"Please, sir, I want some more."

Oliver Twist’s famous request for seconds on gruel at the workhouse is a fitting reminder of why Charles Dickens deserves to win the “Dueling Authors” bout between Dickens and Jane Austen The Classics Circuit is sponsoring from May 8 to 21.  I feel like a traitor to the cause of genteel femininity in denying Austen this honor.  Her novels have had such a powerful hold on me, inspiring me to strive for sensible virtue in the manner of heroines such as Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) and Marianne Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility).  Austen is an exemplar of the common dictum to “write what you know,” but the scope of her world is narrower than that of Dickens. 

The populist in me wants to honor Dickens's ability to reach a wide, multi-generational audience that included non-readers as well as readers.  Because his novels were first published in serial form (in monthly installments or “numbers”), they were affordable and accessible.  Whereas we imagine genteel ladies reading Austen to themselves on long, languid visits to some relative’s country home, we can imagine the only literate member of an extended family gathered around a fire in the only warm room of some humble abode reading the latest installment of Oliver Twist from the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany aloud at the end of a long workday.  And I can imagine some child as hungry for a story as Oliver was for gruel saying, “Please, sir, I want some more.”

As an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz (home of The Dickens Project) two decades ago, I read Oliver Twist in a year-long seminar that aimed to approximate the experience of reading Dickens’s novels in their monthly numbers.  The difference was that we only had to wait a week to read the next installment, while Victorian readers had to wait a month.  We even had two older high school English teachers in the seminar, one of whom added to the atmosphere of coziness by knitting as we talked.  (Of course, we also imagined she was knitting some record of our conversations, like a benign version of the sinister revolutionary Madame Defarge, from A Tale of Two Cities, who knitted the names of aristocrats slated for murder.)  This seminar was a wonderful experience because of the sense of community that resulted from reading books at a prescribed pace and because of our collective excitement about what the next installment would bring. 

Dickens ended each installment of one to three chapters at a critical juncture—for example, just as Oliver is being offered up by the workhouse board to anyone who would take him off their hands for a reward of five pounds or just as Oliver is on the verge of fainting after his appearance before a magistrate for the thievery charge that brings him a sincere defender and benefactor, Mr. Brownlow.  Each installment leaves us wondering what will happen to Oliver next.  His vulnerability endears him to us and makes him an archetypal orphan victim (see my previous post, “Six Great Books about Orphans”).  His tendency to swoon at moments of stress (for example, in his final encounter with the criminal ringleader Fagin in jail the night before his execution) positions us as concerned bystanders who would break his fall or ply him with smelling salts if only we could. 

What fascinates me most about Dickens’s publication in monthly numbers is the fact that he made things up as he went along rather than simply finishing a novel and then dividing it up into installments.  This is so different from the experience of today’s novelists, who do not even consider submitting novels to agents until they are complete and as flawless as possible.  Our sense of audience is far more abstract, even if we know who we want our readers to be.  For writers with a tendency to procrastinate, the finality of a deadline and the knowledge that thousands of fans are waiting impatiently to know what happens next would be a tremendous motivation. 

Since the days of monthly numbers are over—aside from exceptions such as Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, which Rolling Stone published in twenty-seven installments from 1984 to 1985—the closest we can get to that kind of experience is to join a writing group.  Every two weeks or so, the members of Six Great Books gather around the fireside at Molly’s house, where we follow an informal workshop model to discuss each other’s submissions.  Now, as we await our turn to read the final chapter of Donna’s novel, Provenance, we are eager to know exactly what will come of the wonderful characters she has created.  Because we have lived with these characters for over two years, they seem like real people to us.  Like Dickens’s readers fretting over Oliver, we are still hungry and we want some more.

Comments

[Pannathorn]

Oliver Twist is one of Dickens' early novels. He worked on The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby simultaneously it is one of his best loved. It has what you would expect from him: memorable characters, evocative descriptions, melodrama, pathos (more often bathos) and a plot that relies on completely incredible coincidences. These latter are sometimes explained away by the characters themselves as being ordained by Fate, benign or otherwise, and must have been more acceptable to a Victorian readership than to one of the present day, who are likely to groan at each who should it be but' revelation. The crossovers with Pickwick and Nickleby are noticeable. For example, The Artful's court appearance is clearly intended to be as funny as Sam Weller's, although it pales by comparison. The most famous character is of course Fagin, and Dickens' casual anti-Semitism in his treatment of him is another thing that might discomfit the modern reader. He references him as The Jew, always in a derogatory manner. That this is a reflection of contemporary attitudes can be seen from Scott's Ivanhoe, in which Jewish characters are treated with similar hostility and contempt. But it is not the main characters that are most successful and especially not the title character himself, who is innocent and bland beyond belief but the supporting cast; Mr. Bumble and his lady, the servants in the house that gets burgled, the old bachelor who keeps threatening to eat his own head, and many others. They make the book a delight. As always, Dickens is the master of descriptive narrative and he conjures a grim and compelling view of Victorian London's underside. If you have not yet read any Dickens, this is not a bad book with which to start, although for younger readers (teens) I would recommend Hard Times as their first. Either book will probably leave you, like Oliver, wanting more.

[Kelly Hand]

The book is back at the library, but I can tell you that this line is from one of the earliest chapters. If you have an ereader (I don't), then the book is probably free and you can do a search for the line.

[mahek fatema]

please somedone tell me which chapter of oliver twist oliver says please sir i want some more

[Kelly Hand]

Jane and Risa, thanks for pointing out that fan fiction has embraced serialization. The phenomenon of fan fiction is fascinating. It seems like a more extreme version of what writers do all the time in recycling old literary narratives, themes, characters, etc. The Wikipedia article on the topic mentions that there was a craze for Austen-related fan fiction back in the 1920s and 1930s. It would be interesting to compare that body of fan fiction to the one that has emerged in the past decade. Sounds like a good dissertation topic for someone.

[JaneGS]

As an ardent Janeite, I come to the ring spoiling for a fight, but I do like your point about the accessibility of Dickens' novels, particularly the early ones. OT is one of my favorite Dickens novels and is due for a reread soon.

One point I will quibble about, though, is the idea that serialization is dead. As a reader/writer of fan fic (mostly Austen-related), I can attest to the fact that it is very much a part of today's world. Many current Austen-related fiction out there today started life as serialized fan fic, and I can tell you that the technique of cliff-hangers still works!

[Risa]

That must've been a lovely experience!...reading Dickens' Oliver Twist the was it was orignally meant.

I know this might be an odd thing to say in a serious book blog, but if you've ever read fanfiction, quite a bit of it comes in installments...and this is something quite a few can experience today - as long as they like fanfiction, that is.:D

[Anastasia @ Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog]

Oh, how interesting! I had no idea Dickens wrote his novels one installment at a time-- I wonder how hard a time he had by the end, trying to get everything wrapped up perfectly. Even with notes on the plot, it must have been a difficult thing.

I haven't finished a Dickens book yet (besides A Christmas Carol, but I don't quite count that as a "Dickens novel"), but I'm currently working on The Pickwick Papers. I wonder if it would enjoy it even more if I read it as if I were reading it in installments?

[Kristi]

After just finishing my first Dickens novel with A Tale of Two Cities, I think that I'd like to move on to Oliver Twist next. In hindsight, I think that the serialized approach would have been an excellent way to read A Tale of Two Cities, rather than just pushing through from start to finish. The suspense would have added to the experience!

[Kelly Hand]

We'll have to talk some time about Little Nell. Maybe I'm just partial because we eat everyday from Old Curiosity Shop plates we inherited from David's grandmother, who got them one by one through some supermarket giveaway decades ago. I'm wondering what your sneering friends prefer to read. There is plenty of evidence online (including through this blog tour) that Dickens is still beloved by many readers. There are still some of his novels I haven't managed to read yet(couldn't get into Barnaby Rudge, for example)but it's nice to know that there's no rush.

[Rebecca Reid]

I don't think I have the patience to wait a week these days! I just read too fast and love to know what happens next. The closest I've ever been to reading serially was my audio book experience with THE WOMAN IN WHITE. It took me about six weeks. IT was great to just enjoy the suspense.

[Joanne]

I think some women's magazines (Woman's Weekly, The People's Friend etc) still do serials, though not as long-running as Dickens' serials. I don't think these are published in book form after they have finished in the magazine though.

[Norma]

I may just have gone down in estimation to two friends of mine. I told them I loved LOVED Dickens* and their mouths dropped open in shock. "Surely not even Tale of Two Cities?" "YES!" I said, remembering how i was seemingly the only one in my high school class who actually enjoyed the assignment. "My favorite is 'David Copperfield' though," I confided, as they stared at me with slight sneers. Oh well, what can I say? I like Jane Austen, too, but I just love the humor and characters in Dickens.

*I did not like Little Nell, and I certainly haven't read everything.

[Jay]

Very entertaining reading! I like how you tied in the "please sir, I want some more" quotation with how the readers of the serialized publications in Dickens' time must've felt. And I LOVE how your knitting fellow student brought up images of Madame DeFarge.

I think I listed both DeFarge and Bill Sikes in my contribution to the Tuesday Top Ten meme's Top Ten Literary Villains edition last year. Two of my all time favorite "love to hate" characters...

-Jay

[Kelly Hand]

Karen, I think you are probably right that each Dickens novel at least has a "quasi-orphan" if not one who fits the definition exactly. Thanks for mentioning these other serialized novels. I'll have to find out about Laura Lippman, and I look forward to reading your piece on Dombey and Son.

[Karen K.]

Oliver Twist is one of my favorite Dickens novels -- he does such a great job with the cliffhangers and the side characters, such as the Beadle and Mrs. Corney, whom I love to hate. I'm currently reading Dombey & Son for my Classics Circuit posting (the very last day!) and the main character Florence is essentially an orphan. I think there's an orphan in every one of Dickens' novels!

I do wish more works were published serially. The New York Times Magazine published weekly installments of a novella by Laura Lippman a couple of years ago, and that got me hooked on her novels. I know Armistead Maupin published some of his Tales of the City in newspapers, and more recently, Alexander McCall Smith originally published his 44 Scotland Street series in a newspaper. I can't think of any others at the moment though. It's too bad this format has died out.