George Orwell both articulates exactly why Dickens has always frustrated me, and why I can’t seem to get away from him. If you have read, or plan to read much of Dicken’s writing in your lifetime, I highly recommend the fifty page essay, even if only for the use of the phrase “smelly little orthodoxies” in the last paragraph.
Why is it that Tolstoy’s grasp seems to be so much larger than Dicken’s– why is it that he seems to be able to tell you so much more about yourself? It is not that he is more gifted, or even, in the last analysis, more intelligent. It is because he is writing about people who are growing. His characters are struggling to make their souls, whereas Dicken’s are already finished and perfect. In my own mind Dicken’s people are present far more often and far more vividly than Tolstoy’s, but always in a single unchangeable attitude, like pictures or pieces of furnature.
R
