Quigsnip: The Untold Tale of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist"

                  

                          Quigsnip

        The Untold Tale of

                                        Charles Dickens'

 

              OLIVER TWIST

           

Jacob T. Marley by William Bennet

     This is an interesting little book that I happened to read the Christmas before last at the local library, essentially in one sitting. A lot of people probably wonder why Dickens didn't delve deeper into the personal history of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's ill-fated partner in Carol, especially since he was so central to the story. Unlike his more famous business partner,we learn nothing of Marley's childhood or younger years, only that he lived much of his life as a ruthless business man.
    
      Just who was Jacob Marley? What made him into the sort of man he became, and how did he and Scrooge meet? The answers to those questions and others come to light in R. William Bennett's small novella. There have been a number of pastiches of A Christmas Carol over the years, two of the most memorable for me, being God Bless Us Everyone, a book detailing the years following Scrooge's conversion, and Christmas Carol II, The Sequel, a spoofy version that finds Scrooge going too far in the other direction, hosted by George Burns back in 1986. No pastiche is or should be considered canonical; however Bennet's tale is not only better than most, it fills out what the life of Marley may well have been like. One almost wishes for Dickens' stamp of approval--though what the author's opinion would be is anyone's guess.

      One more thing: the author does deal with the issue of Marley's salvation. When we meet in the story, it appears that Marley is a lost soul, doomed to an eternity of hopeless wandering. Not tom divulge the ending, but the author comes up with a scenario in which this might not necessarily be the case, and he does without altering anything that Dickens wrote in the original. I've also read that the author happens to be a Mormon; as I'm only marginally familiar with the Mormon concept of an afterlife, so I can't say for certain to what degree that might have shaped his writing.

But Jacob T. Marley is a worthy "sequel", and one well-worth picking up. 

The Faith of Charles Dickens

       In God and Charles Dickens, Christian author Gary L. College argues that Dickens was an important Christian voice, and the messages of faith that his stories are rife with are seldom discussed or appreciated. Some have argued that Dickens was only nominally a Christian, and even that his works were overtly anti-religious. While it is very true that the author was very critical of how the tenants of the Christian faith were abused or preached hypocritically by those in power, a closer reading of his text reveals that Dickens was NOT condemning Christianity itself--far from it. As I've argued elsewhere, citing hypocrisy among Christians (or those who identify themselves as such)is a very poor way of finding fault with the faith itself. In fact, as College argues, it was the Christian faith of Charles Dickens that lead him to attack hypocrisy he identified in the religious as he sought to change it. The subject of Victorian religious hypocrisy brings almost immediately to my mind the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Bumble in Oliver Twist, the gross, hypocritical Mr. Bumble in particular famous for preaching Christian charity with wallowing in gluttony in front of the starving poor. A line from the 1982 movie stands out in particular, spoken by the future Mrs. Bumble: "Forgive these children their sins; their sinners every one of them; they wouldn't be here is they wasn't. Help me make them better Christians, Lord." Also of particular not note is the incident in the book where Mr. Bumble deliberately lies to Mr. Brownlow about Oliver's good nature.
      College spends time discussing a little-known work of the author, The Life of Our Lord, in which he expounds on the life and acts of Jesus Christ, and their relevance to his present world. This work is little known precisely because it was never intended to be sold to the public; it was a private work intended as a guide to Christian living for his children, and only brought to light years after his death. But even a casual reading of Dickens reveals what amounts to an essentially Christian world-view. While A Christmas Carol is sometimes criticized by the religious as almost entirely secular, Tiny Tim Crachit's enduring phrase God Bless Us, Everyone!, and Bob Crachit's observation of Tim's wish that people would see he was a cripple so that they should remember "Who made lame men walk and blind men see," speak volumes, as do the final pages of Oliver Twist, which reference God and heaven and speak of the narrator's belief that the shade of Agnes Fleming (Oliver's deceased mother) will visit her gravesite. College goes further, pointing out the good characters in Dickens' novels exemplify Christian values, while his villains demonstrate their antithesis.
   One thing that struck me in particular while reading this was how much emphasis Dickens placed on human charity and working for the common good, and how this so contrasts with today's evangelism, in which "good works" are continually downplayed, sometimes to the point of vilification, while "faith" is exulted. Often (though not always) such evangelists recognize that a saving faith will produce works, though it does not always come across that way. Dickens, however, put the importance of charity and defense of the weak, poor, and disenfranchised at the forefront of Christian living. Nor did he confine such philanthropy to his fiction; as College shows, Dickens own life shows much evidence of personal charity.
    So different from the culture-war oriented evangelism of today that often dumbs down faith to a "get out of hell free card." Not that Dickens disbelieved in or disregarded hell's existence: he did not. College provides passages where Dickens strongly suggests that certain non-repentant characters, such as Fagin and Sikes in Oliver Twist, and Rigaud in Little Dorrit were beyond moral redemption at the time of their deaths.
      Curiously, however, College neglects to mention a very powerful presentation of a damned soul, perhaps the most powerful in literature: Jacob Marley. However, as I'll discuss in my next post, it is possible that Marley was not as beyond moral redemption as one might have thought--although I'll say right now that that is according to a different author's interpretation.
  

BBC's Recent Great Expectations--the Gothic Dickens

I wasn't really sure about starting a blog on Charles Dickens, as I figure there may not be many posts for it in the near future, though I could be wrong. I'm reading two works about Dickens right now.  I've read a number of his books, mostly during my college years--though with only one real exception--out side of class. Most classes, in fact, avoid reading Dickens, mainly because of the length and complexity of most of his novels. The only one we did actually read was Hard Times, a good novel so far as his harsh critic of the Victorian industrial conditions and attitudes, but hardly his most important work or his best. There was class offered every once in a blue moon which specialized in Dickens, and offered a Marxist approach to his work, but I was never able to take.

I'm familiar with a lot of Dickens' films though, especially back during the eighties era--see my Clive Donner blog for descriptions of that director's version of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Those films, along with the Chris Sanderson version of A Tale of Two Cities, were shown on CBS TV as part of their "Read More About It" program. The extravagant Royal Shakespeare company version of Nicholas Nickleby, starring Roger Rees as Nicholas (you might remember him as Scrooge's nephew Fred in George Scott's Carol) was shown on ABC. It was PBS, however, that showed the most productions, however, as part of masterpiece theater, including one biography of the author's life, called Dickens of London, which I was able to acquire only fairly recently.

Most of these were done by the BBC. It was their version of Great Expectations , first broadcast back in 1981, before I even knew anything of Dickens other than Carol, that I liked the best. Like other BBC productions Dickens, it stretched on for many episodes, in fact longer than it needed to be to encompass the richness of Dickens' writing. It was played straight, with all the significant details intact. Well, maybe not quite--I seem to recall that no mention was ever made that Compeyson, Magwitch's nemesis, also being the man who deserted Miss Havisham on her wedding night. This incident, in fact ,forms the entire basis for the plot of the story. Now, I won't exactly say that it was left out, merely not brought out, and I can't recall if it was mentioned in the recent 20011 version either. I do recall that the big-screen modernization back in the nineties, which starred Rober DeNiro, eliminated the Compeyson character altogather. This was a very significant error, as what happens in the story therefore makes little sense. The most recent adaptation of GE, initially released only in Britain, ommits Orlick, or so I've heard. This also would create problems, especially in relation to the fate of Pip's sister, but eliminating Compeyson is far more serious.

It's the 2011 version Great Expectations that concerns me here, though. What is most obvious upfront about this film, in common with quite a few other recent Dickens movies by the BBC, seems to be attempting to "modernize" Dickens text. An even more obvious example of this would be the 2007 version of Oliver Twist
with a jarringly modern soundtrack, a Fagin, played by Timothy Spall, who was nearly unrecognizable as the character Dickens created, and which recast Nancy as a Black woman. Other recent BBC productions, such as Bleak House, take a dark, almost Gothic approach. This appears to be the approach they took here. The soundtrack for GE, the atmosphere and photography, seem even to suggest a horror tale. The entire film seems pervaded by a sinister air of lurking menace which is absent from any previous version. The moment when Magwitch reveals himself as Pip's benefactor, is in particular, rife with dark import.

Whether of not this is actually a "problem" with the movie, though, I'm not sure. The original obviously contains elements of the Gothic, the most obvious being Miss Havisham, draped in her wedding shall in her decaying mansion. The fact that this gothic atmosphere has invaded the entire film, however, is a bit disconcerting. Ironically, though, the character of Orlick is a creepy bug-eyed teenager in this film. He seems more like a juvenile bully, and is far less menacing than the burly, adult Orlick from 1981. Also, significantly, the scene near the end where Orlick captures and threatens Pip with death is absent. Miss Havisham is appropriately spidery, and emaciated looking, as well as a bit younger than she is generally portrayed. The character of Bentley Drummle is arrogant, swaggering and rather handsome in this version, compared to the 1981 film when he merely smarmy and oafish. Both Drummles manage to be thoroughly despicable, though the 1981 is perhaps a bit more so. Still it's easier to see in this version why Drummle presents Pip with a serious rival.

Though this version exceeds two hours, it is shorter by far than the rambling 1981 version. Most of the significant episodes manage to remain, though many have been shortened or revamped to fit the shorter running time.

One subtle, though very significant, change from Dickens' novel takes place in during the early scene in which Pip brings food and a file to Magwitch. In the book (and the other film versions as near as I recall), Magwitch threatens the boy into bringing him both the file and food. In this version, he demands the file only. But Pip, being the good-hearted young lad that he is, brings him his tyrannical sister's Christmas cake anyway. This seemingly insignificant fact comes to light years later, after Magwitch finally reveals his identity :"the file you took because you were scared--but the cake you took because of the goodness of your heart."

This is one of the rare incidents in which I beleive the writers actually one-upped Dickens. The author seemingly intended for Pip's bringing the convict what he needed to demonstrate the boy's compassion, yet the fact that he did so out of fear undermines this. Pip's compassion is, in fact, evident, in his concern for Magwitch's alleged companion (who, in fact, he has been told is a murdering psychopath!), when he asks Magwitch if he will not share the cake with his friend. But this is merely incidental to what actually occurs in the story. Having Pip bring Magwitch the cake on his own steam not only makes of point of the boy's compassion, but also makes more sense in light of what Magwitch does for him as a return favor. It never quite made sense that the convict would go to all that trouble for a lad whom he'd merely frightened into helping him.

Like the 1982 and 2007 versions of Oliver Twist it makes the protagonist more heroic--in those versions Oliver takes his bowl up for another starving boy, unlike the book, in which the boys drew lots and Oliver lost. Oversights by Dickenss in my opinion.

Still, the Gothic atmosphere which pervades this production makes the story seem overly bleak. And in regard to "modernization" of the classics, this, in general may be a bleak sign--that the great literature of the past may be less versatile than previously thought. Otherwise, if the work be a classic, why modernize it?