ABSTRACT

His choice to steep his writing in popular modes such as melodrama is, as I have argued elsewhere, a sign of his affinity with ‘the People5 in the sense of the non-elite or the governed;3 but his championing of popular entertainments also signifies his belief that, as he puts it in his seminal essay, ‘The Amusements of the People5, ‘there is some hopeful congeniality between what will excite MR. WHELKS, and what will rouse a Duchess5.4 Dickens sees culture in its ideal form as a shared medium, a bridge between social classes which could ultimately help to submerge class differences beneath a sense of community. Culture is therefore both essential and central to his social vision, yet also, through its very unifying function, a linking, mobile, transformative sphere and idea. Culture enables imaginative and social mobility, for Dickens; it connects and metamorphoses; its value to individuals and societies lies in its ability to evade categorization, to grow, to change, to be itself and not itself.