Note 4 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.
As usual, Forster begins a tradition of negative criticism, this time in relation to the novel's structure: "In construction and conduct of story Martin Chuzzlewit is defective, character and description constituting the chief part of its strength" (Life, i. 292). The most recent continuation of this critical view is by Barbara Hardy, pp. 107-20. The structure of the novel (in terms of a unity of plot and theme) is defended by Edwin B. Benjamin. The overemphasis of the novel's darkness, probably started by H. A. Taine, ii. 351, is, I think, an obvious defect of J. Hillis Miller's chapter on the novel. The best single study of the novel, A. E. Dyson's "Martin Chuzzlewit: Howls the Sublime", addresses itself interestingly to the central issue of the curious combination of grimness and hilarity.
Last modified: 3 May 2001