"Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image"
About this Quote
Dickens is doing what he does best: turning sentiment into a moral ambush. The line starts with a deceptively playful proposition - send the child and the childish man together - then snaps into an accusation. The real target isn’t immaturity; it’s adult vanity. “Blush for the pride” is a command, not a suggestion, and it frames adulthood as a kind of self-serving lie we tell about childhood: that we’ve outgrown it, that we’ve improved on it, that we now stand at a higher rung of human seriousness.
The phrase “libels our own old happy state” is especially pointed. To call it libel is to imply malice and fabrication, as if the grown-up story of childhood as foolishness is a smear campaign designed to justify the losses adulthood quietly requires. Dickens’s subtext is that “childish” isn’t the opposite of wise; it’s the raw material of empathy, wonder, and moral clarity - qualities adults rebrand as naive because acknowledging them would indict the compromises we’ve accepted.
Then comes the mirror twist: pride “gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.” Adulthood, in this formulation, is not the polished portrait we imagine; it’s a caricature, swollen by ego and narrowed by habit. In Dickens’s Victorian context - a culture loudly invested in respectability, discipline, and industrial “progress” - that’s a sharp rebuke. He’s not romanticizing childhood so much as exposing how modern adulthood flatters itself by misnaming what it has abandoned.
The phrase “libels our own old happy state” is especially pointed. To call it libel is to imply malice and fabrication, as if the grown-up story of childhood as foolishness is a smear campaign designed to justify the losses adulthood quietly requires. Dickens’s subtext is that “childish” isn’t the opposite of wise; it’s the raw material of empathy, wonder, and moral clarity - qualities adults rebrand as naive because acknowledging them would indict the compromises we’ve accepted.
Then comes the mirror twist: pride “gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.” Adulthood, in this formulation, is not the polished portrait we imagine; it’s a caricature, swollen by ego and narrowed by habit. In Dickens’s Victorian context - a culture loudly invested in respectability, discipline, and industrial “progress” - that’s a sharp rebuke. He’s not romanticizing childhood so much as exposing how modern adulthood flatters itself by misnaming what it has abandoned.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
|---|
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
