I'm fairly behind on the thread (gratz on 9001 btw), but if I'm understanding the last 20 or so pages correctly, Dickens is basically just Ye Olde Rick and Morty, and you need to have a pretty high IQ to appreciate it.
Dickens is Ye Olde Prole Slop. He wrote serials in magazines that were mainly read by women. He knew exactly what they liked, adorable little children, effusive descriptions of what people were wearing, and absolutely mental drama. Supposedly, he wrote
A Tale of Two Cities in part to silence critics who said he wasn't a real author due to him actually making money and being famous. The critics, of course, still pouted and whined, and
Tale of Two Cities went on to possibly be the best selling novel of all time, moving over two hundred million copies. Dickens just massively flexed on everyone all the time, the alpha Chad of novelists reminding everyone else that if you could be a #1 best-selling author, you would be, and you're not because you're not him.
Imagine if Andreas Carlsson took a break from writing top 100 pop hits because he was tired of people who can't even chart accusing him of being a fake musician, so he takes a break and writes what becomes the absolute most popular opera of all time. That's pretty much what Dickens did in literature.
English majors don't know any of this shit because knowing things is racist, and they spend all their time writing essays about how Jane Austen's books are sorely lacking in scenes of niggerfaggots sucking each others' cocks.