Suggestions for Reading Dickens as a Christian Author

A friend has commented on my post from February 11 that she would like to read some Dickens with his Christian message in mind. So I thought I would offer my best ideas on where to start.

If you’d like to start by reading about Dickens, I highly recommend God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author by Gary L. Colledge. Colledge shows the man with all of his faults and all of his spiritual virtues, as well. Some critics have made facile arguments claiming that Dickens was not a true Christian. (The same kind of critics desperately want Handel to be an unbeliever, presumably so they can listen to Messiah without any pressure.) Colledge sets those views aside quickly and starts to show how Dickens exalts Christ in his books and stories.

If you can’t stand just reading about Dickens but must start reading the words of the Inimitable himself, begin with this letter from 1861 to a certain Reverend Macrae:

With a deep sense of my great responsibility always upon me when I exercise my art, one of my most constant and most earnest endeavours has been to exhibit in all my good people some faint reflections of our great Master, and unostentatiously to lead the reader up to those teachings as the great source of all moral goodness. All my strongest illustrations are drawn from the New Testament; all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit; all my good people are humble, charitable, faithful, and forgiving. Over and over again, I claim them in express words as disciples of the Founder of our religion; but I must admit that to a man (or a woman) they all arise and wash their faces, and do not appear unto men to fast.

So don’t expect his Christian heroes to say, “According to Romans 8:28 . . . .” Dickens's humbugs and judgmental Christians thump their Bibles, whether literally or metaphorically, on the heads of others. His “good people,” on the other hand, follow the words of the book of James and show their faith by their good works. (The one, glorious exception is Captain Cuttle from Dombey and Son. This nearly illiterate sailor constantly quotes the Bible and the Prayer Book with uproarious imprecision. Yet, he, as much as any character in all of Dickens’s works, is “humble, charitable, faithful, and forgiving” and thus shows his true heart.) The piety of these good characters may be represented by a single phrase among the hundred thousand in a typical novel; don’t let these slip past your notice. If Pip says he prays or Bob and Tiny Tim go to church, Dickens is telling us with modest efficiency where the character’s allegiance lies.

Now, what you’re really looking for.

Start by rereading A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens grew up and lived in an officially Christian country. Nearly everyone he knew was baptized as an infant. The purest Christian he ever knew was his sister-in-law, who died in his arms at the age of (I believe) sixteen. Put these facts all together (with a few choice words from our Savior about the faith of children) and it’s easy to see how the author would come to the point of view that Christian faith is something that children grow up with and many adults have wandered away from and that returning to Christ means undoing some adult decisions and going back to take up again a state of childlikeness. Note that Scrooge’s parents raised him in some kind of Christian faith, else they would not have named him the otherwise improbable Ebenezer. Then watch in Stave the Second as young Ebenezer trades in his childlike faith for a love of money. Then, of course, there has to be a child of faith to show Scrooge the way. And of course the child, Tiny Tim, has to die (in one version of the Future) in order to demonstrate the beauty of an entire life lived in devotion to the one “who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” Now tell me if you can (and you know you can’t) that Scrooge’s joyous “I am as merry as a schoolboy” doesn’t mean a return to faith in Jesus. If you still doubt, think of Dickens’s checklist as you read the last few pages and note where, after his conversion, Scrooge is humble (check), charitable (check), faithful (check: he goes to church!), and forgiving (check).

Next stop, A Tale of Two Cities. Here Sydney Carton transforms from the most beautiful lost character in all of literature, to Christian (remembering the words “I am the Resurrection and the Life” from his father’s funeral), to Christ figure. On the slight chance that you don’t know the end of the plot, I won’t give it away. But pay attention to these key elements along the way. (1) Dr. Manette is released from prison in a scheme involving the codewords “recalled to life.” Keep in mind this master analogy in all of its deepest Christian connotations as it affects the rest of the book. Prison = death (literal, metaphorical, and spiritual). Freedom = resurrection (literal, metaphorical, and spiritual). (2) Think about Manette’s resurrection and the new Christian’s spiritual resurrection and Christ’s resurrection in comparison to the grave digging done by “the resurrection man.” (3) When one great character finally tells his wife that he approves of her praying, keep in mind that Dickens by that tiny rudder of a phrase turns a whole ship of spiritual meaning and wants us to take the words as a sign of renewed Christian faith. (4) When the drinker (you’ll know who) pours out his drink on the hearth, don’t take it simply as a renunciation of alcohol but also as a pouring out of sacrificial blood on an altar. (5) When Charles Darnay says that inheriting aristocracy, a state that brings a death sentence in the new French Republic, leaves him “bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it,” consider the similarities to the Biblical description of the state of sin. (6) When Sydney changes clothes with Charles, consider that Christ took on our humanity that we might “become partakers of the divine nature.” For me, no other novel, not even The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, gives a more powerful, theologically detailed allegory of salvation from sin by substitutionary death.

Little Dorrit contains much less allegory. But it’s there. My post from February outlines the main points. As for the rest of the content of the book, we have a morality play with three main groups: the Christians (“my good people” who quietly go their way demonstrating the character of Christ), the villains (who obviously do the opposite), and the humbugs, chiefly Mrs Clennam, who talk much more about the Bible than Dickens’s heroes but only seem to find in it judgment and cause for anger and revenge.

The Old Curiosity Shop reads like a fairy tale at times with its generically named characters: the Grandfather, the Single Gentleman, the Bachelor. So a little allegory shouldn’t come as a surprise. Little Nell leads her troubled Grandfather through the industrial midlands where they see poor souls tortured in the fires of the furnaces. Hmm. I wonder what that could represent? They find peace in their journey when they hear the bell of a country church, and for the rest of her time, Nell enjoys sitting among the statuary of the saints. The plot is actually barely allegorical. Clearly the good Christian Nell leads her Grandfather, a man mentally and spiritually bound by [I’ll let you discover the secret on your own], from Hell to Heaven by her humble, faithful, forgiving ways.

David Copperfield seems at first like it might be a great Biblical allegory, pitting David against Uriah Heep. (See 2 Samuel 11 & 12 for the story of the original David and Uriah.) But its symbolic message is more in the details of the separate characters. Note especially Agnes (Agnes = agnus = the lamb), who first appears in front of a stained-glass window, standing as one with the spiritual light shining down on David. Aunt Betsey Trotwood is one of the best Christians and best characters in all of Dickens’s works, and David Copperfield is one of the best novels in the history of English literature. So don’t forget that part of Dickens’s Christian message is care for all of humanity as shown in his realistic, carefully crafted attention to detail of character.

Then read any of the other novels with the letter to Rev. Macrae in mind. My recommendations in order: Dombey and Son, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House. If you still like Dickens after all that, you can read Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers, and the others.

Enough. Stop reading me. Start reading Dickens.