Pickwick Papers

As Dickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers set the standard for Victorian serials that followed. Compare this novel’s format with another of his novels or another Victorian serial. In what ways does the style, tone, or format of the other work reflect the influence of The Pickwick Papers?

At the end of the novel, the Pickwick Club dissolves, and all its primary members cease their adventures and begin to settle down. What does this dramatic shift in the conclusion imply about travel and experience?

Explore the idea of justice and injustice in the text. How does it analyze and represent these concepts? How does its representation of courts and prisons expose some of the weaknesses of social and legal justice in England at the time?

What is the symbolic significance of the antique stone Pickwick finds and brings back to London? What does London society’s reaction to this artifact reveal about Pickwick’s reputation?

Words and phrases in the novel are sometimes used in a “Pickwickian sense” (16). Using evidence from the text, describe what the “Pickwickian sense” means: What would it support or be opposed to?

How does the novel depict familial ties such as those in the Wardle, Allen, and Winkle families? How do these family dynamics reflect or explore some of the text’s key themes and ideas?

How is femininity depicted in the text? How do the characterization and experiences of Emily, Arabella, Rachael, or Mary reflect Victorian conventions about womanhood or challenge such conventions?

Many believe that the novel’s descriptions of the desolation of Fleet Street Debtors’ Prison in part caused the prison’s closing in 1844. Explore how Dickens’s beliefs about prison reform and his other activism informed the novel. In what ways did Dickens use literary elements and devices to convey his convictions?