Comical Operation of Dismemberment on Novel Characters

Adaptation of M. M. Bakhtin's Novel Theory to Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend

Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Prieud is permeated with laughter, humor, and elements of self-parody which M. M. Bakhtin refers to as the result of novelization, and it is undoubtedly due to Dickens's ironic way of presenting his characters to the readers. Dickens rarely introduces his characters straightforwardly either in an approving or disapproving way. He tries to bring their hidden part to light and to show how it is different from their facade. The difference between their surface and center arouses laughter, which provides readers with insightful knowledge of the truths as wel! as emotional and moral satisfaction. Dickens's "comical operation of dismemberment" on his characters is made possible because he takes quite a different authorial position from that of epic writer, who, according to Bakhtin, speaks about a past that is to him inaccessible, in the reverent point of view of descendent. Dickens, on the contrary. speaks about the present, his contemporaries. Since there exists no absolute distance between the author himself and his objects, he can observe them freely and closely. Novel writer Dickens makes good use of generic tactics of the novel, that is parody and travesty, and their etfect laughter to destroy the epic and any hierarchical distance and to investigate his object far more freely and familiarly.