A study of Dickens as moralist.

Abstract

In this thesis I want to discuss five of Dickens's novels, written more or less in the middle of his writing career. These novels cover the years 1846 to 1857; they are Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, figgg Eimgg and Little Dorrit. Dickens was forty-five years old when he finished Little Dorrit, so that this period spans the middle years of his personal life as well. While I will be tracing what I consider to be a general line of development through the five consecutive novels, that will not be the real preoccupation of my thesis. I will primarily be looking at two closely linked general questions, which, despite the outpouring of Dickens studies in recent years, have not, I think, been overworked, or even over—explored. The first question, briefly, is this: is there discernible, in all the variety of Dickens's work, a philosophy of life, or a Dickensian point of view? Is Dickens's view of the moral universe a specific and defineable one? In particular, are there any dominant ideas about the nature of fate and the ability of man to control his own existence?