Mr. Pecksniff as Representant of the Life Force in Martin Chuzzlewit

James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California

Note 14 to Chapter 6 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.

I acknowledge that this interpretation disregards Dickens's final mention of Pecksniff as a "drunken, squalid, begging-letter-writing man" (LIV), but I think no apologies are required. For a fuller discussion of Pecksniff's final position, see Michael Steig, pp. 196-7.

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Last modified: 3 May 2001