#pecksniff

Note on the text: I used Martin Chuzzlewit as written by Charles Dickens and published in 1994 by Alfred Knopf.

Now I love Dickens (in fact once I read Dombey and Son and Oliver Twist I will have read all of his major novels) but I have to admit that I did not love this one. However, having said that, I did love the character of Seth Pecksniff and the way in which Dickens criticizes people who are hypocritical moralists. 

Moralists are people who live their lives by telling other people how to live theirs, and hypocritical moralists have been around since the beginning of time. Thus, “we never fail to meet, in the records of [all families, innumerable] repetitions of the same character” (1). This is why characters like Seth Pecksniff continue to speak to us more than a hundred years later: we know him. 

Now not only is Seth a moralizer who constantly is telling other people how to live their lives, but he is always pointing out just how much better, how much more moral, he is than everyone else. The ridiculous ways in which he supports this view of himself is something that Dickens instantly exposes as being extremely self-serving. Just look at the way in which he talks about poor people: 

If everyone [was] warm and well fed, we would lose the satisfaction of admiring the fortitude with which certain conditions of men bear cold and hunger. And if we were no better off then anyone else, what would become of our sense of gratitude; which,’ Mr Pecksniff said with tears in his eyes as he shook his fist at a beggar who wanted to get up [and share the coach which Seth was riding in so he could get out of the cold], ‘is one of the holiest feelings in our nature” (116).

The self serving nature of his moralizing becomes even more self evident when he tries to bully Mary into marrying him by saying that if she does he will use his influence on Martin Chuzzlewit Sr. to help make sure that Martin Chuzzlewit Jr (whom she is engaged to and who is the estranged grandson of Martin Chuzzlewit Sr.) is taken care of. And if she doesn’t marry him well then. . . . But listen to the way in he attempts to talk her into seeing things from his point of view: 

When we are married, you shall have the satisfaction of [knowing] that [your love for young Martin] didn’t last to ruin him, but passed away to do him some good; for we’ll see then what we can do to put some trifling help in Martin junior’s way. Have I any influence over our venerable friend [i.e. Martin Chuzzlewit Sr.]? Well! Perhaps I have, Perhaps I have” (484). 

His moralizing is entirely self serving. He only cares about doing the right thing if and when it serves him. 

10 Dickensian Character Names Deciphered

This article was in a recent edition of Literary Hub and it made me wonder if Charles Dickens was writing today, would Donald Trump be one of his characters? From Mr. Pumblechook to Mr. Pecksniff, the Meaning Behind the Monikers   By Bryan Kozlowski

You have to love Charles Dickens’ knack for naming characters. Who else could have come up with monikers like Mr. Sweedlepipe, Honeythunder,…