Martin Chuzzlewit

Old Martin Chuzzlewit, convinced that his relatives care only for his money, quarrels with his grandson and places himself under the influence of the hypocritical architect Seth Pecksniff. Young Martin leaves England with the cheerful Mark Tapley and attempts to build a new life in the United States, where hardship and illness gradually challenge his selfishness. In England, Pecksniff’s schemes, Jonas Chuzzlewit’s violence and Mrs Gamp’s corrupt nursing draw the wider family toward fraud and murder.

The novel is a broad satire of greed, hypocrisy and self-deception in both Britain and America. Through parallel stories of moral failure and reform, Dickens argues that inherited wealth, professional respectability and public virtue are unreliable measures of character.