"Reader, I married him"

"Reader, I married him."

We love these characters

The plucky heroine
Jane, Jo, Elizabeth
Courageous, ingenious, loyal

The bereft orphan
Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Balfour
Innocent, ingenious, and finally, wealthy

The saintly girl who dies
Beth March, Helen Burns, Little Nell
Sacrificing for others, fading away
Consumption perhaps, or scarlet fever

The meandering plots
Twists, turns
Poverty
Unexpected relations, sudden wealth

Happy ending
tinged with
melancholy
for the
saintly, departed girl

Commentary: I wanted to write an appreciation of those classic novels by Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, and even Robert Louis Stevenson, but flavored with a bit of peppery amusement. I love these stories, I love that everyone seems to end of related to each other in Dickens, and that all the impoverished orphans find their families, who turn out to be wealthy! I don't think the poem is done yet. It needs to sit for a while.