Can Dickens be defended?

Charles Dickens was a great, great writer. He is the author of a number of famous works, including Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist. It is this last work which I would like to comment on. In it, one of the main villains - a master thief and employer of young pickpocketing boys - named Fagin is a Jew. Not only is he a Jew, but he is constantly known as "the Jew" throughout the novel, making it sound extremely antisemitic and giving Jews a bad name.

I adore Dickens. It really bothers me that he seems to have anti-semitic tones in his novels, especially in Oliver Twist, and in searching around for some article in his defense, I only found one trying to defend him but realizing that there isn't that much to defend. He did write a novel, Our Mutual Friend, with a Jewish protagonist instead of villain, but that's about it. Here is the article, though it is on JSTOR so not everyone will be able to get to it, I don't think. Anyway, here it is for you all to read at your own convenience, but I just want to know, how can I adore Dickens if he was such an anti-semite? I feel bad doing it, but I love his work! It's so awful.

A David Copperfield Dream Come True

I was so lucky this morning. Somehow, I managed to write half my paper last night before I went to bed (at three in the morning, oy!) and still woke up at 8:25 this morning, finishing it with enough time to still make it to my final at 9:30! Yes! I'm not positive how coherent it was, but it was on David Copperfield and when I handed in my final, the teacher started talking to me about Great Expectations (which is clearly not as good as David Copperfield, its only redeeming quality being Miss Havisham, who is made of quirky win) as though she really delighted in the fact I enjoy Dickens. So perhaps that's a good sign.

What was fun about this paper (that I, er, had forgotten about until the last minute) was that I had been waiting since I was in tenth grade to write a paper on David Copperfield. You see, as a tenth grader, I went to a friend for shabbat, we shall call her Friend A, and she invited along Friend B, as well. On Friday afternoon, Friend B mentioned the fact that she would read anything and that she was going to even read Don Quixote. Well, I was not going to let her outdo me, so I picked up a rather fat book from a shelf at Friend A's house and said, "Oh yeah? Well, I'm going to read this!" 'This,' I discovered, as I belatedly glanced down at the title to see what exactly I had just promised to read, turned out to be David Copperfield. At that time, I had never read anything by Dickens, nor had I heard much about this David Copperfield character. I knew Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and I'd heard of Great Expectations, but that was about it. And I had read none of those. But I was determined. I sat down to read that Friday night and I did not stop for about two or three months. No joke. I would read during lunch at school, during free periods, anytime, anywhere. Friend A had given me the book gladly, claiming that no one in her family read it anyway.

At some point later, I was finished. FINISHED. I couldn't believe it. I almost wanted to cry. I had worked so hard, looked up all the hard words, read for so long, gotten to know the characters on a real personal level, and now it was over? But I had a real sense of accomplishment, too, as I closed the book for the final time. I had read an entire nearly a thousand page Dickens book and I had survived to tell the tale. I was so proud of myself that I even told my English teacher as we were going up the stairs to class. I'm sort of embarrassed for having done that, now. I mean, who on earth goes bragging to her English teacher over having read a book? She sort of just nodded and smiled and told me that was very good. But I wasn't satisfied. I was squirming to show off. More than that, though. I wanted to tell everyone about all these characters I had come to know so intimately, the way someone else likes to talk about her best camp friends that live in Texas or wherever. But I knew no one would really like to hear about Mr. Micawber, or Aunt Betsy Trotwood, or anyone else I had met in my literary journey. So I waited. I waited until the perfect opportunity came. And then, to my delight, for my Film and Fiction class, I did my paper on David Copperfield.

There is a Masterpiece Theater production with Daniel Radcliffe as young David and Maggie Smith as Aunt Betsy that I really wanted to see, but my teacher wouldn't let us use Masterpiece Theater because she says they're not real films. I'm not film-obsessed the way I am book obsessed so I don't really know the difference, but I did as she suggested and saw the 1935 black and white version. I hated it. I hated basically everything about it, except for the woman who played Aunt Betsy. She was very good. So I emailed my teacher asking her if I could use the Masterpiece Theater production instead. This was her response:

Erachet, the classic won an Academy Award, and the Masterpiece Theater version isn't exactly a film, still you can use it, but be very precise about matters of adaptation.

Right. So the 1935 version it was. Still, I got to spend two pages talking about the book and gushing over the eccentric characters, which is what I really wanted to write about.

And as for Friend B, last I heard, she never had gotten around to reading Don Quixote.