Martin Chuzzlewit

Abstract

Martin Chuzzlewit is in some ways an easy novel to understand, because its major theme is so obviously stated throughout. Dickens even tells us, in his Preface to the novel, exactly what he has set out to do: ‘to exhibit in a variety of aspects, the commonest of all the vices; to show how Selfishness propagates itself; and to what a grim giant it may grow’ (Preface to the Cheap Edition, p. 39 in the Penguin edition, 1985).