Chuzzlewit (I Make An End)

I just finished Martin Chuzzlewit. I read most of it on my iPad and my eyes are aching as a result...I don't think I'm much of an iPad reader...but I wanted to read Martin Chuzzlewit and that's not even available in Kinokuniya...one of his lesser favoured books.

But oh my, the chapters on America...nothing but nothing was good. He even took to task the Transcendentalists, which I thought rather mean. I know he and Emerson met. Wonder what Emerson thought of Dickens.

I thought he could have softened his picture without detracting from it. One Mr Bevan against all of the United States...ahem.

Anyway, I suspected from the beginning that old Martin was biding his time and allowing Pecksniff to expose himself fully. Funnily enough I thought this was the Dickens novel with spontaneous combustion and I kept waiting for either Pecksniff or Jonah to combust. Well, Pecksniff didn't, and Jonah, well Jonah just poisoned himself. The funny thing is, although Dickens sort of defends Jonah in the preface, explaining how he came to be the way he was, it didn't make the slightest difference.

The way he crushed Mercy (I wonder why she didn't run away from him and why it is deemed a virtue to remain with a brute and endure his torments) was beyond forgiveness. I don't care what he was brought up to.

Tom Pinch was lovable, although many were the times I felt I could shake him hard, for his unfailing belief in Pecksniff no matter how the latter treated him. But it was good that although he endured much on his own account, he didn't on his sister's. When he rescued her from that horrible house, and the two of them set forth together to live together and support each other, it was one of the best moments in the book.

And John Westlock was wonderful. Of course was going to fall in love with Tom's sister, seeing how much he esteemed and valued Tom.

The denouement was particularly satisfying (when Chuzzlewit struck Pecksniff with that stick, I wanted to stand up and cheer) and when he told Sairey Gamp to drink less and that good nurse fainted...hahahahahhahaha.

I felt a little sorry for Charity at the end....if she had been a man, and Augustus had been a woman, the marriage would have been forced through and endured...she was mean to her sister though and she had no heart and more of her father in her than was necessary.

Dickens swears by all that's holy that Pecksniff was taken from life.

And I guess, in this one instance, I believe him.