1. Introduction to Charles Dickens

2. Despite everything we know about Dickens…
From his more than 10,000 letters, twenty-four novels, as well as other Victorian sources – we know much less than we would like about two of the most dramatic experiences of his life.

3. At forty-six, he seems actually to have had a breakdown, when he separated from his wife.
As a boy of twelve, he came close to a nervous breakdown when put to work in a shoe polish factory to help his impoverished family.

4. Early life
Charles Dickens born February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England
1815 – the Dickens family moves to London
Charles receives early education in Chatham, Kent
1823 – Dickens’ father (a clerk) is transferred back to London – Charles expects to be enrolled in school.
1824 (Charles is 12) – he is put to work in a shoe polish factory.

5. Warren’s Blacking Boot Polish
1824 – Dickens begins working at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse.
John Dickens placed in Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison – (reputation for living slightly beyond his means)

6. Marshalsea

7. Dickens’ father and family were imprisoned in Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison – while Charles worked in a grimy, rat-infested factory, in the company of uneducated, working class boys.
Soon John Dickens claims the provisions of the Insolvent Debtor’s Act.

8. Humiliation
Dickens is subjected to the disgrace of having the value of his tattered clothes assessed, since debtors and their families could not have possessions valued at more than 20 pounds.
Shortly after John Dickens came back from prison, he quarreled with Charles’ employer (the owner of the boot polish warehouse).

9. Their feud pained the boy because his employer was a family friend who had generously attempted to give him lessons during his lunch hours.
But the feud had one fortunate consequence: John Dickens removed Charles from the factory.

10. Dickens was enrolled by his father in a pretentious school for the next two years where he remained without distinction until the age of sixteen. Then, with his family again in financial difficulty, he was put back to work, this time in an office – he became the lowest clerk in an attorney’s chambers.

11. Early Employment 1827-28, Dickens employed as solicitors’ clerk.
1829, Dickens learns shorthand and becomes a law-court stenographer.

12. Unrequited Love
1830, Dickens begins unsuccessful courtship of Maria Beadnell.

13. “Sketches”
1833, at age 21, Dickens begins to publish sketches, reprinted as Sketches by Boz (1836).

14. Dickens’ wife Catherine Hogarth (married 1836)
Dickens marries Catherine Hogarth. She was a modestly intelligent, unimaginative, and conventional young woman when he was 24 and she was 21.

15. The Dickens Family
Catherine provided him with ten children, nine of whom survived.
Vain and flirtatious, Dickens was distressed to find himself , in his mid-forties, balding, grey, and wrinkled.

16. The 1850’s
Dickens faced the chore of trying to find careers for his untalented male children (seven of them), who otherwise threatened to depend on him indefinitely.

17. Dickens’ Marriage Troubles
Catherine had grown fat and clumsy and became very accident-prone.
With the waning of physical desire between the two, her companionship became even less attractive.

18. Dickens’ Fantasy Life
In his letters, he commented on his wish to give up his family and professional responsibilities to travel to Italy and other faraway places.
Dickens felt restless and dissatisfied.

19. Dickens’ Mistress - Ellen Ternan
In 1857, Dickens met Ellen Ternan. Less than a year later, he forced a humiliating and painful separation from Catherine .

20. Ternan was an actress hired by Dickens to play a role in the production of a play for his company of amateur players.
Dickens was 45, she was 18.

21. Ternan was slim, gracefully youthful, and modestly attractive.
She had no special interest in Dickens other than an appreciation of his power as an internationally recognized great man.

22. There is no evidence to suggest that she was in love with him.
After Dickens’ death, she married quite conventionally, and never conveyed any strong feeling for him in her few reported comments on their relationship.

23. Strict Victorian conventions of the time…
When a bracelet meant for Ternan was mistakenly delivered to Catherine, Dickens demanded that Catherine herself deliver it to the younger woman as a demonstration of both his innocence and his wife’s confidence in him.
He fought with and renounced everyone who did not accept that he was a blameless man of formal virtue.

24. Dickens maintained that his marriage had collapsed because of Catherine’s deterioration and used her clumsiness to alienate their children from her.
Although Dickens’ children lived with him during the separation of their parents, upon Charles’ death, they returned to their mother.

25. Dickens’ double life
For twelve years, Dickens conducted a public life that excluded Ternan.
Dependant for his livelihood on the approval of the Victorian middle class, he could not afford to offend public moral standards.
But he established Ternan and her mother, in various houses, using pseudonyms for himself and for her.

26. Over the years, he visited and stayed with them and took them traveling and vacationing with him.
Whether he and Ternan became lovers sexually cannot be determined.

27. But Dickens’ extreme secretiveness, the frequency of their meetings, and the many domestic evenings he spent with Ternan – all suggest that they were.

28. Why does any of this matter?
Because we (human beings) have a natural curiosity about the writers whose work has shaped our culture.

29. Because Dickens’ novels are linked to the details of his own life, knowing these details contributes to the pleasure (and pain) in reading his works.
The facts of Dickens’ life are grim. They are a sobering expression of the fact that great men live ordinary lives.

30. A rationalization? (for celebrities)
Dickens had little desire to change – that would be tampering with what he believed to be inseparable from his creativity.
He stubbornly proclaimed that his temperament (his personality) was the foundation for his work as an artist.
Any ‘modern day’ examples of this?

31. Victorian Period – Strict Morals and Values
Though there was never anything printed that might “bring a blush to the cheek of a young person,” speaking the dialogue of a range of characters acquainted Victorians with the diverse human situations in their culture.

32. Mercy and Tolerance
Dickens’ narrative voice consistently urged his readers to sympathize, empathize, and understand.
He appealed to his audience to exercise humane and compassionate values.

33. Reading was an active occupation.
Dickens sometimes set his stories at the same time of year as the publication date, so a customer could find out in January, for instance, how the characters had spent Christmas, or in October how they had enjoyed the summer holidays.

34. Dickens’ major novels - published serially
1836, Pickwick Papers
1837, Oliver Twist
1838, Nicholas Nickleby
1841, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge
1843, Martin Chuzzlewit and A Christmas Carol
1846, Dombey and Son
1849, David Copperfield
1852, Bleak House and Hard Times
1855, Little Dorrit
1859, A Tale of Two Cities
1860, Great Expectations
1864, Our Mutual Friend
1870, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished)

35. Work Cited
“Bleak Houses, Charles Dickens at Home” by Fred Kaplan, Thesis, Fall, 1986, The Graduate School of the City University of New York.