On the eve of a 200th anniversary

Studying English Literature in school can go one of two ways. It can lead some people to never want to pick up another book again in their lives or it can nourish a love of literature that lasts a lifetime. Often it depends on the material studied and on the teaching of it. Or it can depend on whether the immature teenage brain is capable of understanding the mind blowing nature of what it is taking in, rather than just reading Brodie's notes (remember them?)and desperately trying to remember key quotations for the exam.

I was very nearly put off reading the work of Charles Dickens when I studied Oliver Twist for GCSE. On reflection I don't think it was anything to do with the teaching which was very enthusiastic (to the point of reading dramatic episodes aloud and hamming it up ridiculously as Fagin). Rather it was due to the fact that I could not appreciate the revolutionary nature of what I was reading.

Thankfully I overcame my initial reaction to start reading some of Dickens' other work. His use of language to provoke a smile or a tear in his reader was second to none. He could lose his reader (and sometimes himself) in overlong passages of vivid description or wild tangents of social comment which did nothing to serve the plot but did everything to let you know what the author thought of the corrupt institutions of his day.

His personal life was a troubled one. Nobody could mistake Charles Dickens for a model husband and father and his attitude to women (both in real life and in his novels) was weird. But his novels shaped life in this country like no other works of literature could. Some of his characters were bland (Oliver Twist, Little Nell) but that only served to demonstrate the colourful character of many of the others (Fagin, Miss Havisham, Uriah Heep).

But why am I writing about Dickens in this blog? Not just because he is one of my favourite authors and Great Expectations is almost certainly my favourite novel of all time but because his (almost prophetic) voice is just as relevant to society today as it was when he wrote. We have plenty of satire today but none of it comes with the moral outrage so often contained in Dickens' writing. We have plenty of campaigners for justice but movements like the Occupy protests lack the imagination, punch and vicious sense of humour that made Dickens incapable of being ignored by the powerful and corrupt.

Maybe it is going too far and maybe Dickens himself would reject the idea but I think it is entirely possible to see him standing in the heritage of the Old Testament prophets who were stark in their criticism of power and who often delivered their message with biting satirical humour. (NB Hosea also had a pretty strange personal life!)Our society with all it's dissatisfaction at the perceived corruption of financial, governmental and ecclesiastical institutions is surely ripe for a new Dickens. There are many blurbs on the back covers of paperbacks that use that tag about an author. None of them live up to the hype. Perhaps we need to recover the old Dickens and ask ourselves what he would write about 21st century society. Would it be any less scathing than his opinion of 19th century Britain? I think not.

Perhaps it would be even better if we re-read some of those Old Testament prophets and began to apply their voice to our culture today and echo their cries for justice and mercy. In May the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will launch its theme for the year 2012-13 which calls the church to be a prophetic voice in our society. I suspect Mr Dickens would approve. He might even ask what has been keeping us?