Charles Dickens/YMMV


 * Fair for Its Day:
 * Dickens indulged heavily on broad caricatures, often modeled after stereotypes of his age. This led to some rather insensitive characterizations. The most famous is perhaps Fagin, the Greedy Jew. However, Dickens was actually a pretty progressive person for his time, and his characters were designed for comedy or social commentary rather than bigotry.
 * The Inspirationally Disabled trope, of which Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol is the Trope Codifier, is often considered offensive today; it's preferable that disabled people be shown as fully actualized characters, with their own faults and struggles, rather than perfect angels who exist only to teach the able-bodied hero a lesson. But in Dickens's day, disabled people were still commonly feared and derided as monsters and freaks. So to show a disabled person as sympathetic and inspirational was actually quite progressive.
 * Mary Sue/Marty Stu: All of his characters, ever, unless they're Complete Monsters. OK, so YMMV big-time here, but really: Sydney Carton, Esther Summerson, begging her doll to forgive her air-headedness and terrible storytelling skills, and then  Tiny Tim, who did NOT die (actually capslocked in the story)? Stephen Blackpool, noble and good and unjustly accused, ? OH, SHUT UP ALREADY. Get down off that cross, someone else needs the wood.
 * The above troper may be being unfair. Tiny Tim is in no way a Sue, aside from being the Littlest Cancer Patient. He was used more as a plot device than a character whom the story revolves around. Esther was an unlucky Proper Lady. I fail to see how the incident with her doll qualifies her as a Sue. Most of Dickens' characters are meant to represent the contrast between the wealthy and the poor, and they suffer from normal afflictions that were common at that time. Some of them have a few Sue-ish elements, but symptoms are not the disease and I think we need to remember how common things like smallpox and starvation were back then.
 * And Remember Tropes Aren't Bad. Dickens chooses to use static character in order to build his environment.
 * Moe: Yes, that moe. You want to know how much of a genius Dickens was? He completely and hilariously deconstructed the moe archetype and instinctive protective feelings people have toward young female characters with the character of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop. He did this one hundred and fifty years before the trope existed in its modern form, and even many people at the time didn't realize they were being made fun of for becoming so attached to a fictional character. (Reportedly, he was actually rather disappointed that the point he was trying to make went over the heads of so many people -- Nell's death is supposed to be funny, not heartbreaking.)
 * Eh? Is there evidence for this? A number of critics have stated that Nell was based on Dickens' sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. If he was mocking her death, he was a heartless bastard. Most likely, Dickens meant it perfectly seriously, and was thoroughly satisfied that so many of his contemporaries (even Thackeray!) took it perfectly seriously.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Has sometimes scared many a child during high school, well, the British system anyway.
 * Popcultural Osmosis
 * Purple Prose: The first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities is one whole sentence. Notably, one of the most famous openings in literature history and an early example of antithesis parallelism which drew his audience in.
 * Actually, Dickens does that a lot. Bleak House, anyone?
 * The first sentence of Bleak House is a masterpiece of conciseness as it happens. One word, and that a proper noun.
 * Tear Jerker