A change of heart is possible, says Mr Dickens. My favorite quiet heroes are the ones you would never expect because they started out as unlikable or scoundrelly.There’s Mr Venus, the melancholy articulator of bones who agrees to help a true scoundrel defraud whomever they can find to defraud and ends up telling the truth and exposing the scoundrel. Dickens recognized that anyone has the capacity to be the hero of a story, be it a continually debt-ridden man with too many children or a downtrodden, clarinet-playing brother or a little old lady scared to die
These are all the little people, who in any other story would scarcely make an entrance, let alone distinguish themselves. Sergeant George is willing to face disgrace to keep his dead captain from disgrace. Frederick Dorrit faces down his brother to stand up for his unappreciated niece. Mr Micawber and his wife take young, lonely David Copperfield under their impoverished wing. Mrs Higden “runs away” from young Sloppy to give him a chance at a better life.
Lordįrederick Verisopht’s is huge: he dies for honor. Mr Twemlow’s is small: all he has to do is speak. But he also had a genius for incorporating very minor characters into his stories who suddenly surprise you with an act, big or small, of heroism. His heroes are obvious their names are often the titles of the books, and even when they’re not, they soon reveal themselves. One of my favorite themes of the many that pervade Charles Dickens’ books is what I call the Quiet Hero. He’s a meek, confused little minor character in Our Mutual Friend who spends the entire book being meek and confused and doing what he’s told, and then suddenly, at the very end, he speaks upīravely in defense of Lizzie Hexam before all his society friends.
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