Charles Dickens: Champion of Social Causes

Among the modern books recently published that have won great admiration and wide fame is the book written by George Orwell, the young critic, treating the life of Charles Dickens, his work, and his writings.

Perhaps one of the hidden aspects of Dickens's life that has stirred much debate about him is that he never succeeded in making enemies for himself, despite the many grave subjects he treated in his writings — some of them so grave that they brought about industrial and social reforms. Dickens was radical in tendency; indeed, in the eyes of many he was considered a revolutionary. In "Oliver Twist," "Hard Times," and other works we see him attacking the English institutions with an unprecedented severity; and yet he was so tactful in his attack that he stirred up no one's hatred against him.

Perhaps the reason for this is that Dickens in his criticisms was moral rather than practical. He believed in no solution or alternative to what he attacked, and he had no constructive views for amending any condition or reforming any flaw or defect in society.

His method of solving the problems he criticized in his writings was to resort to changing the characters of the principal heroes of his novels, or to create, say, a kind-hearted man capable of finding a solution by way of his good heart or his full pocket. Thus appeared Dickens's stamp and his belief that the solution of these problems had but one road — individual goodness, which he considered the sole answer to every problem. And despite the intensity of his hatred of tyranny and the vehemence of his criticism of it, it always seemed that all the attacks Dickens directed at society aimed at changing the spirit of society, not its being and its structure.

Orwell believes, more than any other writer, that in Dickens's upbringing and his social environment lies a clear explanation of his personality and his works. His father was a clerk in government service, yet before he had reached his ninth year he was raised in the commercial quarters of London in an atmosphere of poverty and want. The environment in which he grew up had a great negative effect in shaping his life: he grew up hating the aristocracy, the bureaucracy, judges, men of the law, and all men in authority — except, that is, the police.

But the most prominent trait in Dickens is that, despite his thorough Englishness, he was not fanatical with the nationalist fanaticism that prevailed in his age. He was distinguished by a unique capacity for looking at things with a fresh, constructive, and friendly eye. And after Mr. Orwell has undertaken the analysis of Dickens's personality as no one before him has done, he asks the reason for Dickens's success and his enduring fame...

Orwell explains that success by the capacity in which Dickens excelled: expressing the ordinary man in a comic and easy style — that is, a style that endures in the memory.