Well, that took a while. A month and a half, pretty much exactly. Bleak House, which I read because I had heard it was the best Dickens, was also my first Dickens – the first I finished anyway. I think I started Great Expectations about ten years ago. And how do I feel? Overwhelmed, that’s for sure. This wasn’t the life-changing event that some other books are, but it was awe-inspiring in its own way. I know about Dickens, of course – how can you avoid him? That he is larger than life, that his characters and books and everything else are all massive – well, yes, I was half-ready for it. But still, faced with such a whirlwind, no amount of preparedness will let you stay anchored to the ground. Readers, I was blown into the air by this mad book, and only now am I beginning to sink back down to earth.
Bleak House has a hugely intricate, complicated plot, filled with more characters than I and my extended family have fingers and toes to count on. It is a state-of-the-nation novel, one that aims to contain everything and everyone, every idea, and every thought, every word, and every punctuation mark. And so, it does, so far as I can tell. We deal with a murder mystery, our narrator’s mysterious parentage, and many other bits and pieces as Dickens accumulates and articulates everything he wants to say about the world. Much as with War and Peace, which I read and couldn’t write about here, I struggle to know where or how to begin. But as this is my first Dickens, perhaps there’s some value in thinking about that most distinctive of Dickensian elements – his characters.
Character
I think it was James Wood who said of Dickens’ characters that they are real, far more real than real people, not because of their depth, but precisely because of their flatness. Most of the people here can be reduced to a single trait or mood or thought or image. Mrs Jellyby is surrounded by papers, so obsessed with bringing civilization to the Niger delta that she neglects to bring it to her own family, who live in squalor. Mr Chadband sweats oil whenever he speaks. Mr Turveydrop is extremely proud of his deportment, to the detriment of everything else. Volumnia Dedlock is as airy as her name. I could go on. Give me one of the silly names and the character returns, here bent over like Mr Smallweed, there standing tall like the ex-soldier George.
In the preface to my edition, Terry Eagleton suggests that Dickens’ broad-brushstroke method of characterisation reflects the urbanising environment in which the novels were written. When we see people for only a brief moment, on a street corner say, then they will inevitably be reduced in our minds to their simplest and most striking characteristics. I quite like the idea, save that the characters really do not have any depth, for the most part. They are who their name literally says they are, mostly incapable of change, mostly without any complexity going on behind the scenes.
And yet they are real. The more I read and live, the more I appreciate that character is the hardest thing for a writer to make. A simulacrum of a human being, this can be done – “a man enters the room”. But the realification of the image within an author’s mind is a sacred mystery. Plots, by comparison, are easy. Intelligence alone and a bit of time will allow the majority of us to weave some interesting interconnection(s), to build a network of symbols and thoughts and motives. But a network is dull and empty without life, without character.
Who are the characters that I remember? Dostoevsky’s mostly, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Dostoevsky simply adored Dickens, and there are even legendary if false stories of their having met in London. Dostoevsky’s characters – the ones we remember – burn with passion for ideas. This fact simplifies them just as Dickens’ characters are simplified. But Dostoevsky understood that to take an idea into your soul and to live by it is to transform yourself utterly so that no interaction is left unaltered. This is inspiring, which is why we want to be, especially when we are young, like his characters. With the exception of those whose lives end in suicide, nobody can accuse Dostoevsky’s people of being empty. Repulsive at times, doubting-stricken, but always filled.
Dickens’ characters are not like this. They are startling because of their lack of interiority – it does not matter if their souls are filled because they do not seem much concerned with them, to begin with. Very few of them seem capable of reflection or thought, only our occasional narrator Esther and a few of her friends. The rest float through life in an uncomprehending daze.
A character’s reality lies in the little details, more even than the big ones. One of the first moments in Anna Karenina that had me on the verge of awestruck tears is when Levin, at a party, repeats the same joke twice. Few authors would consider writing something similar because it’s a waste of space and might convince an editor that they don’t actually proofread their own work. But it’s also a truth, a real truth, that some of us social incompetents really are socially incompetent. It is showing, rather than telling, at its very best. Thomas Mann got from Tolstoy the importance of such details for allowing for many characters within a relatively short book. Buddenbrooks, that supremely realist novel, features a number of minor characters who are distinctive only because every time they are mentioned we hear the same thing about them – whom they tailor, for example.
Dickens’ characters are their details, as I’ve said. Name, description, and speech with them are all possessing a certain unity. They create an overwhelming impression which means that within a few lines we know all we need to know and know enough to remember them even as a wave of other such characters crashes over us. I never remember what a character looks like – hair colour, eyes, and all those traditional bits and pieces – I cannot even picture most characters in my mind as I read the description. But Dickens does it, easy as that. In Bleak House, their simplicity, and their purpose, give them energy.
And I suppose that’s what makes them interesting, beyond the book. What does it say that these people are so powerful in our minds? I am no Dickens, but I have been alive. How many people do I know whom I could write about as Dickens does? Nobody, because people in real life are not so simplistic – I am being ridiculous to suggest that such a thing is possible. But I also think I can say, begrudgingly, that few people, even those close to me, leave such a vivid impression as these characters have. And is that not something to be regretted, even worried over?
Perhaps only if we are as anxiety-ridden as I am. We look at ourselves and find ourselves wanting. If only I could be so distinctive, as one of Dickens’ characters. I won’t change my name, but all the rest… – don’t I want to be remembered? For one thing, success in life is at least partly dependent upon standing out in people’s minds. We don’t just want to be an office drone, we want to be the guy who is selected for a promotion, or the girl whose work is remembered for a commendation. If we want an active social life we should message other people, but we should also be the person who comes first into someone’s head as they lie on their bed, aimlessly scrolling through their contacts looking for something to do.
All this raises the perennial question, what must we do? Must I focus on one distinctive facet of my character and ham it up to no end? As a ginger, ought I not perhaps exclusively dress in reds, so that the impression of being aflame is so overwhelming that people rush for a fire extinguisher every time I enter the room? There was a moment, after watching the anime Death Note as a young teen, when I started crouching on tables and making structures from match sticks – do I need an obnoxious hobby, perhaps, or an unattractive habit?
Almost certainly not, for the simple reason that memorability is not the only reason why we might succeed in life. We must marry it to being attractive – having those traits that make others think of us positively when we come into their minds. The last thing I want to be known as is that ginger with the dreadful dress sense. But it must be admitted also that the traits that are most attractive are also, for the most part, ones that are less memorable than their Dickensian counterparts. Esther Summerson, our narrator for part of Bleak House, is boringly good and kind. As Eagleton notes in his preface, Dickens was faced with the rather common problem of “how to make virtue artistically attractive”. Esther, whose defining trait is her radiating goodness, is ultimately memorable for being annoying.
Working hard, being clever, being kind – these are all things that leave a positive impression. But they are also to some extent incompatible with leaving a strong impression. If you work hard, you have no time for being distinctive in other ways, and being kind requires modesty to really leave a positive impression, or else it just annoys people. And modesty is quiet. Some things work for positive impressions and strong impressions, but I cannot think of many – things like wit and the ability to laugh easily and make people feel at ease.
Where, then, does Dickens come in? We are often told to be ourselves, and authenticity is almost always an attractive trait in a conforming world. Being an individual then, perhaps, is already enough to be distinctive. Mixed together with some good traits, we may not be as memorable as Mr Tulkinghorn or Detective Bucket, but we will still be pretty well-off compared to some. Have a hobby, read the odd book, go outside, think for yourself, and do your own thing. We cannot achieve a Dickensian personality, nor should we aim to. But there is plenty we can do to avoid being a forgettable a side character in everyone’s lives, even our own.
If there is something in Dickens that we must take note of for our own lives, besides the obvious social messages, it must be the importance of distinctiveness. When we meet many more people over the course of a week than we do even in the madness of Bleak House, we see just how important being a non-mushy part of someone’s experience of the world is. Sometimes this is impossible, for example because at work people may adopt a mercantile attitude towards others that only allows them to exist provided they bring a benefit, but for the most part it is not so. So, reader, let’s go and exist distinctively, so that we may become memorable for the right reasons, and fill the hearts of others with joy.
Anyway, these are some of the thoughts that my first full encounter with Dickens inspired in me.