The New World in Dickens's Writings. Part Two

Abstract

_HE VIEWof America which develops from its functions in his various stories and novels is a conventional one which Dickens might have held quite comfortably without ever thinking seriously about America, much less going there. America is a conveniently distant place, an asylum for the troubled, a land of promise where greater material well-being can be found, and, finally, a source of materials be used in satirizing Europe-functions well established long before Dickens's day. In Sketches by Boz a drunkard asks a son about his other sons. Where they'll never trouble you;' replies the son: John's gone America, and Henry's dead''1 In Nicholas Nickleby, Mrs. Nickleby tries stimulate Frank Cheeryble's interest in Kate by dark hints of the latter's going to America on a visit, or anywhere threatened a long and tedious separation' Of the haunting in Haunted House (i859) nothing can be learned because a witness of the phenomena is in California.' Cuttings from the same general pattern appear in two other works! The escape motif makes a brief appearance in five novels. Mr. Weller plans have Mr. Pickwick escape from jail in a piano in which there ain't no vurks and flee America, where, we learn later, Job Trotter's brother has fled in consequence of being too much sought after here' The villain Leeford, alias Monks, retires to a distant part of the New World' but, exceptionally, dies in a prison there.' Mrs. Nickleby refers a Mr. Watkins that your poor