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    Martin Chuzzlewit
    Martin Chuzzlewit
    Martin Chuzzlewit
    Audiobook (abridged)9 hours

    Martin Chuzzlewit

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by Seán Barrett

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Chuzzlewits are a family divided by money and selfishness; even young Martin, the eponymous hero, is arrogant and self-centred. He offends his grandfather by falling in love with the latter’s ward, Mary, and sets out to make his own fortune in life, travelling as far as America – which produces from Dickens a savage satire on a new world tainted with the vices of the old. Martin’s nature slowly changes through his bitter experience of life and his enduring love for Mary. Martin Chuzzlewit is one of Dickens’s most humorous and satirical novels, and it contains two great comic creations: the hypocrite Pecksniff and the drunken nurse Sarah Gamp.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9789629549626
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking-warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.

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    Reviews for Martin Chuzzlewit

    3.5/5

    25 ratings18 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Dickens' own personal favorite of his stories and I think one of mine too. An amazing satire on how selfish people can get. It's not on the short side, but if you can sit through it it's worth your while.Martin Chuzzlewit is Charles Dickens' comic masterpiece about which his biographer, Forster, noted that it marked a crucial phase in the author's development as he began to delve deeper into the 'springs of character'.Old Martin Chuzzlewit, tormented by the greed and selfishness of his family, effectively drives his grandson, young Martin, to undertake a voyage to America. It is a voyage which will have crucial consequences not only for young Martin, but also for his grandfather and his grandfather's servant, Mary Graham with whom young Martin is in love. The commercial swindle of the Anglo-Bengalee company and the fraudulent Eden Land Corporation have a topicality in our own time. This strong sub-plot shows evidence of Dickens' mastery of crime where characters such as the criminal Jonas Chuzzlewit, the old nurse Mrs Gamp, and the arch-hypocrite Seth Pecksniff are the equal to any in his other great novels.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The story: This is of the Chuzzlewit family and is a study of hypocrisy and selfishness and this book is a study of character. Some might say exaggerated but they do represent people in society. The Peckniffs and Sarah Gamp, the Jonas and the Martins Chuzzlewits. The book is called the last of Dickens picaresque novels. Another unique element is the American portion of the story which is a caricature of America. Dickens had just returned from a tour to the US and from this book, he was not impressed with us. Some could find this offensive but the more I read it the more I accepted that it did represent the US as a character that is no different that characters of England that Dickens has featured in his books. And last, this is a story of romance and endings that will not disappoint. I am glad to have read this book. I needed to read about Sarah Gamp. Being educated as a nurse with a background of having worked in hospitals, Ms Gamp has always been a stereotype that I’ve encountered but hadn’t read the book. Dickens mentions that she was not atypical of attendants at the time and many hospitals were poor institutes at best. Dickens never disappoints. It takes awhile to get into the rhythm of his books but they are always good. I have to say, that Sean Barrett did such a wonderful job of reading the story. Every character had their own voices, women were women (some were manly women) and men voices were men's’ voices except for the whiny barber. If willing to read a pdf file, the one listed above is of excellent quality and contains Dickens comments about the American part of the story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Although not one of Dickens' more popular books, this is one of the ones I re-read frequently. It has some of the author's most memorable characters - Sarah Gamp with her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris, the hypocrite Pecksniff, the low-life rascal Montague Tigg who transforms himself into the high-life rascal Tigg Montague (not the best choice of alias, one might think), the awful Jonas Chuzzlewit and the determinedly jolly Mark Tapley - the list goes on and on. Although it is fair to say that chapter 1 is probably the worst thing Dickens ever wrote (if there's a stronger contender, I don't want to know) there are some brilliant bits of writing, particularly the description of the commercial boarding-house Todgers's and the part of London in which it stood. It is sometimes said that that there are only seven basic plots, and that one of them is The Man Who Found Out Better; this book is overloaded with examples, from the title character to Pecksniff's daughter Mercy. The 90's TV adaptation was a creditable attempt, but the only way to get the authentic Dickens experience is from the book.
    • 3/5
      Martin Chuzzlewit follows that formula that Dickens is so good at executing - our hero is basically a good person, but has some character flaws. Hero goes on a journey/experiences some serious hardship. Hero reforms and repents. And everyone lives happily ever after. I don't mind this formula and many of his stories that follow it, like Our Mutual Friend, end up being one of my favorite classics. But, in this story, our hero Martin Chuzzlewit goes on a journey to the United States and not only does he face physical hardship, but has to endure the crassness and shallow liberality of Americans. Definitely there was an agenda here describing Dickens dislike of certain American qualities. In some ways this was enlightening to see a visitor's viewpoint of America during the 1800's, but the message was too strong, and some of those quirky characters that he executes so well became a sounding board for his agenda.
    • 4/5
      Much to my surprise, Martin Chuzzlewit turned out to be one of my favorite Dickens books, right behind Bleak House and Great Expectations. It's funnier than most of his books and features one of Dickens' best villains, Seth Pecksniff (what a name). I have just one more Dickens novel, Our Mutual Friend, to finish and I can say I completed Dickens' oeuvre. It has taken me only ten years to do it.
    • 2/5
      Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens wasn’t a particularly long novel (unlike War and Peace) nor was the language particularly challenging (like the writing of Proust) yet I had a difficult time completing this novel.The characters in the book were incredibly rich, but many of them were completely unlikeable. The entire Pecksniff family, father and daughters alike, were despicable. The duplicitous nature of Seth Pecksniff made me ill each time he entered the scene. His blatant hypocrisy and pandering in the hopes of increasing his wealth and social standing was nauseating. While the daughters may have received unfair treatment by other characters, the manner in which they treated Pinch more than warranted the karmic payback. Jonas Chuzzlewit, a swindler and wife beater, at least received his due in the end.Sending a few of the characters off to America to try to make a fresh start was a bit confusing. It didn’t further the story and really only provided the author with a means at taking pot shots at the “U-nited States.” He made the entire country out to be a savage, disease infested wilderness run by a bunch of con-men. The characters’ survival of their time in Eden, however, did help forge their bonds through the remainder of the story.One main theme in the story, found in much of Dicken’s writing, is a commentary on class distinction. While Pinch was a surveyor and civil engineer, trades that are considered to be respectable today, he was always treated as a second class citizen by the Pecksniffs; often to the point of appearing to be no more than a lap dog. However, his higher caliber of character raises him in the end.The entire Pecksniff-Chuzzlewit clan could justify any means of advancing their standing. From their poor treatment of others, swindling through Ponzi schemes and even murder, nothing was beneath them and everything was rationalized to be morally acceptable. Their self righteous attitudes towards their foul deeds made them all the more corrupt.In retrospect, I think my difficulties may have roots in the fact that I simply didn’t like the people about which I was reading. The story was secondary to the characters and their moral defects.
    • 3/5
      I tend to overdo my pleasures. Very recently, I've read Dombey and Sons, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, and the Mystery of Edwin Drood. So it's only to be expected that I should encounter a little Dickens fatigue. And along about page 600 of Martin Chuzzlewit, the thought kept popping into my mind, like those Interstate motel advertisements, "if this had been John Sanford's 'Prey on Greed', I would be home by now."Yes, I'd had it with ole "Sairey" Gamp, who seemed to have no purpose in Dicken's universe, except to annoy the hell out of me with her quaint dialect stylings and her bottle on the mantelpiece when she was so "dispoged". Not to mention how she precipitated a debilitating series of Robin-Williams-in-Doubtfire-drag flashbacks.And those Pecksniff hoes, Cherry and Merry? Like any time I want more of that action, there's a thousand starlet wannabe's on Youtube looking sideways at a web cam, mis-accenting their dialogue and raising their eyebrows like they all suffer from the same bizarre tic doloureux. Enuff a dat, thank you very much.I did enjoy Martin Jr. and Mark Tapley, when - to hum a bit of Paul Simon - they "walked off to look for America." Dickens riff list of New York City newspapers was genius "The Sewer, The Stabber, The Family Spy, The Private Listener, The Peeper, The Plunderer, The Keyhole Reporter, and The Rowdy Journal." Indeed, what with wire photos, colored printing, the Internet , it's nice to see that a century of technological change hasn't really spoiled the industry, eh wot?I found myself comparing Chuzzlewit to Our Mutual Friend. Both novels contained a universe of characters. In both, the ecology - the way they fed and fed on one another - was similarly complex. Both used major plot twists. But Our Mutual Friend has a much better flow (no pun about the Thames intended). And equivalent characters are much more interesting in Our Mutual Friend. Little Jenny Wren, for example, steals the show very much like Gamp does in Chuzzlewit, and has a role of equal proportion, but I think she's far more interesting and funny.Bottom line - two things - first, if you're thinking of broadening your reading of Dickens, choose Our Mutual Friend over Martin Chuzzlewit; second, Chuzzlewit doesn't have much forward motion, so focus on enjoying the eccentricities of the characters rather than expecting much from the plot.
    • 5/5
      Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) is Dickens sixth novel, written after his first visit to America. It is generally considered transitional between his earlier and later works of maturity, Dickens borrows less from the picaresque (Martin's trip to America) and begins to focus on character development and a central theme, creating a unique style of his own. The theme, as Dickens says in the Preface, is "selfishness". It was written at the same time he wrote A Christmas Carol, and at the time he thought of Chuzzlewit the best novel to date - he was particularly attached to his characters Tom and Mary Pinch. Today the novel is one of his lesser known and read, although still generally has a positive critical reception.This is my sixth Dickens novel and they all take forever to read, at this point I have probably spent more time reading Dickens than any other novelist. The more I read the more I respect and enjoy, there is not a page that doesn't have an amazing passage, very often I find myself reading it aloud, acting out the scene and characters (something Dickens himself sometimes did while writing). There is a sense of the unlimited, of imagination unbounded - it's the same feeling I had when younger playing D&D or reading Lord of the Rings, a rich tapestry world with no end of possibility. His descriptions and choice of words are truly unique. Even if the plot is circumstantial and old-fashioned, Dickens can be read for his aesthetic and artistic beauty alone. The more immersed in Dickens one becomes, the more impressed upon the 19th century mind-set, emotions, way of thinking - a sense of the emotional, feeling, that no history book could portray.
    • 4/5
      This is Dickens' sixth major work, written when he was 31/32 years old. His writing skills are visibly improving, the characters are better developed and the plot structure is sound. But the reliance on coincidence and plot twists is typically Dickens. The book starts well, introducing the key characters gradually, developing them as the book proceeds. For the first time, the major villain (Pecksniff) is a rounded, believable creation. The major hero (Pinch) is also well developed, but just a little too good to be entirely credible. The seemingly obligatory comic character (Mrs Gamp) makes too many appearances and stays on the scene too long for my taste.The book was written after Dickens' first trip to the USA and he is humourously critical of much of the pretension he found there. He must have lost audience support in the US as a result, because the edition I read had a postscript, written around the time of his second visit 20 years later, stating how much the place has improved! Dickens' takes a progressive position on slavery and excoriates the practice in the US. He also paints an interesting picture of the gentleman, young Martin Chuzzlewit, learning how to live a better life from his servant, Mark Tapley - not a common position for an author to take in this era.A long book, at 786 pages, but as usual, I found myself drawn in to a real page turner in the last third of the work. Read February 2012.
    • 4/5
      Another great Dickens’ novel of biblical proportions. Even the pages of this edition have a scriptural feel to them - thin and vellum-like, with the added benefit of the original illustrations.And the novel is everything that I have come to expect of Dickens. Plenty of memorable characters and scenes and a plot full of unexpectedly and unbelievable coincidences. You just have to suspend your modern cynicism and go with it - when you do, it’s incredibly satisfying. Every character, no matter how insignificant, gets their just desserts at the end.This is also the novel where Dickens turns his satirical eye on the United States, since two of the characters immigrate in quest of their fortune, and are horribly disappointed. In the appendix, there is actually a postscript where Dickens attempts to make amends.So heft a copy of this 800 page tome and give it a read - you won’t be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      It was a happy day when I, for whatever reason, elected to sample Charles Dickens. Having read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, I digressed to more popular fiction (Michener, Clavell, McMurtry, King, Grisham), as well as periods of science fiction and even non-fiction (Ambrose, McCollough for example), before making an effort to upgrade my reading list.I read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck and Hemingway with mixed success before reading Great Expectations. I liked it enough to read David Copperfield, and I was hooked. A Tale of Two Cities followed and then Oliver Twist (not my favorite), Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby before taking on this lengthy novel.Martin Chuzzlewit takes its name not from one, but two characters in the novel, a very wealthy, old gentleman and his grandson. While there are numerous story threads involved in the work, the overarching theme involves the ultimate disposition of the elder Chuzzlewit’s substantial fortune, the characters maneuvering for a piece of it and those on the periphery. As in almost all Dickens’s work, the beauty of the novel lies in the original and classic characters created therein. Heretofore, I had heard people referred to as “pecksniffs” without any understanding of the meaning (aside from context) or the source of the reference. Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters are central characters in this novel. The story was penned shortly after Dickens returned from a tour of the United States and that country does not show well in the younger Martin’s experiences there.Having read several Dickens works prior to this one, I was aware that a period of acclimation is required before becoming comfortable with both the language and the cultural landscape, however the comfort that I eventually attained in the previous novels was more difficult to come by here. To be honest, some of the dialogue, especially that of the old nurse was virtually unintelligible.Make no mistake, at nearly 900 pages this is a real door stop, with long periods of very slow advancement. Not my favorite of the several Dickens novels I have read, but not the worst.
    • 4/5
      Old Martin Chuzzlewit believes that his relations are only interested in him because he is rich (and this is mostly true), but mysteriously falls for the sycophantic attentions of the hypocritical Mr Pecksniff. His grandson, also Martin Chuzzlewit, falls out with him over Martin's choice of bride and the younger Martin goes to America to seek his fortune. There are many other characters and strands to the story which Dickens ingeniously brings together at the end. For a while I wondered why the novel had the title it did and who Martin and Tom's mysterious benefactors were, but all was made clear in the denouement. The good ended happily and the bad unhappily, although I did feel a twinge for Charity. I can see why the scenes set in America caused a bit of a stir - they are very harsh - but the tone is pretty sarcastic throughout. A very satisfying conclusion.
    • 2/5
      Not one of my favorites. Too long and too unfocused for my taste. The American journey didn't offend me -- it just didn't seem to fit. Characterized as a comic masterpiece by Forster, I disagree totally. Pecksniff was too mean-spirited to be funny as was the hypocritical Ms. Gamp (not to mention the fact that I couldn't understand a bloody word she said). It just didn't do much for me.
    • 4/5
      The character Martin Chuzzlewit is comparable to Ebenezer Scrooge, an exceedingly wealthy man to whom money brings only grief, but surrounded by a large family comically obscene in its obsession with his estate. In true Dickens fashion the most honest and monetarily disinterested among them, if not entirely likeable - Martin's grandson and namesake - is the one Martin Sr. trusts least of all. I can't agree with Mr. Chesterton that it's rife with melancholy. In fact, while I didn't expect another Dickens novel to rival The Pickwick Papers for humour, this one stands in the running albeit with a nastier streak. The sarcasm and satire dials are turned up to 11, especially where Mr. Pecksniff is concerned. This is also the infamous novel in which Dickens goes America-bashing, following upon his tour of that country, which holds its own kind of fascination. I was most taken up when reading about Pecksniff since the novel feels devoted to showcasing him. Some of the minor characters - Jonas, Gamp, etc. - I was less keen on having to spend chapters with, but eventually these pay a dividend. Martin Jr. has an arc to his character that eventually does make him likeable if you can wait for it.I read each chapter in the spirit of sharing Dickens' having fun with his characters rather than worrying where his plot was going. Like the novels that preceded, it's not terribly focussed. He was becoming more sensitive to this critique, to judge from his introduction, and apparently with his next (Dombey and Son) he finally began to get a handle on it. This won't be my favourite of his but neither would I rate it his worst, and even Dickens at his worst is not a very bad thing.
    • 4/5
      Phew! This is long and I needed a break over halfway through, but I did it! A lot of Dickens' themes in this book are still relevant today--swindlers, employment, marriage, education, family, care of the elderly, and more. I do wish I had kept a character cheat sheet, as so many people are in and out, though the serial nature of the original publication helped a bit.I think my favorite character was Mrs Gamp--widow, midwife, overnight nurse, and nurse to the elderly or injured--just an older woman trying to make her way in mid-19th-century London. Mark Tapley was a little TOO jolly for my taste, the Pecksniffs (all) just annoying (as intended, I believe), Martin the elder is perhaps meant to be the favorite--or maybe Martin the younger. Not Jonas, nor Anthony, nor Tigg/Montague--obviously. I actually enjoyed the American interlude. No, it didn't really fit, but Dickens completely nailed many points of American history at that time (swindling, boomtowns and made-to-order "boom" towns, etc etc). But, I am glad to be done.
    • 3/5
      This was one of the only two of Dickens's full length novels I had never read (the other is Dombey and Son). It's fair to say it's not going to become one of my favourites. The theme of the novel is selfishness, shown most consistently by Seth Pecksniff and Jonas Chuzzlewit, and initially also by the title character and his namesake grandfather ("The curse of our house..has been the love of self; has ever been the love of self. How often have I said so, when I never knew that I had wrought it upon others"). Young Martin's redemption comes after his near death experiences in a town in the back of beyond in America. The American portion of the novel is probably its most well known characteristic, being so unlike anything else in Dickens, but which forms a only small part of book. It is based on Dickens's own experiences of his first visit to the States, where he seems to have been most struck by three different wildly different phenomena: the horrors of slavery; the unpleasantness of the habit of tobacco chewing and spitting; and the complete absence of any copyright laws in the States at the time, which meant his works were being abused in his eyes. Most of the characters did not really impress in this one. The midwife Mrs Gamp is probably the best known and quite an effective comic character, though she has hardly entered the top pantheon of the author's most famous creations. My favourite was probably young Martin's loyal companion Mark Tapley, though I also liked Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth. Pecksniff's daughters the inaptly named Mercy and Charity take after him and were also quite amusing, and it was interesting to see how Mercy's character changed during the course of her book after undergoing her own redemption through a miserable marriage. All in all, though, this was a bit of a chore in places, albeit with some dramatic events and a couple of violent deaths.
    • 3/5
      Probably this novel (apparently Dickens' favorite) deserves 3 1/2 stars. Certainly, the last quarter of this measures up to his best but, unfortunately, I can't say the same for the first 75%. I did appreciate Dickens' satire of Americans (Martin the younger is a victim of someone selling him worthless land in a scheme reminiscent of selling the Brooklyn Bridge).

      Maybe I'm just suffering from reading too much Dickens in a short stretch of time, having read Dombey and Son, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities (audiobook), A Christmas Carol, several other short stories and poems, in addition to this book, in the past 35 days.
    • 4/5
      Martin Chuzzlewit feels like the beginning of Dickens' second act. While all of his previous books had strengths (and I probably still viscerally prefer Nicholas Nickleby), this, his 9th major work and 6th novel, was written after the celebrity Dickens' return from America, and marks the start of a busier lifestyle for the author, which included social engagements, speaking tours, and community responsibilities, not to mention a growing household. My suspicion is that he started devoting more time to the nuances of his writing - not the descriptions, which have always been first-rate, but the character arcs. The vivid characters of Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp have a comic life of their own, while the analysis of human folly among the Chuzzlewit family is a deeper, more internal attempt at storytelling which Dickens would return to in his next novel, Dombey and Son. For the first time, Dickens hasn't felt the need to make his central character a paper-thin but sentimental naif (not that young Martin is exactly the most scintillating of figures).

      We'll dock a couple of points for the American sequences, which have a reasonable level of thematic resonance but are clearly filler, but this is a new, more "novelistic" side of Dickens that can't be ignored. I certainly think more people should be reading Martin Chuzzlewit when they feel like a taste of Dickens.