Note 4 to Chapter 9 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.
There is enormous controversy on this point, and many critics, of course, do not agree that there is a failure. Of those who do, one of the most interesting is Robert Bernard, who argues that the novel fails "because Dickens was losing his faculty for writing serious comedy" (p. 93).
Last modified: 3 May 2001