What the Dickens?
It seems there is nothing new about unpleasant book reviews. I
stumbled upon this stinker yesterday. It is from an unsigned review
(cowardly…) of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, and
was printed in the Westminster Review in April 1866.
Much of the caricature in the second volume is simply like trying to frighten a man by making faces at him; whilst in the chapter on 'The Voice of Society', Mr Dickens becomes as angry as a woman, and as inconsistent as The Times. But more extraordinary than any chapter is the preface, or postscript, or apology, for we don't know what to call it, which closes the work… His object in Our Mutual Friend, he says, is to set forth the wrongs of Betty Higden [one of the characters] and the Poor Law. Now, true art has nothing to do with such ephemeral and local affairs as the Poor Law and Poor Law Boards … If Mr Dickens knows anything of human nature, he must know that the practical English mind is, as a rule, repelled by any advocacy in the shape of fiction. And to attempt to alter the Poor Law by a novel is about as absurd as it would be to call out the militia to stop the cattle disease…
Much of the caricature in the second volume is simply like trying to frighten a man by making faces at him; whilst in the chapter on 'The Voice of Society', Mr Dickens becomes as angry as a woman, and as inconsistent as The Times. But more extraordinary than any chapter is the preface, or postscript, or apology, for we don't know what to call it, which closes the work… His object in Our Mutual Friend, he says, is to set forth the wrongs of Betty Higden [one of the characters] and the Poor Law. Now, true art has nothing to do with such ephemeral and local affairs as the Poor Law and Poor Law Boards … If Mr Dickens knows anything of human nature, he must know that the practical English mind is, as a rule, repelled by any advocacy in the shape of fiction. And to attempt to alter the Poor Law by a novel is about as absurd as it would be to call out the militia to stop the cattle disease…
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4 Comments
Had the author of the review expressed dissatisfaction with the overdrawn or caricatured people and events of the second volume, then a reader might have stopped to think about that. If he had objected to the intrusive voice of the author in 'The Voice of Society' and its distracting angry tone, then that might have been useful. Instead there is an offhand remark about the anger of a woman that is more revealing of the reviewer's character than the book.
There is even a subtle point in his objection to Dickens' stated aim in the work, which is quite an interesting and defensible position - only I doubt he is making it. Can a work set out to make a political or social or philosophical point and remain authentic? Obviously a work may well reflect the authors beliefs. opinions, and prejudices, but can it explicitly set out to express them?
Dickens must have been doing something right to annoy somebody like that.
This is a timely reminder of how radical Dickens's subjects were at the time. Good ol' Dickens.
I did read a book concerned with Charles Dickens and the Chartist movement and the author drew particular attention to the influence of Victorian theatre on Dickens. ( The melodramatic gestures of his characters, especially in the depiction of horror et) The critic of the Wastminsrer review has a point, Dickens did not truly espouse radical causes such as universal suffrage, As Trollope noted, Dickens reflected the popular sentiment of the middle-classes.
I am looking forward to Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens.
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