The Pickwick Papers

"The Pickwick Papers was published serially, but also episodically: the story, such as it is, hops around in quite unpredictable ways. It’s full of these little in-set stories—episodes which can be detached, like an anthology that’s been scattered through the novel. “Dickens is very good at writing stories which have morals but are not moralistic” This particular Christmas episode was published on the 31st of December, 1836. It was written just after a major snowstorm. Dickens wrote it quickly and happily; you can see the atmosphere of the approach of Christmas and a snowy landscape all the way through the episode itself. It’s a world of blazing log fires, punch bowls, friendship, and a return to childhood games. All the things which Dickens would go on later to make central to his other writings about Christmas. It ends with what is in some ways a version of A Christmas Carol . “The Story of The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” involves a misanthrope who decides to celebrate Christmas in his own way by digging a grave. He’s tormented by visions of a happy family life which he doesn’t have, and then decides to reform himself. He’s converted to the kind of optimism and generosity Dickens associated with Christmas. It’s a prototype of Scrooge. One of the big distinctions that’s made in the Victorian period, which Dickens knew, is between ‘wit’ and ‘humor’. Wit is cleverness, often at someone else’s expense, whereas humor he sees as being generous and all-inclusive. For Dickens, Christmas is a time for humor. So it’s a “good-humoured” chapter in the sense that it’s not only funny, but it’s also designed to bring people together. It’s a kind of virtual version of the fire that he ends up talking about. Well, both. We have records of people doing both. The fact that Dickens ended up taking Christmas as one of his public readings—his version of A Christmas Carol —suggests that what he wanted was to treat his readership as a kind of extended family, who’d gather together around him as if around a virtual fire. He’s the storyteller who is drawing them in, but also drawing them together."