The relevance of Charles Dickens’ dystopian England to the present day world is quite mystifying. If one is literature-savvy, the Dickensian world is a source of perpetual fascination where his caricatures take the stage to enthral the audience. As for the popularity of the author, the Victorians and the generations to come later differed little in applauding his genius. His biographies sell like hot cakes even today, as did his novels in his own day. People used to wait anxiously for each instalment throughout the UK and even in the US. When the instalment copies of The Old Curiosity Shop used to arrive on the docks in the US, people would holler from the shore, “Is little Nell dead?” He was a celebrity in his own day and kept his status intact even after the passage of one-and-a-half century after his death.

Dickens’ world is no utopia, rather it is a dystopia: the real England of the 19th century where squalor, child labour and class stratification potentially vitiated society. Unlike Henry Fielding’s stock characters and Jane Austen’s parish-dwelling beauties anxious to get married, Dickens’ characters were very life like and real. The most popular of them were full of eccentricities and oddities; hence, aptly termed caricatures.

His craftsmanship in sketching caricatures is second to none as his literary career skyrocketed soon after the publication of Sketches by Boz — a collection of 56 sketches concerning London scenes and people, published between 1833 and 1836, and illustrated by George Cruikshank. The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) came soon after and then he never looked back. By then, he had become the maestro of his art. We don’t find Micawbers, Pumblechooks and Fagins afterwards in English literature. He immortalised these caricatures with his marvellous craftsmanship which were a source of hilarious comedy for his Victorian readers through their ‘queer’ behaviour and oddities.

Even after more than 200 years of his birth, one finds that Dickensian times are still relevant especially in the Third World

Charles John Huffam Dickens was a Londoner and the city was his obsession, so much so that it appeared to have a semblance of a character in his novels. He dwelled well in the city and explored it profusely in his novels. He described London so vividly in his works that even one of his hostile critics, Walter Bagehot, was compelled to comment in The National Review (October 1858) that “He [Dickens] describes London like a special correspondent for posterity”. Dickens had a difficult childhood, when his extravagant father was imprisoned for non-payment of debts. He had to work in a blacking factory at the age of 12, which left a deep imprint on his mind. Mr Micawber of David Copperfield is a caricature of Dickens’ own father John Dickens, as Micawber had to face imprisonment in the novel on the same charges. His child characters like Pip, Oliver and the young David Copperfield were crafted so well that their stories also served as children’s classics.

As Dickens’ biographer, Claire Tomalin, remarks, Dickens has an immediacy which children love. This immediacy and vivid description is, in fact, the result of psychosomatic trauma which Dickens suffered throughout his life due to his ordeal of child labour at a blacking factory. Sigmund Freud categorised David Copperfield as his favourite book which is an autobiographical novel. In fact, Dickens appears to be a forerunner to Freud as far as child psychology is concerned. Tomalin remarks aptly in Dickens’ biography Charles Dickens: A life, “Before Freud or any of the child experts arrived on the scene, the voice of childhood was truly rendered by Dickens out of his own experience, and out of imagination, since the earliest chapters of the book [David Copperfield] are purely imaginary.”

Dickens had a troubled marital life, even after fathering 10 children by his wife Catherine. He fell in love with an actress Nelly Ternan and remained with her till his death. In his biography, Charles Dickens: A life by Claire Tomalin, Nelly Ternan was compared to Estella of Great Expectations who remained inaccessible to the protagonist throughout the novel. This is a very interesting aspect of the novelist’s life on which Tomalin has penned yet another book titled, The Invisible Woman: The story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens.

The Victorians turned out to be more realists than idealists due to which Dickens rose to the zenith of his fame. However, how he would have felt in the present-day world is a question worth pondering upon. In my humble opinion, Dickens’ grievances would have been little alleviated even in the present day due to the persistence of child labour, squalor and wretched health conditions the world over.

Similarly, in Pakistan, conditions are quite the same if we look at the above noted maladies in society. Here 17.2pc people live below the poverty line and child labour is a depressing fact. Health conditions are worse in rural areas and suburbs. In such a scenario, Dickens’ dystopia appears to have a universal effect and its relevance has not faded even today. Lately, Tomalin has also commented to the same effect about England due to lack of health services and food banks.

Dickens’ popularity did not wane despite his strict instructions against erecting his busts or statues in London or elsewhere. All he wanted was that his works should be remembered by the masses for whom he wrote. As he himself directed in his will, “I emphatically direct that I be buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and a strictly private manner ... I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb without the addition of ‘Mr’ or ‘Esquire’. I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial or testimonial whatever. I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works and to the remembrance of my friends upon their experience of me in addition thereto.”

Such was the confidence and the humility of the author. However, his works remained with his people who eulogised him well.

The Victorian age is a bygone era but Dickens’ relevance has not been diminished at all. Child labour is still a painful reality in Asian and African countries. Squalor is a big challenge to the world, and millions of people live below the poverty line even in these times. Class stratification has changed its form but even now it persists as the demarcation between the haves and have nots is clear in every society.

Google paid tribute to Dickens’ on his 200th birthday with a Google doodle: which is a montage of characters from his novels. By clicking on the doodle, a hyperlink takes the net surfer to all of the Dickens’ novels which are available on Google books. That’s what Google thinks about the relevance of the artist to the present-day world. In the same vein, the University of Warwick decided to launch a mobile app dedicated to the literary genius.

The educational systems infested with cramming and rote methods rendered Dickens’ meaningless to mediocre minds. The Victorian age is over but the Dickensian times are still relevant in different countries of the world especially in Third World countries.

The range of Dickens’ characters is stupendous and overwhelming. The grotesqueness of Wemmick, the lovable foolery of Joe Gargery, bereavement of Miss Havisham and the callousness of Ebenezer Scrooge are all proverbial in English literature. Some of his characters had very suggestive names in the context of the story; for example, Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield is clearly connoting murder and stony coldness, similarly, Miss Havisham, the rich spinster in Great Expectations, indicates ‘having is sham’. Despite her wealth and riches she was unable to buy happiness in life. In her misery she becomes a sadist and uses Estella to break Pip’s heart in order to wreak vengeance on the male sex. Perhaps no other author has given such a colourful variety of characters to the readers save Shakespeare.

Dickens was bitterly criticised by the later generation of novelists which include Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolfe and George Gissing for his sentimentalism and excessive use of coincidences. In spite of their adverse criticism, they were unable to escape Dickensian influence on their writings. Hardy’s own works like Tess of the D’urbervilles is marred by excessive coincidences which renders his story unrealistic to his readers. However, later Victorians (including Hardy) duly confronted the established institutions of the age including religion, parliament and judiciary. Hardy believed in the immanent will which led his characters to tragic ends.

Dickens’ dystopia is distraught with miseries yet a source of perpetual fascination. Once in his world, the haunting effect doesn’t stop but persists perpetually. He is not only a litterateur whose function is restricted to holding up a mirror to society; in fact, he is more of a reformer. He pinpoints a social or moral vice in the society and vehemently exposes it to his readers with an ardent wish to eradicate it. To augment his case, he made several trips to the US and France for public readings of his novels.

The Victorian age is a bygone era but Dickens’ relevance has not been diminished at all. Child labour is still a painful reality in Asian and African countries. Squalor is a big challenge to the world and millions of people live below the poverty line even in these times. Class stratification has changed its form but even now it persists as the demarcation between the haves and have nots is clear in every society.

When we get into Dickensia, we are enchanted and entranced, but when we come out of it, we have had our catharsis and stand educated — an education which is relevant to all times and ages. Somehow or the other we are all Dickensians.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 21st, 2016