CATHY: OK, so now shall we think about a topic linked to each novel?
GRAHAM: Yes. I’ve printed out a list of Dicken’s novels in the order they were published, in the hope you’d agree to focus on him!
CATHY: You’re lucky I did agree! Let’s have a look. OK, the first was The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836. It was very successful when it came out, wasn’t it, and was adapted for the theatre straight away.
GRAHAM: There’s an interesting point, though, that there’s a character who keeps falling asleep, and that medical condition was named after the book – Pickwickian Syndrome.
CATHY: Oh, so why don’t we use that as the topic, and include some quotations from the novel?
GRAHAM: Right, Next is Oliver Twist. There’s a lot in the novel about poverty. But maybe something less obvious …
CATHY: Well Oliver is taught how to steal, isn’t he? We could use that to illustrate the fact that very few children went to school, particularly not poor children, so they learnt in other ways.
GRAHAM: Good idea. What’s next?
CATHY: Maybe Nicholas Nickleby. Actually he taught in a really cruel school, didn’t he?
GRAHAM: That’s right. But there’s also the company of touring actors that Nicholas joins. We could do something on theatres and other amusements of the time. We don’t want only the bad things, do we?
CATHY: OK.
GRAHAM: What about Martin Chuzzlewit? He goes to the USA, doesn’t he?
CATHY: Yes, and Dickens himself had been there a year before, and drew on his experience there in the novel.
GRAHAM: I wonder, though … The main theme is selfishness, so we could do something on social justice? No, too general, let’s keep to your idea – I think it would work well.
CATHY: He wrote Bleak House next – that’s my favourite of his novels.
GRAHAM: Yes, mine too. His satire of the legal system is pretty powerful.
CATHY: That’s true, but think about Esther, the heroine. As a child she lives with someone she doesn’t know is her aunt, who treats her very badly. Then she’s very happy living with her guardian, and he puts her in charge of the household. And at the end she gets married and her guardian gives her and her husband a house, where of course they’re very happy.
GRAHAM: Yes, I like that.
CATHY: What shall we take next? Little Dorrit? Old Mr Dorrit has been in a debtors’ prison for years …
GRAHAM: So was Dicken’s father, wasn’t he?
CATHY: That’s right.
GRAHAM: What about focusing on the part when Mr Dorrit inherits a fortune, and he starts pretending he’s always been rich?
CATHY: Good idea.
GRAHAM: OK, so next we need to think about what materials we want to illustrate each issue. That’s going to be quite hard.
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