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Reads like an autobiography
20 May 2012

There are a few things about this book that are somewhat interesting and quite typical of what one would expect from a Dickens' novel. The first, and most important, is that it reads like and autobiography. The story is about how a boy grows to manhood and goes from a poverty stricken life with a horrid stepfather, to being imprisoned in a boarding school, and then sent off to a factory. In the end all comes good and he goes on to become a successful author. I don't know much about Dickens, but it is quite clear that his writings have not only survived, but are still read and are still quite popular today.
I personally have never really liked Charles Dickens, and I have yet to read a book of his that I enjoyed, though I must admit that the grand total of Dickens books that I have read comes out at two. That would be this one and Great Expectations is the other. In many ways there is little difference between these two books, though the action (for what one may call action) is somewhat different. However, the themes are generally the same: that is struggling to survive as a poor person in 19th Century England.
The second thing is that this book reads like a soap opera, and you can say much the same thing for Great Expectations. However, even though I don't watch many soap operas (though some could suggest that Star Trek is one, but that comes under a different category, namely Space Opera), I can say that many that I have glanced at always seem to involve upper middle class and upper class people. Australian soap operas tend to only deal with the upper middle class (see Neighbours and Home & Away) where as the US ones tend to deal with the uber-rich (Dynasty and Dallas). What sets Dickens apart is that he deals with the poor and poverty stricken.
Despite my dislike of Dickens' work, as I have suggested before, they are actually quite helpful and insightful because we see a side of 19th Century England that we do not see in a lot of the other novels. Say for instance Jane Eyre, or the writings of Jane Austin. In these romances we are always dealing with the landed aristocracy. In Dickens we are not. We are dealing with the poverty stricken masses of England. It is especially important because Dickens is writing from experience. While it is very much an 'oh woah is me' type experience, if we can step away from that we can see and experience a part of England that we very rarely get to experience. Moreso, we tend to see it in all is dark and dirty unpleasantness.
I have some more Dickens on my shelf, and I do intend to read them someday, though they do tend to get shoved to the bottom of the pile since they tend to be very slow going and take a very long time to get from cover to cover.