Note 8 to Chapter 4 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.
G. K. Chesterton has the best and most evocative description of this irony: "All the good fairies and all the kind magicians, all the just kings and all the gallant princes, with chariots and flying dragons and armies and navies go after one little child who has strayed into a wood, and find her dead" (pp. 53-4).
Last modified: 1 May 2001