Similarities and Differences between Pecksniff and the Patriarch

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

Note 9 to Chapter 8 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.

The treatment of Mr. Pecksniff is, on the surface, almost identical. He merely repeats Mrs. Lupin's words, but, the narrator says, "Anybody would have been, as Mrs. Lupin was, comforted by the mere voice and presence of such a man." (III).

Last modified: 3 May 2001