By Danny Kuhn, guest blogger
Dickens and His Older People: The Portrayal of Older Adult Characters in the Early Novels of Charles Dickens (1836-1841) by Dr. Mervyn Eastman (Noble Legacy Publishing Ltd, 2026)
Ebenezer Scrooge and Samuel Pickwick notwithstanding, we often think of Dickens’s characters as youthful voyagers navigating the perils and predation of Victorian society. We want to feed Oliver until he is about to burst, give a word of caution to adolescent Pip, and befriend lonely Nell.
But Dickens’s older characters, somewhat neglected in scholarship, offer an even broader swath of good and evil, pain and pathos, than the youngsters. Dr. Mervyn Eastman’s new book, Dickens and his Older People, fills that gap with insight and careful research that makes readers want to revisit the original works, paying closer attention to what we may have missed. While the eternal question “Why are people the way they are?” remains, Eastman’s examination of the “more experienced” lives, motivations, and behaviors woven by the master of all storytellers reminds us that nothing about human nature, good or ill, is new, and we can still benefit from the lessons of the past.
Dr. Eastman’s long career in social work and gerontology gives us insight into these characters as real people whose progenitors surely were just that, as seen through the eyes of the great storyteller. He adeptly places them into the 19th-century milieu (with extensive scholarship and a welcome thorough reference listing) which shows us today’s aging experience contains more commonalities than differences.
Eastman’s book covers characters in The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, and (my personally transformative) A Christmas Carol. He promises a Volume II, focusing on Dickens’s middle and later novels (1842-1870). I look forward to it.
As my own mirror reflection becomes more Pickwickian by the day, these insights can be both comforting and frightening. But, like Dickens and his Older People, always thought provoking.
Danny Kuhn is the author of Fezziwig: A Life, Thoreau’s Wound, and other works of fiction and nonfiction.
(Cover image courtesy of Noble Legacy Publishing Ltd. Editor’s note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
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