The basis of the entirety of the plot in Bleak House by Charles Dickens is essentially an investigation. As the novel unfolds, little bits of the story come together in what is essentially a murder mystery at the end. Similarly, in The Devil in...

One detail critics seem unable to agree on a conclusion regarding in Charles Dickens’s masterpiece novel Bleak House is the author’s decision to tell his story from the perspective of both a seemingly-omniscient third-person narrator and the...

He maketh the deep to boil like a pot:

he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

Job (ch. XLI, v. 31)

Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Export by Charles Dickens is a novel largely about motion and change. A good place to begin the analysis...

“Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.” This quote, often attributed to Einstein, is actually said by many physicists and writers – the oldest confirmed being Ray Cummings in a short story. However, Dickens’s novels have...

Charles Dickens’ novel Dombey and Son displays the patriarch Mr. Dombey in his obvious and complete disappointment in his daughter. Florence, as the only surviving heir to Mr. Dombey, has no worth to him, which he outwardly acknowledges, yet...

Narcissism, defined as extreme selfishness combined with a lack of empathy for others, is the exact trait which Dombey exhibits in the short story. Immediately after his wife has given birth to their son, he displays his indifference towards her...

The railway system brought an air of uneasiness to British society during the nineteenth century, during which change was felt behind every corner. While this feeling of skepticism was felt through all social classes, the middle and lower classes...

An audience member's gleeful first-hand account of Charles Dickens's public reading of "A Christmas Carol" unwittingly exposes an often overlooked contradiction in the story's climax: "Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human...

Like Christmas morning itself - when each present represents a discrete mystery, separate from the last - the Christmas Carol is divided into a set of episodes. The book's chapters are episodic, with the duration of each spirit a single episode....

Much of Charles Dickens' representation of morality in his most famous of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, is derived from "the wisdom of our ancestors." (1) From the beginning of his narrative Dickens explains his usage of the phrase "dead...

While in Christianity Christmas maintains certain religious icons that help school boys and girls remember the story of the birth of Christ, had Tiny Tim attempted to recite the Christian myth he likely would have earned a swift stroke of the...

Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is set in Victorian London and tells the story of the transformation of a wicked, miserly Scrooge into a benevolent humanitarian via supernatural intervention. The invited reading persuades readers to accept that...

‘A Christmas Carol’ was immediately popular in Victorian England and soon, the rest of the world. It became a cultural icon, sparking a tradition to be read every Christmas Eve in many households. The relevance of the novella, even in the 21st...

“If they would rather die, then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Ebenezer Scrooge’s words encapsulate how he is characterised as a largely disagreeable, morally vacuous man. Silhouetted against the backdrop of...

“These are but the spirit of things that have been.” The metaphorical words of the Ghost of Christmas Past are typical of Dickens’ melodramatic writing style. Set in Victorian England, a time rife with greed and social stratification, Charles...

“I wear the chain I forged in life… I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will, I wear it.” Jacob Marley’s words allude to the harrowing impact that emotions such as remorse have on the...

When a man’s name is synonymous with greed and misery, most readers would not associate him with the shining image of a hero. The hero’s journey is a classic literary pattern in which a character goes on an adventure, faces challenges, and comes...

‘Jacob Marley was as dead as a doornail.’ The celebrated author Charles Dickens accentuates this inert nature of a door nail to the society to 1843 England through his classic novella ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The novella’s titular character, Ebenezer...

‘A Christmas Carol’ is a novella written by Charles Dickens in 1843, the novella follows the journey of a stingy protagonist -Scrooge- and his many epiphanies that lead him to eventually understand the paramount role of family, joy and social...

The theme of marriage is a prevalent one throughout the novel, often utilised by Dickens to convey the prominence of values such as wealth and status within its contemporary society. The depiction of marriage in the novel acts as a vehicle through...

Within Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend exist several separate worlds. The lives of the Boffinses are separate from that of Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap, which in turn is separate from the lives of the different members of the Hexam family. The most...

The narrator of “The Signal-Man” by Charles Dickens comes across the Signal-Man and calls to him, and thus he begins to learn of deaths and supernatural happenings along the train tracks where the Signal-Man keeps his post. At the very ending of...