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Dickens' Use Of His American Experiences In Martin Chuzzlewit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Harry Stone
Harry Stone*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
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Extract

On 31 January 1842, shortly after Dickens arrived on his first visit to the United States, he wrote to his friend Thomas Mitton, “There is a great deal afloat here in the way of subjects for description. I keep my eyes open pretty wide, and hope to have done so to some purpose by the time I come home.” And certainly Dickens' observations were to “some purpose.” The American visit produced a fine series of letters, a travel book, American Notes for General Circulation (1842), and the famous American chapters of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44). These three basic sources—the letters on America, which were never intended for publication as such; the Notes, which represented Dickens' public statement of what he saw in America; and Chuzzlewit, the fictional recreation of the America he found—form an extraordinary trilogy of materials made to order for the study of the relationship between fact and fiction. But strangely enough, despite the immensity of the Dickens bibliography, one hunts vainly for such a study. And yet, by analyzing the American chapters in Martin Chuzzlewit in the light of Dickens' letters from America and his American Notes, it is possible to achieve a better understanding of his artistic methods and limitations. One can see, for example, how Dickens the observer, the selector, worked, how he broke up some experiences and fused others together. One can watch impressions and images recur and reappear as the associations with which they are connected also recur and reappear. Finally, one can better understand the fictional difficulties and shortcomings in the American interlude of Martin Chuzzlewit; one can better explain a good many artistic lapses and seemingly wild exaggerations.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , June 1957 , pp. 464 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 464 The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter, Nonesuch ed. (Bloomsbury, 1938), I, 381—hereafter referred to as NL and cited within the text.

Note 2 in page 464 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J. W. T. Ley (London, 1928), p. 195—hereafter referred to as CD and cited within the text.

Note 3 in page 466 American Notes for General Circulation, National ed. (London, 1907), Ch. ii, p. 12—hereafter referred to as AN and cited within the text by chapter and page.

Note 4 in page 466 National ed. (London, 1907), i, xv, 304-305—hereafter referred to as MC and cited within the text by volume, chapter, and page.

Note 5 in page 467 In writing American Notes, Dickens used his American letters to Forster and others.

Note 6 in page 469 See also AN, xi, p. 188: the tree's “bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag it under water.”

Note 7 in page 471 “Four Months With Charles Dickens: During His First Visit to America (In 1842),” Atlantic Monthly, xxvi (Oct.-Nov. 1870), 591.

Note 8 in page 473 William Glyde Wilkins, Charles Dickens in America (London, 1911), p. 153.

Note 9 in page 473 “Four Months,” pp. 481–482.

Note 10 in page 473 Ibid., pp. 480, 595, 481.

Note 11 in page 476 In Chuzzlewit Dickens withdraws the veil. The “L. L.'s” are transcendental, and they are anatomized in Chuzzlewit briefly but brilliantly. See Ch. xxxiv.

Note 12 in page 477 Henry E. Huntington Lib. MS. HM 17786.