What are the top signs you're living in a Dickens novel?
Since he was an extremely prolific author, it鈥檚 understandable that author Charles Dickens would have similar characters and plotlines appear in his works.
And now the website has chronicled some of the most frequently occurring devices in Dickens鈥� books in a new article titled 鈥淗ow To Tell If You Are In A Charles Dickens Novel.鈥�
The article鈥檚 author, Mallory Ortberg, takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the many tragic circumstances often faced by Dickens鈥� characters. Some telling signs that you are inhabiting Dickens鈥� world include 鈥淵our father and mother have died at least once in the last year,鈥� 鈥淵ou are a thinly veiled caricature of Hans 海角大神 Andersen,鈥� and 鈥淭he only thing more evil than a headmaster is a landlord.鈥�
Ortberg also tweaks unlikely devices in Dickens鈥� stories with such signs as 鈥淵ou have only to see a letter once, but you will remember the hand that wrote it for the rest of your days.鈥�
Check out the full list . Other readers pitched in with ideas on the Toast site, with commenter C.B. Blanchard adding that people should 鈥渂eware the next time you have a cough. It's the consumption鈥� and reader Dorothea Brooke writing, 鈥淢any of your friends and acquaintances have multi-syllabic and/or portmanteau names. You should have learned by now to judge them accordingly.鈥�
Dickens鈥� two hundredth birthday arrived in February 2012 and prompted new examination of the author鈥檚 championing of the poor, though as noted by Lillian Nayder, author of the Catherine Dickens biography 鈥淭he Other Dickens,鈥� the author is hard to fit into our contemporary political party definitions.
However, Ruth Richardson, author of the biography 鈥淒ickens and the Workhouse,鈥� says the writer changed the way poverty-stricken people were portrayed in literature.
鈥淲hen Dickens was first writing, authors usually showed the poor as pathetic, not clever or funny," she said. "Dickens was highly unusual in showing them as the hu颅man equals of anybody, which was one of the reasons he was so swiftly popular and why he has remained so.鈥�
While film and TV adaptations of the writer鈥檚 work have been quite common, the author himself made it to the big screen this past winter with the release of聽 鈥�The Invisible Woman,鈥� which starred 鈥淭he Grand Budapest Hotel鈥� actor Ralph Fiennes as Dickens.
Are you a Dickens fan? Do you have a way to tell you鈥檙e in one of his novels? Add it to the comments below.
