The Battle of Life

The Battle of Life
	Cover of the first edition of The Battle of Life from 1846.
Author	Charles Dickens
Original title	The Battle of Life: A Love Story
Illustrator	Charles Green
Country	England
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Bradbury and Evans
Publication date	1846
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	116 pp
Preceded by	The Cricket on the Hearth
Followed by	The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
Text	The Battle of Life at Wikisource

The Battle of Life: A Love Story is an 1846 novella by Charles Dickens.[1] It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books", coming after The Cricket on the Hearth and followed by The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain.

Setting

The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title.

Reception

It is one of Dickens's lesser-known works and has never attained any high level of popularity, in contrast to the other of his Christmas Books.[2]

Plot summary

Two sisters, Grace and Marion, live happily in an English village with their two servants, Clemency Newcome and Ben Britain, and their good-natured widower father Dr Jeddler. Dr Jeddler is a man whose philosophy is to treat life as a farce. Marion, the younger sister, is betrothed to Alfred Heathfield, Jeddler's ward, who is leaving the village to complete his studies. Alfred entrusts Marion to Grace's care and makes a promise to return to win her hand.

Michael Warden, a libertine who is about to leave the country, is thought by the solicitors Snitchey and Craggs to be about to seduce the younger sister into an elopement. Clemency spies Marion one night at a clandestine rendezvous with Warden, and Marion disappears on the very day that Alfred is due to return.

Six years later, Clemency is married to Ben and the two have set up a tavern in the village. After recovering fom her heartbreak at Warden's elopement with Marion, Grace has married Alfred and she bears him a daughter, also called Marion. On the day of the child's birth, Marion re-appears and explains her disappearance: she had not eloped with Warden, but had moved to live with her aunt Martha so as to allow Alfred the chance to fall in love with Grace. The man she had herself loved had not been Alfred, but Warden. Marion is reunited with her family. Warden returns, and is forgiven by Dr Jeddler. Warden and Marion are married.

Stage adaptation

An adaptation of The Battle of Life by Albert Richard Smith was produced with success at the Surrey Theatre in 1846.

References

Glancy, Ruth (1988). "The Shaping of "The Battle of Life": Dickens' Manuscript Revisions". Dickens Studies Annual. 17: 67–89. ISSN 0084-9812.
Morgentaler, Goldie (2011). "The Doppelganger Effect: Dickens, Heredity, and the Double in "The Battle of Life"". Dickens Studies Annual. 42: 159–175. ISSN 0084-9812.

External links

The Battle of Life at Internet Archive.
The Battle of Life at Project Gutenberg
The Battle of Life public domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Battle of Life - Searchable HTML version.
The Battle of Life - Easy to read HTML version.

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[1] Glancy, Ruth (1988). "The Shaping of "The Battle of Life": Dickens' Manuscript Revisions". Dickens Studies Annual. 17: 67–89. ISSN 0084-9812.

[2] Morgentaler, Goldie (2011). "The Doppelganger Effect: Dickens, Heredity, and the Double in "The Battle of Life"". Dickens Studies Annual. 42: 159–175. ISSN 0084-9812.