Sunday, July 21, 2002		Books

Dickens’s Novels in the ‘Age of Improvement’
by Sambudha Sen. Manohar. Pages 183. Rs 400.

THE contents of this book, by Sambudha Sen’s (Reader in Delhi University) own admission, were originally part of his PhD thesis, but due to a turn of events, this extensively researched and laboured dissertation was published in the form of a book after some revision.

This book essentially seeks to differentiate and draw a parallel between Dickens’ early "socially engaged" fictional work and the "historical specificity" of his later novels which were vivid in their reflection of societal environs, emblematic of the changing class equations and dynamism of the "age of progress" principally marked by the second half of the 19th century. Sambudha has case-studied Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, which he feels make for a sustained critique of the progress on which official mid-Victorian England based its supreme self-confidence. He has excluded David Copperfield and Hard Times from his analytical purview as he feels these go against the "trajectory of Dickens’ later development."

Poverty and insecurity arising out of deepening "social cleavages" is the ubiquitous theme in Dickens’ early novels. in his later works these become less and less central as Dickens shifts to the self-improvement ideology and the predicament associated with wanting to get a toehold in the upper strata of English society. the early novels have the petit bourgeoisie striving for a respectable place in society.

Even if poverty does emerge, as in Bleak House, Sambudha says it is treated symbolically so that it no longer symptomises the "condition of England," rather it becomes one of the means by which Dickens destabilises the mid-Victorian rhetoric of progress

In the later novels, the fear of immiseration is virtually non-existent in the wake of the economic boom and slums are shown to have the potential to "symbolically subvert the confidence in progress" and industrialisation.

Also, the nouveau riche financiers and business tycoons are shown mixing freely with the aristocrats as against the earlier novels wherein the social divide was unmistakably stark. However, this ambition exposes the characters to anxieties that are "very different from but just as painful as the ones experienced by Oliver or Nichlos" in the earlier works.

The author says, "Many of Dickens’s later characters are products of a system where the individual is no longer capable of expressing himself/herself as an individual...but where his/her thoughts, feelings...are conditioned by the conventions of society.

"One of Dickens’ greatest achievements in his later novels is that he speaks of the ‘mind forged manacles’ in which modern societies are so often bound."

The New Poor Law and the state machinery work by way of direct force in Dickens’ early novels but later the "ideologies of the industrial bourgeoisie becomes less coercive" and work by "hegemonisation" rather than force.

sambudha also suggests Dickens’ strategy, so to speak, to publish his novels both in the serialised form and the regular editions for maximum profit. In this context, the interplay between his novels and the nascent advertising scene, besides the market forces, best represented by capitalism and the desire for personal profits, are also delved into, albeit summarily.

Sambudha writes, "If I were to write this book again, I would try to take into account the underlying ambiguity of Dickens’ relationship with the ‘Age of Improvement’—his complicity with the very world that he so often criticised in his novels."

Students of literature and teachers alike will find this book, replete with exhaustive critical notes and references, useful in that it provides a variation in perspective on dickens and the transition in his mode of writing and use of techniques.