Dickens Characters
Download Dickens Characters PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Dickens Characters book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
Dickensian characters - real or nil? An analysis of characters in Our Mutual Friend
Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7 (A-), Technical University of Braunschweig (English Seminar), course: Hauptseminar: Charles Dickens, language: English, abstract: To begin with the end, the overall statement of this paper is that the characters in Charles Dickens′s Our Mutual Friend are for the most part inconsistent. In order to clarify this assertion to the reader, I will at first provide an overview of how Dickens′s characters were received by various critics. This will be the foundation for my claim that his characters are not realistic since they are only described from the outside and, thus, character-development is only achieved by means of the plot. This lack of introspection derives from the fact that Dickens′s focus as a writer was surely on social issues and not on character-development. That Dickens was a great novelist will not be questioned, seeing that, despite this lack of interiority and the ensuing incoherence of the characters to the critic, his characters work during the experience of the first reading. This I will show by examining the character of Eugene Wrayburn in Our Mutual Friend, whose final catharsis is approved of by the reader at first, but has to be highly doubted at second sight, as his actions and thoughts do not justify his reformation to a person of integrity. A thorough study of Wrayburn′s character will reveal that he is a sadist who exults in humiliating other people and wielding power over them, which will raise the question whether he has to be considered as a villainous rather than heroic character. I will then investigate the character of Bradley Headstone, who appears to be the villain of the subplot revolving around Lizzie Hexam. This analysis will lead to the discovery that Headstone is not so much of a villain but has to be seen as a victim of society and its machinery. Headstone′s story has to be seen as tragic since he succumbs to his violent passions and lets them drive him to despair and the edge of reason in the end. In addition, I will juxtapose Wrayburn′s character to that of his opponent Headstone and thus illustrates the fact that, while we do not get an insight into Wrayburn′s emotions and therefore cannot understand his deeds, Headstone′s actions and motivations are rendered plausible for the reader by the way Dickens describes his character, from the outside as well as from the inside. [...]
Everyone in Dickens: Characteristics and commentaries, tables and tabulations: a taxonomy
An essential reference book that offers complete coverage of all the characters created by or mentioned in Charles Dickens' 435 known works.
The Textual Life of Dickens's Characters
Author: James A. Davies
language: en
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Release Date: 1990-01-01
This book interprets a number of Dickens' works through the detailed analysis of a single characterization in each. It is mainly concerned with the textual functions of characters, i.e., with how analyses of Dickens's methods of characterization help us understand what characters do within his texts. The author presents a selective variety of major and minor characters. Included are examples from the three main periods of Dickens's career, from his non-fiction as well as fiction, and from the combination of both that is Sketches by Boz. There is an emphasis on the later books and particularly on Our Mutual Friend. Contents: IntroductionóSome Sketches by Boz; Modifying SummariesóThe Fat Boy in The Pickwick Papers; Young Bailey in Martin Chuzzlewit; Gaffer Hexam in Our Mutual Friend; NarratorsóSome Epistolary Personae; The Troubled Traveler in Pictures From Italy; The Sentimental Paternalist in A Christmas Carol; Extending the Interface: The Third Narrator in Bleak House; The Middle-aged Businessman: The Narrator of Great Expectations; Sexism and Class Bias: The Narrator of Our Mutual Friend; Two Re-readersóKnowing What Happens in Our Mutual Friend; Droodiana and The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Characterisation and Ideas in Little Dorrit: Clennam and Calvinism; Characterisation and Structure: John Harmon in Our Mutual Friend; Story and Text.