Chaire Tomalin regards him as the greatest creater character in English fiction after Shakespeare, Dickensian characters is especially so because of the typically whimsical names, which are amongst the most memorable in the English literature. The likes of Ebenezer scrooge, tiny tim, Jacob Marley, Bob cratchit, Oliver twist, the artful dodger, Fagin, bill sikes, Charles Draney, David copper field, Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Saquers are so well known as to be part and parcel of British culture and in the same cases have passed into ordinary language a scrooge, for example is a miser.
His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs. Gamp and Pickwickian. Pecksniffian and Gradgrind all entered dictionaries due to Dickens’s original portraits of such characters who were quixotic, hypocritical or vapidly factual. Many were drawn from real life. Mrs. Nickelby is based on his mother, though she didn’t recognize herself in the portrait, just as Mr. Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father’s rhetorical excuberance.
Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife’s dwarfish chiropodist recognized herself in Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield. Perhaps Dicken’s impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep. Virginal Woolf maintained that “we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens” as he produces “characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks”.
Women characters in his novel were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside of his book. Miss, Havisham, bell Welfer Jouissa (Joo), Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe, Nancy, Gamp became slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs. Gamp and Pickwickian. Pickshiffian and Grandgrind all entered dictionaries due to dickens original portraits of such characters who were quixotic hypocritical or vapidly dactual many were drawn from real life. Mrs.
Nickel is based on her mother through she did not recognize herself in the portrait virgenia wolf maintained that we remodel our psychological geography when we read dickens as he produces characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks. One character uinidly drawn throughout his novels is Londen itself. From coaching inns on the outskerts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work.
Women characters in the select Novels 1) Oliver Twist 2) Hard Times 3) Great Expectations 4) Tale of two cities CHAPTER II Women character in Oliver twist Nancy: A thief in Fagins service one of fagins forms child pickpockets now turned prostitute. As if life was not tough enough. She is also notorious, bill sickes lover. Like many other in the novel nancy takes a shine for oliver and she questions her love for bill when she gave he life to save his (bill likes murders nancy after she is overheard on London bridge) Rose Maylic : Sister of Agnes fleming rose was raised by mrs.
Mayline after the death of her father a truly beautiful and compassionate soul rose show a lot of compassion to oliver even before it is urravelled trough the novel that the two gentle souls are in fact related Agnes flaming, Oliver twists mother in the time bading upto the time of the take Agnes falls deeply in love with Mr. Luford as a result she falls pregnant outside of wedlock being a highly moral woman and not wanting to tarnish her families good reputation agnes opts for a life in the work house where she dis and our tale begins.
Agnes was the daughter of retired noval officer a truly beautiful, caring woman. Mrs. Maylie: The adoptive aunt of rose and mother of harry mayliea a lovely kind wealthy nature women. Old sally: An old poor midwife woman who tends as a nurse at the time of briars birth. Old sally swips a gold locket that is the possession of Agnes the locket is the only due that would have pointed to the true identely of oliver. Mrs. Corney : The wife of Mr. Bubble and matron of the work horse. A callous and hypoeritical women with materiatistic tendencies. Mrs.
Bedwin : A kind hearted women with great judge of character and Mr. Brownloues house keeps. It is this good judge of character that results in Mrs. Bedwin not believing Mr. Bumbles negative report of olivers characters. Monks mother: Mr. Leeford’s wife and wealthy heiress who lived a decadent life and alienated her husband in a moment of pure spite monk’s mother destroy Mr. Leeford’s will and testament that bestous part of his inheritance to oliver. Mrs. Soverberry : The wife of Mr. sower berry. A callous hen pecking old women who treats oliver and her husband with equal disrespect.
Mrs. Mann: The superintendent to the work house where Oliver twist is raised. Mrs. Mann is a vile women who physically abuse and starves the children who are placed in her care CHAPTER III Women characters in Hard times:- Louisa: Louisa is one of the central character of the novel lovisa though skillfully drawn in the main essestials, yet rings less true to life than that of old grandgrine and sucessarily suffers through lack of suitable partner to play opposite this rather conspicuous absence of a hero tends to produce an ill balanced effect in an otherwise well constructed story.
She is the eldest of the Grandgrind children and the prize pupil of the educational system. When she grows olderm her father arranges her marriage to Mr. Bounderby, through out her life, Lovisa is very unfulfilled because she has been forced to deny her emotions. She has an emotional breakdown after being tempted into infidently by Mr. reproaches her father for his dry and fact bassed approach to the world and convinces him of the error of his ways. Cecilia: (Sissy) Jupe is a circus girl of sleary’s circus as well as a student of Thomas grandgrinds very strict class rooms.
Sessy has her own set of values and lieliefs which make her seen unintelligent in the grandgrind household. At the end of novel, when the grandgrends philosophy of religiously adhering solely to facts beaks down, sissy is the character who teaches them how to live. Sissy Jupe is first introduced to the readers as girl number twenty in grandgrind classroom. She struggles to keep up with grandgrind’s extreme reliance on the reciatation of facts and therefore is seen as not worthy for the school. Sissy is also representative of creatively and wonderment because of her circus background.
Sissy jupe is first introduced to the readers as Girl Number Twenty in Gradgrind’s classroom. She struggles to keep up with Gradgrind’s extreme reliance on the recitation of facts and therefore is seen as not worthy for the school. Sissy is also representative of creativity and wonderment because of her circus background , and those were things that the Gradgrind children were not allowed to engage in. with the urging of Josiah Bounderby, Mr. Gradgrind goes to inform Sissy’s father that she can no longer attend his school.
Gradgrind and Bounderby arrive at the Pegasus’ Arms, the public-house of Coketown where Sissy, her father, and the rest of Sleary’s circus were staying. While Sissy and her father were very close once, Mr. Jupe packed up and abandoned his daughter, leaving Sissy alone. In a moment of compassion, Mr. Gradgrind takes Sissy into his home and gives her a second chance at the school. Sissy continues to fall behind in the school, so Mr. Gradgrind keeps her at home to tend to his invalid wife. While Sissy is the device of imagination and fantasy in the novel, she also serves as the voice of reason.
The reason she cannot grasp the philosophy of Gradgrind’s classroom is because she actually has a more realistice view of how the world should be perceived. After Lousia and Mr. Gradgrind come to terms with the fact that their way of life is not working, Sissy is the one they come to; she takes care of Lousia and helps her live a new, happy life. Prying and knowledge is key to several characters, namely Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Bounderby. Mr. Bounderby spends his whole time fabricating stories about his childhhod, covering up the real nature of his upbringing, which is solemnly revealed at the end of the novel.
While not a snooper himself, he is undone by Sparsit unwittingly revealing the mysterious old woman to be his own mother, and she unravels Josiah’s secrets about his upbringing and fictitious stories. Mr. Bounderby himself superintends through calculating tabular statements and statistics, and is always secretly rebuking the people of Coketown for indulging in conceitful activities. This gives Bounderby a sense of superiority, as it does with Mrs. Sparsit, who prides herself on her salacious knowledge gained from spying on others.
Bounderby’s grasp for superiority is seen in Blackpool’s talks to Bounderby regarding divorce proceedings and a union movement at his factory, accusing him that he is on a quest ‘to feast on turtle soup and venison, served with a golden spoon’. All “superintendents” of the novel are undone in one way, or another. This is closely related to Dickens’ typical social commentary, which is a theme he uses throughout his entire oeuvre. Dickens portrays the wealthy in this novel as being morally corrupt. Bounderby has no moral scruples; he fires Blackpool “for a novelty”.
He also conducts himself without any shred of decency, frequently losing his temper. He is cynically false about his childhood. Harthouse, a leisured gent, is compared to an “iceberg” who will cause a wreck unwittingly, due to him being “not a moral sort of fellow”, as he states himself. Stephen Blackpool, a destitute worker, is equipped with perfect morals, always abiding by his promises, and always thoughtful and considerate of others, as is Sissy Jupe. CHAPTER IV WOMEN CHARACTER IN GREAT EXPECTATION Mrs. Joe gargery, miss havisham, estella, geogiana sarah pocket miss skiffine lara, mrs. Joe Gargery: Pips hot tempered adult sister who raises him after their parents death but contently complains of burden of raising pip orlick, her husband journey man attacks her and she is left disabled until her death. Miss Havisham : Wealthy spinster who takes pip on as a companion and who pip suspects is his benefactor miss havisham doesnot deny this as it fits into her own spiteful plans that derive from desire for revenge after being jitted at the altar several years before. She later appologises to pip as she is over takes by guitt.
He accepts her apology and she is badly burnt when her wedding dress which she has never taken off since her jitting catches fire when she sits too close to the fire place. Pip saves her, but she later dies from her injuries. Estella : Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, whom pip pursers throughout the novel she doesnot know that she is the daughter of molly. Joggers house keeper. Estella was given up for adoption to Miss havishan after her mother. Molly is tried for murder. Estella represents the life of wealth and culture for which pip strives since Miss Havisham ruined Estella’s alulity to love, estella cannot return pip’s passion.
She warns pip of this repeatedly, but he will not or cannot believe her. Georgiana: An ageing relative of Miss Hanishan who is only interested in her money, she is one of the many relatives who hang around Miss Havisham like flus for her wealth. CHAPTER V WOMEN CHARACTER IN A TALE OF TWO CITIES Lucie Manette – A young French woman who grew up in England, lucie was raised as a ward of tellson’s bank because her parents were assumed dead. Dickens depicts lucie as an archetype of compassion. Her love has the power to bind her family together – the text often refers to her as the “golden thread”.
Furthermore, her love has the power to transform those around her. It enables her father to be “recalled to life”, and it sparks Sydney carton’s development from a “Jackal” into a hero. Madame Defarge – A cruel revolutionary whose hatred of the aristocracy fuels her tireless crusade, madame defarge spends a good deal of the novel knitting a register of everyone who must die for the revolutionary cause. Unlike her husband, she proves unrelentingly blood- thirsty, and her lust for vengeance knows no bounds. Possessing a remorseless bloodlust, madame defarge embodies the haos of the French revolution. The initial chapters of the novel find her sitting quietly and knitting in the wine shop. However, her apparent passivity belies her relentless thirst for vengeance. With her stitches, she secretly knits a register of the name of the revolution’s intended victims. As the revolution breaks into full force, madame defarge reveals her true viciousness. She turms on lucie in particular, and as violence sweeps paris, she invades lucies’s physical and psychological space. She effects this invasion first by communiting the faces of lucies and her family to memory.
In order to add them to her mental register of those slated to die in the revolution. Later she bursts into the young woman’s apartment in an attempt to catch lucie mourning darnay’s imminent execution. Dickens notes that madame defarge’s hatefulness does not reflect any inherent flaw , but rather results from the oppression and personal tragedy that she has suffered at the hands of the aristocracy, specifically the evremondes, to whom darnay is related by blood and lucies by marriage. However, the author refrains from justifying madame defarge’s policy of retributive justice.
For just as the aristocracy oppression has made an oppressor of Madame Defarge herself, so will her oppression, in turn, make oppressors of her victims. Madame defarge’s death by a bullet from her own gun she dies in a scuffle with miss pross symbolizes dicken’s belief that the sort of vengeful attitude embodied by madame defarge ultimately proves self damming one. Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette: Novelist E. M. Forster famously criticized dickens characters as flat, lamenting that they seem to lack the depth and complexity that make literary characters realistic and believable Charles Darnay and lucie manette certainly fit this description.
A man of honor, respect, and courage, darnay conforms to the archetype of the hero but never exhibits the kind of inner struggle that carton and doctor Manette undergo. His opposition to the Marquis snobbish and cruel aristocratic values is admirable, but ultimately, his virtue proves too uniform and he fails to exert any compelling force on the imagination. Along similar lines, Luice likely seems to modern readers as uninteresting and two-dimensional as Darnay. In every detail of her being, she embodies compassion, Love and virtue; the indelible image of her cradling her father’s head delicately on her breast encapsulates her role as he “golden thread” that holds her family together. She manifests her purity of devotion to Darnay in her unquestioning willingness to wait at a street corner for two hours each day, on the off chance that he will catch sight of her from his prison window. In a letter to Dickens, a contemporary criticized such simplistic characterizations: The tenacity of your imagination, the vehe-mence and fixity with which you impress your thought into the detail you wish to grasp, limit your knowledge, arrest you in a single feature, prevent you from reaching all the parts of the soul and from sounding its depths.
CHAPTER-VI CONCLUSION Dickens choose the characters from life and place them in situation and surroundings with which he was familiar that is why diakens always wrote from experience or deep knowledge of his life. Conclusion as far as woman’s character in his novels is guilt, It is very clear in the character of Louisa in hard times, Estella in great expectation or in the character of Nancy of Oliver twist. Most of his womens character is of the motive for masochisien i. e the sexual enjoyment of that most women character would find unpleasant or painful.
Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picaresque novels which he found in abundance on his father’s shelves. According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of The Arabian Nights. Dicken’s Dream by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of his characters. His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature is his forte. The year is 1775, and social ills plague both France and England.
Jerry Cruncher, an odd – job man who works for tellson’s Bank, stops the dover mail coack with an urgent message for Jarvis lorry. The message instructs lorry to wait at dover for a young woman, and lorry responds with the cryptic words, Recalled to life. At dover, lorry is met by lucie manette, a young orphan whose father, a once eminent doctor whom she supporsed dead, has been discovered in france. Lorry escorts lucie to paris, where they meet defarge a former servant of doctor manette, who has kept Manette spends all of his time making shoes, a hobby her learned while in prison.
Lorry assures lucie that her love and devotion can recall her father to life, and indeed they do. Novels Oliver twist can attract and hold almost every kind of imagination, since its main figures the defenseless wife the devilish fence, the unctuous bradle speak a language of gesture and symbol that quite transcends national cultures. The novel’s staring role. Our star is orphaned into a life in a workhouse as result of his mother being found dying in the street, Charles Dickens uses the situation of Oliver being in a workhouse in order to expose his views of the vile workhouse and poverty law that had been passed in Victorian London.
Our heroin Oliver Twist is somewhere between nine to twelve years of age as the majority of the novel unfolds. You would assume that with the barbaric treatment that Oliver receives throughout his life that he would in fact be a bitter and twisted soul, on the contrary, Oliver is a pious, innocent child, whose charming demeanor plays on the heart strings of a series of wealthy benefactors. Oliver’s actual identity is at the very heart of the novel and unfolds towards the conclusion of the novel.
Relating back to Dicken’s aim to “strike the heaviest blow in my power,” he wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston. Relating to this also, Dickens wished to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality, a notion whih is systematically deconstructed in this novel through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse.
Dickens was also campaigning for the importance of imagination in life, and not for people’s life to be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistical analyses.
