Dickens and the Daughter of the House

Feminist criticism has not been kind to Charles Dickens. The characters George Orwell referred to as ''legless angels'' - Little Nell, Agnes Wickfield, Esther Summerson and others - have been conjured as evidence of Dickens'' inability to create ''real'' women. Critics wishing to rescue him have turned to the dark, angry women - Nancy, Lady Dedlock, Miss Wade - who disrupt the calm surface of some...