I'm not someone who is particularly familiar with Dickens's work. That being said, I have the impression that a certain peculiarity in his sensibility—perhaps what we might call his "wit"—is notably detached from the point of view of his characters. It's as if Dickens's narrator were an omniscient voice that could only speak about the characters in an ironic tone, without ever allowing their perspective to emerge. This stands in stark contrast to Gustave Flaubert’s use of free indirect style in "Madame Bovary". In the twentieth century, I recognize this same "dissociation of sensibility," as Eliot would call it, in the work of Evelyn Waugh. Perhaps the remedy lies in a fusion of Flaubertian sensibility with Sternean irony—a combination that, I believe, was quite successfully achieved by the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, particularly in "Epitaph of a Small Winner".
I read someone an excellent description of his characters as starting the novel already "fully formed"; they are like very well crafted cardboard cutouts that he pushes around stage for the duration of the novel. Yes, his third person narrative is very standard, no indirect, no seamless merging between perspectives. But we are talking of his weaknesses only. He has many strengths.
I'd say Dickens's main strength - at least the one that most captures my attention- is his ability to depict formative internal experiences that actually happened to him as an individual. A striking example is when David Copperfield discovers his late father's collection of books and recounts how literature enriched his inner world, enabling him to transcend his immediate circumstances. For me, this marks the apex of Dickens's sincerity - and I use "sincerity" here in the same sense that F. R. Leavis employed in his analysis of T. S. Eliot, as Lionel Trilling further explores in "Sincerity and Authenticity".
I'm not someone who is particularly familiar with Dickens's work. That being said, I have the impression that a certain peculiarity in his sensibility—perhaps what we might call his "wit"—is notably detached from the point of view of his characters. It's as if Dickens's narrator were an omniscient voice that could only speak about the characters in an ironic tone, without ever allowing their perspective to emerge. This stands in stark contrast to Gustave Flaubert’s use of free indirect style in "Madame Bovary". In the twentieth century, I recognize this same "dissociation of sensibility," as Eliot would call it, in the work of Evelyn Waugh. Perhaps the remedy lies in a fusion of Flaubertian sensibility with Sternean irony—a combination that, I believe, was quite successfully achieved by the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, particularly in "Epitaph of a Small Winner".
I read someone an excellent description of his characters as starting the novel already "fully formed"; they are like very well crafted cardboard cutouts that he pushes around stage for the duration of the novel. Yes, his third person narrative is very standard, no indirect, no seamless merging between perspectives. But we are talking of his weaknesses only. He has many strengths.
I'd say Dickens's main strength - at least the one that most captures my attention- is his ability to depict formative internal experiences that actually happened to him as an individual. A striking example is when David Copperfield discovers his late father's collection of books and recounts how literature enriched his inner world, enabling him to transcend his immediate circumstances. For me, this marks the apex of Dickens's sincerity - and I use "sincerity" here in the same sense that F. R. Leavis employed in his analysis of T. S. Eliot, as Lionel Trilling further explores in "Sincerity and Authenticity".