Five Novellas from Charles Dickens (2023 #DickensChallenge: Read ONE Novella by June 9th) Post #2

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Hello Readers, If you are interested in joining us for the 2023 #Dickenschallenge, we invite you to read ONE novella (or as many as you want). (Thanks to Norah, and a few others, who offered feedback) 

***We also have a separate website in the works for this challenge. STAY TUNED***

We usually post our replies in JUNE – but below you can find the posts that have come in so far for the 2023 challenge:

• Robbie : A Christmas Carol. https://roberta-writes.com/2023/02/21/roberta-writes-dickens-novella-challenge-a-christmas-carol-dickenschallenge-readingcommunity/
• Robbie : The Cricket on the Hearth  https://roberta-writes.com/2023/02/28/roberta-writes-dickens-novella-challenge-the-cricket-on-the-hearth-a-fairy-tale-of-home-readingcommunity-dickens/
• Donna: The Cricket on the Hearth. https://retirementreflections.com/2023/03/16/whats-on-your-bookshelf-march-2023/

Also, Dan Antion (here) asked if we had any suggestions about which novella to consider reading. Charles Dickens wrote short stories, novels, and novellas. Novellas are works of fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel.

Most of Charles Dickens novellas came out around Christmas, but keep in mind they are so much more than holiday stories (and some barely connect to the holiday at all). 

So…in this post, we have a brief intro to FIVE Dickens novellas

1. A Christmas Carol (1843)
   
2. The Chimes (1844)
   
3. The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
   
4. The Battle of Life (1846)
   
5. The Haunted Man & The Ghost’s Bargain (1848)

1 – A Christmas Carol (1843)

Free copy HERE

This well known novella, A Christmas Carol, is a ghost story where the miser Ebenezer Scrooge is “visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, as well as the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.” This story is about more than the Christmas holiday. The nephew in this story depicts joy, kindness, and wellness. Other characters add social dimensions and layers of avarice, greed and unhealthy goals and cut-throat business practices. This was also a story that Dickens liked to perform (and maybe he overdid the drama at times). “Dickens undertook around 130 public readings of the novella from 1849 until his death.” 

2 – The Chimes (1844) 

Free copy HERE

The Chimes is said to be a story of the New Year (not Christmas) a working class man who comes to believe that he is worthless and worries that working-class people are wicked by nature. As the novella unfolds, Dickens plants seeds with a “strong moral and social message.” Some call this the “forgotten novella” by Dickens and the online Dickens Club (here) noted the idea came to Dickens while he was visiting Italy. He was awed by the uplifting  sound of the bells in Genoa. He then built a story that “champions not only the poor and downtrodden, but those among them driven to desperate acts, like the real-life woman who, in a failed suicide attempt to keep herself and her baby from the workhouse, was accused of infanticide. Society, Dickens argues, must take its responsibility.” (source)

The Chimes is somewhat similar to Scrooge’s story in A Christmas Carol, in the sense that a character is changed by supernatural means. “In this case, however, the protagonist is Trotty Veck, an aged ticket-porter (messenger) who longs for the old days. Thanks to the newspapers, he has taken to believe that the working class — to which he belongs — is responsible for their own strife. When he supposedly dies climbing a belltower, spirits and goblins appear and present him with visions of a future riddled with social injustice and the suffering of those he loves” (source).

3 – The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)

Free copy HERE

The Cricket on the Hearth is like the other Christmas novellas, where the holiday is not always the main theme. In this story, Dickens stirs up his astute social psychology insights and then weaves in insights about love, family, and hope. The reader also finds reminders to remember the poor, suffering, and in this book – we have a focus on physical disabilities.

“In this novella, Dickens’s character, Bertha Plummer, is shown to be removed from the world of courtship because of stereotypes about blindness and disabilities. Dickens masterfully shows how Bertha’s blindness is perceived as “a cognitive dullness” and “example of the sociological phenomenon of ‘spread,’ in which one disability is assumed, without evidence, to produce impairment to other physical and mental functions.”  (source)

*** Side note ***  I think this is the novella that I am going to read for this year’s reading challenge. Not sure yet, but when I started reading it earlier today – the opening “kettle” part grabbed me:

“The kettle began it!  Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said.  I know better.  Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn’t say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did.  I ought to know, I hope!  The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp.As if the clock hadn’t finished striking, and the convulsive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn’t mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!Why, I am not naturally positive.  Every one knows that.  I wouldn’t set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever.  Nothing should induce me.  But, this is a question of fact.  And the fact is, that the kettle began it, at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence.  Contradict me, and I’ll say ten. Let me narrate exactly how it happened…..”

4- Battle of Life: A Love Story (1846)

Free copy HERE

The Christmas holiday is NOT the focus in the Battle of Life novella; instead, the theme is romance and resilience. Even if romance is not your genre, the characters allow the reader to experience relatable life detours, setbacks, patience, and rebounding. 

The Battle of Life is “set in a town that was once the site of a historical skirmish, the battle that takes place in this story is one of the heart. Two sisters live with their widowed father and a pair of house-servants. Marion, one of the sisters, is betrothed to a man who left town to better himself — leaving her open to the advances of a local rake. Written somewhat like a light farce, this breezy book from Dickens offers readers a satisfying ending with a romantic twist.” (source)

5 – The Haunted Man & The Ghost’s Bargain (1848), the last of Charles Dickens’ Christmas novellas.

Free copy HERE

This is another supernatural holiday novella that allows the reader to connect with a character who has a lot of baggage and heaviness from gloomy memories. I recently met someone who was very cynical and they always “discounted the positive” – and I knew their actions and distortions were related to some of their past hurts (and lack of growth). This person came to mind when I was reading about the main character, a ngetave and bitter teacher, in this novella.

In the Haunted Man & The Ghost’s Bargain, Mr. Redlaw is a chemistry teacher and he “constantly broods over wrongs done to him” and he cannot seem to release grief from his past. Many of us can relate to that and I wonder if this novella offers more of Dickens’ social psychology layers and spotlight on humans getting stuck.

In this novella, we have our teacher, Mr. Redlaw (and the choice of name adds much – re + law?) – who is “alone Christmas Eve, haunted not only by past traumas but also by his spectral doppelganger. The ghost offers to wipe away Redlaw’s gloomiest memories, Eternal Sunshine-style, which the teacher only too eagerly accepts” with outcomes that will entertain and move the reader.” (source).

Dickens wrote about this book to John Forster noting that “bad and good are inextricably linked in remembrance, and that you could not choose the enjoyment of recollecting only the good. To have all the best of it you must remember the worst also.”

Care to join us?

If so, start thinking about which “one” novella you want to read and then stay tuned for more information. 

• The 2023 #DickensChallenge invites you to read ANY ONE of Dickens’ novellas between February 7th and June 9th, 2023 (the dates for the challenge align with Dickens’ date of birth and date of death). Then share about your reading in a post or via comments on one or all of the host blogs. 
• The hosts are Trent, Marsha, and Yvette.
• Posts and Comments will be shared after June 9th until around June 16th – and then we will raffle off the gift cards by entering the names of participants into a raffle. 
• Use this hashtag: #Dickenschallenge if you make a post 
• You do not need to make a post to join us. You can comment on our blog posts and join in that way. This challenge is about community and celebrating literature together.

Closing Note:

• If you want to buy a soft cover copy of these novellas, then this book here on Amazon might be for you.  I think this is the book Robbie recently purchased. It has the five novellas and a handful of Dickens’ short stories. However, as noted in this post, there are many free copies of each novella available online. 

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