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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North ZMb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 76-24,564 BOGATY, Lewis, 1946- DICKENS'S AMERICA: A STUDY OF THE BACKGROUNDS AND OF DICKENS'S USE OF AMERICA IN AMERICAN NOTES AND MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1976 Literature, English Xerox University MicrofilmsAnn ( Arbor, Michigan 48106 @ Copyright by Lewis Bogaty 1976 DICKENS'S AMERICA: A STUDY OF THE BACKGROUNDS AND OF DICKENS'S USE OF AMERICA IN AMERICAN NOTES AND MARTIN CKUZ2LEV,fIT DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Lewis Bogaty, B.A., M*A. The Ohio State University 1976 Reading Committee: Approved By Professor Arnold Shapiro Professor James R* Kincaid Advised Professor William D* Andrews Department of English For My Parents ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My special thanks go to my advisor, Professor Arnold Shapiro* His ideas gave me ideas* His direction forced order from chaos* To his support and encouragement, and his genuine humaneness throughout, I owe the completion of this project. My further thanks go to my readers, Professors William D* Andrews and James R. Kincaid, for their careful (and prompt) reading of the dissertation* Professor Andrews*s thoughtful criticisms were both stimulating and challenging* Professor Kincaid, who introduced me to Seth and Sairey, has had, in numerous discussions over the past six years, an immeasurable influence on my reading of Dickens* Finally, I wish to thank Professor Richard D* Altick, who suggested this project to me, and under whose guidance I completed the preliminary research* iii VITA May 30, 19^6............ Born - Brooklyn, New York 1961* - 1968 ............ Attended George Washington Uni versity, Washington, D.C. B.A. With Distinction 1966 • ............ Board of Trustees* Scholarship 196 7 .................... Phi Beta Kappa 1970* • .............. Editorial Assistant, Random House Inc., New York, N. Y. 1970 - 1971*.......... .. University Follow, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971f.................... M.A., The Ohio State University 19 75* • ........ .. Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University; Instructor, Department of Communi cation Skills, Columbus Technical Institute, Columbus, Ohio 1976. »••••••••• Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University; awarded Department of English Distinguished Teaching Award FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Nineteenth Century British Literature X am also qualified in American, Medieval, and Eighteenth Century British Literature. In addition, I have taught courses in Modern Fiction and in Composition. i v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION.......................................... 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................... Ill VITA . lv INTRODUCTION........................................ 1 CHAPTER I. If Spittle Could Wait At Table: America - The View From England ......... • • 10 II. Such a Row: Dickens In America ••••«•••• ......... 80 III. A Veil Over My Sufferings: American Notes .............................. 120 IV. The Republic Of My Imagination: Martin Chuzzlowit ......... 163 CONCLUSION............................................ 227 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................... 229 v INTRODUCTION '•How can I give you the faintest notion of my reception herei" wrote Charles Dickens from America in 1842, of the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of the people that line the streets when I go out.**. V/hat can I tell you about any of these things which will give you the slightest notion of the en thusiastic greetings they give me...* "It is no nonsense, and no common feeling," wrote Dr. Channing to me yesterday. "It is all heart. There never was, and never will be, such a triumph."1 At the height of his fame, in the idealism of his thirtieth year, Charles Dickens went to America in 1842 with a bound less enthusiasm, certain that he would love the country. Within a month of his arrival, though, he wrote, "I tremble for a radical coming here, unless he is a radical on principle ...I fear that if he were anything elso, he would return home p a tory." As John S. Whitley and Arnold Goldman note in their recent introduction to American Notes. "The significance of Dickens's American journey in his career is quite possibly greater than is commonly thought."^ Dickens's intense dis appointment was many-faceted, and, according to some critics^ profoundly altered his attitudes toward both social reform** and human nature itself.^ At the very least, it was a cul mination of attitudes present in earlier novels. This dis sertation attempts to trace the development of Dickens's America-induced attitudes through the three products of his trip: the letters written from the United States, the 18^2 travel book, American Notes, and the 18^3 novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Such an analysis reveals a progressive symboli zation of the American experience, a transformation of the specifics of his personal experience in the United States into a symbolic vision of the dangers implicit in human society* Dickens travelled to America in the face of long-estab lished English beliefs about the United States and in the wake of a number of previous travellers* His American Notes is one of many American travelogues written during the period. Indeed, his trip, public and controversial as it was, was a high point of the English exploration of America that had been under way for decades, as both Dickens and his English readers were aware. It seems somewhat arbitrary, then, for Donald Hawes, discussing a previous traveller, Captain Marryat, to write that It is unlikely that Dickens was influenced by Marryat*s book, or by anybody else's for that matter, as the freshness, occasional naivet^, and sense of excitement that are conveyed on many pages of American Notes arise from his own direct observation of the American scene*6 No one would deny that Dickens directly observed, but it is not accurate to say he was viewing America independently of all he had heard and read for a decade* He refers in his letters to other travellers and is very much aware of their reports* More to the point, the lack of freshness in American Notes is due in large measure to Dickens's failure to find a different country from the America his predecessors had discovered* The attitudes that will govern the symbolism Dickens develops are the same attitudes that Mrs* Trollope brought with her to America over a decade earlier* Moreover, Dickons, in some of the exaggerations of Martin Chuzzlewitt clearly violates the truth of his own experience as recorded in the letters in order to fulfill his readers' expectations* It is necessary, then, to understand the context of Dickens's trip. In Chapter One, I examine both previous travellers and the attitudes toward America that their writings sustained and provoked in the English people* There has been no real attempt to view Dickens's trip within this context* Allan 7 8 Nevins' and Jane Louise Mesick offer useful, comprehensive surveys of the travel literature of the period, but Nevins, who deals briefly with American Notes, misjudges the reasons for its non-belligerent tone, a tone which does not, as he suggests, represent accurately Dickens's foelings toward America at the time* Helen Hoineraan's Threo Victorians in the New Y/orld^ explores the travels and works of Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, and Dickons* V/hile I am indebted to her work for insights into Frances Trollope's literary technique in Domestic Manners of the Americans, neither her work nor any

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