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A review by bookslovejenna
Charles Dickens: A Life by Jane Smiley
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Five things about Charles Dickens: A Life by Jane Smiley 5/5⭐️s
1. First, this is a slim volume but it manages to cover Dickens’s life, relationships, and writings without compromising or circumnavigating his complexities. Smiley is incredibly skilled, restrained, and generous all at once.
2. I was captivated from the first, as Smiley explains that hers is an attempt to explore Dickens life in the chronology with which he himself chose (or was forced) to reveal it. This, it does not start with his childhood - as he kept this hidden for most of his life and instead begins with Pickwick which was his first success.
3. I’ve spent this year with Dickens. I’ve read all of his major works in the last two years…12 of them this year. I have done so with a chip on my shoulder…loved him and his work with restraint…because of his treatment of of his devoted wife Catherine. Smiley manages to honor Catherine while creating within me a deep empathy for the man.
4. “Most other great innovators owe something to someone - even Shakespeare was preceded by Christopher Marlowe… Dickens however spoke in a new voice, in a new form, to a new audience, a new world, about several old ideas reconsidered for the new system of capitalism - that care and respect are owed to the weakest and meekest in society, rather than to the strongest; the ways in which class and money divide humans from one another are artificial and dangerous; that pleasure and physical comfort are positive goods; that the spiritual lives of the powerful have social and economic ramifications…Dickens grasped this idea from the earliest stages of his career and demonstrated his increasingly sophisticated grasp of it in the plots characterizations, themes, and styles of every single novel he wrote. This is the root source of his greatness. That he did so in English at the very moment when England was establishing herself as a worldwide force is the root source of his importance. That he combined his artistic vision with social action in an outpouring of energy and hard work is the root source of his uniqueness.”
5. “The question is not whether Dickens’s characters are realistic…but whether he makes a compelling case for the origins and resolutions of their dilemmas, which are, in many cases, extreme and melodramatic. These are exactly the terms in which most people experience their own dilemmas - life or death propositions that are tremendously challenging to resolve… Dickens excelled at bodying forth the drama of the inner battle… the resolution [for his characters] always takes place within the character first and then in the social nexus.”
6. Team Dickens for life!
1. First, this is a slim volume but it manages to cover Dickens’s life, relationships, and writings without compromising or circumnavigating his complexities. Smiley is incredibly skilled, restrained, and generous all at once.
2. I was captivated from the first, as Smiley explains that hers is an attempt to explore Dickens life in the chronology with which he himself chose (or was forced) to reveal it. This, it does not start with his childhood - as he kept this hidden for most of his life and instead begins with Pickwick which was his first success.
3. I’ve spent this year with Dickens. I’ve read all of his major works in the last two years…12 of them this year. I have done so with a chip on my shoulder…loved him and his work with restraint…because of his treatment of of his devoted wife Catherine. Smiley manages to honor Catherine while creating within me a deep empathy for the man.
4. “Most other great innovators owe something to someone - even Shakespeare was preceded by Christopher Marlowe… Dickens however spoke in a new voice, in a new form, to a new audience, a new world, about several old ideas reconsidered for the new system of capitalism - that care and respect are owed to the weakest and meekest in society, rather than to the strongest; the ways in which class and money divide humans from one another are artificial and dangerous; that pleasure and physical comfort are positive goods; that the spiritual lives of the powerful have social and economic ramifications…Dickens grasped this idea from the earliest stages of his career and demonstrated his increasingly sophisticated grasp of it in the plots characterizations, themes, and styles of every single novel he wrote. This is the root source of his greatness. That he did so in English at the very moment when England was establishing herself as a worldwide force is the root source of his importance. That he combined his artistic vision with social action in an outpouring of energy and hard work is the root source of his uniqueness.”
5. “The question is not whether Dickens’s characters are realistic…but whether he makes a compelling case for the origins and resolutions of their dilemmas, which are, in many cases, extreme and melodramatic. These are exactly the terms in which most people experience their own dilemmas - life or death propositions that are tremendously challenging to resolve… Dickens excelled at bodying forth the drama of the inner battle… the resolution [for his characters] always takes place within the character first and then in the social nexus.”
6. Team Dickens for life!