The very first element that has to be said about this novel, or this work is that it is too intricate and characters are too complicated and intertwined in their motivations and even identities that we find it difficult to follow. The plot is slightly too thick for me.
The second element is the social cruelty of the story. Cruelty against the poor, the small, the lower classes. They are working like hell making their bosses rich and they are described as having no real human feelings, no real human dimension. They are like human animals living in dirt, squalor and bleakness. It is at times unbearable how little self-respect they may have for themselves, and as for that only a few, and very few women make an effort among these poor people to be clean and keep their house and household clean.
These poor are over-endowed with alcoholism and gross attitudes and habits, drinking late at night in dirty and in many ways disgusting public houses. And here is Dickens's social Darwinism. The upper classes are shown with all kinds of respectable qualities and everything is genteel with them. They drink in parties in glasses served to them on a tray by special servants, with music and beautiful dresses and suits. In these circles marriage has to be within one's own social rank, a type of social segregation particularly obnoxious, and marriage is first of all for money and nothing else, which is absolute hypocrisy, but at least in comfort and cleanliness, except for the abuse of cigars.
So think of the situation in this novel of a miser of no genteel extraction and with no respectable human sentiments, who made his fortune out of the heap of dirt and rubbish collected in London and deposited up some river and sorted out with shovels by some human rats. What's more being a miser he is rejected by everyone. So his decision to give all his fortune to his son whom no one knows at all provided he marries the woman this father has set for him in his will makes the whole thing melodramatic and overwrought.
So after a few murders and a lot of squalid events Dickens manages to bring up some happy ending for three young couples and an older one and a good old sound heavy moral lesson about doing what the heart is supposed to tell you to do and never be over-fascinated with money. But at the same time the only people who really suffer in this situation are the poor, even if they are shown as deserving that treatment. When you are born in the dregs of society your are bound to remain there and to end very badly.
A little bit short, Mr. Dickens, and your regenerated main character is regenerated only symbolically, and he could not be rejected to the end since he was born on the right side of the silver spoon, even if this silver spoon has to be called a garbage shovel.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The second element is the social cruelty of the story. Cruelty against the poor, the small, the lower classes. They are working like hell making their bosses rich and they are described as having no real human feelings, no real human dimension. They are like human animals living in dirt, squalor and bleakness. It is at times unbearable how little self-respect they may have for themselves, and as for that only a few, and very few women make an effort among these poor people to be clean and keep their house and household clean.
These poor are over-endowed with alcoholism and gross attitudes and habits, drinking late at night in dirty and in many ways disgusting public houses. And here is Dickens's social Darwinism. The upper classes are shown with all kinds of respectable qualities and everything is genteel with them. They drink in parties in glasses served to them on a tray by special servants, with music and beautiful dresses and suits. In these circles marriage has to be within one's own social rank, a type of social segregation particularly obnoxious, and marriage is first of all for money and nothing else, which is absolute hypocrisy, but at least in comfort and cleanliness, except for the abuse of cigars.
So think of the situation in this novel of a miser of no genteel extraction and with no respectable human sentiments, who made his fortune out of the heap of dirt and rubbish collected in London and deposited up some river and sorted out with shovels by some human rats. What's more being a miser he is rejected by everyone. So his decision to give all his fortune to his son whom no one knows at all provided he marries the woman this father has set for him in his will makes the whole thing melodramatic and overwrought.
So after a few murders and a lot of squalid events Dickens manages to bring up some happy ending for three young couples and an older one and a good old sound heavy moral lesson about doing what the heart is supposed to tell you to do and never be over-fascinated with money. But at the same time the only people who really suffer in this situation are the poor, even if they are shown as deserving that treatment. When you are born in the dregs of society your are bound to remain there and to end very badly.
A little bit short, Mr. Dickens, and your regenerated main character is regenerated only symbolically, and he could not be rejected to the end since he was born on the right side of the silver spoon, even if this silver spoon has to be called a garbage shovel.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU