Note 27 to Chapter 1 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.
Dorothy Van Ghent's arguments are stated in "The Dickens World: A View from Todgers's" and in the chapter on Great Expectations in The English Novel: Form and Function. Dickens's animism had previously been noted, most prominently by H. A. Taine, pp. 340-41; however, it has been investigated intensively only since Miss Van Ghent's studies.
Last modified: 1 May 2001