Note 9 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.
Edgar Johnson is one of the few critics to take seriously the commercial and economical implications of the novel's theme; he argues that behind all is the "acquistive greed callous to the suffering it eaused". J. C. Reid, pp. 34-47, does offer a similar reading, but it seems to me somewhat weakened by being so self-consciously "archetypal" in approach.
Last modified: 1 May 2001