Editing Charles Dickens (section)

===Literary techniques===

Dickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his [[caricature]]s and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in ''The Old Curiosity Shop'' (1841) was received as extremely moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by [[Oscar Wilde]]. "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell", he said in a famous remark, "without dissolving into tears ... of laughter."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/boev1.html |title=Deconstructing Little Nell |last=Boev |first=Hristo |website=The Victorian Web |access-date=11 October 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181011133356/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/boev1.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Ellmann|1988|p=441}}: In conversation with [[Ada Leverson]].</ref> [[G. K. Chesterton]] stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this.<ref>{{harvnb|Chesterton|1911|pp=54–55}}.</ref>

[[File:Tiny-tim-dickens.jpg|thumb|upright|Less fortunate characters, such as Tiny Tim (held aloft by Bob Cratchit), are often used by Dickens in sentimental ways.]]
The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the [[sentimental novel]] is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her book ''Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition'', sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "''Dombey and Son'' is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition".<ref>{{cite book |last=Purton |first=Valerie |title=Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition: Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Lamb |series=Anthem nineteenth century studies |location=London |publisher=Anthem Press |year=2012 |pages=xiii, 123 |isbn=978-0857284181}}</ref> The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' online comments that, despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in ''A Christmas Carol'' (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421071/novel |title=novel (literature) |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=7 July 2013 |archive-date=30 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430021713/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421071/novel |url-status=live}}</ref>

In ''Oliver Twist'', Dickens provides readers with an idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically good that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young [[pickpocketing|pickpockets]]. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in ''Bleak House'' and Amy Dorrit in ''Little Dorrit''), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence.<ref>{{harvnb|Marlow|1994|pp=149–150}}.</ref> For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]],'' which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=44}}.</ref>