You don’t mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn’t much matter whether you do or don’t, for you can’t sleep anywhere else.
–One of the kindlier statements addressed to Oliver Twist at the beginning of the novel
I like to think of Charles Dickens as the Joss Whedon of his day—a popular storyteller who churned out episodic adventure after episodic adventure, keeping viewers—er, that is, readers—hooked with cliffhanger after cliffhanger, rarely allowing his love interests to have more than a moment’s true happiness, and constantly killing off beloved characters just to twist all of the knives in the hearts of his fans a little bit deeper.