Мартин Чеззлвит өмірі мен оқиғалары

1843–1844 novel by Charles Dickens
the BBC adaptations

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (commonly known as Martin Chuzzlewit) is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialised between January 1843 and July 1844. While he was writing it Dickens told a friend that he thought it was his best work thus far, but it was one of his least popular novels, judged by sales of the monthly instalments. Characters in this novel gained fame, including Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp. Like nearly all of Dickens's novels, Martin Chuzzlewit was first published in monthly instalments. Early sales of the monthly parts were lower than those of previous works, so Dickens changed the plot to send the title character to the United States. Sarah Gamp (also known as Sairey or Mrs Gamp) is an alcoholic who works as a midwife, a monthly nurse and a layer out of the dead. Even in a house of mourning Mrs Gamp manages to enjoy all the hospitality the house can afford, with little regard for the person she is there to minister to, and she is often much the worse for drink. She constantly refers to a Mrs Harris, who is "a phantom of Mrs Gamp's brain created for the express purpose of holding visionary dialogues with her on all manner of subjects, and invariably winding up with a compliment to the excellence of her nature". Mrs Gamp habitually carries with her a battered black umbrella: so popular with the Victorian public was the character that Gamp became a slang word for an umbrella in general. It is believed that the character was based on a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend Angela Burdett Coutts. Mary Graham is the companion of old Martin Chuzzlewit, who has told her that she will receive nothing from him in his will. She is a beautiful young woman who is loving and loyal. Mary and young Martin Chuzzlewit fall in love. The two lovers are separated by the argument between grandfather and grandson. They are eventually reunited. Mr Chuffey is Anthony Chuzzlewit's old clerk and lifelong companion. Chuffey protects Anthony from his son Jonas. Bailey is a boy employed first by Mrs Todgers, then by the fraudster Montague Tigg. He is reported to have suffered a fatal head injury in falling out of a cabriolet, though he eventually recovers. Mrs. Todgers owns the inn or boarding house where the Pecksniffs stay when in London. As it is for male guests only, she houses Charity and Mercy in her own suite of rooms.

Jefferson Brick is a war correspondent in The New York Rowdy Journal. He typifies the bluster written in American newspapers, which publish every speech made by a local, and have poor knowledge of the world beyond America. Mr. Bevan is the kind and level headed American man who meets Martin on his arrival in New York. He aids Martin in returning to England.

The main theme of the novel, according to Dickens's preface, is selfishness, portrayed in a satirical fashion using all the members of the Chuzzlewit family. The novel is also notable for two of Dickens's great villains, Seth Pecksniff and Jonas Chuzzlewit. In keeping with the theme of greed and selfishness in this novel, the Christmas story Dickens published in December 1843, as this novel was being serialized, was A Christmas Carol.

This novel is dedicated to Angela Georgina Burdett Coutts, a friend of Dickens.

The novel has been seen by some Americans as unfairly critical of the United States, although Dickens himself wrote it as satire similar in spirit to his "attacks" on certain people and particular institutions back home in England, in novels such as Oliver Twist. Dickens was serious about reforms in his home country and is credited with achieving changes, notably in the workhouse system and child labour. Such satirical depictions by him and other authors contributed to the call for legislative reform. Fraud in selling land sight unseen was shown as a common event in the United States of the 1840s. Most Americans were satirically portrayed: they proclaim their equality and their love of freedom and egalitarianism at every opportunity. Those who have travelled to England claim to have been received only by aristocrats. One character, Mr Bevan, is the voice of reason with a balanced view of his nation and a useful friend to Martin and Mark. Another American character, Mrs Hominy, described The United States as "so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust". Dickens attacks the institution of slavery in the United States in the following words: "Thus the stars wink upon the bloody stripes; and Liberty pulls down her cap upon her eyes, and owns oppression in its vilest aspect for her sister. The institution of slavery had not been practised in England since the 12th century and Britain outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire in 1833 so the sight of slaves and the still lively debates on keeping or abolishing the practice in the US were an easy stimulant for satire by an English writer. George L. Rives wrote that "It is perhaps not too much to say that the publication of Martin Chuzzlewit did more than almost any other one thing to drive the United States and England in the direction of war" over the Oregon boundary dispute, which was eventually resolved via diplomacy rather than war. In 1868, Dickens returned to the US and at a banquet in his honour hosted by the press in New York City, delivered an after dinner speech in which he acknowledged the positive transformation which the United States had undergone and apologized for his previous negative reaction on his visit decades before. Furthermore, he announced that he would have the speech appended to each future edition of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, and the volumes have been emended as such in all successive publications.