Charles dickens and catherine dickens marriage
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Dedicated to the memory of Andrea Gayle Holm Allingham: Wife, Mother, Teacher, and Writer
(13 April 1949-11 July 2019)
I suppose that no two people, not vicious in themselves, were ever joined together, who had greater difficulty in understanding one another, or who had less in common — Charles Dickens's "Violated Letter," 16 August 1858. [qtd. in Slater, Dickens and Women, 103]
atherine Hogarth, eldest daughter of music critic, Morning Chronicle editor, and former Edinburgh lawyer George Hogarth (1783-1870), met young Charles Dickens in the early 1830s in London. Quickly, the Hogarths' regular visitor became their prospective son-in-law. The two young people got engaged in the spring of 1835. As Michael Slater remarks in The Oxford Readers's Companion to Dickens, the letters which the fledgling author of sundry London "Sketches" addressed to "My dearest Kate" during the period of courtship "show none of the passionate intensity of his feelings for Maria Beadnell, but instead reveal a relationship based on common interests and enthusiasms and mutual affection" (153). As her
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The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth
It's a phrase I find myself using frequently whenever a discussion turns to Charles Dickens' private life. His wife bore him 10 children, after which he not only dumped her for a younger woman, but publicly called her mental health into question. Charming. Biographers have pretty much made Catherine a footnote in his life, or accepted Charles' spin. Nayder sets out to explore the life of Catherine Dickens and suss out the truth behind their relationship, to the extent possible. It's an admirable undertaking.
The good: The quest to find the truth behind the rumors and innuendo is a noble one, and Nayder obviously has done extensive research. She relies heavily on extant correspondence (though Dickens destroyed all of Catherine's missives to him), and cites lots of Victorian law, statistical data, etc., which provides context and depth. By putting the focus on Catherine rather than Charles, the picture so many have of their relationship is shown from a different, but equally as valid, point of view.
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Catherine Dickens finds a 21st century ally in Lillian Nayder
After 22 years of marriage and 10 children, Charles Dickens famously dumped his wife, Catherine Dickens, in 1858.
Wielding the power of his pen, he alleged that Catherine was mentally unbalanced and an unfit wife and mother; in truth, he wanted to take up with a younger woman, actress Ellen Ternan.
For years, critics and biographers took his word for it. Now, Professor of English Lillian Nayder has debunked the novelist’s unkind portrayal of his wife with her 2010 biography, The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth.
Professor of English Lillian Nayder, photographed by Phyllis Graber Jensen.
How did you get interested in Catherine Dickens?
It was curious to me that Catherine was always dismissed by critics, while Dickens’ side of the story was always accepted — even though there was plenty of evidence to suggest that he had fabricated tales about his wife. Critics just didn’t want to go there. Charles Dickens has shaped the language of her story — and he told a lot of lies about her.
Such as?
He wrote a
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