Dickens may have had the eye of a journalist, but he also had the nous of a consummate storyteller (some have said to a fault). If he was writing today, it’s likely he would have been a scriptwriter on a soap or hit US series: his episodic structure means there are cliffhangers aplenty, his characters are often sentimentally caricatured to make the obvious contrast between right and wrong (has there ever been a more unrealistically good hero than Oliver Twist?) and there are the kinds of clanging coincidences that would have critics rolling their eyes in the 21st century.
But in a way, that was Dickens’s point; that often, good and unexpected things could happen to good people, despite their seemingly doomed situations. And it is that idea, in the end, which filmmakers, theatre directors, musicians and, most importantly, audiences have always clung on to. Dickens was sentimental, but that sentimentality was based in a gruelling real world which the popularity of his writing helped change for the better.
Nicely said.
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