A Long, Long Time Ago...

[grumbler]

I don't get the fascination with Dickens.  His characters are so one-dimensional and boring.

Ok this guy is bad...this guy is good...here is the bad woman...here is the good woman

I mean it is tiresome there are pretty much no shades of gray anywhere.

I am assuming that you have only read the abridged versions (aka the comic books)?  Because Dickens characters are anything but one-dimensional and boring!  His characters are what he has been known for for over fifteen decades.

[Berkut]

I don't get the fascination with Dickens.  His characters are so one-dimensional and boring.

:boggle:

[grumbler]

That is an obvious mischaracterization of Dickens.  For instance in Great Expectations Pip is a snob, Estella is capricious and cruel, Miss Havisham is a crank, Magwitch threatens Pip; yet none of them are bad people.  They have believeable motivations for their behavior and attitudes.

Exactly.  How someone could not call Estella morally ambiguous is impossible to imagine, except through sheer ignorance.  Yes, her behavior was cruel at tiimes, but kind at other times, and she had been brought up to wreak revenge on mankind, so who was the "real" Estella anyway?

[saskganesh]

I don't get the fascination with Dickens.  His characters are so one-dimensional and boring.

Ok this guy is bad...this guy is good...here is the bad woman...here is the good woman

I mean it is tiresome there are pretty much no shades of gray anywhere.

Dickens was really fun with plots.

[Sheilbh]

I don't get the fascination with Dickens.  His characters are so one-dimensional and boring.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.  I believe there's a big division among his fans between early Dickens and late Dickens.  The early novels I think have more one-dimensional characters, the plot's more episodic and less sweeping, but it's also terrific fun and some of the characters are his most memorable.  Late Dickens is, I believe, more serious, the plots are more integrated and coherent and the characters more complex.  I think that David Copperfield's seen as the sort of pivot between the two.  You still have some of the episodic-ness and the remarkable characters (Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and so on) but there's also a strong narrative drive and a plot that hangs together pretty well.

Though I've not read enough to know the truth of that it's something I read in the introduction to the Penguin David Copperfield.  I've only read A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield so I know nothing of early Dickens.

[Neil]

I don't get the fascination with Dickens.  His characters are so one-dimensional and boring.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.  I believe there's a big division among his fans between early Dickens and late Dickens.  The early novels I think have more one-dimensional characters, the plot's more episodic and less sweeping, but it's also terrific fun and some of the characters are his most memorable.  Late Dickens is, I believe, more serious, the plots are more integrated and coherent and the characters more complex.  I think that David Copperfield's seen as the sort of pivot between the two.  You still have some of the episodic-ness and the remarkable characters (Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and so on) but there's also a strong narrative drive and a plot that hangs together pretty well.

Though I've not read enough to know the truth of that it's something I read in the introduction to the Penguin David Copperfield.  I've only read A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield so I know nothing of early Dickens.

This is what I like about Sheilbh.  He's knowledgeable and thoughtful about things that I've given very little thought to.

[garbon]

This is what I like about Sheilbh.  He's knowledgeable and thoughtful about things that I've given very little thought to.

I think he points out rightly that if you read the introduction to the Penguin edition of David Copperfield, you can have the same knowledge.