Most notably, in a seemingly ‘progressive’ way, he has no mechanical mind. He shows no interest in the details of the machines or the things the machine can do. As Gissing notes, nowhere does Dickens describe a train journey with anything like the enthusiasm he displays when describing a stagecoach journey. Almost all of his books one has the curious feeling that one is living in the first half of the nineteenth century, and in fact, one often returns to this period. Little Dorritwritten in the mid-fifties, speaking in the late twenties; Great Expectations (1861) is undated, but apparently refers to the twenties. Many of the inventions and discoveries that made the modern world possible (the electric telegraph, the breech-loading gun, India rubber, coal gas, wood-pulp paper) began to appear in Dickens’s lifetime, but he does not write about them in his books. Nothing is more surprising than the vagueness with which he speaks of Doyce’s ‘invention’ Little Dorrit. It is represented as very intelligent and flexible, ‘of great importance to his country and fellow creatures’, and is the least important link in the world. a book; yet we are never told what ‘invention’ is! On the one hand, Doyce’s physical appearance is struck with a typical Dickensian touch; he has an unusual way of moving his thumb, which is characteristic of engineers. After that, Doyce clings firmly to human memory; but, as usual, Dickens has done it by sticking to something external.
There are people (Tennyson is an example) who have no mechanical intelligence but can see the social possibilities of machines. Dickens does not have this stamp of thought. He shows very little awareness of the future. When he talks about human progress, he is usually referring to of conduct develop men who grow better; perhaps she will never admit that men are as good as their technological advances allow them to be. At this point the gap between Dickens and his modern analogue, HG Wells, is enormous. Wells puts the future around his neck like a millstone, but Dickens’s unscientific mind hurts in a different way. What it does is to do it anywhere positive a very difficult attitude for him. He has a hatred for the feudal, agrarian past and is not really in touch with industrial modernity. However, what remains is the future (meaning Science, ‘progress’, etc.), which does not quite fit into his thoughts. So, while he attacks everything in sight, he has no definable standard of comparison. As I have remarked, he attacks the present system of education with perfect justice, and yet, after all, he has no remedy to offer but benevolent schoolmasters. Why didn’t he show which school strength late? Why didn’t he educate his sons on his own plan, instead of sending them to public schools to be indoctrinated in Greek? Because he lacked that kind of thinking. He has an unerring moral sense, but very little intellectual curiosity. And here one comes to something which is a really great deficiency in Dickens, something, which really makes the nineteenth century seem distant to us – of which he has no knowledge. work.
Here is the full article, which is excellent throughout.
