ABSTRACT

Some recent writers on Dickens blame him unfairly for faults that he had in common with his age and social class. But without accepting all the conclusions of the psychoanalysts one may recognize that certain defects in his character help to explain the shortcomings in his achievement. There is evidence in his novels and his life that a troubled childhood left its mark upon the man and his work. The sense of power and the self-assertion, combined with an incapacity for self-criticism, were perhaps compensations for the frustrations of his early years.