Note 2 to Chapter 3 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
Though many will think Kettle's articulation of the central theme as "the struggle of the poor against the bourgeois state" (Kettle, i. 132) rather over-specific, I believe his essay is the most sensitive to the important issues in the novel, and I am heavily indebted to it. For a vigorous dissent from Kettle's position see Kathleen Tillotson.
Last modified: 1 May 2001