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Compare and contrast dickens and Thackeray:




Charles Dickens: one of the most prominent and influential novelists of the Victorian age, in fact the most popular of all English novelist so far. Some of his great novels are Pickwick Papers, Great Expectation and Bleak house in which his comic view of life, social criticism and power of storytelling are clearly reflected. Dickens seems to see things differently in an amusing and exaggerated way.
As a novelist, Dickens is a social chronicler .he is found to have introduced social novels in a much bounder sense. His novels are full of pathos and there are many passages of the extravagant sentiments. His themes chiefly focus on mans thoughts, imaginations, affections and religious instincts. In spite of pain, dirt and sin with which his novels are full, they leave an impression and the reader of the firm optimism and an exaggerate temper of Dickens.
All of his characters comes out of the pit of suffering and distress as better man, uncontaminated purer than before. Dickens is more successful with characters drawn from the middle and lower classes of his society. As a child and young man, he had seen and even experienced the life of these classes. His novels were most important product and expression of the humanitarian movement of the Victorian era. From first to last, he was a novelist with the purpose. Dickens may justly be regarded as one of the foremost reformers of his age
Thackeray, who was a great contemporary ad great rival, was more interested in the manners and morals of the aristocracy than in the great upheavals of the age. Unlike dickens who came from the poor family and had to struggle in his boyhood, Thackeray was born of rich parents, inherited a comfortable fortune, and spent his young days in comfort. But whereas Dickens, in spite of his bitter experiences, he had cheerful outlook of life. Thackeray, in spite of his comfortable and easy life, turned cynical towards the word and found deceptions and verities everywhere.
Dickens was more interested in plain, common people, Thackeray, on the other hand was more concerned with high society. The main reason of his fundamental differences between the two was not of environment but of temperaments. Dickens was romantic and emotional and interpreted the worlds largely through his imagination; Thackeray was the realist and moralist and judged society by observation and reflection. Thus if we take the novels of both together, they give us a true picture of all classes if the English society in the early Victorian period

It was the publication of the Vanity Fair in 1846 that gave him recognition in public’s eyes. In 1852 appeared the marvellous historical novel of Henry Esmond which was the greatest novel ever written. In its Thackeray proved that he had a remarkable grasp of characters and story. By some critics Newcomes has been considered to be his best novels. In all these novels Thackeray has presented life in the most realistic manner
Hence Thackeray is a realist, who paints life as he sees it. As he says of himself” I have no brain above my eyes, I describe what is see”. His novels give us accurate and true picture especially of vicious elements of the society. He is readily offended by shames, falsehood and hierocracy in the society. The result is that he satirises them. But his satire is always tempered by kindness and humour.

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