Forster was a close intimate of his subject, and his biography was the 19th century’s answer to Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. It began in 1874, the year John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens appeared. Remove the gooey sentiment and false perceptions though, and who was Charles Dickens? For over 150 years we have received nothing but terrible news about him. Suggested reading Dickens lives on in the streets of London Or he is, in Hollywood terms, “ The Man Who Invented Christmas.” I would guess that most subscribe to George Orwell’s reckless judgment that Dickens was a man full of jolly, slightly angry laughter a “free intelligence” who represented the best of 19th-century British. And Dickens is, in popular culture, defanged, desexed and without a crackle of danger. Yet Oliver Twist is remembered either for the pious little boy who triumphed over adversity, or as a hit musical.
That’s a far more lucrative emotional mix for an author to create in a reader. He wanted them lightly appalled, chuckling with him, and thoroughly entertained. But any concern we might have for Oliver and his tiny starving colleagues is blotted out by Dickens’ sarcastic laughter - which is all the more infectious for being inappropriate.Ĭharles Dickens did not aim to disgust his audience. These boys were the victims of a monstrously utilitarian system, of which Dickens was supposedly a savage critic. This is amoral writing, ironically ornamental, a low moment given high treatment. When Oliver rises from the table to get the “please sir, I want some more” over with, he is described as “somewhat alarmed at his own temerity”.
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