Thursday
Once again, I turn my blog over to my college professor son’s literary tweets. Tobias Wilson-Bates, a Victorianist who teaches as Georgia Gwinnett College, is one of the most sensitive readers that I know. Combine that with his wit, and the result is brilliant insights that were made for twitter.
I’ve also discovered, from a recent tweet, that his model in this medium William Blake. In response to the following Blakisms, Toby responded that “Blake was just out there subtweeting poetry every day of his life”:
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery. Shame is Pride’s cloak.
Anyway, Toby surveyed his readers for their ten favorite characters and then announced them on his twitter feet at Tobias Wilson-Bates@PhDhurtBrain. I love his summations. My own favorite Dickens character, incidentally, is #3 on his list but it’s hard to argue with the character he chose as #1.
Here we go:
By Tobias-Wilson Bates, Georgia Gwinnett College
OK! Buckle up your bratwurst! TOP 10 CHARACTERS IN DICKENS
10. John Wemmick (Great Expectations) The OG lover of fungible tokens, Wemmick’s love of portable property, his CASTLE with a CANNON and MOAT, and his dedication to work/life balance catapult him onto the list!
9. Jenny Wren (Our Mutual Friend) Dickens loves proxy author characters, and Jenny is the best of them. Sitting at the nexus of religion, age (old and young), disability, and gender. She is a mysteriously perfect Proteus-like figure of Fate weaving her little character dolls.
8. Madame Defarge (Tale of Two Cities) Dickens liked to say that his characters appeared to him as a holographic imagination parade, but I imagine Defarge was straight out of his nightmares. A FRENCH (ah) REVOLUTIONARY (Ahh) WOMAN (AHHHHHH!!) ready to spill blood for the cause!
7. Wackford Squeers (Nicholas Nickleby) Dickens’ sometimes a subtle writer, and sometimes he writes a one-eyed murderous school demon with every possible vice, and yet, Squeers still somewhat undersells how poorly the educational system was managed before gov’t regulation.
6. Uriah Heep (David Copperfield) I promise this list is not just EVERY DICKENS VILLAIN, but anybody not haunted by the writhing bony sweaty hands of Copperfield’s central antagonist clearly wasn’t paying attention to this unctuous eel of a character.
5. Ebenezer Scrooge (Christmas Carol) The only Dickens character who remains instantly recognizable to the general public. Both a fascinating figure at the nexus of folklore and modern ideas of time travel, while also presenting Dickens’ unsatisfying solution to inequality.
4. Miss Havisham (Great Expectations) The dress?! the clocks?! the cake?! the combustion!?? the cruel but intentional and eventually self destructive urge to reproduce and view her own trauma?! Dickens practically owes Miss Havisham royalties for writing his novel for him.
3. Esther Summerson (Bleak House) Like a DC/Marvel crossover event, somehow a Brontë character shows up in the Dickens extended universe and gives us an unreliable (female!!!) narrator infected with being whatever she wants to be at any given moment of the novel.
2. Sam Weller (Pickwick Papers) If The Pickwick Papers are a comedic auto-ethnography of England, then Sam Weller is the embodiment of everything worthwhile the country had to offer. An Everyman character so funny that his name was a punchline for the rest of the century.
1. Betsey Trotwood (David Copperfield) “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” The pages show you lost, son. From donkeys to dandies, Betsey takes and vanquishes all comers.
And then, in two successive tweets, Toby lists his Honorable Mentions. Can you name the novels in which they appear?
Impossible to list all the honorable mentions, but characters that could easily have been on this list: Boffin, Artful Dodger, Samuel Pickwick, Fagin, Sikes, Nancy, Copperfield, Lizzie Hexam, Bradley Headstone, Boz, Amy Dorrit, Herbert Pocket, Caddy Jellyby, Florence Dombey, …
James Harthouse, Dick Swiveller (heehee!), Mr Micawber, Krook, Phil, George Rouncewell, Inspector Bucket, Tulkinghorn, Mr Venus, Volumnia, Lady Dedlock, Sloppy ,Bella, Peggoty (all of them), Pecksniff (heehee), Sydney Carton (my heart), Quilp, Estella, John Jasper, Gradgrind…
Joe Gargery, Mr F’s Aunt, Mr Dick (maybe I made a mistake here), Gamp, Traddles, Ghosts (various), Tattycoram, Alfred Jingle, Twemlow, Jo, Durdles, Peg Sliderskew, Pip, Magwitch, Miss Mowcher, Sir Leicester, Skimpole, Mr Bumble (broke me not including him)