When the I's of Novels Cross Over; Should a Man Try to Write in a Woman's Voice and Vice Versa? - The New York Times The New York Times Books |When the I's of Novels Cross Over; Should a Man Try to Write in a Woman's Voice and Vice Versa? Search Continue reading the main story ''I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever.'' The author of this passage, the prolific and prolifically clever Charles Dickens, demonstrably believed the contrary. What novelists do, after all, is invent characters, and first-person narration, in which an imagined character is given a voice as well as a point of view, is a common convention. But in the cited passage, the speaker is Esther Summerson, the protagonist of the novel, ''Bleak House,'' who alternates chapters with an arch and satiric omniscient narrator more identifiable with the writer himself. Esther is a typically self-effacing and angelic Dickens heroine but the only female narrator in his entire output.

And as a result, ''Bleak House,'' published in 1853, remains much discussed as both a narrative anomaly and a social one. ''It was probably the most controversial of his works at the time and is still the subject of enormous discussion among scholars,'' said Alison Case, a professor of English at Williams College and the author of ''Plotting Women,'' a forthcoming book on female narrators in 18th- and 19th-century fiction. ''Dickens's friend, John Foster, said, 'It was an experiment not worthy of success and certainly not successful.' '' This marked an interesting moment in the history of the relationship between writer and narrator, which itself is complex enough to have spawned an academic discipline (called narratology), one of whose more piquant issues is cross-gender narration: that is, male writers speaking in the voice of a female character, and, though historically less often, vice versa.

Continue reading the main story ''Male writers seem to take on the first person to prove their virtuosity and/or empathy,'' said Joseph Boone, a narratologist and professor of English at the University of Southern California, ''while, at least historically, women writers, often working under male pseudonyms, might use the male first person as part of their attempt to 'pass' and prove themselves professionally.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the past several decades, female writers have claimed their narrative authority much more aggressively. Indeed, cross-gender narration is a technique that is employed today -- by writers of both sexes -- far more often than it has ever been in the history of the novel (and probably more often than narrations that cross other boundaries, like race and ethnicity). But even so, it's relatively rare, and for many readers, it intensifies the challenge that all novels extend to them -- to suspend disbelief. Reaction to contemporary works like ''Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All'' by Allan Gurganus, ''The End of Alice'' by A. M.

Homes and ''Memoirs of a Geisha'' by Arthur Golden is often informed by surprise, if not discomfort, at the gender gap between the teller of the tale and the controlling intelligence behind it. ''People are always asking me how I did it,'' said Mr. Gurganus, in a recent interview, 10 years after the publication of ''Confederate Widow,'' the purported memoir of an uneducated but shrewdly observant woman who at age 15 had married a 55-year-old veteran of the Civil War. ''Hundreds, if not thousands, of women, saying to me: How did you know? But what's weird is not my knowing, it's how weird most people consider that knowing. We live in a culture where it's considered an immense feat to assume a woman's voice.'' Fiction writing is an act of presumption. ''Listen,'' the the voice of the narrator says, ''I have a story to tell.'' Playwrights routinely give voice to characters of the opposite gender, but they do not routinely cede to any character the authority to tell the story the way it is conferred on a narrator in fiction. A first-person narrator more easily creates the illusion of an intimacy, however.

''Readers tend to identify quickly with the first person,'' said Norman Mailer, one of whose books is written in the assumed voice of Marilyn Monroe. (Another was in the voice of Jesus.) ''The danger is they are determined not to let the author get away from them.'' Indeed, the first-person technique, particularly for literal-minded readers, can obscure the lengths to which writers will go to separate themselves from their creations. The narrator of ''The End of Alice,'' an aging pedophile in jail for the murder of a 12-year-old girl, for example, is not exactly a stand-in for the young woman who created him. ''That I was writing so far from my own experience, people found that unfathomable,'' said Ms. Homes. ''I did a radio interview where a guy called in and said, 'That's O.K., Thomas Mann was a pedophile, too.' '' For reasons that are probably both obvious and psychologically complex, first-person intimacy combined with cross-gender narration seems particularly provocative.

This was the presumption behind ''Written on the Body,'' a 1994 first-person novel by Jeanette Winterson about a passionate, adulterous love affair in which the beloved is a married woman, but the gender of the narrator-lover is coyly, skillfully obscured. Some obvious questions are raised: Does a voice have gender qualities? Do men and women speak differently, observe differently, think differently, love differently? ''It's funny, isn't it, how everything gets broken down into basic distinctions between the sexes, as though we have no other way of distinguishing things?'' said Ms. Homes, one of whose novels, ''Jack,'' was written in the voice of a teen-age boy and whose next novel is narrated by both a man and his wife. ''Maybe there is a male kind of novel and a female kind of novel. People have always said to me, 'You write like a boy.' But the voice of a novel occurs obliviously, according to what's appropriate to the material.

It's 'Who should be best telling the story I want to tell?,' not 'Can I take on a male voice?''' Writers can -- and do -- feel free to impersonate anyone they wish and in any way they wish. That is why they often find rigidly ideological criticism (How dare you presume to speak for the Other!), especially irksome and foolish. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy ''Especially with the focus on gender studies today, the feeling in some quarters is that voices shouldn't take on 'the other,' '' said Joyce Carol Oates, who has written two novels with male narrators, ''Zombie'' and ''We Are the Mullvaneys.'' ''But it's not an issue. It's just as difficult to create a woman as a man. Basically, you're working with language to create a voice, and sometimes there are gender qualities in it.'' Alan Cheuse, whose novel ''The Grandmother's Club'' was written in the voice of an elderly Jewish woman, concurred.

''You can't not do it if you get the call to do it,'' he said, adding that his novel floundered through several versions until he rewrote it, at last, in the first person. ''The voice comes into your head and you allow it to speak. If the voice is female, you let it out.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the 18th century, when the novel arose as a form, two if its earliest masters, Daniel Defoe (in ''Moll Flanders'' and ''Roxana'') and Samuel Richardson (in the epistolary novels ''Pamela'' and ''Clarissa'') assumed the female narrative disguise. The sensitivity of readers to the technique, however, arose later. ''No one seems to have thought Richardson's attempt or desire to impersonate the feminine, or his affinity with the domesticity often associated with the novel, as a genre-odd,'' said Mr. Boone at Southern Cal. ''It would take the more Victorian milieu of the next century to make more 'sensational' male writer's attempts to speak in the female first person. One of the more audacious examples was 'Bleak House.' '' It worked the other way around as well.

Charlotte Bronte's ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'' was published under a pseudonym, the gender nonspecific Currer Bell, and it immediately unleashed a critical debate over the sex of the author, with claims, on the one hand, that no man could have written so intimately about a governess and on the other that if a woman did write it, it was unseemly. ''One reviewer said that no man could have written a book so concerned with curtains,'' Ms. Oates said with a laugh. ''I always liked that.'' Bronte's first novel, ''The Professor,'' was written from the male point of view, but it wasn't published until after her death. Indeed, all the Bronte sisters explored the cross-gender issue. Most famously, in ''Wuthering Heights,'' Emily framed the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, largely told by the servant, Mrs. Dean, within a narration by Lockwood, a male visitor to the moors. Prior to the 20th century, female narrators, in novels written by men or women, were few enough; those that did exist, said Mr. Case at Williams, were usually speaking contemporaneously to the events being described.

They were keen observers, but rarely granted the power of shaping a story that comes with a retrospective view. ''There are some obvious reasons for this,'' she said. ''For so long men had the cultural authority to speak for women in so many ways, from religion to medicine, authority to speak for and on behalf of women. Women have historically had trouble speaking for themselves, let alone for men. To make a gross generalization, this is a kind of cultural authority people have turned away from in the 20th century.'' Scholars generally point to Joyce's ''Ulysses,'' published in 1922, as initiating the era of broad narrative experimentation that novelists enjoy today. ''Ulysses'' concluded with a famous episode of cross-gender narration, Molly Bloom's internal monologue, which opened the landscape for Faulkner's daring narrative stews in books like ''The Sound and the Fury'' and ''As I Lay Dying.'' Even Hemingway seemingly aped Joyce with a woman's internal monologue at the end of ''To Have and Have Not.'' So how is it done?

''I imagine a man,'' is the cynical response offered by the writer played by Jack Nicholson in the film ''As Good as It Gets,'' ''and I take away reason and accountability.'' But off screen, writers talk about the same painstaking work it takes to speak credibly in any voice. Mr Gurganus, for example, called the process of writing ''Confederate Widow'' ''undertaking a Ph.D. in intentional femaleness.'' ''What happens is that you begin with almost a detective kind of logic,'' Mr. Gurganus said. ''If she didn't get an education, she'd use this locution instead of that. If she has to cook meals for nine children and worry about their clothes, she'd know fabrics and shortcuts involving cornbread. Metaphors begin to merge from whatever is in reach in her kitchen and at her writing table. It's when you live with that long enough, then the quantum stuff starts to happen, and that's when it really gets amazing.'' In the end, Mr. Gurganus said, it changed his life. ''I spent seven years writing 'Confederate Widow,' and I think it was the most politicizing experience I've ever had, '' he said.

''It was tremendously enlightening. It's a shadowland critique of being male to assume the female disguise, and one of the things you realize is that women really know more than men.'' Bleak House by Charles Dickens, book of a lifetime | The Independent Bleak House by Charles Dickens, book of a lifetime Friday 14 March 2014 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Quindlen says: 'As a former columnist, I always respond to the social conscience that animated and enraged Dickens' I can't be dismissive of readers who don't warm to Bleak House. That title adjective isn't exactly an invitation, and the sheer size of the thing can be intimidating: I have four copies, and not a single one comes in at under 850 pages. And, at least in the States, we've done something dreadful to Charles Dickens: assigned his work at the wrong time in the wrong place. As a seventh-grader with a paperback copy of David Copperfield once told me, "He starts out by saying he was born.

What's up with that?" I lucked out; my mother warned me that the work of Dickens was a torment, overly detailed, so populated by secondary characters that it was impossible to track them all. My youthful rebellion was to read, but it was my natural inclination to resonate. What my mother had seen as overstuffed I saw as richness, and early on Dickens became the writer I admired most. Bleak House is his greatest novel, and not simply because, with its backdrop of a legal system more invested in obstruction and obfuscation than resolution, it remains utterly contemporary. Dickens was a wonderful actor, and this novel is a performance, in which he plays two disparate parts. One is the story of Lady Dedlock, "bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself". The sections of the book that detail her airless existence and those that explain the legal tangle of Jarndyce V. Jarndyce are told in third person, the prose baroque and satiric. The other sections of the story are told by Esther Summerson, the writer's only female narrator.

(I did my senior thesis at college on the women of Dickens; even as a devotee, I can summarize in two words: pretty lame.) Esther is yet another one of the novelist's lucky orphans; when her guardian dies, a lawyer swoops in and sends her to live with John Jarndyce, who may or may not be a beneficiary of the endless case of dueling wills. (It's that kind of lawsuit. It's that kind of book.) The voice of Esther, simple, no frills, is completely at odds with that of the omniscient narrator; they might as well have been written by different men. As a writer, I admire that virtuousity. As a former columnist, I always respond to the social conscience that animated and enraged Dickens. But make no mistake: there is a heart in this book, too. Bleak House is known as a novel about the law, but it is really about the sadness and the souls of two women, one who has sold her happiness for the sake of security, and one riven by the insecurity of not knowing who she is. That's why I love it so.

Anna Quindlen's 'Still Life with Bread Crumbs' is longlisted for the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction (Hutchinson). Bleak House, novel by Charles Dickens | Silver Birch Press Bleak House, novel by Charles Dickens 0 In an article about what inspired her novel, Debt, author Rachel Carey mentions Charles Dickens‘ novels, including Bleak House. Many other authors have cited Bleak House as an inspiration — F. Scott Fitzgerald called it “Dickens’ best novel.” In an essay featured in Lectures on Literature , the notoriously critical Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) — the Wellesley and Cornell professor best known as author of Lolita — praises Bleak House from every direction, but mainly focuses on the novel’s atmosphere, which Nabokov views as a character in the book. He also lauds the unusual narration techniques — an omniscient third-person narrator alternating with a first person narrator (a young woman named Esther Summerson — the only female narrator in the Dickens canon). All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades.

That little shiver is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.” VLADIMIR NABOKOV An excellent online version of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, in an easy-to-read, attractive format, is available from Pennsylvania State University here . The Millions : Dickens's Best Novel? Six Experts Share Their Opinions - The Millions at 9:51 am on August 2, 2012 “Our mutual friend” is the greatest plot Dickens ever penned. Shawn Casey at 10:15 am on August 2, 2012 For its historical portrayal of a horrific period in time; for its depiction of anger, hatred, hypocrisy, and fear; for its richness of characterization and plot; for its proclamation of truth and inevitability of tragedy…was I wrong in bringing first to mind, my choice of “A Tale Of Two Cities” as Dickens’s best and most memorable novel? I was surprised it was not mentioned… Rob at 11:09 am on August 2, 2012 What, no Nicholas Nickleby?

Anthony Ashworth at 11:26 am on August 2, 2012 I’ve read Martin Chuzzlewit twice and enjoyed it immensely both times – I can’t see why it’s apparently one of the leasdt popular novels. The plot is excellent, it’s both hilarious and moving at times, and has one of THE great Dickensian characters in Mr. Pecksniff. Dickens’s Best Novel? « Read, Write, Be at 12:17 pm on August 2, 2012 […] was browsing through my Facebook home page and I foundÂ this linkÂ (provided by Charles Dickens’s fan page). Dickens’s best novel? I had to see what they […] Nicole at 12:17 pm on August 2, 2012 Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House are a tie in my mind. Tale of Two Cities is “minor Dickens.” Melinda at 1:32 pm on August 2, 2012 A Tale of Two Cities may not have been his best, but it was my gateway drug and still my favorite. And contains some of the most memorable lines of all time.

jack at 1:51 pm on August 2, 2012 Bleak House is the best because you admire it as you read; you think ‘wow, how clever,’ as the plot expands and then unravels arounds an incredible cast of characters. David Copperfield is the best because it’s impossible not to love David :-) mike at 5:10 pm on August 2, 2012 While my gateway was Great Expectation, I have to put in a vote for Pickwick Papers as the funniest novel I have ever read. Also a Nick Nickleby fan. Mark at 8:35 pm on August 2, 2012 I’ve read them all, except Our Mutual Friend, and I would rank them 1. Bleak House C.A. Hall at 8:43 pm on August 2, 2012 Dickens had so many novels and stories that captured your soul. Oliver Twist, showing the struggles of youth and the poor, but able to overcome. Great Expectations, dealing humanity a different fight, joy, and conflict every day, even if imagined as with Miss Haversham.

Probably my favorite overall, The Christmas Carol, that shows anyone watching or reading it that we all have a responsibility to mankind and probably a debt to pay to society. Gus at 2:45 pm on August 5, 2012 Seems like a good list, though I haven’t read Our Mutual Friend. Much as I love Nicholas Nickelby, Nicholas and Kate are almost nauseatingly virtuous. I have to assume that the commenter who called Tale of Two Cities “minor Dickens” is being tongue in cheek quoting a character in The Squid and the Whale. Not his greatest, but not “minor.” at 10:59 pm on August 6, 2012 […] Six literary scholars share their thoughts on Dickens’s best book. […] at 5:23 am on August 8, 2012 My choice also for Dickens’ best is Bleak House. My great favorite, though, is Dombey and Son. Alex at 10:33 am on August 8, 2012 Obviously the best character for a one-night stand is Estella from Great Expectations.

at 12:43 pm on August 9, 2012 Still weeping over Jo. Marie-Anne Mancio at 10:03 am on August 10, 2012 None of them! Here’s why: his prostitute characters reflect his paternalistic attitude to women and you have to read between the lines of his letters about Urania Cottage to see glimpses of stories he could have told and didn’t. Book Links 8-10-12 « Loose Leaf Bound at 4:08 pm on August 10, 2012 […] The Millions has some professor type people throwing down on what they think is the best novel by Charles Dickens. this made me feel soooo litararily ignorant. Reading Bleak House just got scribbled into my day […] Susan Fisher at 4:13 pm on August 10, 2012 Whichever one I’m reading at the time! My introduction to him was my mother reading A Christmas Carol to me–I have lines by heart from that one. But I think my favorite is Pickwick Papers. I adore Sam Weller.

Veronica Zucchi at 10:21 am on August 28, 2012 Though unfinished (but very intriguing), I really loved The Mistery of Edwin Drood….and the variety of endings written by so many authors. A sign of Dickens’s genius and literary generosity, allowing writers to take advantage of such a valuable first half of the novel. Charles Dickens: 5 Great Works | Endpaper: The Paperblanks Blog at 3:43 pm on January 7, 2013 […] as a criticism of the government of the period. As to its significance in the Dickens’ canon? According to Deb Gettelman, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross, Little Dorrit is the best novel to read to […] Tim McKinney at 10:00 am on April 21, 2013 The Mystery of Edwin Drood would top everyone’s list if the secret were widely known that Dickens was embedding a ‘shadow story’ (telling a second strata of story concerning druidism and nature-righting) in the words of the apparent story of Edwin and Rosa’s engagement. 2. Bleak House 3. Great Expectations 4.

David Copperfield 5. Little Dorrit 6. Our Mutual Friend JGK at 3:04 pm on July 3, 2013 “Our Mutual Friend was my Dickens gateway drug. The opening sequence plays like a Scorsese tracking shot on steroids.” Anyone looking for a reason to devalue the way the liberal arts are taught in this country need only brood over this ridiculous statement. Yocheved at 1:22 pm on July 10, 2013 Nope, they’re all wrong. Dickens’s best book was “The Magic Fishbone.” christopher lord at 5:27 pm on July 11, 2013 The “Best Dickens Novel” is a difficult topic. The commenter whose list excludes “Our Mutual Friend” should read it immediately and then start over, because, if not the greatest expression of his art (I would nominate “Great Expectations” for that), it is his greatest novel. “Bleak House,” “Little Dorrit,” and “David Copperfield” are also up there.

I have read, taught, and been inspired by every Dickens novel at multiple times in my life (including basing a mystery series on them), and each time I read them I gain new meaning and depth. Right now I’m basking in the glory of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” a book I didn’t read until I was in my thirties, and now it’s among my favorites. But read any of his books and your life will be enriched; you might save such challenges as “Barnaby Rudge” and “The Old Curiosity Shop” until later, but even they have rewards for the patient reader. at 11:42 pm on August 10, 2013 i think it depends upon readers taste but i would rank BLEAK HOUSE…………. Debby at 9:13 am on March 26, 2014 I haven’t read Dicken’s works but I am interested to observe his works for my minithesis. So, can you tell me what novels are have the sameness whether the themes or characters or anything. I really thank you if you can help me.

Barry Dalton at 10:51 pm on April 10, 2014 As an introduction to Dickens, I have just completed Bleak House. What a wonderful book! A Novel Apart: Embarking on The Pickwick Papers | Ninteenth Centuryist at 4:43 pm on September 5, 2014 […] two adaptations ofÂ Great ExpectationsÂ that appeared within six months of each other in 2012. Even ‘the experts’Â don’t vote for PickwickÂ as Dickens’s best novel anymore.Â Trying to understand why […] Alicia Lozano at 8:37 pm on November 11, 2014 Even I’m not an expert, for me it’s Bleak House, it let me wanting more, I couldn’t put it down. I’m still looking for a book who can take its place but I found none. I live in Mexico and it’s complicated to find something from Dickens beside Oliver Twist, Great Expectations or Tale of two cities, so when I went to USA and found this I bought it immediately.

It didn’t disappoint me, it’s really wonderful, it’s characters and plots make it so easy to read , it amaze me. Rob at 2:30 pm on September 11, 2015 Dickens is probably my favorite author and picking out the best is hard to do. The Pickwick Papers is very funny and has so many characters differing in age and station, that it boggles the mind to think it was written by an author in his early 20’s. Great Expectations is probably my favorite, and the surprise twist of Pip’s benefactor ( who will remain nameless here ) was what novels are all about. I never saw that surprise coming, but when it came, it didn’t come out of nowhere, and it all made perfect sense. The Mystery of Edwin Drood might have been my favorite if Dickens had lived to complete. I read it in denial, knowing it was going to end only half finished, and yet hoping against all hope to see the mystery revealed. Dickens greatly admired Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, and here he was about to outdo Collins, no mean achievement considering The Woman in White is one of the greatest mysteries every written.

I at 5:17 pm on October 14, 2015 To me,David Copperfield is Dickens’ best & most ‘dickensian’ novel. I have read most of his novels but I first came to love Dickens while reading this veiled autobiography.If someone read Dickens with not a critical eye but a affectionate and understanding mind,David Copperfield will certainly be the best.The book certainly has flaws but it’s impossible not to love David,Agnes,Betsey Trotwood or Traddles(or,hate Murdstone siblings or Heep). The book is very long & has many subplots but is far more griping than many other lengthy novels.It is not much sentimental like earlier novels like Oliver Twist,Nicholas Nickleby or The Old Curiosity Shop.On the other hand, it is mostly free from later novels’ bitter sarcasm & melancholic tone. Certainly, David Copperfield has most perfect ‘Dickensian’ characteristics.The reader just needs to feel the pulses of the writer while reading. Bonnie Sharp at 5:38 pm on October 25, 2015 Great Expectations, but I’m working my way through all his work, so that may change.

I have to have Dickins on my bedside table at all times. Melinda Fulwood at 8:37 pm on December 9, 2015 Bleak House is so wonderful to read and what full bodied characters Mr. Dickens presents in this story. Esther Summerson gives us a higher standard of what can be done with meager beginnings especially in present day society where no standard has become the status quo. Shake me up Judy! Pete Short at 12:14 pm on January 31, 2016 After deciding to concentrate my reading on ‘Dickens Only’ for a couple of years, I read most of the novels (Martin Chuzzlewit, Edwin Drood, Our Mutual Friend, Barnaby Rudge still to go). I can’t name the best, only which I loved most. I found Hard Times and Bleak House the most difficult to love, but David Copperfield and Dombey and Son still fight it out in my mind for ‘most loved’. I do think ‘Dombey and Son is a very underrated book. (Such sneaking regard for the sheer joy of The Pickwick Papers)!

Ken Presland at 6:17 pm on February 29, 2016 Bleak House seems the most highly rated novel here, and I wouldn’t disagree: I think it has its faults – I’ve never found Lady Dedlock a particularly believable character – but it has moments of undeniable power and an overall feeling that this is Dickens at the very top of his game. I would like to put in a claim, though, for the somewhat overlooked early novels, if only for their sheer energy, exuberance and sense of fun. There are not many Victorian writers who have the power still to make us laugh and it’s an amazing achievement that Dickens’s humour seems as fresh today as it must have been to his first readers. Nickleby and Chuzzlewit are both highly entertaining books, once they get past their opening chapters, and I would also give mention to Barnaby Rudge. No-one seems to like it much but it’s a particular favourite of mine and contains, in John Willet the inn keeper, what is surely one of Dickens’s finest and truest characters.

David Weir at 3:51 pm on March 2, 2016 ‘Great Expectations’ is a highly original study of human nature in a way that the rest aren’t. It’s chilling in that pretty well everything Pip wants at his retributive worst seems somehow to come about. That’s serious stuff with worrying implications for us. At the other extreme I agree with Ken above about the sheer energy of the earlier novels. And ‘Pickwick Papers’ is a delight – Dickens at his most Fieldingesque. What a pity, though, that he never read Jane Austen. Book Review: Bleak House by Charles Dickens – Rejected Letters to the Editor at 1:10 am on March 8, 2016 […] HOUSE is said by some critics to be Dickensâ best novel, the one with the most stuck-to theme, the one with the least ox-bows, side-shows and dead-ends.

[…] Bleak House by Charles Dickens – Rejected Letters to the Editor at 9:08 am on March 9, 2016 […] HOUSE is said by some critics to be Dickensâ best novel, the one with the most stuck-to theme, the one with the least ox-bows, side-shows and dead-ends. […] TS at 4:43 am on August 5, 2016 Bleak House, absolutely #1. I also have a personal affection for Pickwick Papers because I had the most fun reading it. Rikhard at 11:55 am on September 20, 2016 I’ve only read A Tale of Two Cities, and it made me weep like a baby. MarkW at 12:26 am on October 1, 2016 I have not read them all, but clearly Bleak House is a great great novel and if the majority here think it the best, who am I to disagree? I am puzzled by the dismissal of Tale of Two Cities which, of all the ones I’ve read, seems to be the most concise and tightly put together.

And I admit to have read it eight times since High School and never tire of it. Keith Lofthouse at 9:13 pm on October 27, 2016 No question; Dombey and Son is the most underrated, and I’ve read them all. My copy was picked up at a jumble sale. It’s a 1927 edition in poor condition that I had restored and rebound at great expense. You do these things, for things that are precious. Billy at 3:30 pm on October 30, 2016 I have read all Dicken’s novels . Funniest , The Pickwick Papers . The most complex and inteÄºlectually rewarding , Bleak House . The best written , life affirming and my personal favourite , Great Expectations .

Post a Response The Infrastructural Uncanny: Oliver Twist in the Suburbs and Slums Justin Eichenlaub Oliver Twist foregrounds the interconnections of the suburbs and the slums and places them into dramatic and formal tension through a version of the “architectural uncanny.” This essay explores the ties between the rise of the slums and the building of suburban housing with the movements of characters between these zones in the London of the novel. To read the novel with the suburb and slum plot in the foreground is to see the text critiquing a deeply flawed system of classed spaces and their ambiguous, mutable interrelations. This approach allows us to revisit the role of urban space in the novel in a new way, demonstrating Dickens’s early engagement and concern with suburban spaces, and the ways in which the interplay of urban and suburban zones function much like the “systems” that are considered hallmarks of his later novels.

“No Certain Roof but the Coffin Lid”: The Melodramatic Body and the Semiotics of Syphilis in Oliver Twist Erin Wilson This essay centers on Oliver Twist’s Nancy, considering her development as a collaboration of the “melodramatic body,” as theorized by Martha Stoddard Holmes and others, and the medical body. It is my contention that Dickens composes Nancy in a manner that suggests, without stating outright, that she is suffering from late-stage syphilis and I further contend that this apparent affliction performs crucial political and formal work in the space of the novel. The essay traces the pervasive discourses surrounding venereal disease and the body of the prostitute in the nineteenth century, indicating that Dickens’s treatment of Nancy vividly deviates from those popular conceptions. The essay goes on to suggest that Dickens’s ability to manipulate the paradox of the melodramatic body, specifically the tension between hyper-visibility and invisibility, allows him to generate a realistic pathological narrative that intersects with and fundamentally alters the primary narrative. It is the final assertion of the essay that the novel’s resolution, often noted for its adherence to melodramatic tropes, is hosted in medical realism via the case study of Nancy’s symptomatolgy and her physical deterioration.

Making Piracy Pay: Fagin and Contested Authorship in Victorian Print Culture Monica F. Cohen In light of Dickens’s professional struggle with literary piracy wherein the claims of exclusive ownership encountered the claims of democratic access, Fagin—one of his most notorious villains—emerges as a site through which Dickens imagines the criminalization of a practice common in the Victorian entertainment industry: unauthorized adaptation. From the crowd of characters vying to author Oliver Twist’s story, Fagin stands out for his successful manufacture of criminal identities through the control of public words, which culminates in his production of Nancy’s murder through the savvy publication of a fake story. This paper argues that through Fagin Dickens mounted an anti-piracy campaign whose primary objective was to win the hearts and minds of literary consumers hitherto unconcerned with brand loyalty. Reversing Domestication in Dickens: Forging Masculine and Domestic Types through the Cross-Species Kattie M. Basnett Located at the forefront of Dickens’s domestic imaginary, animals are integral to the formation of normative masculine and domestic types in his early novels.

Although Dickens’s animals are often read as metaphorical figures for marginal human populations rather than as animals imbued with distinctly nonhuman forms of significance and agency, Dickens employs a domestic triad—composed of human male, human female, and animal—in his early work to insist that the agency of the animal as an animal is necessary for creating and sustaining domestic and masculine typologies. This cross-species triad facilitates Dickens’s reimagination of human-animal power dynamics so that animals are represented not merely as the passive objects of symbolic domestication, but as capable of reversing traditional power hierarchies and exercising reverse domestication on their primarily male interactants. Dickens’s method of rethinking domestic power as something wielded by humans and animals across species divides is significant for understanding the domestic politics and ethics of his early novels as he carves a path toward radically challenging Victorian assumptions about masculinity, domesticity, the cross-species, and the ethics of animal representation.

Not Too Cheery: Dickens’s Critique of Capital in Nicholas Nickleby Timothy Gilmore As the power and avarice of those who seek to profit at the expense of society increases wildly with each passing year, it is important to look once more to Dickens, one of our most trenchant critics of the human cost of capitalist exploitation. Dickens’s early novel Nicholas Nickleby has been criticized repeatedly for being a melodramatic narrative without strong focus and purpose, but this article argues that such an assessment misses the deeper unity beneath the “muddle” of scenes that compose the novel. As a sustained critique of the capitalist mode of production and the reification intrinsic to the logic of commodification, the novel gains a structural integrity otherwise missing if we try to locate it in some other aspect of the narrative, such as its protagonist. The novel astutely investigates the ways that reification, by beguiling everything within a commodity calculus, affects the quality of social relations and restricts individuals’ life potential. This essay posits that the novel is best understood as a kind of allegory of capital detailing the deleterious effects of reification upon social and personal life.

Close attention to the novel’s critique of capitalism reveals that there is no such thing as a good capitalist and usurious activity is the rule. Drowning in the Fog: The Significance of Quilp’s Death in The Old Curiosity Shop Christine L. Corton The Old Curiosity Shop is viewed by many critics as a text which was largely improvised and written with “less consciousness of design” according to John Forster than any other work by Charles Dickens. This article suggests that the novel is, in fact, much more tightly constructed and planned than has often been thought. John Bowen has recently argued this point, with reference to the figure of the garland. I examine other figures used in the novel: the inter­connected metaphors of smoke, mist, and fog. The death of Quilp, through the element of a natural fog, as opposed to the man-made “London particular” of Bleak House, is linked with themes that recur throughout the novel. Quilp is presented as a representation of industrialism punished by elements of the natural world. The juxtaposition of the natural with the industrial world throughout the novel indicates a high degree of planning and coherence in the novel’s composition.

The Wax Girl: Molding Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop John B. Lamb This essay explores Dickens’s use of the waxwork figure and the waxwork tableau in The Old Curiosity Shop as visual tropes for melodrama’s engagement with the body. By portraying Little Nell as the wax girl, Dickens attempts to obscure Nell’s narrative history and with it forestall both her maturity and her mortality. In so doing, the author seeks to maintain Nell’s status as a melodramatic heroine, as a figure of unchanging virtue and purity—the “Good Angel of the race.” But this attempt and the melodramatic impulse that sustains it are undermined by the waxwork effigy’s origin in death and by the irresolvable tension in the novel between the ideal fixity of tableau and the relentless forward movement and temporality of narrative, a narrative that, in the case of The Old Curiosity Shop, ironically both begins and ends with Nell’s death.

Dora Spenlow, Female Communities, and Female Narrative in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and George Eliot’s Middlemarch Maria Ioannou The article argues that Dickens’s David Copperfield and Eliot’s Middlemarch pose the problem of a story which is non-narratable in female terms, while at the same time trying to articulate it within the main narrative, in what becomes a commentary on the central story. The two novels, though different in many respects, have one similarity: a certain characteristic of the way the narrator of each novel describes events, which makes it possible to register conflicting interpretations of experience. This is especially so concerning the voices of women characters, particularly women whose positions within the social structure seem problematic, women who have been judged as having failed in their wifely roles, or women who have been defined by one single attribute. These women exist in a space that forms a female narrative and enables the creation of female community. This way, a female-centered explanation of the questions pertaining to female belonging in Victorian society begins to emerge. Vibrations in the Memory: Bleak House’s Response to Illustrations of Becky in Vanity Fair Deborah A.

Thomas As indicated by evidence in Bleak House, Dickens was more aware of Thack­eray’s Vanity Fair than has been commonly recognized. Dickens’s response to that widely acclaimed work by his contemporary and rival reflects an interest in the concept of the double and takes the form of splitting and rewriting Vanity Fair’s multifaceted Becky Sharp. In Bleak House, Esther, Lady Dedlock, and Hortense can each be seen as embodying a particular facet of Becky suggested in certain of Thackeray’s illustrations that appear to have triggered Dickens’s imagination. Although he may have misunderstood Vanity Fair, his reworking in Bleak House of aspects of Thackeray’s Becky displayed in these pictures illuminates important differences between these two great novels. Dickens’s response also reminds us that discussions of intertextuality should consider visual as well as verbal dimensions of texts. When Fairy Godmothers Are Men: Dickens’s Gendered Use of Fairy Tales as a Form of Narrative Control in Bleak House Melissa A.

Smith This paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to support and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as lack of curiosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity.

An Old Dog Enters the Fray; or, Reading Hard Times as an Industrial Novel Priti Joshi Although Dickens had wanted to write an industrial exposé as early as 1838, it was not until 1854 that he published what is widely read as his denunciation of industrial dehumanization, Hard Times. Had he included in Nicholas Nickleby a disquisition on industrial ills as he had considered, he would have been present at the birth of the subgenre; as it is, Hard Times appeared during the dying days of—to paraphrase Franco Moretti—the subgenre’s life cycle. This essay examines the tropes and conventions of the genre as established by three predecessors, Frances Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë, and argues that Dickens’s rehearsal of the established tropes is tinged with fatigue and repetition rather than innovation. As an industrial novel, Hard Times marks the last gasp of a subgenre whose literary moment had passed. Book-Snatcher / Body-Snatcher: Adaptation, Resurrection, and A Tale of Two Cities Lauren Ellis Holm Dickens claimed an intimate relationship with his works by embodying his characters both in his public readings and while writing.

This intimacy allowed him to set himself up as the perpetually besieged victim of literary and dramatic pirates. In the case of A Tale of Two Cities, however, his attempts to claim ownership of his characters were undermined by accusations of plagiarism that called the originality of his characters into question. This ambiguity threatens to collapse the distinction between Dickens and his appropriators that he was eager to maintain. Rather than condemn Dickens for his purported unoriginality, this essay views both Dickens and the pirate dramatists he fought against as sharing a similar desire to bring characters back to life to postpone their final end. Bradley Headstone’s Bad Example of Self-Help: Dickens and the Problem with Ambition Rebecca Richardson This essay explores Charles Dickens’s vexed relationship to self-help. Popular self-help texts, such as Samuel Smiles’s 1859 Self-Help, offered hundreds of examples of men who succeeded through their perseverance and hard work. Dickens was himself an example of successful self-help, and readers since his death have seized upon this image, as the compulsive critical attention to his childhood stint at the Warren’s Blacking factory demonstrates. In his novels, however, Dickens tends to condemn such ambitious characters.

This essay argues that despite Dickens’s personal history and political support for the institutions of self-help, he understood that the ambition to improve one’s condition could also disrupt civil society. Some ambition is necessary if one is to succeed in industrial capitalism; Dickens reveals, however, that ambition and perseverance can become monstrous when developed in excess. Through close analysis of Dickens’s speeches and his use of Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend, this essay shows how Dickens translated the problem of ambition into narrative: Bradley’s perseverance helps drive the plot, but it also leads him to monomania and suicide. The Storm at the Lighthouse by Wilkie Collins, with an Introduction, Textual Notes, and Appendix Robert C. Hanna Wilkie Collins composed his first surviving original play, The Storm at the Lighthouse, between September 1854 and May 1855. The original text of the play is published here for the first time. Sometime prior to June 1856, Collins shortened the play and retitled it The Lighthouse. This version was translated into French by Émile Forgues and is the only previously published edition. Textual notes compare these two versions, the only ones preserved entirely in Collins’s hand.

Collins’s play is noteworthy in Dickens studies, as well. Charles Dickens was the first to recognize the play’s dramatic possibilities, producing, directing, and acting in its premiere at Tavistock House in June 1855. An introduction includes a summary of The Storm at the Lighthouse, an examination of its themes of guilt and forgiveness in writings of both Collins and Dickens, influences of the 1827 play Trente Ans on both Collins and Dickens, a summary of major differences between Collins’s 1853 short story “Gabriel’s Marriage” and his reworking of that story into The Storm at the Lighthouse, and an examination of the four surviving manuscripts, including locales mentioned therein. An appendix contains the play’s performance history during Collins’s lifetime. Recent Dickens Studies: 2011 Elizabeth Bridgham This essay surveys Dickens scholarship in the year 2011, summarizing and commenting on nearly 150 critical articles and books. While the body of work produced in this year has been wide-ranging and diverse in its interests, some scholarly trends emerge.

Particularly vibrant fields of study are life writing about Dickens, no doubt in anticipation of his bicentennial year; Dickens adaptations, particularly in performance; and Dickens’s relationship to economics. These common interests reflect our contemporary preoccupations, and the extent to which Dickens’s life and works are relevant to these current concerns. The scholarship surveyed is organized into the following categories: Life Writing; General Studies; Influences on Dickens, Dickens’s Influence: Intertextualities; Performance and Adaptation; Places and Spaces: Geography, Internationalism, and the Urban Imagination; Material Culture and Publication; Reading, Writing, Textuality; Inner Lives: Psychology, Philosophy, Religion; Social Institutions and Issues: Capitalism, Law, Politics; Science and Technology; and Gender and Sexuality, Family and Children. Follow Us: UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, Ca 95064 ©2017 Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved. Bleak House, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Favorite Dickens Novel | Silver Birch Press Bleak House, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Favorite Dickens Novel 0 I’ve always been interested in learning which books some of my favorite authors admire. Today, to commemorate F.

Scott Fitzgerald‘s belated birthday, I looked up the novels Fitzgerald recommended to Sheilah Graham — as chronicled in her memoir, College of One. The list includes Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cheri by Colette, A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. According to Graham, Fitzgerald called Bleak House “Dickens’ best novel.” At 350,000 words — most editions are close to 1,000 pages — Bleak House is a doorstopper. I find the novel’s sheer size daunting. I can count on two hands the really, really long books I’ve read in my life. I’ve always said I’d rather read five 200-page books than one 1,000-page book (I plead eyestrain), but I have tackled Bleak House — though not at Fitzgerald’s recommendation.

I read an essay on Bleak House in Lectures on Literature by the notoriously critical Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) — the Wellesley and Cornell professor best known as author of Lolita. A native of Russia, Nabokov had him some opinions about English literature! But I’ll limit my comments to his thoughts on Bleak House by Charles Dickens. All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.” VLADIMIR NABOKOV In Lectures on Literature , Nabokov praises Bleak House from every direction — but mainly focuses on the novel’s atmosphere, which Nabokov sees as a character in the book. He also lauds the unusual narration techniques — an omniscient third-person narrator alternating with a first person narrator (a young woman named Esther Summerson — the only female narrator in the Dickens canon).

About a decade ago, my New Year’s resolutions included “read Bleak House.” (You know, when you say to yourself: One way or another, I am going to finish this book!) And I enjoyed the novel so much, it didn’t take me a year to reach the final page. A few years after I’d finished Bleak House, Masterpiece Theatre ran a multi-part adaptation — but I didn’t watch it. I knew the program could never live up to the story I’d pictured in my mind. And I realized that if the program had aired before I’d read the novel, I might never have attempted to make my way through the behemoth. (I’ll admit, I’ve never been able to get more than halfway through Moby Dick.) So if you’d like to commemorate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s belated birthday by reading one of his favorite novels, you can find an excellent online version from Pennsylvania State University here . (In an attractive, easy-to-read format.) This version is only 872 pages long. If you read five pages a day, you’ll be finished by spring. Enjoy!

Dombey and Son Audiobook | Charles Dickens | Audible.com "Utterly incredible!" It is difficult to state that this is my favorite Dickens because I enjoy them all. I can state though that David Timson is my favorite narrator. I also enjoy Sean Barrett, but Timson's distinctive variety of voices gives him the edge. I just listened to Dombey and Son and Barnaby Rudge - both novels are so full of life (and death), so much color and true Dickensian stories - right overcomes wrong and justice over evil in the end. I also read many of Dickens' novels, but I now believe that Dickens is to be listened to and not read. Although this book has two males (father and son) in the title, the most powerful and endearing character is Florence, Dombey's neglected daughter. Further, Dickens may have created one of the most obnoxious and evil characters in English literature in the person of Mr Dombey's manager, James Carker. Fortunately, and in true Dickens style, Carker gets his just desserts in the end. "A Hidden Dickens Gem" Would you consider the audio edition of Dombey and Son to be better than the print version?

I have never read the print version of Dombey and Son and had never even heard of it until I did a Dickens search in Audible. What does David Timson bring to the story that you wouldn???t experience if you just read the book? I thought that David Timson did a fanctastic job of bringing Dicken's characters to life. One benefit (and sometimes drawback) of listening to a book, is that you can be pulled into a character's life by the narrators voice. David Timson did an excellent job of differentiating one character from another. He has a very pleasant voice to listen to. Dickens has tendency to go on and on about a subject, but in David Timson's voice, it was not only pleasant but helped me understand the beauty of Dicken's narrative. "Great narrator for undeservedly forgotten Dickens" I love all things Dickens, so it's no wonder I enjoyed this. This narrator is just gorgeous. He absolutely brought this book to life. Captain Cuttle became a most beloved and alive human with Timson's voice. Wonderful, wonderful job. About the book itself. This is a very underrated Dickens novel that probably deserves some modern eyes to see & modern ears to hear.

Of course, as is characteristic of Dickens, this book rounds itself out and works all the bits and pieces to a satisfactory ending, but not always in the way we thought we wanted or in the timeframe we expected. It is a gorgeous story full of heart and timeless themes. "Brilliant narration!!" Better than reading the book? Yes- the narration is so good, it really brings the story alive. This is not one of Dickens great novels, but well worth the listen. Many of the social themes that Dickens typically examines are here, but the central themes are "Papa, what's money," and pride goeth before the fall. The main characters can be a bit tiresome (not Timson but rather Dickens). But there are some truly memorable and wonderful characters in Domby and Son, and Timson does a great job of inhabiting them. The novel's really bad guy, James Carker, has just the right resonance of condescension and swarm. Captain Cuttle is masterfully inarticulate, and Major J.B. Bagstock is equally masterfully a conceited windbag. You will much enjoy!!! "Terrific experience" Any additional comments?

First of all, Dickens is a master of the English language, using it like an artist painting a vivid portrait of Victorian England, his characters, and the world they live in. Second, he is deeply cognizant of human psychology,( of the passion of pride and jealousy in particular in Dombey and Son) and makes the motives believable. He is also a master of building up the suspense to make stories a real "page-turner". To top it all, the reading is fantastic, persuasive, and better than any print edition. I am out to read all of Dickens on audiobooks, now that I have so deeply enjoyed the first two (this one and the equally great Bleak House). "A Master Narrator and Under-appreciated Classic" What did you love best about Dombey and Son? There's little I can add to what other commentators have already said: David Timson is masterful. He's able to manage many different voices for the novel's characters and is one of the few male narrators I've listened to who's female voices are believable. But what most surprised me about this book was just how captivating it was.

I hadn't been expecting that since it's not one of Dickens' better known novels and I'd assumed this was because the plot or characters were less compelling than in his other books. Not the case! I've listened to about half of Dickens' novels now and this is my favorite, along with Bleak House. This has partially to do with the narrator, who can truly make or break a book, but greatly to do with the story itself. Like other novels, those of Dickens can be either plot-driven or character-driven. Dombey is character-driven and the characters here are colorful and captivating from the very beginning. This was the only novel that didn't take a few chapters or more to "get into". He had me from the very first lines and his description of the newborn Dombey in swaddling clothes by the fire, "as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin." "Dark Dickens, Superb Narrator" This is one of the darkest Dickens I've listened to. Fewer funny or lovable characters than in many of his stories and much time spent in very sad situations with too little love and too much greed and selfishness.

Narration is brilliant -- all voices are distinct and unique, women's voices are natural, and Captain Cuttle, Mr. Toots, and Sally are absolutely delightful. Despite the dark mood that prevails, this is still worth a listen because the writing is so beautiful and, as with all Dickens, his observations of human nature are spot-on. My favorite Dickens novels are still (1) Our Mutual Friend and (2) David Copperfield. Each have the perfect balance of characters, depth of story, humor and pathos in the right proportions.

Question: Which is the only Dickens novel to have a female narrator?
Answer: Bleak House