Because of critics’ misunderstanding of Dickens’s major concern, Dickens’s characters have been unjustly criticized for its lack of psychological complexity. For a better understanding of the complexity of Dickens’s characters, therefore, a new theoretical frame is necessary. The purpose of this essay is to reevaluate the complexity of Dickens’s characterization by using Bakhtin’s idea of internal dialogism. Bakhtin acknowledges the irreducibility of contradictions not only between conflicting individual perspectives but also in a single individual’s consciousness, and he calls these contradictions in a single consciousness “internal dialogism.” For Bakhtin, this double-voiced human psyche cannot be dissociated from social contexts. Therefore, conflicts inside any single individual’s psyche can be reestablished as strife between social ideas. With this theoretical tool, the complexity of Dickens characterization can be viewed from a new angle. In Great Expectations, even inside minor characters’ consciousnesses, diverse social tensions exist. Herbert Pocket’s consciousness is divided between idle bourgeois life and life of industry and self-reliance. In Wemmick’s and Jaggers’s cases, the division is between private humane life and dehumanized professionalism which capitalistic society produces. On the other hand, Magwitch’s divided psyche can be defined as a battle between Victorian self-help ideal and the misappropriation of it. By recognizing multiple voices in a single character, Bakhtin’s internal dialogism helps us perceive Dickens’s character not only as a point of emanation for social voices in the text, but also as a point of convergence or as a battlefield of voices. The existence of these diverse social voices in a single character enables us to reevaluate the complexity of Dickens’s characterization.

Because of critics’ misunderstanding of Dickens’s major concern, Dickens’s characters have been unjustly criticized for its lack of psychological complexity. For a better understanding of the complexity of Dickens’s characters, therefore, a new theoretical frame is necessary. The purpose of this essay is to reevaluate the complexity of Dickens’s characterization by using Bakhtin’s idea of internal dialogism. Bakhtin acknowledges the irreducibility of contradictions not only between conflicting individual perspectives but also in a single individual’s consciousness, and he calls these contradictions in a single consciousness “internal dialogism.” For Bakhtin, this double-voiced human psyche cannot be dissociated from social contexts. Therefore, conflicts inside any single individual’s psyche can be reestablished as strife between social ideas. With this theoretical tool, the complexity of Dickens characterization can be viewed from a new angle. In Great Expectations, even inside minor characters’ consciousnesses, diverse social tensions exist. Herbert Pocket’s consciousness is divided between idle bourgeois life and life of industry and self-reliance. In Wemmick’s and Jaggers’s cases, the division is between private humane life and dehumanized professionalism which capitalistic society produces. On the other hand, Magwitch’s divided psyche can be defined as a battle between Victorian self-help ideal and the misappropriation of it. By recognizing multiple voices in a single character, Bakhtin’s internal dialogism helps us perceive Dickens’s character not only as a point of emanation for social voices in the text, but also as a point of convergence or as a battlefield of voices. The existence of these diverse social voices in a single character enables us to reevaluate the complexity of Dickens’s characterization.

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