovered somewhat in the peace and quiet of Gadshill, Dickens began to write The Mystery of Edwin Drood (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), planning twelve monthly issues, and persuaded his doctor to allow him twelve farewell appearances in London. They began on January 11, 1870; The last performance took place on March 15. Edwin Drood, the first issue of which appeared on March 31, was only half written.
On June 8, 1870, after working all day in a chalet in Gadshill's garden, Dickens suffered a stroke at dinner and died at about six o'clock the next day. In a private ceremony on 14 June, his body was buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Charles Dickens is deservedly considered the greatest English writer, prose writer, humanist and classicist in world literature. In this short biography of Charles Dickens, we have tried to briefly outline the main milestones of his life and work.
Early life and family of Charles Dickens
Writer Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Landport. Charles's father was a very wealthy government official, and his mother was a housewife who tenderly cared for the welfare of the Dickens family. Mr. Dickens loved his son very much and protected him in every possible way. Although his father was a rather flighty and simple-minded man, he also possessed a rich imagination, ease of speech and kindness, which his son Charlie inherited to the fullest extent.
Acting talent began to emerge in Charles from early childhood, which Dickens Sr. encouraged in every possible way. Parents not only admired their son’s abilities, but also cultivated vanity and narcissism in him. His father demanded that Charlie teach and publicly read poetry, act out theatrical performances, share his impressions... Ultimately, the son really turned into a little actor, who also had pronounced creative abilities.
Quite unexpectedly and suddenly, the Dickens went bankrupt. The father went to prison because of debts, and the mother had a difficult lot - from a wealthy and prosperous woman, she turned into a beggar, and was forced to take full responsibility for food and further existence. Young Dickens found himself in new and difficult circumstances. By that time, the boy's character had formed - he was vain, pampered, full of creative enthusiasm and very painful. In order to somehow ease the fate of the family, Charles had to get a low-honor and dirty job - he became a worker producing blacking polish in a factory.
The development of a writer and creative career in the biography of Charles Dickens
Later, the writer terribly did not like to remember that terrible time - this disgusting wax, this factory, this humiliated state of his family. And despite the fact that Dickens even preferred to hide this page of his life, he learned many lessons for himself from that time on and determined his guidelines in life and work. Charles learned to have deep compassion for the poor and disadvantaged and to hate those who go crazy with fat.
The first thing that began to emerge at that time in the great writer was his reporting abilities. When he tentatively wrote a few articles, he was immediately noticed and amazed. Not only was the management quite a find, but also his colleagues did not hide their admiration for Dickens - his wit, style of presentation, wonderful authorial style and breadth of words. Charles quickly and confidently began to move up the career ladder.
When compiling a biography of Charles Dickens, it is necessary to mention the fact that in 1836 Dickens wrote and published his first serious work with a deeply moral bent - “Sketches of Boz”. Although all this at that time was at the newspaper level, the name of Dickens sounded loudly. In the same year, the writer published The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, and this brought him much greater success and fame. Two years later, the author had already published “Oliver Twist” and “Nicholas Nickleby,” which earned him real fame and veneration. The following years were marked by the fact that Dickens published the greatest masterpieces one after another, worked a lot and persistently, and sometimes brought himself to exhaustion.
In 1870, at the age of 58, Charles Dickens died of a stroke.
If you have already read a short biography of Charles Dickens, you can rate this writer at the top of the page.
In addition, we bring to your attention the Biographies section, where you can read about other writers, in addition to the biography of Charles Dickens.
Charles Deakins (1812-1870). The writer has always been distrustful of society and government policies. He always criticized public and state institutions (prisons, image institutions). The criticism was of a moral nature, but the books do not contain ideas for social reconstruction. Deakins does not offer any alternatives to the existing order, nor does he encourage rebellion. His moral is “It is not the workers and the poor who should be rebels, but the members of the bourgeoisie who should be kind and merciful.”
The work of Charles Dickens, taking into account its evolutionary development, can be divided into four main periods.
First period (1833-1837) At this time, “Sketches of Boz” and the novel “Posthumous Notes of the Pickwin Club” were created. In these works, one can already clearly see, firstly, the satirical orientation of his work, which anticipated the satirical paintings of the mature Dickens; secondly, the ethical antithesis of “good and evil”
Second period (1838-1845) During these years, Charles Dickens acts as a reformer of the novel genre, expanding the scope of children's themes that had not been seriously developed by anyone before him. He was the first in Europe to depict the lives of children on the pages of his novels. Images of children are included as an integral part in the composition of his novels, enriching and deepening both their social meaning and artistic content. The theme of childhood in his novels is directly related to the theme of “great expectations,” which becomes central not only at this stage of Dickens’s work, but continues to sound with greater or lesser force in all subsequent works of fiction by the writer.
This mature period of the writer’s work was marked by the creation of the following works: “Oliver Twist” (1838).
The third period (1848-1859) is characterized by the deepening of the writer’s social pessimism. The technique of writing also changes: “it is distinguished by great restraint and thoughtfulness of techniques”; in the depiction of artistic paintings, “detail takes on special importance.” At the same time, the writer’s realistic research into child psychology also deepens. In general, the work of Charles Dickens during this period marked a qualitatively new stage in the history of the development of English realism - a psychological stage. A new ethical category, previously unexplored by him, also appears in the writer’s work - moral emptiness.
During this period of creativity, the following mature realistic novels of the writer were published: “David Copperfield” (1850), “Hard Times” (1854), “Little Dorrit” (1857), “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859).
The Fourth Period (1861-1870) During this last period, Charles Dickens created two masterpieces: Great Expectations (1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1865). In these works you will no longer find the gentle humor inherent in Dickens at the beginning of his creative career. Gentle humor gives way to ruthless irony. The theme of "great expectations" of the late Dickens turns, in fact, into Balzac's theme of "lost illusions", only there is more bitterness, irony and skepticism in it. Even Dickens's all-saving flame of the hearth cannot save broken hopes. But this result of the collapse of “great hopes” interests Dickens, an artist and moralist, no longer in a social sense, but rather in a moral and ethical one.
Oliver Twist, having gone through the life school of Feigin, who taught him the art of thieves, remains a virtuous and pure child. He feels unfit for the craft that the old swindler is pushing him into, but he feels at ease and free in Mr. Brownlow’s cozy bedroom, where he immediately draws attention to the portrait of a young woman, who later turned out to be his mother.
Evil permeates every corner of London, most of all it is widespread among those whom society has doomed to poverty, slavery and suffering. But perhaps the darkest pages in the novel are those dedicated to workhouses. Liquid oatmeal three times a day, two onions a week and half a loaf on Sundays - this was the meager ration that supported the pitiful, always hungry workhouse boys, who had been shaking hemp since six o'clock in the morning.
When Oliver, driven to despair by hunger, timidly asks the warden for an extra portion of porridge, the boy is considered a rebel and locked in a cold closet. In this work, the narrative is colored with dark humor, the narrator seems to have difficulty believing that the events taking place belong to a civilized and boastful democracy and the justice of England. There is a different pace of the story here: short chapters are filled with numerous events that make up the essence of the adventure genre. In the fate of little Oliver, adventures turn out to be misadventures when the ominous figure of Monks, Oliver's brother, appears on the scene, who, in order to receive an inheritance, tries to destroy the main character by conspiring with Fagin and forcing him to make a thief out of Oliver. In this novel by Dickens, the features of a detective story are palpable, but both professional servants of the law and enthusiasts who fell in love with the boy and wanted to restore the good name of his father and return the inheritance that legally belongs to him are involved in the investigation of Twist’s secret.
Of particular importance in “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” are the social motivations for people’s behavior, which determined certain traits of their characters. The negative characters of the novel are carriers of evil, embittered by life, immoral and cynical. Predators by nature, always profiting at the expense of others. Thus, the head of a gang of thieves, Feigin, loves to enjoy the sight of stolen gold things.
Oliver in the novel is called upon to embody Good. Dickens understands the child as an unspoiled soul, an ideal being; he resists all the ills of society; vice does not stick to this angelic creature. Although Oliver himself does not know about it, he is of noble birth, and Dickens is inclined to explain his innate subtlety of feelings, decency precisely by the nobility of blood, and vice in this novel is still more the property of the lower classes. However, Oliver would not have been able to escape alone from the pursuit of evil forces if the author had not brought to his aid the cloying images of “good gentlemen”: Mr. Brownlow, who turns out to be the closest friend of Oliver’s late father, and his friend Mr. Grimwig. Another defender of Oliver is the “English rose” Rose Maylie. The lovely girl turns out to be his own aunt, and the efforts of all these people, wealthy enough to do good, lead the novel to a happy ending.
