Dickensian

Flying from New York to California is always a time-consuming endeavor, so I managed to read W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage on my way out here last week.  Longtime readers may know that I frequently froth at the mouth, roll about on the floor, and tear my (already short) hair when faced with the adjective "Dickensian."  Of Human Bondage isn't especially Dickensian, but it certainly clarified my dislike for the term.  Like Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale, Of Human Bondage is "post-Victorian": its narrative structure ironically harkens back to Victorian quests for career or vocation; the plot tweaks Victorian notions of gentlemanliness, masculinity, spirituality, and so forth; and the style is almost indistinguishable from late-Victorian prose, save in Maugham's reluctance to indulge in any sort of rhetorical flourish.  (Gore Vidal correctly describes Maugham as "very much a nineteenth-century novelist and playwright" [xi]).  But the novel could have been written by any of the Victorian realists influenced by Naturalism, like George Gissing or George Moore.  Even the representations of sexuality (or, at least, the indications that somebody is about to have sex) are no more or less explicit than what you would find in a reasonably daring "sex-problem novel" (as the Victorians called it) of twenty-five years previously. 

What does this have to do with "Dickensian"? Novels sold as Dickensian (totally inappropriately, sometimes) usually feature graphic representations of the Victorian underbelly, whether the underbelly in question belongs to slum life or high life.  Well, yes, there are slums in Dickens, and many exposed underbellies.  But "Dickensian" refers entirely to sensationalized and sexualized content; one rarely encounters a Dickensian novel with,  say, multiple interlocking plots, two narrators speaking from different temporal points of view, and eighty-plus characters.  Nor does "Dickensian" ever seem to refer to his characteristic prose style.   Maugham's novel engages with its Victorian antecedents--there are, after all, definite echoes of Bleak House, Middlemarch, and David Copperfield floating about in the protagonist's unmoored career path, as well as George Gissing's obsession with cross-class relationships--in ways that are thematic, structural, and stylistic.   But "Dickensian" turns Dickens into Upton Sinclair, only more so.

Comments

[Jonathan]

I remember one time on Metafilter that a commenter said that comparing Stephen King to Dickens wasn't really accurate, as a close comparison of two of their opening sentences revealed far more textual artistry in Dickens.

I thought that this was mainly a result of shifting stylistic modes rather than writerly skill as such, but I agreed with the main idea. I would say that "Sometimes They Come Back" is King's most Dickensian work.

[Bob]

What I'd like to pin down is what various copywriters think they're communicating with the term "Dickensian."

[The Constructivist]

Would you call Mistry's A Fine Balance Dickensian?

[Richard Heft]

I believe that "Dickensian" is code for "over 600 pages" and "set in 19th Century Britain." My favorite was when THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE was described as Dickensian, even though it has about four characters and largely takes place in one house.

[John Thomas McGuire]

I read "Of Human Bondage" two times, and never felt it represented anything memorable, if not Dickensian. I like Maugham's short stories, and later books such as "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge."