Podcast Summary

Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

Episode: What Matters in Jane Austen & Charles Dickens? (with John Mullan)
Host: Dominic Gerrard
Guest: Professor John Mullan
Date: November 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode marks both the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and the reissue of John Mullan’s book, What Matters in Jane Austen. Host Dominic Gerrard is joined by Professor John Mullan to discuss the similarities and differences between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, exploring their literary styles, education, characterisation, and the enduring relevance of their works. The conversation covers their approaches to prose, character naming, the use of weather and setting, and how their work continues to resonate with readers today.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Austen & Dickens: Thematic and Stylistic Contrasts

• Opening Comparisons [00:01–03:12]
  • Gerrard introduces both authors as "the two greatest 19th century British authors," noting their radically different prose styles.
    • Dickens described as using "a joyful cannonade of adjectives," while Austen "draws her bow and releases a few choice words."
    • Reference to Dickens’ Pumblechook and Austen’s Emma Woodhouse as iconic examples of their descriptive approaches.
    • Gerrard reflects on Austen’s “microscopic focus” versus Dickens’ “wide telescopic sight.”
• Education and Class [03:41–07:28]
  • Both authors had rudimentary formal education, never attended university.
    • "They had something like three and a half years schooling between them and that is likely to have been of quite a rudimentary nature." – Mullan [04:29]
    • Mullan suggests their lack of formal literary training was, paradoxically, an advantage, freeing them to invent their own styles.

2. Understatement vs. Overstatement

• Literary Virtues in Opposition [07:28–09:56]
  • Austen as “mistress of understatement,” Dickens as “master of overstatement.”
    • "Dickens is the novelist of excess, hyperbole, monstrosity... Jane Austen the opposite. She’s the absolute master or mistress... of exactitude, precision, everything honed down. Nothing is surplus to requirements." – Mullan [07:41]
  • The pleasures of reading each author are “pioneering, original, but in totally different ways.”
  • Discussion of whether Dickens ever actually read Austen (likely not, according to Mullan).

3. Characterization and the Voice of Characters

• Dialogue as Plot Device (Austen) vs. Comedy (Dickens) [10:16–12:19]
  • Mullan notes how Austen’s characters’ dialogue ("nothing is just there to make us laugh") often contains crucial plot information.
  • Ms. Bates from Emma and Flora Finching from Little Dorrit are compared; Austen’s characters’ monologues serve the plot, whereas Dickens enjoys the comedy of idiosyncratic speech.
    • "Ms. Bates's monologues actually contain lots of clues as to the plot of Emma... but because nobody listens to her, nobody hears the clues. And that includes, I think, quite a lot of readers of the novel." – Mullan [11:09]

4. Rereading and Perspective

• Austen’s Rereadability and Hidden Clues [13:57–17:11]
  • Mullan observes that Emma is virtually designed so the reader must reread it to catch all the carefully hidden clues—making mistakes ("blunders") is inescapable on a first reading.
    • "Great literature is what you reread rather than what you read... Emma... had to be read twice, that you couldn't get it the first time." – Mullan [16:18]

5. Weather and Pathetic Fallacy

• Atmosphere in Austen and Dickens [17:11–25:05]
  • Dickens wields weather for effect (“implacable November weather” in Bleak House), often in extreme, poetic ways.
    • Mullan quotes Dickens’ opening to Bleak House: "As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth... it would not be wonderful to see a megalosaurus... waddling..." [18:05]
  • Austen’s use is subtle but present (e.g., Emma’s gloom mirrored by July rain: “the weather added what it could of gloom” [20:52]).
    • "That's the nearest Jane Austen ever gets to... pathetic fallacy..." – Mullan [20:57]
  • Austen’s female characters, due to societal restrictions, are often more weather-dependent.

6. The Sea as Setting and Symbol

• Danger and Liberation at the Seaside [25:05–29:00]
  • Austen uses the sea as both a space of danger and personal change—social rules loosen at the seaside, enabling key plot developments (Lyme in Persuasion, Brighton in Pride and Prejudice).
    • "Things happen by when people go to the seaside. That couldn't happen otherwise." – Mullan [26:07]
  • For Dickens, the sea is more commonly a site of threat or death (e.g., Steerforth’s death in David Copperfield).

7. Significance of Character Names

• Dickens’ Poetry vs. Austen’s Precision [29:00–32:17]
  • Dickens’ names (Scrooge, Fagin, Murdstone) are immediately evocative.
    • "There are more eponyms... derived from names from Dickens novels than from the works of any other writer." – Mullan [30:30]
  • Austen’s are subtler but telling (Penelope Clay, Augusta Elton); often, their power lies in how and when names are used, not their composition.

8. Naming and Social Customs in Austen

• The Power of Names in Social Context [32:03–36:28]
  • Austen uses naming conventions to indicate social relationships.
    • Only one married woman in Austen calls her husband by first name—Mary Musgrove in Persuasion.
    • First name use signals intimacy or impropriety: "Mr. Darcy does not call Elizabeth by her first name until she's finally accepted his proposal." – Mullan [35:03]
    • Misuse (Mrs. Elton calling Mr. Knightley “Knightley”) is socially offensive.

9. Dickens’ Language, Repetition, and the Comic-Grotesque

• Rule Breaking and Playfulness [22:06–25:05]
  • Dickens breaks writing “rules” with delight: repetition, cliches, playful syntax ("Marley was dead: to begin with").
    • "Dickens loves cliches... recognizes that cliches are in some ways the frozen poetry of the English language." – Mullan [22:28]
  • These techniques bring energy and pay homage to oral storytelling.

10. Fear and Comedy Intertwined

• The “Whooping Cough Dance” and Comic Terror [36:28–38:54]
  • Gerrard cites the Christmas dinner scene from Great Expectations as an exemplar of Dickens’ unique pairing of horror and hilarity.
    • "That's what Dickens does so brilliantly, I think, so uniquely: terror and hilarity together, not alternating, but actually almost in the same sentence." – Mullan [37:52]
  • Other examples include the threatening yet comically described Jaggers and his boots.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On literary education and opportunity:

  "For both of them, you can sort of see that not having been told how to write in a sense was an advantage for both of them." — John Mullan [05:50]

• On Austen and Dickens as opposites:

  "Dickens is the novelist of excess, hyperbole, monstrosity... Jane Austen the opposite. She's the absolute master or mistress... of exactitude, precision, everything honed down. Nothing is surplus to requirements." — John Mullan [07:43]

• On dialogue and plot in Austen:

  "Ms. Bates's monologues actually contain lots of clues as to the plot of Emma... but because nobody listens to her, nobody hears the clues. And that includes, I think, quite a lot of readers of the novel." — John Mullan [11:09]

• On rereading Emma:

  "Great literature is what you reread rather than what you read... Emma... had to be read twice, that you couldn't get it the first time." — John Mullan [16:18]

• On Dickensian cliches:

  "Dickens loves cliches, and he recognizes that cliches are in some ways the frozen poetry of the English language." — John Mullan [22:30]

• On terror and comedy in Dickens:

  "Nobody, I think, has ever managed to do fear and comedy combined so brilliantly." — John Mullan [37:57]

• On Austen’s naming conventions:

  "The power of the name comes from who, often, who's allowed and who's not allowed to use it." — John Mullan [32:21]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Start & Contextual Introduction: [00:01]
• Discussion on Education & Class: [03:41–07:28]
• Understatement vs. Overstatement: [07:28–09:56]
• Character Voices and Dialogue: [10:16–12:19]
• Rereading and Narrative Perspective: [13:57–17:11]
• Weather and the Pathetic Fallacy: [17:11–25:05]
• The Sea as Setting: [25:05–29:00]
• Naming and Characterisation: [29:00–32:17]
• Forms of Naming and Social Use: [32:03–36:28]
• Dickens’ Playfulness with Language: [22:06–25:05]
• Fear & Comedy – "Whooping Cough Dance": [36:28–38:54]

Conclusion

This episode provides a lively, insightful, and often humorous deep dive into the literary worlds of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, focusing on their enduring differences and shared legacies. With Professor John Mullan’s encyclopedic knowledge, it is an invaluable listen (or read) for both Austenites and Dickensians, brimming with sharp observations, memorable examples, and a fitting celebration of two literary titans.

Recommended for:
Anyone interested in narrative technique, the craft of classic fiction, literary history, or how two of Britain’s greatest writers still shape our understanding of the novel today.