Dickens' Critical Realism
Dickens’Critical Realism
I. Introduction
In the long period of domination of Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens was the most popular and internationally known as an English novelist. Being the greatest representative of the English critical realism, he gave us a most vivid picture of everyday life, of the ordinary people of his time. He created a large number of life characters, well known, full of life and unforgettable. He had suffered so bitterly himself as a child and had seen so much evilness that burned with the desire to fight it to the end. While representing a truthful account of the hardships born by poor people,
he believed that a hard-working and honest man could achieve his little personal business under capitalism. The success of one great novelist would rely on the carrier: his works, to support himself.
Charles Dickens wrote many a novel such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens used his pen to mould a typical figure of all stratum in the Victorian age: Mr. Pickwick, the benevolent gentleman; Oliver Twist, the good lucky young man; Mr. Grandgrad, the victim of his own ridiculous utilitarian philosophy and Mr. Manetle, the innocent doctor who witnessed the French Revolution. All above novels made an important role in Charles Dickens’ successful career. But David Copperfield, a novel based on his early life experiences, is Dickens’ satisfied reminiscence of his life way and literature reappearance of his personal history. Like Dickens, David works as a child, pasting labels onto bottles. David also becomes first a law clerk, then a reporter, and finally a successful novelist. Mr. Micawber is a satirical version of Dickens’s father, a likable man who can never scrape together the money he needs. Many of the secondary characters spring from Dickens’s experiences as a young man in financial distress in London. So we can see that Dickens liked this novel very much. No wonder...
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