Martin Chuzzlecunt, I mean Martin Chuzzlewit has the dubious honour of being the first book that I put into the trashcan. The book was already falling apart mind you, but I was pretty disgusted with it at the end. Reading Martin Chuzzlewit is like listening to a bandsaw grating wood while Blackpink is pumping full blast at the same time. It’s been a while since I read Dickens and the last I read (The Old Curiosity Shop) I really liked. I don’t think there is too much difference in Dickens’s prose — he can be tricky at the worst of times and eloquently poetic at the best of times. All Dickens books have the element of the two, including Martin Chuzzlewit.
The issues I have with the book were only a handful, but their prevalence really affected my reading. Below were the reasons why I had trouble with the book, which are omnipresent in all Dickens’s books, but most transparent in Martin Chuzzlewit.
That storyline is a bit of a mess huh?
Dickens often serialised his stories before collating them into a novel. Readers will have to wait for bits and pieces before the next edition comes out. Sometimes he adjusts the stories on the fly, pulling out a drastic move so that the stories will sell better in the following month. The young Martin’s trip to America was one of these moves, as the sales of Martin Chuzzlewit was not so hot. But the readership agrees, that the first twenty or so chapters were absolute fucking garbage.
A lot of it is also confusing. I attribute this to the pompousness of Dickens’s prose that at times feel like he could say two lines instead of two pages. Of course, it was of his financial interest to write in length, but at times the book gets too much and the prose often jade the plot to murkiness. The subplots that muddles through due to the number of characters also lack cohesion as we try to figure out how they are all going to connect in the end.
The end, when it came, was too convenient and too abrupt. There are too many coincidences at play to make the story work. Though in the introduction to my Penguin edition, Furbank argues that it is essential to the story, we can’t help to think that the storyline is just too forced and lacks the organic drive.
How to put this nicely? Fucking Annoying Characters
Dickens is notorious for this and this is on full display in Martin Chuzzlewit. I never feel strongly to any of Dickens’s characters, as most of them are caricatures and exaggerated versions of realities. When they’re evil, they’re too evil, when they’re nice, they’re too fucking nice and when they’re bald, they’re too ugly. Looking at you Tom Pinch. This is a shame because after 900+ pages you should feel close to at least one of them right? Especially the title character.
Not in Martin Chuzzlewit. When I can’t get close to Pip, David Copperfield or Little Dorrit, what hope is there for Martin Chuzzlewit (the younger), an entitled brat whose ends are way bigger than his capabilities? But in these stories, the journey is the thing and Martin does go through some superficial arc. But I don’t buy his character development, even after getting absolutely smashed in America. I feel that Martin Chuzzlewit is the weakest out of all Dickens’s protagonists. Besides, he doesn’t have a strong presence in the book.
The rest of the characters fare no better. I absolutely fucking hate Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp. They’re so pompous in their speech that every time they open their mouths, I just wanted to roundhouse kick their temple to shut them up. Unfortunately this isn’t physically possible for characters on paper. Mark Tapley reaches this annoying pomp also, despite the fact that he’s supposed to be the more “likeable” characters who guide our hero to a moral victory. Jonas Chuzzlewit, as the antagonist, is perhaps the most well-drawn. He is despicable and conniving, but for this I felt that he was the most believable out of the long list of characters.
Is it really saying much? Don’t think so
With all the twist in the plots, the big adventure to America, the selfishness angle that’s present in every page, I don’t feel that Martin Chuzzlewit has a lot of substance. Aside from the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company, a Ponzi scheme to squeeze every penny of desperate people, which exposes society’s vile and exploitative nature, the book is rather shallow. Dickens was under fire after the publication due to the depiction of Americans as rough, self-important but arrogant people. Personally, I feel that his commentary on America is still relevant today.
Is there much discussion on the nature of man? In the end, the book points to the necessity of human empathy. There is a little bit of this in every Dickens book — Sure, we all need human empathy so that everybody can benefit, instead of compartmentalising our interests to the detriment of others. But Dickens have written on this theme and written them better — David Copperfield, Dombey and Son and Oliver Twist to name a few. I’m sure with deeper reading that you can pick out Dickens’s ponderings on human nature, but I’m not the one to overanalyse this book when I’d rather be hand-feeding sharks in the ocean.
