I should make this disclaimer: I find Dickens an absolute pleasure to read. Rather than infuriating me, his effulgent, flowery, witty prose provides pleasurable tingly sensations in my brain. While it is true that no one could or should write in this style today, I would maintain it is merely because Dickens did it so perfectly, anything else would be a base imitation.
In Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens portrays selfishness on a grand scale. Rich miser Martin Chuzzlewit is continually hounded by his mercenary relations, particularly the hypocritical honey-tongued Seth Pecksniff. He hopes to bestow his fortune on his grandson, young Martin, whom he has raised from youth. But when young Martin displays a similar attitude of selfishness and entitlement, old Martin expels him upon the world.The comic aspects of this novel are top-notch. The tortuous, self-serving rationalizations of Pecksniff, a disinterested saint if ever there was one, provide plenty of laughs while driving the plot. When the extended Chuzzlewit relations get together, Dickens lampoons their dysfunction with great levity and precision. Young Martin's naive confidence in his ability to make it in the world also provides several comic moments, especially when he sets out for America, fully expecting to make a fortune in a few months and return triumphant. In the minor character realm, the urchin Bailey is a hoot as he sits his childish face in the barber's chair and waxes eloquent on manly topics while the barber "shaves" him. Dickens the comic master is at the top of his game here.
Of course, this generous novel is not merely comic. Pathos, tragedy, greed, suspicion, selfless love, and sordid crime have their fair share of narrative space. Pride, idiocy, and deviousness on both sides of the Atlantic receive plenty of satirical skewering. While many elements of this book link it to Dickens' earlier novels, he really begins to slow down and let his characters breathe in this one. In Martin Chuzzlewit we see the growth of the popular storyteller into the truly great novelist who expertly plumbs the depths of human nature.
The only truly bizarre aspect of this book is its ending. After so much admirable pacing and character development, it is as if Dickens realizes he owes the readers a melodramatic plot twist and a swift cataloguing of resolutions for all characters, major or minor, in the most unnatural of ways. At one point, characters who have never really interacted with each other get together at a place they have never been before and make their revelatory disclosures. Thankfully, this rushed ending doesn't ruin what has gone on before, and it might have taught Dickens that sometimes, the formula must be ditched.
Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 self-serving rationalizations
