Victorians! discussion

While Mr. Pickwick is having his adventure at the school, which has left him with rheumatism from the damp, the rest of the Pickwickians have remained in Eatenswill, where Winkle is still at the Potts'. The rival newspaper publishes a poem implying that Potts is being cuckolded by Winkle, which leads to a confrontation. Mrs. Potts resolves the matter by a fit of hysterics, which induces her husband to say that he doesn't believe it. Summoned by Pickwick, they depart to join him and Wardle, who invites them to Dingley Dell for Christmas and the wedding of his daughter Bella (Snodgrass has a bad moment when he hears of a wedding, until assured it is not Emily's). Mr. Pickwick then receives a letter advising him that he is being sued for breach of promise by his landlady, Mrs. Bardell! He resolves to return to London, but first there is another shooting party; since Pickwick is rheumatic, he is taken in a wheelbarrow by Sam. Winkle demonstrates once again that he is not a sportsman, while Tupman manages to bag a bird while his eyes are closed. After lunch, at which Pickwick takes a good quantity of punch, they leave him asleep as they go on. Captain Boldwig, the owner of the property, finds him and has him arrested for trespassing! Wardle gets him out. Back in London, Pickwick visits Mrs. Bardell's lawyers, Dodson and Fogg, but they will not drop the case. We then make the acquaintance of Sam's father, an amusing character who drives a coach. As Pickwick's lawyer Perker is out of town, he meets with his clark Mr. Lowten, who is drinking with a group of his fellow clerks.

I am starting to see that this book is well suited to serial publication but less successful (I think) when read as a book. Each set of chapters is self-contained and each set has its predictable structure: the Pickwickians journey to a new location, get involved in an adventure of some sort (usually with humorous overtones), the issue is resolved and we are on to the next. Although each adventure is a good read, they are starting to merge in my mind. And though we're learning a bit more about each character, They are not growing more complex.

The part at the lawyers' office is the first part where I actually recognise Dickens' writing from his other novels. The Pickwick Papers is a humorous work with light and bearable problems, which are somehow funny. This is not how I know Dickens from other works that I read from him, which are A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist and Bleak House. These novels show gruesome problems and a harsh world. The grim, lightless offices from chapter 20, where greedy people are making long hours, are recurrent in his work. And I wonder how this image has progressed in his further writing. I haven't read enough Dickens to answer this.
I must say, I like The Pickwick Papers just as much as I do Dickens' other work. The tone of the novel is rather refreshing.

Susan wrote: "I am starting to see that this book is well suited to serial publication but less successful (I think) when read as a book. Each set of chapters is self-contained and each set has its predictable s..."

From what I read in the introduction, this was originally not intended to be a novel or book, but just a series of monthly sketches to accompany sporting illustrations. The illustrations were really supposed to be the main thing, and the writing just an accompaniment. I don't think Dickens liked that idea so much from the start, and after the original illustrator left and committed suicide, and another had tried and then left, Dickens and his publishers found 'Phiz' (Hablot K. Browne), who later illustrated so many of Dickens' novels. I don't think it was until about the sixth or seventh installment that Dickens decided to try to tie it together with a bit more of an ongoing plot. It does remind me a bit of a picaresque novel - similar, in a way, to Don Quijote, both in being a series of adventures, but also the contrast between the idealistic master and the realistic servant

Denise, I'd realized that this was a picaresque tale but had not gotten the additional parallel to Don Quixote that you mentioned: the idealistic master and practical servant. That parallel also appears (sort of) in the great American picaresque tale "The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn". It's a bit of a stretch to call Huck idealistic, but he is younger and less jaded than Jim.