From the characters in the social novel to the characters entangled with their own
emotions.
Dickens displays his greatest talent in the portrayal of characters, not so much of virtuous heroes
as for the crowd of people who populate his novels. He draws most of them from reality, but
enriches them with his love for comic exaggeration and exuberant style. In Dickens’ art of fiction
the caricature of minor characters is an important element. We can see it in the way he presents
Mr Bounderby, the boastful insensitive self made man of “Hard Times”. In the fourth chapter, he
is presented vividly and in detail, both in the way he behaves and in the way he talks. But his
characterisation is based on a very limited range of characteristics which are so exaggerated as to
make his portrait a sort of caricature. Mr Bounderby is a flat character, but he is unique!
In the first section, dealing with Story , plot , narrator and point of view, we divided Lawrence’s
“Sons and Lovers” into two parts. This division can be kept in order to analyse the way in which
the author presents his characters. In the first part the reader’s attention focuses on the
deterioration of the marriage between Walter and Gertrude Morel. These two characters are
presented in a deep link with their environment: their relationship will get worse because of their
different social position and class consciousness and their living condition. Lawrence thinks, in
fact, that the people are condemned to live an unnatural life in the prison of industrialism which
undermines all human relationship.
In the first six chapters Paul, the third son ,is described in the contest of his family. But Paul is
increasingly going to become the centre of attention in the second part of novel, which is based on
his intellectual and emotional development. Some critics have considered this novel nothing less
than the literary examination of the influence of the Oedipus complex on the male personality;
others have seen it as a “traditional” novel. But Lawrence, as a Modernist novelist, prefers to
move in and out of the feelings and thoughts of his characters. Also symbolic scenes point to the
web of emotions entangling the characters
