Martin Chuzzlewit

Although this story is technically flawed (most of the last 1/3 of it seems disjointed and isn't of the same quality as the rest of the novel) the good parts of it are still so humorous and enjoyable, I was happy to overlook the parts which weren't up to snuff. Again, if you listen to the book, you will really be able to pick up on Dickens' subtle sense of humor which comes out at some of his best in Martin Chuzzlewitt. His humor is always dry and sly and he slips something funny in when you least expect it. You have to be really listening--it will be in the name of a character, the way someone answers or even in the narration. All of Dicken's characters names mean something--it's a literary motif he uses to perfection.

A good comedy about greed and hypocrisy! Has two of his best and most memorable characters: Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp.

Started: 25 June 2001

Found this book annoying, all right already Mr Dickens, you are an amazing writer and observer of human nature, and funny, but this book left me cold, characters are good or evil, I didn't care about any of them. Maybe this is a lesser known Dickens novel for a good reason?!?

This book too me foreverrrrrrrrrr, but it was so worth it! I think what I most loved about this Dickens read was the characters. First off, what's not to love about names like Pecksniff, Sweedlepipe, Spottletoe, and ofc Chuzzlewit?! Dickens threw a lot of subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) humor into each character's dialogue that really made them come alive.

The Best of Boz and the Worst of Boz

Martin Chuzzlewit, which was published between 1843 and 1844 in monthly instalments and can be regarded as Dickens’s last excursion into the genre of picaresque writing – his next major novel, Dombey and Son would not see its first instalment before October 1846 and was much more carefully planned –, witnessed a further waning of the star of Dickens’s popularity as a writer, a development that had already started with its forerunner Barnaby Rudge. Dickens reacted to the decline in monthly sales figures by sending the eponymous hero to America, where Martin tries to make a fortune but soon finds himself the dupe of ruthless self-promoters. Nevertheless, even though the British reading public entertained a strong interest in anything that had to do with the United States, sales figures did not really pick up remarkably, and what was even worse: The American public was not at all amused at what it regarded as an unfair and scurrilous attack upon a whole nation, and it took Dickens quite some time to live down his literary transgressions against God’s own country.

To be sure, the American chapters, though they contain some unforgettable characters, like the Janus-faced impostor Scadder, or the pompous editor Mr. Jefferson Brick, do not integrate well with the rest of the novel, and they all too obviously miss any credible link with the rest of the book. Like Martin himself, one is relieved when the hero and his indefatigable sidekick Mark Tapley finally leave the American shores behind them and return to Merry Old England since it cannot be denied that Dickens’s possible anger at the U.S.’s copyright infringements had got the better of him, enticing him to excoriate anything American in a way that turned satire into mere calumny.

And yet, I would rank Martin Chuzzlewit among Dickens’s finest achievements as a writer. How come? The answer is simple enough. Because I like the book for all its faults, seeing that, to slightly quote from Dickens himself, this novel contains the best of Boz and the worst of Boz. The flaws of the novel are easily discernible. Apart from the monotonous America-bashing passages, the novel’s plot-construction is, at best, pathetic. The novel takes no fewer than ten chapters to get going and to give the reader an inkling of what it is all about, and even then the plot is full of holes. Were it not for the title, for instance, we would not know for sure whom we are supposed to root for as the novel’s protagonist – and even with this additional help it is surprisingly difficult to root for Martin. The novel centres on … hmm, I’m at a loss to say on whom or what, actually, because we as readers have to divide our attention between Mr. Pecksniff’s machinations in order to beguile his suspicious and wealthy relative, old Martin Chuzzlewit, on the one hand, and young Martin’s attempts at winning his grandfather’s respect on the other hand. The novel, however, has at least one more hand, in that it also centres on Martin’s cousin Jonas, who is an arch-scoundrel, wishing for his father’s death, and later being entangled in the web of a base impostor who practises fraud on a grand scale. Frankly speaking, since I love books like Tristram Shandy or Moby-Dick, which have no plot to speak of, I did not really give a damn about the plot deficiencies in Martin Chuzzlewit, all the less so as every honest-to-God Pickwickian knows that generally you do not read Dickens for his plots but rather in spite of them. Here, however, it is so obvious that Dickens himself did not always know whither the winds of inspiration were going to take him so that there are some characters who ultimately serve no purpose, or hardly any, at all, characters who might have been introduced into the novel with a certain purpose, but whose purpose somehow failed to outlive the first few instalments. Chevy Slyme is one of these, but we can put up with his presence because of his wonderful name and his propensity to be waiting around the corner. And last, not least his character serves as a means of showing the lack of loyalty and the opportunism in one of the novel’s major blackguards, Montague Tigg. Nevertheless there are at least two characters that are neither amusing nor entertaining in any way and that have absolutely no business in the whole novel. I am talking of John Westlock,  who introduces one minor character that is important with regard to casting some light on Jonas’s crimes, to grant him, at least, that much; but this could have been done in some other manner, and of Ruth Pinch, who is as needful as a hole in the head, as a goitre or a vermicular appendix. She makes a pudding once, but she needs a whole chapter for it with all that running up and down the stairs for want of some ingredient or other, and it is painfully obvious that Mr. Dickens is indulging himself here at the cost of the reader’s patience. It will not come as a surprise to anyone that these two literary loafers will end up in wedlock, and in this context let me warn you of Chapter 53, where Westlock woos Ruth: Read this chapter only when you are standing, or better even walking around, because it took me half an hour to get the cramp out of my feet afterwards! The Ruth and Westlock scenes, and many of the Pinch scenes are so corny and cheesy – you know, in the quality of “Oh! foolish, panting, frightened little heart!”, which is actually a quotation from the novel itself – that you should actually mind your feet and talk it over with your podiatrist if you really want to read them.

Here we have Dickens at his worst. But as I said, in Martin Chuzzlewit we also have Dickens at his best. Never has his humour been so rambunctious and irreverent as in the scene when the whole set of vultures, commonly known as the Chuzzlewit family, assemble in Mr. Pecksniff’s parlour, as the following little passage might gave a slight idea of:

”'If Mr George Chuzzlewit has anything to say to me,' interposed the strong-minded woman, sternly, 'I beg him to speak out like a man; and not to look at me and my daughters as if he could eat us.'
'As to looking, I have heard it said, Mrs Ned,' returned Mr George, angrily, 'that a cat is free to contemplate a monarch; and therefore I hope I have some right, having been born a member of this family, to look at a person who only came into it by marriage. As to eating, I beg to say, whatever bitterness your jealousies and disappointed expectations may suggest to you, that I am not a cannibal, ma'am.'
'I don't know that!' cried the strong-minded woman.
'At all events, if I was a cannibal,' said Mr George Chuzzlewit, greatly stimulated by this retort, 'I think it would occur to me that a lady who had outlived three husbands, and suffered so very little from their loss, must be most uncommonly tough.'”

Rest assured that there is more where that came from. We also have two of the most hilarious characters that Dickens ever created, namely the glib hypocrite Pecksniff himself, whom we really get to loathe in the course of the novel – what a great scene it is when Pecksniff tries to impose himself on Mary Graham, for instance! – and the inimitable Mrs. Gamp, who is my secret favourite. With Mrs. Gamp, Dickens has clearly surpassed himself, not only because of her linguistic peculiarities,

”'Why, goodness me!' she said, 'Mrs Chuzzlewit! To think as I should see beneath this blessed 'ouse, which well I know it, Miss Pecksniff, my sweet young lady, to be a 'ouse as there is not a many like, worse luck, and wishin' it were not so, which then this tearful walley would be changed into a flowerin' guardian, Mr Chuffey; to think as I should see beneath this indiwidgle roof, identically comin', Mr Pinch (I take the liberty, though almost unbeknown), and do assure you of it, sir, the smilinest and sweetest face as ever, Mrs Chuzzlewit, I see exceptin' yourn, my dear good lady, and your good lady's too, sir, Mr Moddle, if I may make so bold as speak so plain of what is plain enough to them as needn't look through millstones, Mrs Todgers, to find out wot is wrote upon the wall behind. Which no offence is meant, ladies and gentlemen; none bein' took, I hope. To think as I should see that smilinest and sweetest face which me and another friend of mine, took notice of among the packages down London Bridge, in this promiscous place, is a surprige in-deed!’”

but also because with Mrs. Gamp Dickens has created a more complex and lifelike character than he himself probably was aware of. It is quite self-evident, from Mrs. Gamp’s disdainful and dismissive treatment at the hands of the reformed Mr. Chuzzlewit senior, that Dickens intended us to dislike poor old Sairey, whom he clearly categorized as a selfish woman (unlike Mrs. Todgers). Yet by the time the rather cardboardy Mr. Chuzzlewit self-righteously vituperated the merry midwife, she had already earned such a cosy place in my generally uncosy heart that I could only laugh off Mr. Chuzzlewit’s admonitions. In her seemingly endless ramblings, Sairey has displayed so much anarchic imagination and creativity that she outacts every other character in the book, with the possible exception of young Bailey, and at the same time – maybe even unbeknown to Dickens – she has become such a complex character that it is hard to share Mr. Chuzzlewit’s attitude of haughty dismissal. Mrs. Gamp may be selfish and always on the lookout for new clients but this is probably because she is a lonely woman who has to fend for herself, quite like Mrs. Todgers. From her fictitious altercations with the equally fictitious Mrs. Harris (who, by the way, seems more real to me than Ruth Pinch) we can gather that Mrs. Gamp has suffered a lot from an alcoholic and abusive husband, who even beat some of her teeth out, and that she once was a mother herself but that she had to bury all her children in the course of time. So, all in all, her life was surely anything but a happy one, and this probably explains her less redeeming qualities, such as her rough attitude towards her patients and her own alcoholism. What is interesting in this context is that the narrative voice does not moralize on her melancholy lot – as it does in the case of Mrs. Todgers, whom we are clearly expected to take to our hearts – but that we are given the opportunity to find all this out by ourselves. Maybe this makes Mrs. Gamp one of Dickens’s most complex and psychologically challenging characters. At any rate, her imagination and her potential for taking over our imagination make her rise head and shoulders above all the goody-two-shoes-characters Dickens allows to live on happily ever after.

It is Mrs. Gamp who, to me, is one of the finest achievements of Dickens’s art, and it is due to her and Mrs. Harris, and – to a lesser degree – characters like Bailey and Pecksniff (as well as the breathtaking hell-ride we can experience alongside the murderous Jonas Chuzzlewit) that Martin Chuzzlewit, for all its flaws and shortcomings, ranks among my favourite Dickens novels.

having joined the ranks of the twelve people in the world who have actually made it through this book, i am pleased to report it a thoroughly enjoyable romp: an example of dickens’s early manic energy and excess at its finest. apart from being one of the funniest novels i’ve encountered (with a great deal of excellent satire on american life, the american press, and americans in general) it has something profound to say—beneath the often overwrought meditations on the corrupting influence of Self—on the immeasurable social value of being kind to strangers, and of keeping cheerful when things get rough. characteristically saccharine at times and far from flawless, but absolutely a worthwhile read regardless.

Martin Chuzzlewit, or “the American one”, as fans of Dickens often refer to it, is “The Inimitable”’s sixth novel, written and published in twenty monthly parts between January 1843 to July 1844, when its author was between 30 and 32. It is a typical Dickensian romp of a ride, with thrills, passion, savage mockery, suspense - and flashes of absurd humour amidst the despair. The novel lunges between hyperbole and whimsy, switching at a moment’s notice, and it contains some of Dickens’s most memorable characters. There is the seedy but charming schemer Montague Tigg (Tigg Montague), and his associate Chevy Slyme, the eccentrically fey and colourfully attired barber and bird-fancier Poll Sweedlepipe, the staunch ally Mark Tapley, the undertaker Mr Mould, the buxom good-hearted pub landlady Mrs Lupin, the poor addled old clerk Chuffey ... or is he really so confused?

Who could ever forget Mrs Sairey Gamp, the booze-addicted midwife-cum-nurse who has her own mode of speech or idiolect? Who could forget the reported gushing flattery and compliments of her “employer” Mrs Harris, or her devious plots and hilarious squabbles with her associate Betsy Prig? Or who could not fall in love with the noble but naïve Tom Pinch, solid and unswerving in his loyalty, despite suffering gross insults and deprivations, or Mary Graham, of whom the same could be said, or his sister Ruth, a creation with whom it seems crystal clear the author himself fell in love.

Oh, the characters! The names alone are enough to make the reader chuckle, and they were carefully designed by Dickens to do precisely that. He even fiddled about with the main character’s name, trying out Sweezleden, Sweezleback, Sweezlewag, Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig, and Chuzzlewig, before settling on “Chuzzlewit”. The fully fleshed out versions pop into the reader's mind long after the novel has been finished, remaining long after the story itself, fascinating and devious though that is. For mention has still not been made of any characters in the American section, whose whimsical names include Jefferson Brick, General Fladdock, Major Pawkins, Hannibal Chollop, Captain Kedgick, Elijah Pogrom and General Cyrus Choke. (These bogus titles comprise part of Dickens poking fun at the American habit of bestowing honorary military titles, as is his observation that everyone Martin meets in America is “remarkable man”).

Nor has mention been made of members of the large Chuzzlewit family itself: Anthony and Martin, the two feuding elderly brothers who drive the plot, or Jonas, Anthony's bully of a son, or the myriad of minor relatives who bookend the novel - and incidentally provide some of its most amusing moments. Nor of Jonas’s cousin, the young Martin, the namesake of his father, whose adventures we are to follow. And surely it would be a crime against literature to forget the character who arguably makes Martin Chuzzlewit the great novel it undoubtedly is ... the unforgettable ... Mr Pecksniff.

It would be difficult to say who is the most memorable character, Sairey Gamp or Seth Pecksniff, (father of two priggish daughters, Charity and Mercy, cast from the same mould) - a smooth-talking hypocrite with his pious sanctimoniousness, so self-deluded that he seems to be unable to cast off his mask of virtue throughout. The novel is worth reading for these two alone. Any scene with either of them in makes the reader settle down with a smile on their face. The story may continue in its tragedy, the hairs on your neck may stand up at the horror or brutality - but then turn the next page and you may be splitting your sides at some absurd turn of phrase by Mrs Gamp, or the sanctimonious twaddle of Mr Pecksniff. Such is the skill of the author that not only can he write scathingly ironic satire, but he can provide sparks of humour; shafts of light within the powerful and evocative descriptions of the darkest and most dire situations.

So what is the novel about? Put in a nutshell, it is about greed and selfishness. This theme raises its ugly head throughout the novel, being reflected and present in many of the minor characters and episodes, crossing all social classes, occupations and cultures. The primary focus however is on greed in regard to inheritance. John Forster, Dickens’s closest friend, mentor and biographer says,

“The notion of taking Pecksniff for a type of character was really the origin of the book; the design being to show, more or less by every person introduced, the number and variety of humours and vices that have their root in selfishness.”

So in a sense it could be said that Pecksniff is the hero - or anti-hero - of the book, although he is only one of many character strands to this complex story. Seth Pecksniff had his origin in an actual person, Samuel Carter Hall. Carter Hall was an Irish-born Victorian journalist who edited “The Art Journal” and was widely satirised at the time. He made Old Masters (such as Raphael or Titian's paintings) virtually unsaleable, by exposing the profits that custom-houses were earning by importing them. By doing this, he hoped to support modern British art by promoting young artists and attacking the market for unreliable Old Masters. However, he was deeply unsympathetic to the Pre-Raphaelites, and published several attacks upon the movement. Julian Hawthorne says,

“such oily and voluble sanctimoniousness needed no modification to be fitted to appear before the footlights in satirical drama. He might be called an ingenuous hypocrite, an artless humbug, a veracious liar, so obviously were the traits indicated innate and organic in him rather than acquired ... His indecency and falsehood were in his soul, but not in his consciousness; so that he paraded them at the very moment that he was claiming for himself all that was their opposite.”

It is a very short jump indeed from this description of Samuel Carter Hall to one of Seth Pecksniff!

The other arguably strongest character, Mrs Gamp, was also an early inspiration, which came via Dickens’s rich philanthropic friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts. Later Burdett-Coutts was to co-found “Urania Cottage” with the author. “Urania Cottage” was a home for young women who had “turned to a life of immorality”, such as theft and prostitution. Additionally, this novel is dedicated to her. Angela Burdett-Coutts had told Dickens about a nurse who took care of her companion (and former governess) Hannah Meredith. The nurse was an eccentric character, and details such as her yellow nightcap, her fondness for snuff and for spirits, and her strange habit of rubbing her nose along the top of the tall fender were immediately seized on by Dickens, who then immortalised her in the unforgettable character of Mrs. Gamp.

We easily become diverted by the characters, for Dickens is adept at discursiveness. But Dickens always has a huge persuasive element to his novels too, despite their apparent primary desire to entertain. Martin Chuzzlewit was written shortly after Dickens had taken a year off in 1842. During this time Dickens was in financial difficulty. He had borrowed money from his publishers in order to visit the United States of America, and his wife Kate was expecting their fifth child. John Forster notes,

“Title and even story had been undetermined while we travelled” and

“Beginning so hurriedly as at last he did, altering his course at the opening and seeing little as yet of the main track of his design,”

The story which frames Dickens’s message was additionally altered considerably as Dickens wrote, in an attempt to revitalise flagging sales. In the sixth part, desperately hoping to win back his fans, Dickens has our young hero, Martin Chuzzlewit, go off to America, hoping that this would stimulate renewed interest in the book. From now on, he actually planned the events in the story beforehand. His previous novels had just grown and developed as he wrote them, shortly before each serial part was published, but Martin Chuzzlewit represented a difference in approach, and one which he was to continue.

This has a dramatic impact on the novel itself. From a deceptively humorous start, containing some of Dickens’s sharpest satirical observations and wit, the novel switches to passages in America where the humour - at least for this reader - seems to lose its masterly touch. There are a couple of chapters which seem more to be Dickens venting some of his ill feelings for his dislike of the United States. It had been a colony up to less than a hundred years previously - almost within living memory - so he may well have suspected that some of his readers may have shared his feelings. His personal wrath was due mostly to what he saw as an invidious practice there of disregarding copyright.

Dickens’s observation of American habits which he personally disliked, such as incessant tobacco-chewing and spitting, what he saw as greedy and uncouth table manners, plus a tendency to talk things up, which appeared to an outsider as disagreeable boasting - all these were savagely parodied, and the introduction to America afforded by this novel is single-mindedly bad. No character has any redeeming qualities, and an entire family, the Norrisses, is introduced (disappearing from the narrative for ever shortly afterwards) apparently solely to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the nation as a whole, across all strata. Others are characterised as buffoons, and to a man (or woman) they are acquisitive, placing gain and accolades above true worth and honour.

This approach backfired. Not surprisingly it alienated all Dickens’s many American readers, who were outraged. Dickens took note, and the later American episodes, in the ironically named “Eden”, contain both good and bad characters, well portrayed rather than mere grotesque parodies. In addition, for every subsequent edition of the novel in perpetuity, Dickens left instructions to be printed, which offer an apology to the US citizens. This resulted from his second visit there.

It is interesting to wonder, from a modern point of view, whether he would have liked to edit this part. Very possibly, given his Postscript, and it would seem unfair to downgrade an assessment of the book as a whole because of what after all is merely a couple of chapters. The scenes on board ship are graphic, and powerfully described, as well as providing an important indicator to the character development of the two travellers. The descriptions of Eden too, immediately afterwards, are haunting, and expressive. It is clear from a letter he wrote to his mentor and biographer, John Forster, about the mountains near Pittsburgh which he saw from a train when travelling through the area, that they are drawn from life. Forster himself called that area “The Original of Eden”. In addition, the scams to do with selling property - or selling shares in railways - or insurance fiddles - were all very common at the time.

The novel's full name is,

“The
Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
His relatives, friends, and enemies.
Comprising all
His Wills and His Ways,
With an Historical record of what he did
and what he didn't;
Shewing moreover who inherited the Family Plate,
who came in for the Silver spoons,
and who for the Wooden Ladles.
The whole forming a complete key
to the House of Chuzzlewit.”

- a typically lengthy Victorian title - and in fact each of the 54 chapters has an equally long and informative preamble of a title. One would assume this made it easier to identify the protagonist, but this is not so.

A modern interpretation of this novel would probably focus on the coming-of-age journey of a young man. Young Martin Chuzzlewit starts out as an unlikeable, selfish, arrogant young cad, who thinks the world owes him a living. The novel details all the experiences he goes through as he matures; life-threatening experiences which teach him a lesson and make him a far better person. So it is about a young man’s personal and moral development, just as the earlier novel “Nicholas Nickleby” had been. It also conforms to the ancient traditional story of the hero's journey. When we think of Martin Chuzzlewit, the novel, it is this particular young man whom we naturally think of.

Yet the plural use of “Wills” in the title does not then make sense, for young Martin did not have a will in the legal sense of the word, and as we have learned, there is another, older Martin, his father. Thus it can be said to have developed a double meaning, reflecting the changing perspective of the author as the writing proceeded. It is partly about the transformation of the self-concern of the younger Martin into something more noble, and also about the selfishness of the older Martin, receiving help from an unexpected quarter, so that he too transforms into a worthy individual. Dickens loved to write about moral improvements; about people who genuinely strive to be better.

So who is the hero? It is difficult to say. Possibly one of these two, or possibly Dickens’s original thought, Seth Pecksniff. It could even possibly be a character who is ever-present, and prominent in the frontispiece, playing his beloved church organ, with scenes and characters floating around him as thoughts in his mind as he plays, the noble but naïve Tom Pinch.

It is a true masterpiece. Reading earlier novels, one can trace the origins of this one. The humour of “The Pickwick Papers” is tweaked to perfection. The brutality and bloody murder - and the subsequent horror felt by the murderer - are all there in prototype in “Oliver Twist”. Dickens had cautiously explored some romantic elements in “Nicholas Nickleby”, but here we have an abundance of three romances, amongst the young characters, plus a fourth very poignant romantic strand which runs through the entire novel. All are destined for happiness; Dickens loves to “reward” his good characters with a happy ending and his bad ones with their comeuppance and an appropriate punishment. We are anticipating both good and bad endings, even though we cannot predict them, throughout the book.

And the bad endings? Oh my goodness. There are foul deeds and a murder described so powerfully that it may well cause shivers of revulsion and terror. Some of Dickens’s finest writing to date accompanies this event, with an evocative vivid description of a storm, lightning and dashing rain accompanying the episode. If you thrilled to Nancy’s murder in “Oliver Twist”, you will be swept up in the horror of this. The perpetrator is very reminiscent of Bill Sikes.

There are disguises, there are doubles, subterfuges and bluffs. There is mystery, confusion and duplicity, as in both “Nicholas Nickleby” and "Barnaby Rudge”. Things, and characters, are not always what they seem. Dickens is an adept at this, carefully referring to “The Man” or “The Stranger” so as not to give the game away. Dramatisations always miss this aspect, of course, as they do the evocative imagery. Read the book!

Yet even now Dickens had not yet written his truly great novels; they were yet to come. But in my view this represents a growth on the part of the author. Dickens was planning a small book for the Christmas season of 1843 - one which would continue the theme of greed he was writing about in Martin Chuzzlewit.

The result was a great classic, a favourite story loved by millions worldwide. It was published in December 1843, before the concluding episodes of Martin Chuzzlewit had even been published.

And its name? It was “A Christmas Carol”.

From then on, there was no stopping Mr. Charles Dickens.

Dickens's sixth novel gets off to a lumbering start, stalls in the middle, but ends in a flurry of excitement reminiscent of Shakespeare (Macbeth), Poe, and Doyle all tied into one. Tom Pinch and Mark Tapley are keepers.

I loved this book even more than I expected to. :-D