Storytelling for Social Change

I can't believe it, but we are halfway through the list of writers.   I have at least 13 of the 25 writers on the list finished - and today is Charles Dickens.

Now, Charles Dickens was a brilliant storyteller, a powerful voice for social justice, and a master of crafting unforgettable characters.

You could say that Charles Dickens was The Voice of the Common Person.
Dickens used his novels to expose the harsh realities of Victorian England, particularly for the poor and working class. His own childhood, which included a stint in a blacking factory after his father was imprisoned for debt, gave him a unique and empathetic perspective. He wrote about the brutal conditions in workhouses, the exploitation of child labor, and the hypocrisy of the justice system. Through his writing, he gave a voice to those who had none, forcing the public to confront the social injustices of their time. For example, in Oliver Twist, he vividly depicted the squalor of London's slums and the plight of orphaned children. His work was so effective it led to real-world social reforms.

Transcript

 
I can't believe it, but we are halfway through the list of writers.   I have at least 13 of the 25 writers on the list finished - and today is Charles Dickens.

Now, Charles Dickens was a brilliant storyteller, a powerful voice for social justice, and a master of crafting unforgettable characters.

You could say that Charles Dickens was The Voice of the Common Person.
Dickens used his novels to expose the harsh realities of Victorian England, particularly for the poor and working class. His own childhood, which included a stint in a blacking factory after his father was imprisoned for debt, gave him a unique and empathetic perspective. He wrote about the brutal conditions in workhouses, the exploitation of child labor, and the hypocrisy of the justice system. Through his writing, he gave a voice to those who had none, forcing the public to confront the social injustices of their time. For example, in Oliver Twist, he vividly depicted the squalor of London's slums and the plight of orphaned children. His work was so effective it led to real-world social reforms.

Charles Dickens had an extraordinary gift for creating characters who were larger than life and instantly recognizable. From the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge to the cheerful Tiny Tim, from the tragic Miss Havisham to the cunning Artful Dodger, his characters are more than just figures in a story; they are cultural archetypes. He often used caricatures to highlight a specific moral or social trait, making his characters memorable and his critiques all the more potent. This ability to populate his world with such a diverse and vibrant cast is a key reason his novels have endured for so long.

Charles Dickens was a trailblazer in how he published his work. Many of his novels, such as The Pickwick Papers and A Tale of Two Cities, were released in monthly or weekly installments. This serialization created a devoted and widespread readership who eagerly awaited the next installment, much like audiences today binge-watch a series. This format allowed him to respond to his readers' feedback and gave his stories a sense of urgency and suspense. He was a master of building dramatic cliffhangers, a technique that is still a staple of modern storytelling.

Even Charles Dickens' publishing techniques were groundbreaking because he revolutionized how stories were sold and consumed, essentially inventing a form of mass media that created a shared national reading experience.

Dickens’s primary innovation was the monthly installment. Instead of publishing a complete novel at once, he released his stories in short, serialized parts. This began with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, sold for just a shilling each. This method made literature affordable and accessible to a new, wider audience, including the middle and working classes who couldn't afford a full book. This approach was akin to a modern television series, creating a huge, engaged audience that would eagerly await each new episode.

To keep readers hooked for months, Dickens mastered the art of the dramatic cliffhanger. He would often end an installment with a character in peril or a shocking revelation, ensuring readers would return for the next issue. This serialization also gave him an unprecedented opportunity to shape his narrative and characters based on reader feedback. He was known to receive letters from readers pleading with him to spare a beloved character or asking him to address a particular social issue. This interactive feedback loop allowed him to develop the story in real-time, making his novels feel incredibly responsive and alive to the public's concerns.

Dickens didn't just write; he collaborated with illustrators like George Cruikshank and Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz") to create images for each installment. These illustrations were a vital part of the story, giving readers a visual representation of his characters and scenes. This fusion of text and image was crucial for a mass audience, many of whom were still developing their reading skills. The iconic visual representations of characters like Scrooge and Oliver Twist, which we still recognize today, were born from this collaboration. This visual component helped to cement his characters in the public imagination, making them instantly recognizable figures.

Charles Dickens was a master of creating characters who were not just individuals but vivid types, often embodying a specific human quality or social condition. His characters are so iconic they've become part of our cultural language.

Perhaps Dickens's most famous creation, Ebenezer Scrooge is the ultimate symbol of miserliness and greed.  He's a cold-hearted, wealthy man who despises Christmas and human connection, famously saying, "Bah! Humbug!" His journey, guided by three ghosts, is a powerful story of redemption.

Another Dickens character, Oliver Twist is the innocent orphan who embodies the plight of poor and vulnerable children in Victorian London. His journey from a cruel workhouse to the criminal underworld of Fagin and the Artful Dodger exposes the brutality of the era. His famous line, "Please, sir, I want some more," is a heartbreaking cry for help that highlights the starvation and abuse in workhouses.

And another Dickens character is Miss Havisham. She is a tragic and gothic figure who represents a life frozen in time. Abandoned on her wedding day, she wears her wedding dress for the rest of her life, living in a decaying mansion with her uneaten wedding feast still on the table.  She is a symbol of a broken heart and emotional decay, and she seeks revenge by raising her adopted daughter Estella to break men's hearts.

Now the character of Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger, is a cunning and charismatic pickpocket. Despite his young age, he is a skilled criminal and serves as a foil to the innocent Oliver Twist. He represents the way poverty and exploitation force children into a life of crime, but he also has a certain charm and wit that makes him a memorable and complex character.

Now, Charles Dickens used his immense popularity to expose social injustices, prompting real-world reforms and helping to make the world a better place. He was a powerful social critic who translated his observations into compelling stories that moved the public to action.

Dickens's most significant contribution was to shine a light on the brutal conditions faced by the poor in Victorian England. His novels were not just entertainment; they were indictments of a society that neglected its most vulnerable citizens. For example:

Workhouses: In Oliver Twist, he vividly depicted the cruelty and starvation in workhouses, public institutions where the poor and orphaned were sent to labor. The novel's shocking details, particularly the mistreatment of children, led to public outrage and helped fuel the push for reform of the Poor Laws.

Child Labor and Education: In Hard Times, Dickens criticized the utilitarian educational system that stifled imagination and creativity, portraying it as a soulless machine. He also highlighted the deplorable conditions in factories and mines, advocating for better treatment and opportunities for children.

The Legal System: In Bleak House, he created the endless legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce to satirize the complex and inefficient court system of the time. The novel's portrayal of legal corruption and the suffering it caused was a powerful call for judicial reform.

Changing Public Opinion
Dickens's work was so effective because his stories were consumed by a broad audience, from the working class to Queen Victoria herself. His serialized novels created a shared experience where readers discussed the characters and the social issues they represented. By giving a face to the suffering of the poor through characters like Tiny Tim or Oliver Twist, he made these abstract problems personal and relatable. This emotional connection was a catalyst for change.

His influence was so great that when his novel A Christmas Carol was published, its portrayal of Scrooge's redemption and the spirit of giving sparked a renewed focus on charity and generosity during the Christmas season. The book is widely credited with helping to popularize many of the Christmas traditions we know today and remains a powerful moral lesson about compassion and empathy.

Charles Dickens's public readings during the latter part of his life were a unique and highly successful venture that fused his literary genius with his passion for acting. They were not simple readings but highly theatrical, one-man shows that brought his characters to life for a mass audience.

Dickens was meticulous in his preparation. He was a lifelong amateur actor and theater enthusiast, and he applied the same rigor to his readings as a professional actor would to a stage play.

Dickens created special, edited versions of his novels, known as "prompt-copies." He heavily marked up these books with detailed stage directions, vocal cues, and notes for himself. He would cut out long descriptive passages to tighten the narrative and focus on the most dramatic and humorous scenes. For example, he condensed the three-hour-long A Christmas Carol into a brisk ninety-minute performance.

The readings were essentially a monopolylogue, a performance in which a single actor plays multiple characters. Dickens had a specially designed reading desk to act as his stage. Standing behind it, he would transform into each character using only his voice, gestures, and facial expressions. He could shift from the rasping voice of Scrooge to the cheerful chirp of Tiny Tim in an instant, often with his back to the audience to create the illusion of a full cast.

Dickens paid close attention to staging and lighting. He had a custom-built reading desk that was open on the sides so his body gestures were visible, and he often used a special arrangement of gas lights to dramatically illuminate his face. He dressed in formal evening wear, and the only props he used were the desk, a pitcher of water, and his handkerchief. And the
public's reaction to Dickens's readings was overwhelming. Not surprisingly, the readings were a tremendous financial success.

Audiences were captivated by his performances. People would wait in line for hours outside in freezing weather just to get tickets. Critics and fans alike described the experience as a magical transformation. Listeners laughed and cried with the characters, feeling an emotional connection that went beyond the printed page. His performance of the final, terrifying scene of "Sikes and Nancy" from Oliver Twist was so intense that audiences would scream and faint, leaving Dickens physically and emotionally drained. Many of his friends and family worried that the performances were taking too great a toll on his health.

Not surprisingly, the reading tours were incredibly profitable. By the late 1850s, Dickens was making more money from his readings than from his writing. His tours of Great Britain and America in the 1860s earned him a huge sum. In fact, on his second tour of America, he made about £10,000 in just the first few weeks, a staggering amount of money for the time. This financial success cemented his status not just as a great author, but as a wealthy and globally recognized celebrity. The demand for tickets was so high that a black market emerged, with speculators selling tickets for exorbitant prices - you might call them victorian era ticket scalpers

Dickens was a master storyteller. His tales, filled with dramatic plots and memorable characters, are still captivating today. Characters such as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, the kind-hearted Tiny Tim, and the cunning Artful Dodger are more than just literary figures; they are cultural archetypes. We use terms like "Scrooge" to describe a greedy person and "Dickensian" to describe scenes of poverty and social inequality.  His stories have been adapted countless times for film, television, and theater, proving their enduring appeal.

Dickens used his novels as a platform for social reform. Having experienced poverty firsthand, he exposed the brutal realities of Victorian society, including child labor, the workhouse system, and the cruelties of debtor's prisons. His vivid and emotional portrayals in novels like Oliver Twist and Bleak House shocked the public into awareness, leading to real-world changes in law and public policy. Reading Dickens today reminds us of the power of literature to be a force for social change and gives us a historical lens through which to view similar injustices in our own time.

Dickens was a pioneer in how he told his stories. He wrote for a mass audience, serializing his novels in magazines and using cliffhangers at the end of each installment to keep readers hooked. This technique, similar to modern television series, made reading a communal experience.  His work shows us how to build suspense, develop intricate plots, and create compelling characters, lessons that are still relevant to writers and storytellers today.
Dickens's concern with social justice had a lasting impact, influencing many authors who came after him. He established a tradition of using fiction to critique social problems, inspiring writers to tackle issues like poverty, class inequality, and the exploitation of the working class.

And not surprisingly, Dickens was a huge influence on future writers. A few examples include:

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans): Eliot, a contemporary of Dickens, was deeply concerned with the moral and social fabric of society. In novels like Middlemarch, she explored the struggles of individuals within a rigid social structure, examining issues of class, ambition, and community. Like Dickens, she used her work to highlight societal problems, though her approach was more psychological and less melodramatic.

Elizabeth Gaskell: Gaskell's novels, such as Mary Barton and North and South, are powerful examples of "social problem novels" directly inspired by Dickens. She focused on the tensions between the rich and the poor during the Industrial Revolution, giving a voice to the plight of factory workers and exposing the horrific conditions they faced.

The American writer Upton Sinclair was heavily influenced by Dickens's style of social exposé. His 1906 novel The Jungle, which documented the unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry, was a direct effort to use fiction for social reform. It famously led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in the United States.

George Orwell, another writer deeply concerned with social justice, drew from Dickens's sharp-eyed observations of poverty and bureaucratic injustice. Orwell's nonfiction work Down and Out in Paris and London mirrors Dickens's own experiences with poverty, and his critiques of totalitarianism in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four can be seen as an extension of Dickens's critique of oppressive systems.

Even modern authors such as J.K. Rowling have also shown a Dickensian concern for social justice. The Harry Potter series, for example, explores themes of class prejudice, racism, and the abuse of power. The characters and settings, from the downtrodden house-elves to the institutional power of the Ministry of Magic, echo Dickens's use of allegory to critique social systems. Rowling has openly acknowledged Dickens as a major influence on her work, particularly in her creation of the cruel Dursleys and the magical world's darker aspects.

Unfortunately, there's no reliable estimate for the total number of books thatCharles Dickens has sold, including his penny novels. This is due to several historical factors that make an accurate count impossible.

Unlike today's publishing industry, which tracks sales with ISBNs and digital databases, Victorian-era sales were not systematically recorded. Publishers' records from that time are incomplete or have been lost. And a
single Dickens novel was often sold in multiple formats: as monthly or weekly penny serials, as complete books, and as part of massive reprintings. Many of these editions were produced by different publishers, and a single novel could have dozens of printings in a single year, making a cumulative count nearly impossible.

Dickens's work was widely popular, and this led to a massive number of unauthorized, pirated editions, particularly in the United States, that were never officially counted. And his books have been in continuous print for over 150 years. This long-term, global presence across countless publishers and formats makes any attempt at a modern sales count an educated guess at best. While we can't pinpoint a specific number, we do know that Dickens was one of the most popular and commercially successful authors of his time, with his books often selling millions of copies in their original printings.

While a precise number is impossible to determine due to a lack of accurate 19th-century publishing records and widespread piracy, we know from historical data that his works were a massive commercial success. For example, The Pickwick Papers sold over 40,000 copies in its final installment, and A Christmas Carol sold out its first print run of 6,000 copies in just days. His popularity was so immense that when a character was introduced in a serialized novel, readers would flood the publisher with letters. This widespread appeal and continued readership over 150 years make him one of the most successful novelists of all time.

But getting back to Dicken’s environment - his difficult childhood profoundly shaped his stories and novels by giving him a unique and empathetic understanding of poverty, social injustice, and the vulnerability of children. His personal experiences weren't just a source of material; they were the wellspring of his social critique and his most enduring characters.

When Dickens was 12, he was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days in a rat-infested blacking factory. This experience of child labor, and the humiliation of his family's poverty, left a lasting scar. It's why his novels are filled with detailed and emotionally resonant depictions of the urban poor. He wasn't writing from a detached, journalistic viewpoint; he was writing from a place of firsthand knowledge.

The image of the vulnerable, orphaned, or exploited child is a recurring motif in Dickens's work. Oliver Twist, a young boy who is sent to a brutal workhouse, is a direct reflection of Dickens’s own sense of powerlessness and desperation. David Copperfield, a character who also works in a factory and is based in part on Dickens himself, represents the trauma of a lost childhood. These characters are not just plot devices; they are an emotional core that makes his social commentary so powerful.

His personal suffering gave him a deep-seated distrust of the institutions that he felt failed the poor. He satirized and critiqued workhouses, schools, and the legal system. In Oliver Twist, he exposed the hypocritical cruelty of the workhouse system. In Nicholas Nickleby, he targeted the horrific boarding schools of the era. His experience with the legal system that imprisoned his father for debt fueled his scathing portrayal of legal corruption and inefficiency in Bleak House.

In short, Dickens's childhood was a masterclass in the very social injustices he would later write about. It provided him with the raw material and the moral outrage necessary to become a novelist who not only entertained but also sought to change the world for the better. In this episode, I have talked about some of the ways that Dickens made the world a better place through his works, but I would like to end this podcast episode an engrossing section from a Tale of Two Cities - hear the character of Sydney Carton is unselfishly giving his life so that his close friend can live.  Here Dickens shows us his deepest belief in sacrifice, redemption, and the hope that even in the darkest times, something better can be born.

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul,
than I was in the souls of both.

“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man
winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him
winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the
light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,
fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,
with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to
look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement--and I hear him
tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Sources include a tale of two cities, The pickwick papers, a Christmas Carol, Oliver twist, all by Charles Dickens, Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, Dickens London, Charles Dickens the making of a literary giant, and Gerrish lights the public readings of Charles Dickens by Raymond FitzSimmons

Join Celebrate Creativity for episode 46 for a look at Victor Hugo - the author of the hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Creativity.