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Charles Dickens/YMMV: Difference between revisions
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** Dickens indulged heavily on broad caricatures, often modeled after stereotypes of his age. This led to some rather insensitive characterizations. The most famous is perhaps Fagin, the [[Greedy Jew]]. However, Dickens was actually a pretty progressive person for his time, and his characters were designed for comedy or social commentary rather than bigotry.
** The [[Inspirationally Disabled]] trope, of which Tiny Tim from ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'' is the [[Trope Codifier]], is often considered offensive today; it's preferable that disabled people be shown as fully actualized characters, with their own faults and struggles, rather than [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|perfect angels]] who exist only to teach the able-bodied hero a lesson. But in Dickens's day, disabled people were still commonly feared and derided as monsters and freaks. So to show a disabled person as sympathetic and inspirational was actually quite progressive.
* [[Mary Sue|Mary Sue/Marty Stu]]: All of his characters, ever, unless they're [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]]. OK, so YMMV big-time here, but ''really:'' [[A Tale of Two Cities|Sydney Carton]], {{spoiler|tragically sacrificing himself for his friends?}} [[Bleak House|Esther Summerson]], begging her ''doll'' to forgive her air-headedness and terrible storytelling skills, and then {{spoiler|tragically becoming scarred as a result of smallpox, but getting the guy anyway?}} [[A Christmas Carol|Tiny Tim]], who did NOT die (actually capslocked in the story)? [[Hard Times|Stephen Blackpool]], noble and good and unjustly accused, {{spoiler|dying in an evil industrial mine shaft}}? [[Big "Shut Up!"|OH, SHUT UP ALREADY.]] [[Anvilicious|Get down off that cross]], [[Martyr Without a Cause|someone else needs the wood.]]
** The above troper may be being unfair. Tiny Tim is in no way a Sue, aside from being the [[Littlest Cancer Patient]]. He was used more as a plot device than a character whom the story revolves around. Esther was an unlucky [[Proper Lady]]. I fail to see how the incident with her doll qualifies her as a Sue. Most of Dickens' characters are meant to represent the contrast between the wealthy and the poor, and they suffer from normal afflictions that were common at that time. Some of them have a few Sue-ish elements, but symptoms are not the disease and I think we need to remember how common things like smallpox and starvation were back then.
** And Remember Tropes Aren't Bad. Dickens chooses to use static character in order to build his environment.
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