When Dickens is sentimental or moralizing, things drag; it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes. I was trying to articulate, the other day, what I found off-putting about this book: the plot twists that feel manipulative, the way the characterizations are so black and white, morally speaking. But there’s plenty that’s good too: plenty that’s funny, and warm, and human. There’s a pony in particular that made me grin every time he stubbornly inspected the lamp posts or refused to walk forward; there are passages like this one, so pleasingly full:
The cold sharp interval between night and morning — the distant streak of light widening and spreading, and turning from grey to white, and from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red — the presence of day, with all its cheerfulness and life — men and horses at the plough —birds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields, frightening them away with rattles. The coming to a town — people busy in the markets; light carts and chaises round the tavern yard; tradesmen standing at their doors; men running horses up and down the street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting in the dirty distance, getting off with long strings at their legs, running into clean chemists’ shops and being dislodged with brooms by ‘prentices; the night coach changing horses — the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with three months’ growth of hair in one night — the coachman fresh as from a bandbox, and exquisitely beautiful by contrast: — so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of incidents […] (p 436-437)
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