Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Charles Dickens at Christmas at 200

2012; Elsevier BV; Volume: 380; Issue: 9858 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0140-6736(12)62157-6

1474-547X

Stephen M. Lawrie,

Migration, Policy, and Dickens Studies

As the year draws to a close, we tend to reflect on the events of the previous 12 months, and perhaps further back, take stock of the present, and make resolutions for the future. This is of course the structure around which Charles Dickens (1812–70) wrote his seemingly timeless classic, A Christmas Carol, published for a mass market in 1843. As the bicentenary of Dickens's birth also comes to an end, it is doubly appropriate to consider his many contributions to literature and beyond which continue to touch our lives. Many of Dickens's characters have come to embody certain personality types: the irrepressible and rotund Mr Pickwick, the hard-working stalwarts Little Nell and Jenny Wren, the unctuous Uriah Heep, the forever fretful Mr McCawber, the jilted Miss Havisham, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, and of course Scrooge. These are vivid character portrayals, often comically drawn from real life with both insight and sympathy, which still live and breathe on the page, in the memory, and in contemporary culture. The great themes of the stories are themselves of abiding appeal and relevance. Scrooge's misfortune warns of the untoward effects of greed, miserliness, and selfishness, and his salvation comes when he pities the young self he remembers and learns to spare a thought for the less fortunate. In David Copperfield, which might have started out as an autobiography, Dickens describes the unhappiness and neediness of the neglected child. As Claire Tomalin says in her searching but compassionate biography,1Tomalin C Charles Dickens: a life. Viking, London2011Google Scholar this was decades before Freud or “any of the child experts”. Tomalin highlights another example of Dickens's insight, from Hard Times, in which Dickens has Sleary, who has a lisp, be the vehicle of his view that work and learning are not sufficient, and that people also need to be amused, thus “showing that people with handicaps can be likeable, intelligent and perceptive”. Such psychological awareness can be traced to Dickens's own difficult upbringing, in poverty and with little formal education. Dickens is also renowned for his social concern and kindness to others, especially those in adverse legal or financial circumstances, and those seeking to avoid or emerge from the asylums of the era. Together with A B Coutts, he funded and ran a home for destitute women, and did much to help set up London's Great Ormond Street Hospital. Dickens was therefore a visionary—both immersed in and ahead of his time—but his was a tainted genius. He suffered from what he called “fits” of depression,1Tomalin C Charles Dickens: a life. Viking, London2011Google Scholar and had what he regarded as a desperate need for long, late-night walks to sustain his wellbeing and writing. However, even though he composed A Christmas Carol “weeping and laughing and weeping again”,1Tomalin C Charles Dickens: a life. Viking, London2011Google Scholar Tomalin is clear that these were facets of his creative personality rather than any trendy notions that he might have had bipolar disorder. Dickens was also, however, no saint. He was irreligious and intolerant of piety; yet, and concerningly, he had “faith in Mesmerism”1Tomalin C Charles Dickens: a life. Viking, London2011Google Scholar to the extent that he even tried to treat the wife of a friend despite having no qualifications. In his last decade, Dickens married a girl almost 30 years his junior, during the process trying to get his previous wife committed to an asylum, apparently aided by his long-time best friend and chosen biographer John Forster, who happened to be a Lunacy Commissioner. Perhaps because of these personal shortcomings, Dickens requested a simple funeral and an unadorned tomb, wanting simply to be remembered for his works. This he has, at least for 200 years, achieved: it is for his great literature and kind acts that we honour him. I declare that I have no conflicts of interest.