Martin Chuzzlewit
Free public-domain edition — preview in your browser, no account required for the first chapter.
Preview free · sign up to save progress, download to your shelf, and sync with the apps
Already have an account? Sign in
This novel offers a masterful blend of biting social satire and heartfelt redemption, showcasing Dickens' sharpest critique of hypocrisy and greed.
Edition details
Book Summary
Martin Chuzzlewit follows young Martin as he is disinherited by his wealthy grandfather and travels to America, only to face corruption and hardship. The novel satirizes greed and hypocrisy through characters like the sanctimonious Seth Pecksniff and the murderous Jonas, ultimately exploring redemption through genuine human connection.
The story centers on the Chuzzlewit family, rife with suspicion and greed over old Martin's fortune. Young Martin, disinherited for loving Mary Graham, becomes a pupil of the hypocritical Seth Pecksniff. After a disastrous venture in America, where he falls prey to the fraudulent Eden land scheme, Martin returns to England humbled. Meanwhile, Jonas Chuzzlewit, raised to value money above all, plots to poison his father and later commits murder, but is exposed by the old clerk Chuffey. Old Martin, secretly observing all, orchestrates a scheme to unmask Pecksniff's true nature. Through hardship and the loyalty of Mark Tapley, young Martin learns humility and is reconciled with his grandfather. The novel concludes with the virtuous characters rewarded: Tom Pinch finds love with his sister Ruth, and Mercy Chuzzlewit escapes her abusive marriage to Jonas, finding a new home with old Martin.
Reading guide
Go deeper in Martin Chuzzlewit
Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
Tom Pinch
Tom Pinch lives to serve Pecksniff, scraping bread, cutting sugar, and swallowing insults as if gratitude demanded it, until even his patient wonder starts to curdle. His tenderness toward his little sister Ruth and his friendship with the banished John Westlock reveal a man whose humility is real but whose eyes are slowly opening. He matters because the novel's moral center rests on whether goodness this unguarded can survive being used.
Seth Pecksniff
Pecksniff presides over a household of daughters, pupils, and dependents, all arranged to flatter his reputation for benevolence while he quietly calculates what each is worth. His genius is for moral language deployed as camouflage: he sacrifices his children's happiness to his own and calls it self-denial. He anchors the novel's satire, since every plot against old Chuzzlewit's fortune passes through his oily hands.
Martin Chuzzlewit
Young Martin arrives at Pecksniff's door as a pupil, already convinced of his own superiority and already entangled in his grandfather's watchful displeasure. His courtship of Mary Graham, the old man's companion, collides with the family's schemes for the Chuzzlewit inheritance. His early arrogance is the flaw the whole book exists to grind down, and his grandfather's feigned sleep behind the Blue Dragon door keeps the stakes personal.
Jonas Chuzzlewit
Jonas moves through London's flashy circles—Tigg Montague's dinners, Wolf's theatrical gossip, Pip's oaths—with a miser's eye fixed on the silver and a sneer for everything else. He has already humiliated one Pecksniff sister by transferring his suit to the other, and his contempt for his own father is barely concealed. He matters because his greed is the novel's darkest engine, the place where avarice stops being comic and starts being dangerous.
Mark Tapley
Mark Tapley attaches himself to young Martin with the theory that a man deserves credit for being jolly when circumstances make jollity hard, and the worse things get, the more determinedly he beams. He speaks in a cheerful idiom of love, honour, and obedience, punctual to the stroke of the clock, and reads other people's characters more shrewdly than his manner suggests. He matters because his loyalty gives Martin a companion in adversity and the reader a comic counterweight to Pecksniff's false virtue.
John Westlock
Westlock left Pecksniff's establishment with his eyes open and his contempt intact, and he returns as the friend Tom Pinch never had the nerve to seek. Shrewd, warm, and unimpressed by cant, he becomes the practical ally Tom leans on when the household finally cracks. He matters because his clear-sighted friendship offers Tom a way out of Pecksniff's orbit and gives the novel one honest man who was never fooled.
Hypocrisy and Self-Deception
The book satirizes characters like Mr. Pecksniff, who cloaks selfishness and greed in a veneer of piety and moral superiority, while Jonas Chuzzlewit embodies a more brutal form of self-serving deceit.
Greed and Corruption
The pursuit of wealth drives the plot, from the Chuzzlewit family's scheming over inheritance to Jonas's involvement in a fraudulent insurance company, exposing how money corrupts human relationships and morals.
Family and Dysfunction
The Chuzzlewit family is rife with suspicion, manipulation, and lack of genuine affection, as seen in old Martin's distrust of his relatives and Jonas's contempt for his father, contrasting with the ideal of familial unity.
Social Class and Pretension
Dickens mocks the obsession with ancestry and social status, particularly through the ironic genealogy of the Chuzzlewits and the sycophantic behavior of characters like Pecksniff toward the wealthy.