I think every major French character I have read so far in Dickens' novels has been a villain. There was Mme Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities. M. Defarge, although not as villainous as his wife, was still a villain. In Bleak House, Lady Dedlock's maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, was a villainess. In Little Dorritt, Rigaud/Blandois is a villain. At what point does it become statistically significant and we can say with 95% certainty, that Dickens had a problem with the French?
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I haven´t read the complete article yet, kev, but I ihink you might enjoy it:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/61902099.pdf
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
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