34 Figurative Literalism: The Image of the Creator in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

1.1 Introduction: Dickens as a Voracious Reader

“…As each cultural period seems to reduce the entirety of the Bible to a few favourite chapters, it is more than just a simple conjecture that the Victorians were not so much fascinated by the Song of Solomon (as Shakespeare and the 17 th century were) as by the Book of Genesis with its stories of the Creation, the loss of Paradise and the Deluge. 31 From a literary perspective, the Bible seems to be for Dickens on a par with Shakespeare; and what is clearly an indication of Dickens's excellence as a writer is that he just does not enumerate quotations from the Bible, as scholars in reference books might want to make us believe, but that he amply uses motifs, allusions and loose biblical contexts. Dickens, thus, integrates elements and fragments from the Old Testament so skilfully and unexpectedly that it takes some close reading of the novels to notice that, after his expulsion from the little garden of Eden with the Cerberus-like dog in the kennel, David Copperfield's life is a voyage aboard various arks -Peggotty's ark on the shore of Yarmouth with an odd assortment of social misfits (including Ham, Noah's son), Betsey Trotwood's house giving shelter to Mr Dick and eventually his own home offering hospitality even to Mephistophelean characters such as Uriah Heep.…”