ABSTRACT
Among the purposes assigned to Dickens, and, as appeared in his prefaces and sometimes in the text of the novel itself, in part stated by the author, is the expression of a theme.
Kathleen Tillotson, in her pioneering study of several novels of the 1 840s, showed scepticism about the existence, or at least the efficient treatment, of a theme. She wrote: 'it is doubtful whether a reader lacking preface and biography would recognize that Selfishness, or even Hypocrisy (it is never quite clear which Dickens means) was its theme ' . 1 But other respected Dickens scholars have felt differently. K. J. Fielding, for instance, considers that Chuzzlewit, as much as any of Dickens's books, 'is written with a moral purpose. It may be unnecessary to labour this point, but it is impossible to understand Dickens without it, and no one can question that this was his purpose in Manin Chuzzlewit. '2 For John Butt, in one of his posthumously collected essays, 'In Martin Chuzzlewit and in each of the later novels, Dickens set out with a theme in mind and devised a plot to help him in expounding that theme. His success in Chuzzlewit is not so striking as in the later novels, but there is no doubting his intentions. '3 And Michael Steig has roundly asserted that 'Manin Chuzzlewit is built upon an essential superstructure of several moral progresses' . 4
Whether or not Dickens's moral ideas cohered into a thematic superstructure, there can be no doubt that, in Chuzzlewit as in a large majority of Victorian novels, the author's moral ideas are abundantly expressed and are uninhibitedly made part and parcel of his central purpose.
