Ranking the Novels of Dickens

[Teresa Edgerton]

Our Mutual Friend happens to be one of my favorites. I like Bleak House a lot, too, but you might find Esther's humility and low self esteem (part of the book is told in her first person point of view) a little trying.

 

[Extollager]

One approach to the topic of Esther Summerson in Bleak House is, as Dr. Johnson would put it, to clear one's mind of cant -- in this case, to try to read the novel on its own terms, bracketing off for the time being the strong-woman paradigm currently celebrated, and to try to see (1) what Dickens is doing -- for its own sake and also in case there is something there that could be beneficial for us now, and (2) how Esther's sense of things works for other characters and for her; does her way of seeing herself and others conduce to the spiritual health of others and herself, or to their diminishment after all? Or to put it more concisely, to try to read the Esther material open-mindedly. (Not that I'm saying Teresa isn't doing so.)

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I didn't say that I found Esther trying, but I know that a lot of readers do.

But I will say that I don't think Dickens was at his best in writing the female characters of his main cast in any of his books. I don't think he ever understood how women actually think, so using one as a viewpoint character was probably not his best decision.

 

[Bick]

I'll second Extollager's first suggestions, Bleak House or Mutual Friend. Probably Bleak House is his finest work?

I'd also add that I really enjoyed Dombey and would recommend it highly. Also, Hard Times, which is often overlooked but is a relatively short treat (though in some ways not quite so 'Dickensian').

 

[Extollager]

Bleak House is great for sure. Also, it has a certain incident.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I agree that Hard Times deserves more attention than it usually gets.

 

[Avelino de Castro]

Dickens wrote fourteen completed novels plus a substantial fifteenth, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I will count as a novel in the simple ranking below. Missing from my list is Dombey and Son (1846-1848), which I haven't read.

I didn't care to attempt to rank each novel individually, but I figured I could make two lists, what I regard as greater Dickens (seven) and lesser Dickens (seven), or my favorite seven and my less favorite seven -- something like that. The novels below are listed in chronological order, not personal preference order. The dating is drawn from A. O. J. Cockshut's little book The Imagination of Charles Dickens.

Greater Seven:
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)
David Copperfield (1849-1850)
Bleak House (1852-1853)
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)
Great Expectations (1860-1861)
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)
Edwin Drood (1870)

Lesser Seven:

Pickwick Papers (1836-1837)
Oliver Twist (1837-1839)
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Hard Times (1854)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

I hasten to add that I like them all except that I found Pickwick tedious at times and something that it took determination to finish; and I don't remember that I was particularly fond of Hard Times. I have read those once each, also just once for Barnaby Rudge. I expect to try Hard Times someday for a second reading. It's fairly likely I'll read most of Nicholas Nickleby again someday, but I have no plans for now to do so, and I expect I will skip the tales told within the novel, which weren't much good, as I recall. Indeed I'm not certain I read all of them the first time. The other three in the Lesser list are ones I have read at least twice.

I've read all of the completed ones in the Greater list at least twice except for Chuzzlewit and Little Dorrit, which I would like to read again within the next few years. I've read Great Expectations, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend three or four times each. My records indicate I've read Drood just once, but I thought it was at least twice. Dickens is a rereading favorite of mine.

How about you, who have read at least two Dickens novels? I'm thinking unabridged editions here, but of course you can count an abridged edition read in school if you like. That was my introduction to Dickens's novels, as I remember, an abridged version of Great Expectations that was included in a ?9th? grade reader, and which we didn't finish, I think. The first unabridged Dickens novel I read was Oliver Twist, over 40 years ago. I remember that I thought I'd mark paragraphs that could be safely skipped should I reread the novel; I had the impression that Dickens was wordy. I think I ended up marking about two paragraphs -- something ridiculous like that!

Hoping for some discussion here.

I've only read Olover Twist, and was delighted with it. Also I read A Christmas Carol every year at Christmas time as a child. I defintiely have to delve into more Dickens before I can really offer an opinion, except to say that Oliver Twist was inspired writing.

 

[Extollager]

Avelino, you might like to look around this thread and see if anything prompts the desire for a next Dickens novel to tackle. Dickens is great!

 

[Bick]

I've only read Oliver Twist, and was delighted with it.

I have a theory that if you're currently reading a scene or chapter featuring the murderous Bill Sykes, Oliver Twist is officially "unputdownable".

(Likewise, the same goes for Quilp in Old Curiosity Shop)

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I mentioned the Little Dorrit mini-series a while back. Seeing some of the same actors in another recent costume flick inspired me to start watching LD again last night. And being about halfway through I really am enjoying it, although it's probably the third or fourth time I've watched it. There are some very fine performances and though it doesn't include everything from the book it is unusually faithful for a television adaptation. I recommend it to anyone who loves the novel and has access to it through some video service.

 

[Bick]

I've just started a (slow) read of A Tale of Two Cities. I'm reading other SF meanwhile much of the time, so this may be a slow burn, but I'm enjoying it so far.

 

[Extollager]

I think I thought it was OK the first time, and really good the second.

 

[soulsinging]

I've just started a (slow) read of A Tale of Two Cities. I'm reading other SF meanwhile much of the time, so this may be a slow burn, but I'm enjoying it so far.

In my limited experience with Dickens, slow is the best way to read him.

 

[Bick]

I finished A Tale of Two Cities - exactly a month after I started it, according to my post above. A slow read indeed, but I have been reading other things, and took it in a leisurely fashion.

It's quite hard to review, as it has certain features that distinguish it from the most typical works of Dickens. It's an historical novel of course, and Dickens only wrote a couple of those. It's also a little 'thinner' with regard to plot and depth than some of his most famous, longer, novels I think. There's a linear aspect to the narrative that avoids some of the detours and characterisation that fill out his greater works. It also lacks some of the humour I've come to enjoy. Often the humour in Dickens derives from his amusing caricatures, and while there are minor examples of these caricatures here (in Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher) they are not as outlandish or eccentric as favourite characters from other books. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that the comedic caricatures act as foils and respite from the eccentric villains that haunt his better books (such as Quilp or Bill Sykes). But here, the villains are not painted as caricatures, but as more realistic villains (such as Madame Defarge). The result is a book that seems less Dickensian due to its slighter use of comedic caricatures, that would normally offset more villainous caricatures.

On the plus side, there is quite a bit to commend. The start with the coach travelling to Hastings is good. Miss Pross' final encounter with Therese Defarge in the penultimate chapter is quite wonderful and makes the book worthwhile on its own, and the novel has some other memorable or haunting passages. I've got used to Dicken's heroines being angelic and paper-thin, so was not bothered by Lucie as much as I might have been. Dicken's always seems to have a 'vanilla' characterless hero or heroine, around which he spins his byzantine plots and more interesting characters, and this book is certainly no exception, though some will find Lucie a bit much to stomach (though she's nowhere near as annoying as Copperfield's wife). One of the more interesting characters is Striver, and I thought it a shame more wasn't made of him. It's almost as though Dicken's forgot about him, though in general it's rather well plotted and tied up by the end.

Given my views are both positive and negative, I don't know how I'd place this in the list (this thread of Extollager's started out as a rank the books thread), but I suppose it would be in the lower half, and it may well be near the bottom, though that sounds more negative than I feel about it (they're all 'good' afterall).

 

[Extollager]

I wonder if sometimes Dickens’s relatively “characterless” characters need to be evaluated in context, that is, they are (in Patmore’s term) points of rest, indifferent points, that serve the reader as he or she encounters such tumults of invention.

(I refer to Coventry Patmore’s little essay “The Point of Rest in Art,” by far one of the best bits of criticism I have ever read.)

 

[Bick]

I wonder if sometimes Dickens’s relatively “characterless” characters need to be evaluated in context, that is, they are (in Patmore’s term) points of rest, indifferent points, that serve the reader as he or she encounters such tumults of invention.

(I refer to Coventry Patmore’s little essay “The Point of Rest in Art,” by far one of the best bits of criticism I have ever read.)

I think that’s exactly right - they set a central point from which the eccentrics radiate or deviate.

 

[Bick]

I found and read the essay, Extollager, very interesting, and yes I think that's what Dickens achieves with his bland central figures. Patmore's short essay:

THE POINT OF REST IN ART
Coleridge, who had little technical knowledge of any art but that in which, when he was himself, he supremely excelled—poetry—had nevertheless a deeper insight into the fundamental principles of art than any modern writer, with the sole exception of Goethe. And this is one of his many fruitful sayings: “All harmony is founded on a relation to rest—on relative rest. Take a metallic plate and strew sand on it, sound an harmonic chord over the sand, and the grains will whirl about in circles and other geometrical figures, all, as it were, depending on some point of sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and every grain will whisk about without any order at all, in no figures, and with no point of rest.”

Without pretending to be able to trace this principle of rest to more than a very limited distance, and in a very few examples, I think it{38} is worth notice in a time when art generally is characterised by a want of that repose which until recent times has especially “marked the manners of the great.” Look through the National Gallery, and few pictures will be found which would not add a grace of peace to the house they were hung in, no matter how wild the subject or passionate the motive. Step into an Academy Exhibition, and there will scarcely be discovered a dozen canvases in a thousand which, however skilful and in many respects admirable they may be, would not constitute points of unrest, if they were in daily and hourly sight. It is the same with nearly all modern poetry, sculpture, and architecture; and if it is not true of music, it is because music absolutely cannot exist without some reference to a point or points of rest, in keynote, fundamental strain, or reiterated refrain.

It might at first be supposed that, in a picture, this point should be that on which the eye should repose in order to bring the remainder into focal proportion; and this is true with regard to those painters who paint on the theory that the eye is fixed, and not roving in its regard. But this theory has never been that of the greatest times of art. Crome, Constable, and Gainsborough’s landscapes do not fade off from a certain point on which the eye is supposed to be fixed; yet{39} there will usually be found some point, generally quite insignificant in matter, on which, indeed, the eye does not necessarily fix itself, but to which it involuntarily returns for repose.

The most noteworthy remark to be made about this point of rest is, that it is not in itself the most but the least interesting point in the whole work. It is the punctum indifferens to which all that is interesting is more or less unconsciously referred. In an elaborate landscape it may be—as it is in one of Constable’s—the sawn-off end of a branch of a tree: or a piece of its root, as it is in one of Michael Angelo’s pieces in the Sistine Chapel. In the Dresden “Madonna” of Raphael it is the heel of the Infant. No one who has not given some thought to the subject can have any idea of the value of these apparently insignificant points in the pictures in which they occur, unless he tries the experiment of doing away with them. Cover them from sight and, to a moderately sensitive and cultivated eye, the whole life of the picture will be found to have been lowered.

In proportion to the extent and variety of points of interest in a painting or a poem the necessity for this point of rest seems to increase. In a lyric or idyll, or a painting with very few details, there is little need for it. It is accordingly in the most elaborate plays of Shakespeare that we find{40} this device in its fullest value; and it is from two or three of these that we shall draw our main illustrations of a little-noticed but very important principle of art. In King Lear it is by the character of Kent, in Romeo and Juliet by Friar Laurence, in Hamlet by Horatio, in Othello by Cassio, and in the Merchant of Venice by Bassanio, that the point of rest is supplied; and this point being also in each case a point of vital comparison by which we measure and feel the relationships of all the other characters, it becomes an element of far higher value than when it is simply an, as it were, accidental point of repose, like the lopped branch in Constable’s landscape. Each of these five characters stands out of the stream of the main interest, and is additionally unimpressive in itself by reason of its absolute conformity to reason and moral order from which every other character in the play departs more or less. Thus Horatio is the exact punctum indifferens between the opposite excesses of the characters of Hamlet and Laertes—over-reasoning inaction and unreasoning action—between which extremes the whole interest of the play vibrates. The unobtrusive character of Kent is, as it were, the eye of the tragic storm which rages round it; and the departure, in various directions, of every character more or less from{41} moderation, rectitude, or sanity, is the more clearly understood or felt from our more or less conscious reference to him. So with the central and comparatively unimpressive characters in many other plays—characters unimpressive on account of their facing the exciting and trying circumstances of the drama with the regard of pure reason, justice, and virtue. Each of these characters is a peaceful focus radiating the calm of moral solution throughout all the difficulties and disasters of surrounding fate: a vital centre, which, like that of a great wheel, has little motion in itself, but which at once transmits and controls the fierce revolution of the circumference.

It is obvious, as I have indicated, that a point of rest and comparison is necessary only when the objects and interests are many and more or less conflicting; but the principle is sometimes at play in forms and works in which we should scarcely have expected to find it. An armlet, or even a finger-ring, gives every portion of the nude figure an increase of animation, unity, and repose. The artistic justification of the unmeaning “burthen” of many an old ballad may probably be found, at least in part, in the same principle; as may also be that of the trick—as old as poetry—of occasionally repeating a line or phrase without any apparent purpose in the repetition.

Of course the “point of rest” will not create harmony where—as in most modern works—its elements are absent; but, where harmony exists, it will be strangely brought out and accentuated by this in itself often trifling, and sometimes, perhaps, even accidental accessory.

 

[Bick]

I've just started Nicholas Nickleby

 

[Phyrebrat]

I recently bought the entire Dickens catalogue on Kindle as Hard Times was in my list to read in terms of research for my second novel. It was the first Dickens I read and I enjoyed it so much, I found myself writing run-on sentences, parenthetical thoughts, and with that sort of mean-spirited humour when dealing with character.

The only problem I found was the phonetic spellings for the circus owner. Towards the end of the book it became really irritating and slowed the pace right down.

Then I read Great Expectations. Loved all the Havisham gothic-ry (of course).

Started Pickwick Papers but had some beta-ing duties for writer friends and catch-up on some Thomas Ligotti and others, so I’ve not finished it.

Will be doing Bleak House after PP. The only one I’m not looking forward to is ATOTC.

I never thought anyone could turn my head from E M Forster, but CD (and lately JB Priestley) are wonderful.

 

[Extollager]

Phyrebrat, when you write "run-on sentences," do you mean long sentences?

My notion is that a run-on sentence is one sentence followed by another sentence without punctuation it's something like this.

But the term might be used in some places just to mean a long sentence, a sentence that "goes on" with perhaps lots of free modifiers or dependent clauses.

Blackberry vines had established themselves along the walls and spread across the boards, 2luxuriating in the sunlight beating down on them and the warmth of the wood, 2stimulated to unfold serrated, light green leaves and to open pinkish-white blossoms, 3the blossoms attracting honey bees and yellowjacket wasps.

That's a cumulative sentence, in which the main clause has been elaborated by two free modifiers (verbal phrases), and then the second free modifier has itself been elaborated by a free modifier (an absolute, i.e. a verbal phrase with its own subject). The main clause is at the first level of generality; the sentence becomes more specific with the two leverl-2 free modifiers, and it becomes even more specific with a level 3 free modifier, that is, a free modifier that modifies a level 2 free modifier.

Writers like Steinbeck could do wonderful things with these cumulative sentences. One could say that they "run on," but they are not what I understand as "run-on sentences."