Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do it without making himself hated, and, more than this, the very people he attacked have swallowed him so completely that he has become a national institution himself.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Dickens harshly criticized English society but was so beloved that he became part of the establishment he once attacked.
- In plain terms
- He attacked the system so fiercely that he became the system.
- What can you take from it?
- Harsh criticism can be absorbed and turned into tradition.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Can a rebel ever be fully accepted?
- What happens to radical ideas?
Another view
Criticism often loses edge over time regardless of intensity.
More from Charles Dickens
It does not matter that Dicken's world is not lifelike; it is alive.
Permalink to quote #156 Of all the Victorian novelists, he was probably the most antagonistic to the Victorian age itself.
Permalink to quote #158 His eye brings in almost too rich a harvest for him to deal with, and gives him an aloofness and a hardness which freeze his sentimentalism and make it seem a …
Permalink to quote #155
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