Who in the Dickens Are They? Trivia Quiz

Answer: A Christmas Carol

Mr. Fezziwig is the generous businessman to whom young Ebenezer Scrooge is apprenticed. Unfortunately, the Industrial Revolution shunts Mr. F. onto a sidetrack on the railroad of commerce, leaving the field open for slicker businessmen like Ebenezer and his partner Jacob Marley.

Answer: Martin Chuzzlewit

Sairey Gamp appears in 'Martin Chuzzlewit' and she is one of Dickens' most memorable and, sadly, true-to-life characters. Sairey is a midwife/nurse/layer-out-of-the-dead. Mrs. Gamp's chief characteristic, apart from her vulgarity and lack of personal hygiene, is her prediliction for the bottle.

She was more often drunk than not. In an era when the poor often drank gin like water as a way of forgetting their misery, Mrs. Gamp and those like her were all-too familiar figures in the Victorian world.

It was from Sairey and her ubiquitous umbrella that the word 'gamp' for umbrella came into the English language.

Answer: Dombey and Son

When Walter Gay's ship is wrecked on its way to Barbados, his uncle Solomon Gills refuses to believe that Walter has drowned and sets off to search for him. Solomon Gills makes marine instruments and his shop is called The Wooden Midshipman. When he leaves to find Walter, Gills leaves his shop in the care of his friend Ned Cuttle, a retired sea captain.

Answer: Nicholas Nickleby

Mr. Squeers is the headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, the dreadful boarding school to which Nicholas is sent by his typically nasty Dickensian stepfather. Dotheboys Hall is filled with unwanted boys, and Nicholas has a hard time of it at the hands of the Squeers family, all of whom are the epitome of selfishness, hard-heartedness, unkindness and cruelty. Squeers gets his comeuppance, however, and is transported to Australia, leaving his family at the mercy of the boys who have suffered long at their hands.

Answer: Pickwick Papers

Dodson and Fogg are the unscrupulous lawyers who act for the widow, Mrs. Bardell, when she brings a breach of promise suit against Samuel Pickwick. Dickens seldom ever portrayed lawyers in a good light, and Dodson and Fogg are no exception. Dickens' bias against lawyers probably stemmed from his early years when he worked as a law clerk.

Answer: The Old Curiosity Shop

Quilp is an evil dwarf who is a moneylender. When Little Nell Trent's grandfather, obssessed about money, takes up gambling to increase his fortunes he borrows heavily from Quilp. When Nell's grandfather cannot repay the loan (he's a lousy gambler and loses every time!), Quilp takes over his shop (The Old Curiosity Shop of the title) as repayment and continues to hound the now homeless grandfather and Nell for money. To escape Quilp, Nell and her grandfather flee London and find a safe haven in the countryside.

Unfortunately, Nell seems to have had the typically poor constitution of Victorian ladies in novels and the effort of escaping Quilp compounded by her other trials and tribulations leads to her death. The novel, like all of Dickens' novels, was serialized and Nell's death was cause for great mourning on both sides of the Atlantic.

Answer: Bleak House

Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby are relatively minor characters whom Dickens uses to castigate the "professional do-gooders", ladies of means who saw themselves as workers for charity, to benefit the poor (without ever seeming to benefit them at all) while neglecting their responsibilities to their own children. Mrs. Jellyby, in particular, is based on a real person, Caroline Chisholm. Caroline Chisholm, unlike Mrs. J., however, actually did help poor and destitute women and girls in Madras, India (where her husband was stationed with the British army) and Sydney, Australia (where the family moved after Captain Chisholm's retirement), setting up homes where they could be taught how to read and write, and learn domestic skills which would enable them to earn their living.

Answer: Oliver Twist

Sowerberry is the undertaker who purchases Oliver from Mr. Bumble the Beadle and puts him to work under his apprentice Noah Claypole. Oliver is starved, mistreated and generally put upon by the Sowerberry-Claypole menage.

Answer: Hard Times

Thomas Gradgrind is a utilitarian, a materialist and believer in facts and statistics, who decries any artistic endeavour like music, poetry or painting as a waste of time. He learns the error of his ways when his daughter, Louisa, who has been brought up on these rigid lines, suffers a breakdown.

Answer: Barnaby Rudge

'Barnaby Rudge' is one of two historical novels written by Dickens (the other is 'A Tale of Two Cities'), and it is set against the backdrop of the anti-Catholic riots of the 1780s. Barnaby, the title character, is a developmentally challenged man who is cared for by his devoted mother Mary in a village in Epping Forest. Grip is Barnaby's pet raven, a loquacious bird who often utters truth! There are those who believe that Grip inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write 'The Raven'.