Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
[D]on't forget that Dickens was also a journalist and the editor of several newspapers and magazines over the course of his career, and in his journalism he assuredly did campaign for social reforms such as universal education, working conditions for industrial workers, and the abolition of capital punishment.
I would also suggest that by bringing social problems into the public view in his novels, he was extremely influential in bringing about change, even if he didn't suggest solutions to those problems in the novels themselves. The classic example of that is the abolition of the infamous "Yorkshire Schools" that Dickens highlighted in his novel "Nicholas Nickleby". The public exposure of these dreadful places in the novel led directly to Acts of Parliament which resulted in their closure.
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All good points. I'd love to know what Orwell would have said in response.
The piece I mentioned before must appear in a collection of his articles and essays. I still mean to hunt for it.
Even so, Dickens' value in terms of social reform doesn't rescue his fiction from resorting to bad melodrama or relying on what Forster called "flat characters" in
Aspects of the Novel. I happen to think that flat characters work better in a satire than a tragedy, which is partly why I prefer Thomas Love Peacock to Charles Dickens.