The Battle of Life
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Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.
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Reviews for The Battle of Life
41 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Hmmm. The Battle of Life is the fourth of Dickens' five Christmas novellas (and 13th of his 24 major works overall), but it certainly is one of my least favourite. Published at the same time as his underwhelming Pictures from Italy, the book strikes me as exactly what it is: a jobbing writer working on a piece of writing to fulfil a contract. It's a sentimental love story, really, about two sisters and a confused father-figure. It's quite gloopy, never really shows any purpose, and seems very confused - the eponymous Battle of Life sticks out as a strange piece of moralising without any tie to the story, given the battles in this novel are few, if any. Definitely one of the least of Dickens' canon, but I can't fault a man for earning money doing what he's talented at - there's still some beauty here, after all.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the fourth of Dickens' series of Christmas books, but it is quite different from the earlier volumes. It lacks the supernatural element of the previous works, and is more like a long modern short story. After a theme setting prologue about an ancient battle field, the 'short story' starts briskly with the scene set (summer in the countryside) and characters introduced (two daughters of a country doctor, dancing among apple harvesters). It is very Somerset Maugham. Of course, it is Dickens, not Maugham, so the story ends with a complicated twist, and the obligatory happy ending. I enjoyed this book, perhaps because it was different in many ways from other Dickens' works - the writing is concise, the characters interesting without being caricatures, the comic elements understated. Wikipedia tells me that it is one of Dickens' lesser known works and has never attained a high. It seems that I am out of step with popular opinion. Read February 2012.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved this short novel especially because, like Dr, Jeddler,one of the main characters, I have two delightful daughters who are all the world to me. It's Dickens-what more can I say?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The fourth of Dickens' Christmas Books, I thought this one was the least Christmassy of the five books. Dickens uses a fictional battle which took place to illustrate the mental/emotional battles of life we all face. The tale follows Dr Jeddler who refuses to take anything in life seriously and his two beautiful daughters. It's a difficult book to describe without giving away too much of the plot but in the end, the self-sacrifice of his daughters leads to the reform of the Doctor. I enjoyed this book but thought the means by which the self sacrifice was achieved was a little bit unbelievable. 3.75 starsInterestingly, Dickens himself was not completely satisfied with how this idea had been worked out in this short novella and was eventually persuaded by a friend to rework the idea in a full length novel which was called A Tale of Two Cities.
Book preview
The Battle of Life - Charles Dickens
THE BATTLE OF LIFE
BY CHARLES DICKENS
A Digireads.com Book
Digireads.com Publishing
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3271-3
Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-699-2
This edition copyright © 2011
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. Part The First
CHAPTER II. Part The Second
CHAPTER III. Part The Third
CHAPTER I. Part The First
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate colour from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun.
Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant rising-ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces that had once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes, or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across the scene of that day's work and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely moon was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew over it, before the traces of the fight were worn away.
They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things; for, Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered Her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town among the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were sown, and grew up, and were gathered in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned a watermill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and called, in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cottage chimneys; sabbath bells rang peacefully; old people lived and died; the timid creatures of the field, the simple flowers of the bush and garden, grew and withered in their destined terms: and all upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight.
But, there were deep green patches in the growing corn at first, that people looked at awfully. Year after year they re-appeared; and it was known that underneath those fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried, indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those places, shrunk from the great worms abounding there; and the sheaves they yielded, were, for many a long year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart; and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every furrow that was turned, revealed some fragments of the fight. For a long time, there were wounded trees upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time, no village girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower from that field of death: and after many a year had come and gone, the berries growing there, were still believed to leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked them.
The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly as the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time, even these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people carried in their minds, until they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered round the winter fire, and waning every year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long remained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were built, and children played at battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long ago made Christmas logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep green patches were no greener now than the memory of those who lay in dust below. The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits of metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, and those who found them wondered and disputed. An old dinted corselet, and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long, that the same weak half-blind old man who tried in vain to make them out above the whitewashed arch, had marvelled at them as a baby. If the host slain upon the field, could have been for a moment reanimated in the forms in which they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his untimely death, gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared in, hundreds deep, at household door and window; and would have risen on the hearths of quiet homes; and would have been the garnered store of barns and granaries; and would have started up between the cradled infant and its nurse; and would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the mill, and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and piled the rickyard high with dying men. So altered was the battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight.
Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred years ago, than in one little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch; where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of music and laughter, and where two girls danced merrily together on the grass, while some half-dozen peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene; a beautiful day, a retired spot; and the two girls, quite unconstrained and careless, danced in the freedom and gaiety of their hearts.
If there were no such thing as display in the world, my private opinion is, and I hope you agree with me, that we might get on a great deal better than we do, and might be infinitely more agreeable company than we are. It was charming to see how these girls danced. They had no spectators but the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to please them, but they danced to please themselves (or at least you would have supposed so); and you could no more help admiring, than they could help dancing. How they did dance!
Not like opera-dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody's finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style: though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning air—the flashing leaves, the speckled shadows on the soft green ground—the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to turn the distant windmill, cheerily—everything between the two girls, and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they showed against the sky as if they were the last things in the world—seemed dancing too.
At last, the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest.