Character names...

[jennythereader]

I'm listening to Oliver Twist at work today, and noticed something about the name of one of the secondary characters.

It's one of the young thieves, a boy named Charlie Bates. Combine that name with Dickens's habit of referring to his male characters as "Master Last-name," and you get a very unfortunate result.

I don't know if I would have noticed if I were reading the book instead of listening to it.

Comments

[stefka.livejournal.com]

I am 99.8888888888 percent sure he did that on purpose. Remember, many of his novels were serialized; he read them aloud himself to audiences (This is part of why Oliver more-or-less disappear for the final third of the book; Dickens was attached to him.), so you'd think he'd hear it himself.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Having done it on purpose occurred to me, but for some reason I didn't think it was very likely. I'd forgotten about how he would read aloud to audiences.