Becoming a Pickwickian with Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers.
Every Dickens book I read is like a fucking minefield. Call it Forrest Gump’s box of chocolate: you’d never know what you’re gonna get. As The Pickwick Papers is one of Charles Dickens’ earliest work, and was in fact, his first published novel, what I expected was a writer still finding his feet, much flawed in balancing the plot and character, penning a prose that may be reckless but eventually finding a solid foundation and its own tone and beauty.
I don’t think I was far of the mark. I think that The Pickwick Papers is what I mentioned above: It is a worl plagued with imperfections of a young writer. However, it is a voice that is already sure of itself, it is a pen writing prose better than most English writers today could ever dream to write, and it is a book that is easily one of the best that Dickens had ever written in his illustrious career. What surprised me most is that it is one of those rare books that despite the necessary conflicts that drive the novel, it is an optimistic book — the one that make you believe that man is good, that man is capable of being innocent. And that it is not a bad thing.
As I am closing in on finishing all of Dickens’ novels, I had to savour this as much as I could. Yet, reading the novel only took a good part of over a week, and though it is laden with the typical Dickensian linguistic gymnastics, it is not a difficult read. The message of the Victorian era is quite clear, and Dickens had a lot of important things to say about the systematic failures of English civil society.
Pickwick starts a band, and almost achieved rockstar status
As far as rockstars go, you won’t expect a balding fifty-odd year old man to fit the bill, and despite playing a jester (though admittedly, there are multiple) in a novel bearing his own name, Pickwick has an inexplicable aura about him that makes his inner circle of Tupman, Snodgrass and Winkle to follow him like golden retrievers, and other strangers trusting him without batting an eyelid.
Pickwick started the Pickwickan society in order to “[sic] enlarge his spheres of observation, to the advancement of knowledge and diffusion of learning.” And hence begins the adventures of the four men, before Pickwick hired Sam Weller (or Veller) to embark on their wanderings.
In the course of a couple of years, the Pickwickans managed to meet swindlers who’s after ladies’ inheritances, politicians who couldn’t care less about the other side’s arguments and only treated their counterparts with blind hatred, a law firm who would take up minuscule affairs to blow things out of proportion so that they can profit in legal costs, the latter of which put Pickwick himself into the debtors prison.
Yet, the characters they come across are not all bad. The Wardles are kind enough to host the Pickwicks and have the best Christmas ever, which may or may not have resulted in welcome love affairs, Sam Weller’s father and his coachmen community are always a delight and there are strangers who would share their tales, a story within a story, which somehow fit into the cornucopia of the novel, despite for many of these stories, their supernatural elements.
Dickens’ experiences personified in Pickwick
Dickens, at the time of writing, was a court room reporter moonshining his stories into monthly instalments. He was twenty-four years old. Much has been speculated about how much of his own personal life did he borrow into the novel, and though it may mislead readers into speculating what or may or may not be true about the author’s life and the novel itself, I think in this case it is worth pursuing.
Do you remember what it was like being 24 years old? I did. I was ambitious, uneasy and unsatisfied with how the world works. It was the period in one’s life when you want great changes, either for one’s self or for the world around. Dickens had seen a lot of humanity by that time: going through poverty during childhood, essentially being a child labourer, having seen his father going into the debtor’s prison in Marshalsea, being exposed to the dregs and conflicts of humanity in the courtrooms and writing about them. It is natural that at that point in his life that he must taken on a project which would shake the ground. The Pickwick Papers was it.
All these elements and more are essential ingredients which constitute the rich and complex flavour of the novel. Pickwick himself was imprisoned for not paying the legal costs of losing the dispute against Dodson and Fogg, though it was in principle as opposed to not being able to afford the costs. This experience is grounded on his father’s experience of being detained in Marshalsea, an experience that would forever leave a rift between the father and son.
Even as a younger man, Dickens was aware of this incomplete relationship with his father, that his father at his latter life would see his son as a source of funds. In the Penguin edition afterword, Steven Marcus dissected the theme of this flawed paternal relations in the novel. In the novel we can see this in Sam Weller’s precarious relationship with his father, who was often distant to him though he means well. Pickwick, then, is the superior moral authority. A second father to Sam who would provide, counsel and protect him, which is why perhaps that it is of Tony Weller’s interest to indirectly assist Pickwick through his son, as in the court litigation he advised the gov’nor to have an “alleybi”.
But perhaps it is the legal proceedings that rings the most true to life in The Pickwick Papers, grounded Dickens’ experience as a legal journalist. In another lifetime, Dickens may have made an excellent lawyer cum politician, but instead choosing the pathway as a writer to expose the absurdities of the law. Pickwick, being the victim of a petty dispute to which the plaintiff (Mrs Bardell) was hazy on her own case, lets the lawyers to take care of matters who would themselves profit on the legal fees. Unable to recuperate these costs, the lawyers themselves would send the plaintiff to prison in a comedic twist of fate.
The absurdities of the small courts, the hack advocates with no offices and only sell themselves in the street as a drug dealer would, the claustrophobic atmosphere of the lawyers passing through to plead their cases to justices, as a mindless machinery running through a conveyor belt. The author himself injected this opinion on the law in relation to the body of the prisoner:
“The body! It is the lawyer’s term for the restless whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes and griefs that make up the living man. The law had his body; and there it lay, clothed in grave clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.”
Pickwick Papers is the foundation of Dickens’ legacy
We can only speculate on what have beens. The legacy of Charles Dickens is unquestionable, but had The Pickwick Papers come to a moderate failure, he might have been a more balanced and better writer in his latter novels. But then again, this is a personal opinion as I have always found Dickens’ novels to be too fictional, the characters, even the main characters seem more like caricatures than living, breathing, real people. That sometimes, the absurdities of these characters: their physical attributes, their manners, their speech and even the way their dress, are just a bit too much.
Much of that can be owed to the success of The Pickwick Papers which is abundant of these absurd characters, though I find that these characters are more grounded, less extreme and thus, a tad more believable. His latter novels would always have characters that are just way, way off. In Little Dorrit, it was the cartoon-like Maggy; in Martin Chuzzlewit, it was the gibberish-mouthed Mrs Gamp. But plenty of Dickens’ characters have this bit of eccentricity in them which often distract the noble purpose of the novel — to expose the societal failures of English society.
This ambition has never left the author. Despite his growing wealth from the books that he churns out like a neat machinery, Dickens is and always have been charitable to the underprivileged. The Pickwick Papers is no different. Pickwick’s willingness to forgive Jingle and Trotter, and to provide them a livelihood is a prime example. Dickens, as a Christian, wrote books reflective of his own values. Dickens would write more profound novels, but it is in The Pickwick Papers that the sickness of English society is the most apparent.
Still, some of Dickens’ most likeable characters are housed within the confines of this masterpiece. I could never get enough of the loyalty of Sam Weller, who would imprison himself to serve his master until he gets out of imprisonment. Pickwick himself transcended from a bumbling comic relief of his own novel to a father figure, the ideal Christian man who would live his life in peace. We would support quietly back our man Winkle to go after Arabella and leave the pathetic Bob Sawyer in the dust. And though we beg for the downfall of Jingle and Trotter, they are remarkable inventions of comedy, and their redemptions is fitting for a novel which makes the reader giddy of life instead of despaired by it.
Though I stand by my ground if the novel had been a moderate failure perhaps, Dickens would be a more serious writer with characters more well-balanced and less absurd in the novels following. But this is not a criticism, only mere speculation. Dickens, who was proud of the achievements of the book would rarely ever reach these heights again. But we can’t blame him for having tried, as we have benefited with fourteen subsequent novels, some of which stink to the sewers, but most of which were imperfect but delightful to read.
