Dickens, England, France

After having read so many female writers, Dickens is somewhat difficult to read and relate to. But since read him we must, read him we shall. As for relating to him, let’s just say it’s a work in progress.

What is interesting about Dickens way of writing is the way he dramatises nearly everything and anything he writes about. It makes one feel as if Charlotte Bronte was just a kid with all her attempts at drama; the real theatrical soul is Dickens’. Another thing that sticks out in Dickens is his attention to details – descriptive, details of what everything looks like and how everybody, even animals act, no matter how gruesome and how dirty the description is. But what makes him really interesting is his way of fictionalising history and building up a connection between different facts to show how history came about.  To just quote an example look at the way he compares France and England:

“France ….rolled with exceeding smoothness downhill…sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honours to a dirty procession of monks…. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they worked unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to atheistical and traitorous.

In England there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting….the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob; and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way….the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition;….today taking the life of an atrocious murder and tomorrow of wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmers boy of six-pence.”   

What he shows is how injustice and chaos spread in the two countries. No one cared that the punishment did not fit the crimes. In France if you were able to see the injustice, you ended up dead after being labelled a disbeliever and or a traitor. However it is interesting to note that in England you knew what was going on but nobody really cared. The reason for this could be because the chaos in England was mostly, in Dickens’ view due to the unruly masses, but in France it was because of a careless, frivolous and yet egotistical ruling elite. This is something that really calls for more debate. But, as usual, I’m running out of words and time to do it justice, so that will have to do for now.