O deputado Jair Bolsonaro (PP-RJ) protocolou na segunda pedido para que a Lei da Palmada seja votado pelo plenário da Câmara.
Lei da Palmada é aprovada por unanimidade em comissão da Câmara
O projeto, que prevê punições a pais que batem em seus filhos, foi
aprovado em dezembro do ano passado em uma comissão especial da Casa e,
como tramitava em caráter conclusivo, deveria seguir direto para o
Senado.
Bolsonaro, porém, conseguiu o apoio de outros 51 deputados contra a
análise da proposta em caráter conclusivo. Sua alegação é de que o
"assunto é polêmico", por isso precisa ser mais discutido e contar
"efetivamente com a vontade da maior parte da população brasileira".
"É um projeto com entendimento não pacificado pela sociedade, no qual o
Estado poderá intervir na dinâmica procedimental para que a família
exerça sua autoridade com fins educativos, ainda que de forma moderada",
diz ele no requerimento.
O procedimento agora é o seguinte: a Câmara deve conferir, até o final
da semana, as 51 assinaturas conseguidas por Bolsonaro. Caso elas sejam
procedentes, o requerimento deve ser votado pelos deputados no plenário.
Se for aprovado pela maioria simples, o projeto da Lei da Palmada passa
por nova análise do plenário antes de seguir para o Senado.
An anonymous source has leaked an image of what appears to be a promotional poster for the upcoming Superman readaptation, Man of Steel.
The original photo, left, was obtained by MovieWeb. I tried to clean it up and straighten it out a bit for you below. We
can tell a few things from the poster, if it's real at all. First off,
the pose and over-the-shoulder sort of framing is indicative of
conflict, it creates a sense of Superman against the world, which
strengthens the hypothesis that this Superman film will reflect a more
morose and somber Superman, a superhero who is not accepted and feels
ever out of place in an alien world.
The helicopter are likely representations of conflict with Human
authority, so Superman will seemingly have some clashes with police and
military forces throughout, perhaps under the distant direction or
manipulation of Zod, as we see the face of Michael Shannon, who plays
the part of Zod in the film hidden in the clouds.
The final element is the most interesting and mysterious however, in
the distance, a man in shadow stands next to a machine, likely either a
robot or a suit of mechanical armor. This is an element which none of
the synopses or announcements have discussed, and there are no
characters on the cast list which seem robot focused, so who and what
could this challenge be off in the distance, and will he/she/it be the
primary conflict of the film, or only a sub-plot under the greater
threat of Zod and his machinations?
Perhaps we’ll get a new synopsis soon, which will clarify this odd detail. Until then, the best we have is this:
A young reporter named Clark Kent roams the world
covering various news stories. When he is compelled to use his secret
powers to intervene in a crisis in West Africa, he returns to Smallville
to learn more about his origins and the hero he was born to be.
which actually sounds like the plot of Birthright, the current comic book cannon origin story for Superman. However, the Birthright
story has no robot monster that I remember, though it also lacks Zod,
so I guess liberties are being taken with just what challenges Clark
goes up to Metropolis to take on. Man of Steel, which is directed by Zack Snyder, and stars
Henry Cavill, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne,
Michael Shannon, and Russell Crowe, flies into theaters June 14, 2013.
Livre há quase oito meses, o italiano Cesare Battisti, que vive no Rio
de Janeiro, prepara-se para começar a trabalhar em uma livraria e
lançar, em abril, seu 18° livro "Ao Pé do Muro".
O roteiro faz parte da tentativa do italiano, que recebeu asilo político
no Brasil e causou estremecimento na relação diplomática do país com a
Itália, de refazer a vida e afastar a ideia de que ainda vive como um
clandestino.
Battisti pede julgamento 'verdadeiro' a presidente da Itália
Edison Vara - 26.jan.2012/Reuters
Battisti durante lançamento do seu livro em Porto Alegre
Battisti visitou nesta terça-feira a Comissão de Direitos Humanos da
Câmara e o gabinete do senador Randolfe Rodrigues (PSOL-AP). Manteve-se
quase o tempo inteiro calado. Trocou poucas frases com jornalistas e só
foi enfático ao negar que tenha conhecimento de uma ação do Ministério
Público pedindo a revisão de seu asilo. "Não conheço".
Ele afirmou ainda que a passagem pelo Congresso era para "agradecer" o
apoio dos deputados pela liberdade e justiça. Foi recebido por técnicos
da comissão e entregou um livro.
Sua mais recente obra, "Ao Pé do Muro", segundo interlocutores, é de
ficção e fala em prisão, liberdade, justiça. Ele buscou inspiração nos
cerca de três anos de vida clandestina no Brasil e foi concedido ao
longo dos quatro anos na prisão. O livro deve ser lançado entre 10 e 12
de abril em Brasília.
Segundo o ex-senador José Nery (PA), que o acompanhou na visita,
Battisti quer distância de polêmicas. "Foi uma decisão soberana que
concedeu o refúgio político e ele espera ter tranquilidade para tocar a
vida".
O futuro local de trabalho de Battisti ainda é mantido em reservado, mas a livraria é no Rio de Janeiro.
Ex-integrante do PAC (Proletários Armados pelo Comunismo), condenado à
prisão perpétua por quatro assassinatos ocorridos nos anos 1970 na
Itália, não tem problemas com a lei brasileira --já tirou até RG e CPF.
Battisti volta a Brasília pela primeira vez e visita Congresso
TERRORISTA italiano foi recebido por parlamentares e disse que pretende ser um 'cidadão comum'
07 de fevereiro de 2012 | 16h 46
Eduardo Bresciani, do estadão.com.br
O ex-ativista italiano Césare Battisti, que desfruta no
Brasil da condição de asilado político, desfilou nesta terça-feira,
7, pelos corredores da Câmara e do Senado para agradecer o apoio
recebido de parlamentares durante os anos em que esteve preso e com sua
situação sub judice no Supremo Tribunal Federal. Escritor, ele prepara o
lançamento de seu 18º livro e procurou a todo tempo enfatizar seu
desejo de viver como "cidadão comum". É a primeira vez que ele retorna a
Brasília desde que deixou o presídio da Papuda em junho de 2011.
Ed Ferreira/AE - 07/02/2012
O ex-senador José Nery (à esq.), o Domingos Dutra (centro) e o ex-ativista Cesare Battisti
Battisti começou o périplo pela comissão de Direitos Humanos da
Câmara. Em conversa descontraída com os deputados Domingos Dutra
(PT-MA), Erika Kokay (PT-DF) e Chico Alencar (PSOL-RJ) contou estar
morando no Rio de Janeiro e falou sobre seus planos para brincar o
carnaval. Depois, o ex-ativista esteve no Senado onde foi recebido por
Randolfe Rodrigues (PSOL-AP). Tentou encontrar-se ainda com Eduardo
Suplicy (PT-SP) e Inácio Arruda (PC do B-CE), mas não obteve sucesso.
O ex-senador José Nery (PSOL-PA) acompanhou o italiano durante seu
passeio pelo Congresso. Diz ter ouvido diversas vezes de Battisti o
desejo de manter distância da política. O italiano falou ainda sobre uma
oferta de emprego recebida no Rio de Janeiro, onde reside atualmente.
"Ele é escritor, está morando no Rio de Janeiro e disse ter um convite
para trabalhar em uma livraria. Ficou evidente que ele tem consciência
que precisa buscar meios de sobrevivência".
Nery disse estar no semblante de Battisti a principal mudança em
relação aos tempos do cárcere. "Quando nós o visitávamos na cadeia
percebíamos o stress, o mal estar que aquela condição causava, agora ele
está melhor, com saúde, com tranquilidade."
SÃO PAULO - Criado no ano passado, o Instituto Lula já arrecadou R$ 2
milhões. Os nomes dos doadores não são divulgados pela entidade do
ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, que pensa em criar um "plano de
trabalho" e arrecadar até R$ 70 milhões para um fundo patrimonial.
Segundo o presidente do instituto, Paulo Okamotto, a ideia é criar o
fundo para viabilizar os projetos como o Memorial da Democracia, cujo
planejamento deve custar R$ 3 milhões.
O prefeito Gilberto Kassab (PSD), que tenta coligação com o PT nas eleições municipais, deu entrada na semana passada com um pedido de concessão ao instituto,
por 99 anos, de um terreno de 4,2 mil metros quadrados no centro de São
Paulo, próximo à área conhecida como cracolândia. O valor estimado do
imóvel é de R$ 18 milhões.
- Uma das alternativas que temos
estudado é a criação de um fundo patrimonial, de cerca de R$ 70 milhões.
Mas, para isso, o instituto ainda precisa definir seu plano de trabalho
- disse Okamotto, em entrevista por telefone ao GLOBO.
Segundo
Okamotto, o Instituto Lula não recebe nenhum recurso estrangeiro, mas o
presidente da entidade não quis divulgar os nomes dos patrocinadores:
- Para divulgar, tem de combinar com os doadores.
O
instituto deve finalizar o balanço de 2011 em março, mas Okamotto
adiantou que os dados não serão tornados públicos. Segundo ele, um
instituto é uma entidade privada que não precisa divulgar seus balanços.
O
tesoureiro do instituto é o deputado José de Filipe Júnior (PT-SP),
tesoureiro oficial da campanha da presidente Dilma Rousseff em 2010 e
que vai comandar as finanças da campanha do ex-ministro Fernando Haddad
(PT) à prefeitura.
Okamotto é sócio minoritário de Lula na empresa
LILS, que trata das palestras remuneradas do ex-presidente, geralmente
contratadas por bancos e grandes empresas multinacionais. Ele não
descarta fazer uma campanha entre as empresas contratantes das palestras
para que se tornem doadoras, mas nega que Lula já tenha começado essa
articulação.
Além do Memorial da Democracia, que está sendo
coordenado pelo ex-ministro dos Direitos Humanos Paulo Vanucchi,
Okamotto diz que busca um imóvel para instalar a nova sede do Instituto
Lula, hoje acomodado na sede do antigo Instituto Cidadania, também
dirigido pelo ex-presidente.
Paulo Okamotto afirmou que o
tratamento que o ex-presidente faz contra o câncer na laringe e seu
envolvimento nas eleições municipais não devem atrasar os planos do
Memorial nem os projetos do instituto, como os estudos de integração
entre a América Latina e a África.
- Dá para tocar as duas coisas
(os planos do instituto e o engajamento nas eleições) - disse ele,
afirmando que o plano de trabalho já está em elaboração. Presença não confirmada no Carnaval
Ainda
em tratamento, o ex-presidente Lula ainda não confirmou presença no
desfile da Gaviões da Fiel, escola que vai homenageá-lo este ano no
Sambódromo de São Paulo. Mas já tem um carro alegórico sendo montado
para ele. O carro vai apresentar uma favela estilizada.
Charles John Huffam Dickens (/ˈtʃɑrlzˈdɪkɪnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period.
Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous
author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been
responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and
characters.[1]
Many of his writings were originally published serially,
in monthly instalments, a format of publication which Dickens himself
helped popularise. Unlike other authors who completed novels before
serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being
serialised. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm,
punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next instalment.[2] The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print.[3]
Dickens's work has been highly praised for its realism, comedy, mastery of prose, unique personalities and concern for social reform, by writers such as Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton; though others, such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, have criticised it for melodrama, sentimentality and implausibility.[4]
2 Ordnance Terrace, Chatham, Dickens's home 1817–1822
Charles Dickens was born at Landport, in Portsea, on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children, to John and Elizabeth Dickens.
His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay-office and was temporarily on
duty in the neighbourhood. Very soon after the birth of Charles,
however, the family moved for a short period to Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then for a long period to Chatham, in Kent,
which thus became the real childhood home, and for all serious
purposes, the native place of Dickens. His early years seem to have been
idyllic, although he thought himself a "very small and
not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".[5] Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, especially the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding.
He spoke, later in life, of his poignant memories of childhood, and of
his near-photographic memory of the people and events, which he used in
his writing. His father's brief period as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office
afforded him a few years of private education at William Giles's
School, in Chatham.[6]
This period came to an abrupt end when the Dickens family, because of financial difficulties, moved from Kent to Camden Town, in London in 1822. John Dickens continually lived beyond his means and was eventually imprisoned in the Marshalseadebtor's prison in Southwark,
London in 1824. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family joined him –
except 12-year-old Charles, who was boarded with family friend
Elizabeth Roylance in Camden Town.[7]
Mrs. Roylance was "a reduced [impoverished] old lady, long known to our
family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and
embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived in a "back-attic...at the house of an insolvent-court agent...in Lant Street in The Borough...he
was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman, with a quiet old wife";
and he had a very innocent grown-up son; these three were the
inspiration for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop.[8]
On Sundays, Dickens and his sister Frances ("Fanny") were allowed out from the Royal Academy of Music and spent the day at the Marshalsea.[9] (Dickens later used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit). To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and began working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings
a week pasting labels on blacking. The strenuous – and often cruel –
work conditions made a deep impression on Dickens, and later influenced
his fiction and essays, forming the foundation of his interest in the
reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigors of which he
believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He would later write that he
wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age." As
told to John Forster (from The Life of Charles Dickens):
A 1904 artist's impression of Dickens in the blacking factory
“
The
blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way,
at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house,
abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its
wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey
rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and
scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of
the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The
counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and
the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My
work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of
oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a
string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it
looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a
certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection,
I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more
pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on
similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap,
on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string
and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of
using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.[8]
”
After only a few months in Marshalsea, John Dickens's paternal
grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him the sum of £450.
On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was granted release from
prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea for the home of Mrs. Roylance.
Although Charles eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London, his mother Elizabeth Dickens
did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory. The
incident may have done much to confirm Dickens's view that a father
should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere inside the home.
"I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget,
that my mother was warm for my being sent back." His mother's failure to
request his return was no doubt a factor in his dissatisfied attitude
towards women.'[9]
Righteous anger stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class
people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy
period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield:[10]
"I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no
assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to
mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" The Wellington House Academy was not a
good school. 'Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor
discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy
ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr. Creakle's
Establishment in David Copperfield.'[9] Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as a junior clerk
from May 1827 to November 1828. Then, having learned Gurneys system of
shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A
distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.[11] This education informed works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak House—whose
vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system
did much to enlighten the general public, and was a vehicle for
dissemination of Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the heavy
burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to "go to law".
In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.
Journalism and early novels
In 1833 Dickens's first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk was published in the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. The following year he rented rooms at Furnival's Inn
becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and
travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz, published in 1836. This led to the serialisation of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout his literary career.
An 1839 portrait of a young Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise
Dickens and his family lived at 48 Doughty Street, London, (on which he had a three year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickens's younger brother Frederick
and Catherine's 17-year-old sister Mary moved in with them. Dickens
became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief
illness in 1837. She became a character in many of his books, and her
death is fictionalised as the death of Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.[14]
Sketch of Dickens in 1842 during American Tour. Sketch of Dickens's sister Fanny bottom left
During his visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City,
giving lectures, raising support for copyright laws, and recording many
of his impressions of America. He met such luminaries as Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant. On 14 February 1842, a Boz Ball was held in his honour at the Park Theater, with 3,000 guests. Among the neighbourhoods he visited were Five Points, Wall Street, The Bowery, and the prison known as The Tombs.[18] At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone, to care for the young family they had left behind.[19] She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870.
Shortly thereafter, he began to show interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he remained an Anglican for the rest of his life.[20] Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his two or three famous Yuletide tales A Christmas Carol written in 1843, which was followed by The Chimes in 1844 and The Cricket on the Hearth
in 1845. Of these "A Christmas Carol" was most popular and it did much
to rekindle the joy of Christmas in Britain and America when the
traditional celebration of Christmas was in decline. The seeds for the
story were planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to
witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with
scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused
Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. As
the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest,
Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote that as the tale unfolded
he "wept and laughed, and wept again' as he 'walked about the black
streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober
folks had gone to bed." After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844)
Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), it was here he began work on Dombey and Son (1846–48). This and David Copperfield
(1849–50) marks a significant artistic break in Dickens's career as his
novels became more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his
early works.
Philanthropy
In May 1846 Angela Burdett Coutts,
heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens about setting up
a home for the redemption of "fallen" women. Coutts envisioned a home
that would differ from existing institutions, which offered harsh and
punishing regimes for these women, and instead provide an environment
where they could learn to read and write and become proficient in
domestic household chores so as to re-integrate them into society. After
initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named "Urania
Cottage", in the Lime Grove section of Shepherds Bush.
He became involved in many aspects of its day-to-day running, setting
the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective
residents, some of whom became characters in his books. He would scour
prisons and workhouses for potentially suitable candidates and relied on
friends, such as the Magistrate John Hardwick, to bring them to his
attention. Each potential candidate was given a printed invitation
written by Dickens called ‘An Appeal to Fallen Women’,[21]
which he signed only as ‘Your friend’. If the woman accepted the
invitation, Dickens would personally interview her for admission.[22][23]
All of the women were required to emigrate following their time at
Urania Cottage. In research published in 2009, the families of two of
these women were identified, one in Canada and one in Australia. It is
estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859.[24]
Middle years
Photograph of the author, c. 1850
Dickens painted by Ary Scheffer,
1855. Dickens wrote to John Forster of the experience: "I can scarcely
express how uneasy and unsettled it makes me to sit, sit, sit, with Little Dorrit on my mind."
In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House[25] where he would write Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit
(1857). It was here he indulged in the amateur theatricals which are
described in Forster's "Life". In 1856, the income he was earning from
his writing allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place in Higham,
Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of
living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare'sHenry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him.
In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens formed a bond with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan,
which was to last the rest of his life. He then separated from his
wife, Catherine, in 1858 – divorce was still unthinkable for someone as
famous as he was.
During this period, whilst pondering about giving public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached by Great Ormond Street Hospital
to help it survive its first major financial crisis through a
charitable appeal. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked
to preside by his friend, the hospital's founder Charles West and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul[26] (a little known fact is that Dickens reported anonymously in the weekly The Examiner in 1849 to help mishandled children and wrote another article to help publicise the hospital's opening in 1852).[27]
On 9 February 1858, Dickens spoke at the hospital's first annual
festival dinner at Freemasons' Hall and later gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol at St. Martin-in-the-Fields
church hall. The events raised enough money to enable the hospital to
purchase the neighbouring house, No. 48 Great Ormond Street, increasing
the bed capacity from 20 to 75.[28]
After separating from his wife in the summer of 1858[29]
Dickens undertook his first series of public readings in London, which
ended on 22 July. After 10 days rest, he began a gruelling and ambitious
tour through the English provinces, Scotland and Ireland, beginning
with a performance in Clifton[disambiguation needed] on 2 August and closing in Brighton,
more than three months later, on 13 November. Altogether he read
eighty-seven times, on some days giving both a matinée and an evening
performance.[30]
At his desk in 1858
Major works, A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and Great Expectations
(1861) soon followed and would prove resounding successes. During this
time he was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor
to, the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870).[31]
In early September 1860, in a field behind Gad's Hill, Dickens made a
great bonfire of almost his entire correspondence - only those letters
on business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also burned all of
his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two was unknown
until the publication in 1939 of Dickens and Daughter, a book
about Dickens's relationship with his daughter Kate. Kate Dickens worked
with author Gladys Storey on the book prior to her death in 1929, and
alleged that Dickens and Ternan had a son who died in infancy, although
no contemporary evidence exists.[32] On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her a financially independent woman. Claire Tomalin's book, The Invisible Woman,
set out to prove that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last
13 years of his life. The book was subsequently turned into a play, Little Nell, by Simon Gray.
In the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal becoming one of the early members of The Ghost Club.[33]
Franklin incident
A recurring theme in Dickens's writing reflected the public's
interest in Arctic exploration. The heroic friendship between explorers John Franklin and John Richardson gave Dickens the idea for A Tale of Two Cities, The Wreck of the Golden Mary and the play The Frozen Deep.[34] After Franklin died in unexplained circumstances on an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, Dickens wrote a piece in Household Words
defending his hero against the claim made in 1854 that recently
discovered evidence showed that Franklin's men had, in their
desperation, resorted to cannibalism.[35]
Without adducing any supporting evidence he speculated that, far from
resorting to cannibalism amongst themselves, the members of the
expedition may have been "set upon and slain by the Esquimaux ... We
believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and
cruel."[35] Although publishing a defence of the Esquimaux, written by John Rae,
a member of one of Franklin's rescue parties who had actually visited
the scene of the supposed cannibalism, in a subsequent issue of Household Words, Dickens refused to alter his view.[36]
On 9 June 1865,[37] while returning from Paris with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge under repair. The only first-class
carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was
travelling. Dickens tried to help the wounded and the dying before
rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished
manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Typically, Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost storyThe Signal-Man in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He based the story around several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861.
Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest,
to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her
mother, which would have caused a scandal. Although physically unharmed,
Dickens never really recovered from the trauma of the Staplehurst
crash, and his normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Much of his time was taken up with public readings from his best-loved
novels. Dickens was fascinated by the theatre as an escape from the
world, and theatres and theatrical people appear in Nicholas Nickleby.
The travelling shows were extremely popular. In 1866, a series of
public readings were undertaken in England and Scotland. The following
year saw more readings in England and Ireland.
On 9 November 1867, Dickens sailed from Liverpool
for his second American reading tour. Landing at Boston, he devoted the
rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher James Thomas Fields.
In early December, the readings began and Dickens spent the month
shuttling between Boston and New York. Although he had started to suffer
from what he called the "true American catarrh", he kept to a schedule
that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze
in some sleighing in Central Park. In New York, he gave twenty-two readings at Steinway Hall between 9 December 1867 and 18 April 1868, and four at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims
between 16 and 21 January 1868. During his travels, he saw a
significant change in the people and the circumstances of America. His
final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour
at Delmonico's
on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the
end of the tour, the author could hardly manage solid food, subsisting
on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April, he boarded his ship
to return to Britain, barely escaping a Federal Tax Lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour.[18]
Farewell readings
Between 1868 and 1869, Dickens gave a series of "farewell readings"
in England, Scotland, and Ireland, until he collapsed on 22 April 1869,
at Preston in Lancashire showing symptoms of a mild stroke.[38] After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In an opium den in Shadwell, he witnessed an elderly pusher known as "Opium Sal", who subsequently featured in his mystery novel.
Poster promoting a reading by Dickens in Nottingham dated 4 February 1869, two months before he suffered a mild stroke
When he had regained sufficient strength, Dickens arranged, with
medical approval, for a final series of readings at least partially to
make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There
were to be twelve performances, running between 11 January and 15 March
1870, the last taking place at 8:00 pm at St. James's Hall in London. Although in grave health by this time, he read A Christmas Carol and The Trial from Pickwick. On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at a Royal Academy Banquet in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, paying a special tribute to the passing of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise.[39]
Death
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home, after a full day's work on Edwin Drood.
The next day, on 9 June, and five years to the day after the
Staplehurst rail crash 9 June 1865, he died at Gad's Hill Place, never
having regained consciousness. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.[40]
A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the
Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at
his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years.
He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed;
and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the
world."[41] Dickens's last words, as reported in his obituary in The Times were alleged to have been:
“
Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.[42]
”
On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens's interment in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist
whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing
with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could
still be clean, and mirth could be innocent." Pointing to the fresh
flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present
that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New
World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of
this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue."[43]
Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him.
The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. The couch on which he died is preserved at the Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth.
Literary style
Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picturesque or Gothic romance novels,[citation needed] although it had already become a target for parody.[44] One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts 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.
His writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch.
His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the
"Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and
shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to furniture are
just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. Many of his
characters' names provide the reader with a hint as to the roles played
in advancing the storyline, such as Mr. Murdstone in the novel David
Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of "murder" and stony
coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism.
Dickens is famed for his depiction of the hardships of the working
class, his intricate plots, and his sense of humour. But he is perhaps
most famed for the characters he created. His novels were heralded early
in his career for their ability to capture the everyday man and thus
create characters to whom readers could relate. Beginning with The Pickwick Papers
in 1836, Dickens wrote numerous novels, each uniquely filled with
believable personalities and vivid physical descriptions. Dickens's
friend and biographer, John Forster, said that Dickens made "characters real existences, not by describing them but by letting them describe themselves."[45]
Dickensian characters—especially their typically whimsical names—are among the most memorable in English literature. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, Charles Darnay, David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Daniel Quilp, Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Squeers, Uriah Heep
and many others are so well known and can be believed to be living a
life outside the novels that their stories have been continued by other
authors.[citation needed]
The author worked closely with his illustrators supplying them with a
summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters
and settings were exactly how he envisioned them.[46] He would brief the illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them. Marcus Stone, illustrator of Our Mutual Friend,
recalled that the author was always "ready to describe down to the
minutest details the personal characteristics, and ... life-history of
the creations of his fancy."[30]
This close working relationship is important to readers of Dickens
today. The illustrations give us a glimpse of the characters as Dickens
described them. Film makers still use the illustrations as a basis for
characterisation, costume, and set design.
Often these characters were based on people he knew. In a few
instances Dickens based the character too closely on the original, as in
the case of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, based on James Henry Leigh Hunt, and Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield,
based on his wife's dwarf chiropodist. Indeed, the acquaintances made
when reading a Dickens novel are not easily forgotten. The author Virginia 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."[47]
Autobiographical elements
An original illustration from the novel "David Copperfield" Widely regarded as Dickens's most autobiographical work. Phiz
All authors might be said to incorporate autobiographical elements in
their fiction, but with Dickens this is very noticeable, even though he
took pains to mask what he considered his shameful, lowly past. David Copperfield is one of the most clearly autobiographical but the scenes from Bleak House
of interminable court cases and legal arguments are drawn from the
author's brief career as a court reporter. Dickens's own father was sent
to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his
books, with the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorrit
resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution. Childhood
sweethearts in many of his books (such as Little Em'ly in David Copperfield) may have been based on Dickens's own childhood infatuation with Lucy Stroughill.[48][49]
Dickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also
ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his
realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early
life until six years after his death when John Forster published a
biography on which Dickens had collaborated.
Episodic writing
As noted above, most of Dickens's major novels were first written in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as Master Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, later reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories cheap, accessible and the series of regular cliff-hangers
made each new episode widely anticipated. American fans even waited at
the docks in New York, shouting out to the crew of an incoming ship, "Is
little Nell dead?"[50][51][52]
Part of Dickens's great talent was to incorporate this episodic writing
style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. The monthly
numbers were illustrated by, amongst others, "Phiz" (a pseudonym for Hablot Browne). Among his best-known works are Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, and A Christmas Carol.
"Charles Dickens as he appears when reading." Wood engraving from Harper's Weekly, 7 December 1867
Dickens's technique of writing in monthly or weekly installments
(depending on the work) can be understood by analysing his relationship
with his illustrators.
The several artists who filled this role were privy to the contents and
intentions of Dickens's installments before the general public. Thus,
by reading these correspondences between author and illustrator, the
intentions behind Dickens's work can be better understood. These also
reveal how the interests of the reader and author do not coincide. A
great example of that appears in the monthly novel Oliver Twist.
At one point in this work, Dickens had Oliver become embroiled in a
robbery. That particular monthly installment concludes with young Oliver
being shot. Readers expected that they would be forced to wait only a
month to find out the outcome of that gunshot. In fact, Dickens did not
reveal what became of young Oliver in the succeeding number. Rather, the
reading public was forced to wait two months to discover if the boy lived.
Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted
from his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not
write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed
to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those
public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his
weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In
this novel, Nell and her grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The
progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As
Dickens wrote and published the weekly installments, his friend John
Forster pointed out: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't
you?" Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of
the difference between the structures of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a
comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose,
you think they're going to lose, they win". In tragedy, it is: "You
think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose".
The dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel.
So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome
of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his
heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure.
Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Nell
died.[53]
Social commentary
Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime and was responsible for the clearing of the actual London slum, Jacob's Island, that was the basis of the story. In addition, with the character of the tragic prostitute, Nancy,
Dickens "humanised" such women for the reading public; women who were
regarded as "unfortunates", inherently immoral casualties of the
Victorian class/economic system. Bleak House and Little Dorrit elaborated expansive critiques of the Victorian institutional apparatus: the interminable lawsuits of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak House and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient, corrupt patent offices and unregulated market speculation.
Literary techniques
Stamp in "The Centenary Edition of The Works of Charles Dickens in 36 Volumes."
Dickens is often described as using 'idealised' characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was received as incredibly moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde.
"You would need to have a heart of stone", he declared in one of his
famous witticisms, "not to laugh at the death of little Nell."[54] (although her death actually takes place off-stage). In 1903 G. K. Chesterton said, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to."[55]
In Oliver Twist Dickens provides readers with an idealised
portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically 'good' that his
values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced
involvement in a gang of young pickpockets. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary.
Many of his novels are concerned with social realism, focusing on
mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (for instance,
factory networks in Hard Times and hypocritical exclusionary class codes in Our Mutual Friend).[citation needed]Dickens
also employs incredible coincidences (e.g., Oliver Twist turns out to
be the lost nephew of the upper class family that randomly rescues him
from the dangers of the pickpocket group). Such coincidences are a
staple of eighteenth century picaresque novels such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones that Dickens enjoyed so much. But, to Dickens, these were not just plot devices but an index of the humanism that led him to believe that good wins out in the end and often in unexpected ways.[citation needed]
A well-known personality, his novels proved immensely popular during his lifetime. His first full novel, The Pickwick Papers
(1837), brought him immediate fame, and this success continued
throughout his career. Although rarely departing greatly from his
typical "Dickensian" method of always attempting to write a great
"story" in a somewhat conventional manner (the dual narrators of Bleak House constitute a notable exception), he experimented with varied themes, characterisations, and genres.
Some of these experiments achieved more popularity than others, and the
public's taste and appreciation of his many works have varied over
time. Usually keen to give his readers what they wanted, the monthly or
weekly publication of his works in episodes meant that the books could
change as the story proceeded at the whim of the public. Good examples
of this are the American episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit which Dickens included in response to lower-than-normal sales of the earlier chapters.
Dickens continues to be one of the best known and most read of English authors, and his works have never gone out of print.[3] At least 180 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works help confirm his success.[56] Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime and as early as 1913 a silent film of The Pickwick Papers
was made. 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 emotionlessly logical. Sam Weller, the carefree and irreverent valet of The Pickwick Papers, was an early superstar, perhaps better known than his author at first.
It is likely that A Christmas Carol stands as his best-known
story, with new adaptations almost every year. It is also the
most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the
early years of cinema. This simple morality tale with both pathos and its theme of redemption, sums up (for many) the true meaning of Christmas. Indeed, it eclipses all other Yuletide
stories in not only popularity, but in adding archetypal figures
(Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) to the Western cultural
consciousness. A prominent phrase from the tale, 'Merry Christmas', was popularised following the appearance of the story.[57] The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, with 'Bah! Humbug!' dismissive of the festive spirit.[58] Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness".[59] Some historians claim the book significantly redefined the "spirit" and importance of Christmas,[60][61]
and initiated a rebirth of seasonal merriment after Puritan authorities
in 17th century England and America suppressed pagan rituals associated
with the holiday.[62] According to the historian Ronald Hutton,
the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result
of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by A Christmas Carol.
Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centred festival of
generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centred
observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[63]
Superimposing his secular vision of the holiday, Dickens influenced
many aspects of Christmas that are celebrated today among Western
nations, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing,
games, and a festive generosity of spirit.[64]A Christmas Carol rejuvenated his career as a renowned author. A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens best-selling novel. Since its inaugural publication in 1859, the novel has sold over 200 million copies, and is among the most famous works of fiction.[65]
Photograph of Charles Dickens 1853
At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of
the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and
disadvantaged within society. Through his journalism he campaigned on
specific issues—such as sanitation and the workhouse—but
his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing
public opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the
exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public
officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist,
but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this
condition is in Hard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length
treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses both
vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum
was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people"
but rather only appendages of the machines that they operated. His
writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political
figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the
prison scenes in The Pickwick Papers are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. As Karl Marx
said, Dickens, and the other novelists of Victorian England, "...issued
to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by
all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put
together...".[66] The exceptional popularity of his novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend,
1865) underscored not only his almost preternatural ability to create
compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured
that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had
commonly been ignored.
His fiction, with often vivid descriptions of life in nineteenth
century England, has inaccurately and anachronistically come to
symbolise on a global level Victorian society (1837 – 1901) as uniformly
"Dickensian", when in fact, his novels' time span spanned from the
1770s to the 1860s. In the decade following his death in 1870, a more
intense degree of socially and philosophically pessimistic perspectives
invested British fiction; such themes stood in marked contrast to the
religious faith
that ultimately held together even the bleakest of Dickens's novels.
Dickens clearly influenced later Victorian novelists such as Thomas Hardy and George Gissing;
their works display a greater willingness to confront and challenge the
Victorian institution of religion. They also portray characters caught
up by social forces (primarily via lower-class conditions), but they usually steered them to tragic ends beyond their control.
Novelists continue to be influenced by his books; for instance, such disparate current writers as Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe, and John Irving evidence direct Dickensian connections. Humorist James Finn Garner even wrote a tongue-in-cheek "politically correct" version of A Christmas Carol, and other affectionate parodies include the Radio 4 comedy Bleak Expectations. Matthew Pearl's novel The Last Dickens is a thriller about how Charles Dickens would have ended The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In the UK survey entitled The Big Read carried out by the BBC in 2003, five of Dickens's books were named in the Top 100, featuring alongside Terry Pratchett with the most.[67]
Although Dickens's life has been the subject of at least two TV miniseries, a television film The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens in which he was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, and two famous one-man shows, he has never been the subject of a Hollywood big screen biography.[68]
Paul Vallely writes in The Independent that Dickens's Fagin in Oliver Twist
—the Jew who runs a school in London for child pickpockets—is widely
seen as one of the most grotesque Jews in English literature, and the
most vivid of Dickens's 989 characters.[69]
“
The mud lay
thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain
fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch.
It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be
abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of
the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome
reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved,
crawling forth by night in search of some rich offal for a meal.[70]
”
The character is thought to have been partly based on Ikey Solomon, a 19th century Jewish criminal in London, who was interviewed by Dickens during the latter's time as a journalist.[71]
Nadia Valdman, who writes about the portrayal of Jews in literature,
argues that Fagin's representation was drawn from the image of the Jew
as inherently evil, that the imagery associated him with the Devil, and
with beasts.[72]
The novel refers to Fagin 257 times in the first 38 chapters as "the
Jew", while the ethnicity or religion of the other characters is rarely
mentioned.[69] In 1854, the Jewish Chronicle
asked why "Jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart'
of this great author and powerful friend of the oppressed." Eliza Davis,
whose husband had purchased Dickens's home in 1860 when he had put it
up for sale, wrote to Dickens in protest at his portrayal of Fagin,
arguing that he had "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised
Hebrew", and that he had done a great wrong to the Jewish people.[73]
Dickens had described her husband at the time of the sale as a "Jewish
moneylender", though also someone he came to know as an honest
gentleman.
Dickens took her complaint seriously. He halted the printing of Oliver Twist,
and changed the text for the parts of the book that had not been set,
which is why Fagin is called "the Jew" 257 times in the first 38
chapters, but barely at all in the next 179 references to him. In his
novel, Our Mutual Friend, he created the character of Riah
(meaning "friend" in Hebrew), whose goodness, Vallely writes, is almost
as complete as Fagin's evil. Riah says in the novel: "Men say, 'This is a
bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are
good Turks.' Not so with the Jews ... they take the worst of us as
samples of the best ..." Davis sent Dickens a copy of the Hebrew bible
in gratitude.[69]
Dickens's attitudes towards blacks were also complex, although he
fiercely opposed the inhumanity of slavery in the United States, and
expressed a desire for African American emancipation. In American Notes,
he includes a comic episode with a black coach driver, presenting a
grotesque description focused on the man's dark complexion and way of
movement, which to Dickens amounts to an "insane imitation of an English
coachman".[74]
In 1868, alluding to the then poor intellectual condition of the black
population in America, Dickens railed against "the mechanical absurdity
of giving these people votes", which "at any rate at present, would
glare out of every roll of their eyes, chuckle in their mouths, and bump
in their heads."[74]
Suggested extermination of the Indian race
In The Perils of Certain English Prisoners Dickens offers an allegory of the Indian Mutiny, where the "native Sambo", a paradigm of the Indian mutineers,[75]
is a "double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain" who takes part
in a massacre of women and children, in an allusion to the Cawnpore Massacre.[76]
Dickens was much incensed by the massacre, in which over a hundred
English prisoners, most of them women and children, were killed, and on 4
October 1857 wrote in a private letter to Baroness Burdett-Coutts:
“
"I wish I were
the Commander in Chief in India. ... I should do my utmost to
exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested
... proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of
execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the
earth."
”
[77][78] Perils greatly influenced the cultural reaction from English
writers to the mutiny, by attributing guilt so as to portray the British
as victims, and the Indians as villains.[75]Wilkie Collins, who co-wrote Perils,
deviates from Dickens's view, writing the second chapter from a
different perspective which, quoting poet Jaya Mehta, was "parodying
British racism, instead of promoting it".[79] Contemporary literary critic Arthur Quiller-Couch
praised Dickens for eschewing any real-life depiction of the incident,
for fear of inflaming his "raging mad" readership further, in favour of a
romantic story "empty of racial or propagandist hatred".[80]
A modern inference is that it was his son's position in India, there on
military service, at the mercy of inept imperial leaders who
misunderstood conquered people, that may have influenced his reluctance
to set Perils in India, for fear that his criticism may antagonise the son's superiors.[81]
Charles Dickens had, as a contemporary critic put it, a "queer name".[82] The name Dickens was used in interjective exclamations like "What the Dickens!" as a substitute for "devil". It was recorded in the OED as originating from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was also used in the phrase "to play the Dickens" in the meaning "to play havoc/mischief".[83]
'Boz' was Dickens's occasional pen-name, but was a familiar name in
the Dickens household long before Charles became a famous author. It was
actually taken from his youngest brother Augustus Dickens' family nickname 'Moses', given to him in honour of one of the brothers in The Vicar of Wakefield
(one of the most widely read novels during the early 19th century).
When playfully pronounced through the nose 'Moses' became 'Boses', and
was later shortened to 'Boz' – pronounced through the nose with a long vowel 'o'.[84]
There have been several performances of Dickens readings by Emlyn Williams, Bransby Williams, Clive Francis performing the John Mortimer adaptation of A Christmas Carol and also Simon Callow in the Mystery of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd. Entertainer Mike Randall
re-enacts Dickens's readings (in character as Dickens) for a series of
shows known as "Charles Dickens Presents A Christmas Carol," primarily
in his home region in Western New York.
A child, dressed in appropriate attire, at the Dickensian Festival in Ulverston, Cumbria.
There are museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works in many of the towns with which he was associated.
The Charles Dickens Museum, in Doughty Street, Holborn is the only one of Dickens's London homes to survive. He lived there only two years but in that time wrote The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. It contains a major collection of manuscripts, original furniture and memorabilia.
Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth is the house in
which Dickens was born. It has been re-furnished in the likely style of
1812 and contains Dickens memorabilia.
The Dickens House Museum in Broadstairs, Kent is the house of Miss Mary Pearson Strong, the basis for Miss Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield. It is visible across the bay from the original Bleak House (also a museum until 2005) where David Copperfield was written. The museum contains memorabilia, general Victoriana and some of Dickens's letters. Broadstairs has held a Dickens Festival annually since 1937.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
holds the original manuscripts for many of his novels, plus printers'
proofs, first editions, and illustrations. At least one of the
manuscripts is usually on display in the Museum's British Galleries. [85]
The Charles Dickens Centre in Eastgate House, Rochester, closed in 2004, but the garden containing the author's Swiss chalet is still open. The 16th century house, which appeared as Westgate House in The Pickwick Papers and the Nun's House in Edwin Drood, is now used as a wedding venue.[86] The city's annual Dickens Festival (summer) and Dickensian Christmas celebrations continue unaffected. Summer Dickens
is held at the end of May or in the first few days of June, it
commences with an invitation only ball on the Thursday and then
continues with street entertainment, and many costumed characters, on
the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Christmas Dickens is the first weekend in December- Saturday and Sunday only.
Dickens World themed attraction, covering 71,500 square feet (6,643 m2), and including a cinema and restaurants, opened in Chatham on 25 May 2007.[87] It stands on a small part of the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father had once worked in the Navy Pay Office.
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens in 2012 the Museum of London
hosts the UK's first major exhibition on the author for 40 years.
Dickens and London opens on 9 December 2011 and is on until 10 June
2012.[88]
Dickens festivals are also held across the world. Four notable ones in the United States are:
The Riverside Dickens Festival in Riverside, California, includes literary studies as well as entertainments.
The Great Dickens Christmas Fair has been held in San Francisco,
California, since the 1970s. During the four or five weekends before
Christmas, over 500 costumed performers mingle with and entertain
thousands of visitors amidst the recreated full-scale blocks of
Dickensian London in over 90,000 square feet (8,000 m2) of
public area. This is the oldest, largest, and most successful of the
modern Dickens festivals outside England. Many (including the Martin
Harris who acts in the Rochester festival and flies out from London to
play Scrooge every year in SF) say it is the most impressive in the
world.[89]
Dickens on The Strand in Galveston,
Texas, is a holiday festival held on the first weekend in December
since 1974, where bobbies, Beefeaters and the "Queen" herself are on
hand to recreate the Victorian London of Charles Dickens. Many festival
volunteers and attendees dress in Victorian attire and bring the world
of Dickens to life.
The Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council[90] holds a Dickens Festival in the Village of Port Jefferson,
New York each year. In 2009, the Dickens Festival was 4 December, 5 and
6 December. It includes many events, along with a troupe of street
performers who bring an authentic Dickensian atmosphere to the town.
Other memorials
Charles Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England
which was in circulation in the UK between 1992 and 2003. Dickens
appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from The Pickwick Papers.[91]
Charles Dickens published over a dozen major novels, a large number
of short stories (including a number of Christmas-themed stories), a
handful of plays, and several non-fiction books. Dickens's novels were
initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in
standard book formats.
^Jordan, John (2001). "Chronology". The Cambridge companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. xvi. ISBN0-521-66964-2.
^Victorianweb.org – Mary Scott Hogarth, 1820–1837: Dickens's Beloved Sister-in-Law and Inspiration
^Bowen, John (2004). "Dickens's Black Atlantic". Dickens and empire: discourses of class, race and colonialism in the works of Charles Dickens. Farnham, England: Ashgate. p. 53. ISBN978-0-7546-3412-6.
^Dickens, Charles (1842). "Slavery". American Notes for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall. pp. 94–100. ISBN0460876856. OCLC41667089.
^Glancy, Ruth F (2006). "The Frozen Deep and other Biographical Influences". Charles Dickens's A Tale Of Two Cities: A Sourcebook. Abingdon, England: Routledge. p. 14. ISBN0415287596.
^ abDickens, Charles (2 December 1854). "The Lost Arctic Voyagers". Household Words: A Weekly Journal (London: Charles Dickens) 10 (245): 361 et sec. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
^Rae, John (30 December 1854). "Dr Rae's report". Household Words: A Weekly Journal (London: Charles Dickens) 10 (249): 457–458. Retrieved 16 August 2008.
^ The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens: Volume 12: 1868–1870
^Staff writers (2007). "Charles Dickens". History. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 12 July 2009.
"A small stone with a simple inscription marks the grave of this famous
English novelist in Poets' Corner: 'Charles Dickens Born 7 February
1812 Died 9 June 1870' "
^ "Printed at J. H. Woodley's Funeral Tablet Office, 30 Fore Street, City, London." and reproduced on page 4, A Christmas Carol Study Guide by Patti Kirkpatrick, Education Department, Dallas Theater Center.
^ Green, J. (1979), Famous Last Words, Enderby, Leicester, Silverdale Books, ISBN 1856265779
^ Robertson Cochrane. Wordplay: origins, meanings, and usage of the English language. p.126 University of Toronto Press, 1996 ISBN 0802077528
^ Joe L. Wheeler. Christmas in my heart, Volume 10. p.97. Review and Herald Pub Assoc, 2001. ISBN 0828016224
^ excerpt read by William Makepeace Thackeray, New York City (1852)
^ Michael Patrick Hearn. The Annotated Christmas Carol. W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-393-05158-7
^ Les Standiford. The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, Crown, 2008. ISBN 978-0307405784
^ Richard Michael Kelly. A Christmas Carol. Broadview Press, 2003.
^ Richard Michael Kelly (ed.) (2003), A Christmas Carol.pp.9,12 Broadview Literary Texts, New York: Broadview Press ISBN 1551114763
^Broadway.com on A Tale of Two Cities:
"Since its inaugural publication on 30 August 1859, A Tale of Two
Cities has sold over 200 million copies in several languages, making it
one of the most famous books in the history of fictional literature."
(24 March 2008)
^Oliver Twist, Hurd and Houghton, 1867, chapter 19, pp. 221–222.
^ Rutland, Suzanne D. The Jews in Australia. Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 19. ISBN 9780521612852; Newey, Vincent. The Scriptures of Charles Dickens.
^ Valdman, Nadia. Antisemitism, A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. ISBN 1-85109-439-3
^Unnamed writer (January 1849). "The Haunted Man review". Macphail's Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal (Edinburgh) vi: 423. "Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations."
^ Serial publication dates from Chronology of Novels by E. D. H. Johnson, Holmes Professor of Belles Lettres, Princeton University. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography William Morros, 1988
Lewis, Peter R. Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847, Tempus (2007) for a discussion of the Staplehurst accident, and its influence on Dickens.
Charles John Huffam Dickens, FRSA (Portsmouth, 7 de Fevereiro de 1812 — 9 de Junho de 1870), que também adoptou o pseudónimoBoz no início da sua atividade literária, foi o mais popular dos romancistas ingleses da era vitoriana.[1]
A fama dos seus romances e contos, tanto durante a sua vida como
depois, até aos dias de hoje, só aumentou. Apesar de os seus romances
não serem considerados, pelos parâmetros actuais, muito realistas,
Dickens contribuiu em grande parte para a introdução da crítica social
na literatura de ficção inglesa.
Entre os seus maiores clássicos estão "David Copperfield" e "Oliver Twist".[1]
Dickens nasceu em uma sexta-feira na cidade de Moure (condado de Hampshire, Inglaterra),
filho de John Dickens, funcionário perdulário da Armada, e de sua
esposa Elizabeth Barrow. Quando fez cinco anos, a família mudou-se para Chatham, no condado de Kent.
Descrever-se-ia a si mesmo, mais tarde, como uma criança "muito pequena e não muito mimada".[2] Educado por sua mãe, que lhe ensinava diariamente inglês e latim,[2] passava muito do seu tempo a ler infindavelmente – e, com especial devoção as novelas picarescas de Tobias Smollett e Henry Fielding. Entre os livros da sua infância encontravam-se também obras de Daniel Defoe, Goldsmith, bem como o "Dom Quixote", "Gil Blas" e "As Mil e uma noites".
A sua memória fotográfica serviria, mais tarde, para conceber as suas
personagens e enredos ficcionais, baseando-se muito nas pessoas e
acontecimentos que foram marcando a sua vida.
A sua família era remediada em termos económicos, o que lhe permitiu
frequentar uma escola particular durante três anos. A situação piorou,
contudo, quando o seu pai foi preso por dívidas, depois de gastar os
recursos da família no afã de manter uma posição social periclitante.
Com dez anos de idade, a família mudou-se para o bairro popular de Camden Town
em Londres, onde ocupavam quartos baratos e, para fazer face aos
gastos, empenharam os talheres de prata e venderam a biblioteca familiar
que tinha feito as delícias do jovem rapaz. Com doze anos, Dickens já
tinha a idade considerada necessária para trabalhar na empresa Warren’s
onde se produzia graxa para os sapatos com betume, junto à actual Estação ferroviária de Charing Cross. O seu trabalho consistia em colar rótulos nos frascos de graxa, ganhando, por isso, seis xelins por semana.[3] Com o dinheiro, sustentava a família, encarcerada na prisão para devedores, em Moure onde ia dormir.
Alguns anos depois, a situação financeira da família melhorou
consideravelmente, graças a uma herança recebida pelo seu pai. A sua
família deixou a prisão, mas a mãe não o retirou logo da fábrica, que
pertencia a um amigo. Dickens jamais perdoaria a mãe por essa injustiça.
O tema das más condições de trabalho da classe operária inglesa
tornar-se-iam, mais tarde, um dos mais recorrentes da sua obra.
Início de carreira
Em agosto Dickens começou a trabalhar num escritório, emprego que lhe
poderia valer, mais tarde, a posição de advogado. Não gostou, no
entanto, do trabalho nos tribunais e, depois de aprender taquigrafia, foi, por um breve período, estenógrafo
do tribunal. Com dezoito anos de idade, começou outro período de
leituras intensas tendo-se inscrito na biblioteca do British Museum. Por
esta altura, apaixona-se pela filha de um banqueiro, Maria Beadnell. Os
pais da menina desaprovaram, contudo, o idílio amoroso devido ao
passado dos pais de Dickens. A própria Maria tornar-se-á indiferente a
Charles depois de uma viagem "educativa" a França. Dickens levará um ano a superar este desgosto amoroso.
Tornou-se, depois, jornalista, começando como cronista judicial e,
depois, fazendo relatos dos debates parlamentares e cobrindo as
campanhas eleitorais pela Grã-Bretanha fora, de diligência. Os seus Sketches by Boz
("Esboços de Boz" - Boz era a alcunha do seu irmão mais novo que não
era capaz de pronunciar devidamente "Moses" - Moisés, em inglês) são
fruto desta época e são constituídos por pequenas peças jornalísticas em
forma de retratos de costumes, originalmente escritas para o "Morning
Chronicle" em 1833.[4] Ao longo da sua carreira, Dickens continuou, durante muito tempo, a escrever para jornais.
Com pouco mais de vinte anos, o seu The Pickwick Papers (Os Documentos Póstumos do Clube Pickwick)
estabeleceu o seu nome como escritor. A ideia inicial desta obra era
que Dickens escrevesse comentários a ilustrações desportivas. De 1831 a 1834, a New Sporting Magazine comprovou o sucesso desta receita editorial com a sua série "Jorrock´s Jaunts and Jollities" sobre um comerciante cockney
que quer a todo o custo ser reconhecido como o bom caçador que não era.
Querendo seguir a mesma ideia, Robert Seymour propôs aos editores Chapman and Hall
criar uma série semelhante sobre um tal de "Clube Nimrod" (Nimrod é uma
personagem bíblica descrita como sendo um grande caçador) onde também
se troçaria dos caçadores inexperientes, mas cheios de si mesmos.
Procuraram-se escritores para "complementar" as imagens com textos. A
terceira opção, perante a recusa dos dois primeiros, era Dickens, que
escrevera os seus Esboços para a mesma editora. Dickens rapidamente
tomou conta do projecto e rejeitou a ideia de um clube de caçadores - a
ideia não lhe agradava. Criou, pelo contrário, um clube de observadores
de curiosidades, o que afastou definitivamente o ilustrador que tivera a
ideia inicial, Seymour, que viria a suicidar-se na sequência destes
acontecimentos. Procurou-se outro ilustrador. É curioso que tenha sido
rejeitado um tal de William Makepeace Thackeray
que tornar-se-ia outro vulto de importância no romance vitoriano
(geralmente colocado logo a seguir a Dickens, na opinião de muitos
estudiosos da literatura inglesa - ou mesmo superior a Dickens, na
opinião de outros). O novo ilustrador, conhecido pela alcunha de Phiz,
deu conta do recado.
A 2 de Abril de 1836 (três dias depois da publicação do primeiro fascículo de "Pickwick"), casou-se com Catherine Hogarth, de quem teve dez filhos.[1] A recepção do público a Pickwick não foi calorosa desde o início. Só quando aparece a personagem de Sam Weller, o criado de Pickwick e que acompanha as aventuras do seu amo ao jeito de um Sancho Pança ao lado de Dom Quixote, é que as vendas sobem de 400 exemplares para 40 000.
Em 1838, em decorrência do sucesso de Pickwick, propõe a publicação de "Oliver Twist"
onde, pela primeira vez, apontava para os males sociais da era
vitoriana. O romance, divulgado em folhetins semanais, terá também o seu
ilustrador: Cruikshank.[1]
Em 1842 viajou com a sua esposa para os Estados Unidos da América. A viagem foi descrita, depois, no curto relato de literatura de viagensAmerican Notes, existindo também influências da mesma em alguns episódios de Martin Chuzzlewit.
Ao entusiasmo com que foi recebido, de início, nos Estados Unidos,
seguiu-se uma estadia menos calorosa, devido às críticas que teceu à
política editorial deste país, acusando os editores de plágio em relação
à literatura produzida na Grã-Bretanha.
Em 1843, publicava o seu mais famoso livro de Natal, "A Christmas
Carol" ("Canção de Natal"), ao qual se seguiriam outros, com a mesma
temática, como "The Chimes" (1844), que escreveu em Génova na sua primeira grande viagem ao estrangeiro (se descontarmos a breve incursão aos Estados Unidos). Em 1845, "The Cricket on the Hearth" ("O Grilo da lareira") torna-se também um dos seus maiores sucessos natalícios.
Em 1848
publicava "Dombey and Son", escrito principalmente no estrangeiro, onde
descreve o meio dos transportes ferroviários - outro tema estreitamente
relacionado com a Revolução Industrial que conformava a sociedade
vitoriana.
Em 1849
publicou aquele que viria a ser o mais popular dos seus romances, David
Copperfield, onde se inspirava, em grande parte, na sua própria vida. As
amizades literárias de Dickens incluíam, em 1854, Thomas Carlyle, a
quem dedicará o seu romance "Tempos Difíceis".
A revista semanal Household Words, onde viria a publicar, em folhetins, alguns dos seus romances, foi fundada também por ele, em 1850, e chegou a vender 40 mil cópias por semana.[3] A revista seria reformulada em 1859, mudando de nome para "All the year round".
Os livros de Dickens tornaram-se extremamente populares na época e
eram lidos com grande expectativa por um público muito fiel à sua
escrita. O seu sucesso permitiu-lhe comprar Gad’s Hill Place, perto de
Chatham, em 1856.
Esta casa fazia parte do imaginário de Dickens, desde que por ela tinha
passado, em criança – sonhando que um dia poderia lá viver. O local
tinha ainda um significado especial porque algumas cenas do Henrique V de Shakespeare localizam-se nesta mesma área. Essa referência literária agradava de sobremodo a Dickens.
Últimos anos de vida
Dickens separou-se da sua mulher em 1858. O divórcio
era um acto altamente reprovável durante a era vitoriana,
principalmente para alguém com a notoriedade dele. Continuou, contudo, a
pagar-lhe casa e sustento durante os restantes anos em que ela viveu.
Ainda que tivessem sido felizes no seu início de vida conjugal,
Catherine parecia não partilhar a energia de viver sem limites de
Dickens. O trabalho de cuidar dos dez filhos do casal, aliado à pressão
resultante de ser a esposa e dona de casa de um romancista mundialmente
reconhecido não ajudava. A sua irmã, Georgina, tinha mudado para casa de
Dickens, para ajudar Catherine no seu trabalho doméstico – há, contudo,
rumores de que teve um caso amoroso com o cunhado. Georgina manteve-se
com Dickens após a separação para cuidar dos filhos do casal. Podemos
encontrar um indício da insatisfação marital de Charles num encontro que
este teve em 1855 com Maria Beadnell, o seu primeiro amor.
A 9 de Junho de 1865, estando de regresso de França, onde fora visitar Ellen Ternan,
Dickens viu-se envolvido no acidente ferroviário de Staplehurst, em que
as seis primeiras carruagens do comboio caíram de uma ponte em
reparação. A única carruagem de primeira classe que se manteve na linha
foi, por coincidência, aquela onde seguia Dickens. O escritor mostrou-se
ativo a cuidar dos feridos e moribundos antes de chegarem os esforços
de salvamento. Quando se preparava para abandonar o lugar trágico
lembrou-se, ainda a tempo, de que tinha deixado dentro do comboio o
manuscrito inacabado do seu romance Our Mutual Friend (O nosso amigo comum) e voltou à carruagem para o buscar.
Já que se tornaria público que seguia viagem com Ellen Ternan e a sua
mãe, a opinião púbica rapidamente a apontaria como a causa da separação
de Catherine. Ellen foi, para todos os efeitos, a mulher que acompanhou
Dickens até ao final dos seus dias, apesar de a união nunca ter sido
reconhecida oficialmente.[1]
Ainda que tivesse escapado ileso do acidente, nunca chegou a
recuperar totalmente do choque. Isso é evidente no ritmo da sua produção
que decresce bastante depois deste episódio. Levará algum tempo a
completar Our Mutual Friend e a começar a sua obra incompleta, The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
onde se notam influências de Wilkie Collins, que fazia parte do círculo
de amigos de Dickens e que é considerado um dos pioneiros do romance
policial. A partir de 1858, os seus últimos anos de vida serão ocupados
principalmente com leituras públicas. Esse género de espectáculos, que
consistia apenas em ouvir Dickens a ler as suas suas obras mais
conhecidas, tornaram-se incrivelmente populares. Note-se que na altura
era comum ler em voz alta em família ou em grupos – a leitura expressiva
era muito valorizada. E Dickens, com a sua interpretação apaixonada e a
forma como se entregava à narração, não só arrebatava gargalhadas (e,
principalmente, lágrimas) das audiências, como se arrebatava a si mesmo,
exaurindo as suas forças. O esforço despendido nestes espectáculos é,
muitas vezes, apontado como uma das causas da sua morte. Em 1867 foi
convidado a voltar aos Estados Unidos para uma digressão das suas
leituras.
Morreu de morte cerebral em junho de 1870. Foi sepultado no Poets' Corner ("Esquina dos Poetas"), na Abadia de Westminster.
Na sua sepultura está gravado: "Apoiante dos pobres, dos que sofrem e
dos oprimidos; e com a sua morte, um dos maiores escritores de
Inglaterra desaparecia para o mundo."
Na década de 1980, a histórica Eastgate House (casa Eastgate), em Rochester, em Kent,
foi convertida num museu dedicado a Charles Dickens. Anualmente
realiza-se na cidade o Festival Dickens. A casa onde nasceu, em Portsmouth é, também, um museu actualmente.
Filhos
Teve dez filhos de Catherine Thompson Hogarth, os nomes remetem quase sempre para referências literárias:
Quando Dickens começa a publicar os seus romances, tem à sua
disposição um público formado pela revolução industrial. Londres tem
mais de um milhão e meio de habitantes, devido à explosão demográfica e a
um êxodo rural
que expulsa os camponeses dos seus terrenos que ficam cercados em
"enclosures" dedicadas à pecuária, mais especificamente, à criação de
ovinos. A indústria têxtil servirá de emprego para estes espoliados. O
trabalho infantil torna-se uma das características mais pungentes da
economia inglesa. Em 1845, Engels
publicará "A situação da classe operária em Inglaterra", onde toda esta
situação é analisada. Dickens aflorará estes problemas, é certo, mas
conquistará o público burguês porque não se assumirá nunca como um
revolucionário… As suas personagens, quando melhoram de vida, devem essa
melhoria às circunstâncias e acasos da vida, mais que à sua luta pela
justiça social.
Por outro lado, a população anglófona é a mais alfabetizada do mundo.
Por isso, Dickens terá um público potencial muito alargado, não só na
Grã-Bretanha como além do Atlântico.
Características gerais
A escrita de Dickens é caracterizada por um estilo poético.
A maior parte dos principais romances de Dickens foram escritos
mensal ou semanalmente, em episódios publicados em jornais como o Household Words
e que depois foram reunidos nas obras completas, tal como as conhecemos
actualmente. A publicação em episódios separados tornava as histórias
mais acessíveis a um público mais extenso que ia aumentando à medida que
as situações por resolver se sucediam, episódio por episódio, criando
expectativa entre o público. O talento de Dickens residia também nesta
sua capacidade em aliar uma narrativa episódica a um romance coerente na
sua totalidade. Os episódios mensais eram acompanhados de ilustrações
de vários artistas.
A sua escrita manteve sempre um alto nível de qualidade, sem se
distanciar de um estilo tipicamente "dickensiano" que não era
incompatível com a experimentação de novos temas e géneros. A reacção do
público a estas experiências era irregular – e mesmo as críticas e a
percepção pública da sua obra variou ao longo do tempo. A publicação dos
seus textos em periódicos permitia-lhe auscultar as reacções do público
à sua escrita, de forma que podia mudar o rumo à narrativa, de acordo
com o que o público esperava ou não. Um bom exemplo encontra-se em Martin Chuzzlewit, onde foram incluídos episódios passados na América, em resposta ao decréscimo nas vendas dos primeiros capítulos. Em Our Mutual Friend, a inclusão da personagem Riah, retratando positivamente uma personagem judia, resultou das críticas à personagem de Fagin no seu Oliver Twist.
Os romances de Dickens eram, entre outros aspectos, obras de crítica
social. Nas suas narrativas são tecidos comentários ferozes a uma
sociedade que permitia a pobreza extrema, as más condições de vida e de
trabalho e a estratificação social abrupta da era vitoriana, a par de
uma empatia solidária pelo homem comum e uma atitude céptica em relação à
alta sociedade.
A escrita de Dickens é hoje considerada excessivamente
sentimentalista e melodramática: a morte de personagens de quem gostamos
particularmente, como a pequena Nell em The Old Curiosity Shop
("Loja de antiguidades"), ou a costureirinha do "Conto de Duas
Cidades", são exemplo disso. Mesmo quando a história tem características
marcadamente pungentes para as principais personagens, como em Bleak House
("Casa Desolada"), Dickens tentava equilibrar o conjunto com
personagens e situações satíricas e que permitiam sorrisos e gargalhadas
no meio das lágrimas derramadas pela triste sorte das outras
personagens. Outra crítica recorrente ao estilo de Dickens refere-se à
inverosimilhança do enredo que se sustenta quase sempre em coincidências
muito pouco prováveis. Se é assim, de facto, a verdade é que Dickens
procurava, acima de tudo, o entretenimento e não o realismo. Pretendia,
de certa forma, recuperar o espírito do romance gótico e das novelas
picarescas que lia na sua juventude. Efectivamente, quando escrevia um
romance mais realista, a recepção do público mostrava-se bastante mais
fria e indiferente. Além do mais, não era a sua própria história algo
inverosímil, com as suas constantes reviravoltas (uma infância feliz
seguida de pobreza, depois, uma herança inesperada e, finalmente, fama
internacional e reconhecimento público)? Afinal, estão constantemente a
acontecer histórias inverosímeis no mundo…
É normal que um escritor incorpore elementos autobiográficos nas suas
narrativas ficcionais. O caso torna-se particularmente interessante em
Dickens, até porque este sempre teve a preocupação de velar aquilo que
considerava vergonhoso no seu passado. As muitas cenas de tribunal que
aparecem em "A Casa sombria" são bem reveladoras do seu passado como
cronista judicial. Em "A Pequena Dorrit" volta a aparecer o tema da
prisão para devedores – onde Marshalsea, onde a sua família esteve
retida, também serve de espaço narrativo. Pensa-se também que a pequena
Nell de a Loja de Antiguidades poderá representar a sua cunhada. O pai de Nicholas Nickleby e Wilkins Micawber são directamente inspirados no seu pai. Pip, a personagem principal de Grandes Esperanças,
com a sua mistura de pedantismo e remorsos, é semelhante ao próprio
Dickens. Ele era um péssimo escritor antes e depois virou um ótimo.
Temas e personagens
Os temas mais recorrentes em Dickens correspondem a uma vontade de
reformar a sociedade exploradora que pertencia e que se concretizava nos
asilos para órfãos, nos locais de trabalho degradados, nas escolas que
mais se assemelhavam a locais de tortura e no ambiente sórdido das
prisões.
Ilustração metafórica da época, onde Dickens recebe as suas personagens.
Ao comparar os órfãos a acções da bolsa, pessoas a barcos
rebocadores, ou convidados para jantar a peças de mobília, Dickens
conseguia resumir numa imagem o que descrições mais complexas não
conseguiriam transmitir. Satirizou o pedantismo da aristocracia
britânica com especial sarcasmo, usando imagens semelhantes a estas.
As próprias personagens estão entre as mais memoráveis da literatura
em inglês. Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, Mrs. Gamp, Wilkins Micawber,
Pecksniff, Miss Havisham, Wackford Squeers , entre outros, são tão
conhecidos do público anglófono que quase se assumem como identidades
próprias (Scrooge, por exemplo, deu origem ao Tio Patinhas).
As excentricidades destas personagens não monopolizam, contudo, a
narrativa. Algumas destas personagens são grotescas, seguindo o estilo
do romance gótico do século XVIII, que Dickens também apreciava, ainda
que, na altura, o gênero já fosse um pouco ridicularizado (por exemplo,
através de Northanger Abbey,
de Jane Austen, que parodia este tipo de romance). Pode-se considerar,
todavia, como a mais onipresente das personagens de Dickens, a própria
cidade de Londres, revelando aspectos que só poderiam ser descritos por
quem conhecesse profundamente cada rua da cidade.
A delinquencia provocada geralmente por pessoas órfãs e pela
exploração desenfreada do ser humano por outros seres humanos é o
ingrediente base de "Oliver Twist" e "Nicholas Nickleby", onde faz
também a denúncia das condições de muitos estabelecimentos de ensino.
"Casa Sombria" será um libelo contra a corrupção e a ineficiência do
sistema jurídico inglês, tal como em "A pequena Dorrit". Menos
conhecido, este romance é uma obra prima de sátira acerba, recheada de
enganos, além de contar a típica história do pobre que enriquece.
Aventurou-se também pelo romance histórico, de que é exemplo "Barnaby
Rudge", de 1841 - a obra é, contudo, dominada pela ficção e apenas em
alguns pontos serve o desígnio do que se costuma chamar "romance
histórico". De facto, nenhuma das personagens tiveram existência real,
excetuando Lord Gordon. O seu "Conto de duas cidades", sobre a Revolução Francesa, de cariz diverso do resto da sua obra é, contudo, um dos mais celebrados romances históricos ingleses.
Dickens era fascinado pelo teatro, que considerava como uma forma de refúgio psicológico perante as adversividades da vida. Em Nicholas Nickleby
aparecem personagens ligadas ao meio teatral. A mulher que o acompanhou
nos últimos anos de vida era atriz, e ele mesmo teve uma carreira
ligada ao palco, durante as suas leituras públicas dos seus próprios
romances, que o levou a percorrer a Grã-Bretanha e os Estados Unidos da
América em digressões muito concorridas. Sua escrita, ao conjugar
realidade com fantasia, a crítica social com o melodrama, e a reflexão
sobre o destino humano com o humor. Outros, porém, consideram David Copperfield o seu melhor romance – é também aquele onde se encontram mais elementos autobiográficos.
Legado
A sua popularidade pouco decresceu desde a sua morte. Continua a ser
um dos autores ingleses mais lidos e apreciados. Pelo menos cerca de 180
filmes e adaptações para televisão das suas obras documentam ainda o
seu sucesso entre o público actual. Já durante a sua vida se tinham
adaptado algumas das suas obras para o palco. Em 1913 já os produtores cinematográficos se lançavam na produção de um filme mudo denominado The Pickwick Papers.
As suas personagens eram de tal forma sugestivas que pareciam ganhar
vida própria, tornando-se, mesmo, proverbiais. A língua inglesa ganhou
alguns neologismos à sua conta. "Gamp" é um termo usado na gíria
para "guarda-chuva", devido a uma personagem – a senhora Gamp.
"Pickwickiano", "Pecksniffiano", etc., podem ser usadas para se referir
ao mesmo tipo de pessoa que as personagens referidas.
O seu conto "Canção de Natal" é talvez a sua história mais conhecida.
As adaptações são inúmeras, para quase todos os gêneros de comunicação:
cinema, banda desenhada, televisão, teatro, outras adaptações
literárias, etc, criam um fenómeno de popularidade que transcende a obra
original. Segundo alguns, esta história, patética, moralista e bem
humorada, resume o verdadeiro significado do Natal, eclipsando todas as
outras histórias de Dickens sobre o tema.
Numa altura em que o Império Britânico era a maior potência política e
económica do mundo, Dickens conseguiu apontar para a vida dos
esquecidos e desfavorecidos, mesmo no coração do império. Na sua breve
carreira de jornalista já tinha batalhado pelo saneamento básico e pelas
condições de trabalho, mas foram, claramente, as suas obras ficcionais
que mais despertaram a opinião pública para estes problemas. À conta de
um contexto literário bem humorado e de vendas avultadas, denunciava a
vida agreste dos pobres e satirizava os indivíduos que permitiam que
tais abusos continuassem e conseguia mover opiniões. Crê-se que a sua
influência foi importante para o fecho das prisões de Marshalsea e da
Prisão de Fleet.
Dickens terá tido, talvez, a esperança de ver nos seus 10 filhos o
início de uma dinastia literária, pelo facto de todos terem nomes que
remetem para a história da literatura inglesa. Seria, efectivamente,
difícil aproximar-se sequer do sucesso do seu pai. Alguns parecem ter
herdado do pai de Dickens a tendência para esbanjar o dinheiro. Alguns
escreveram as suas memórias, centradas, claro está, na figura do pai,
além de organizarem a sua correspondência de forma a poder ser
publicada. Apenas a sua bisneta, Monica Dickens, seguiria as suas pegadas, e dedicar-se-ia à escrita de romances.
A própria era vitoriana pode-se designar de era dickensiana, se
pensarmos na forma como foi perenemente descrita por este escritor.
Depois da sua morte em 1870
a literatura inglesa tornou-se muito mais realista, talvez em reacção à
tendência de Dickens para o picaresco e o ridículo. Outros romancistas
da era vitoriana que o seguiram, como Samuel Butler, Thomas Hardy ou George Gissing demonstram-se claramente influenciados por Dickens, ainda que a sua escrita seja mais sóbria e menos melodramática.
Dickens continua, contudo, a ser um dos mais geniais criadores da
literatura mundial de todos os tempos, sendo dificilmente superado na
popularidade e acessibilidade da sua escrita.
No cinema português podemos contar com a adaptação do seu "Hard Times" por João Botelho (no filme "Tempos Difíceis").[5]
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BBC MUNDO RADIO
We
can tell a few things from the poster, if it's real at all. First off,
the pose and over-the-shoulder sort of framing is indicative of
conflict, it creates a sense of Superman against the world, which
strengthens the hypothesis that this Superman film will reflect a more
morose and somber Superman, a superhero who is not accepted and feels
ever out of place in an alien world.
