Innocent Characters in the Novels of Dickens

Abstract

Dickens' novels from Dombey and Son are best seen as an artistic "Continuum. After this turning point, the unity of action, design, and feeling was more or less achieved. The uneasiness felt over the contemporary society was carefully instilled into the atmosphere of each novel. His exuberant proliferation of characters and scenes was adjusted so as to concentrate on a single unifying theme, namely, the innocence theme. The ideas were incarnated and dissolved into this complex theme. The relations between the theme and the characters were organized and conceived as a whole. In short, the increasng con- sciousness and control of his artistry, the astonishing range and depth of his creative originality converged into the interfusion of the inno- cence theme and the innocent characters. Dickens started with child heroes and heroines (Oliver Twist, Little .Nell) or child-like characters (Mr. Pickwick), but, as he gained his artistic maturity, he found them inadequate centers for the complex social and moral structures he was trying to compose. He achieved a higher level of realism by removing the children from the center of the stories. But to the end, Dickens remained open to the imagination -of childhood.