In Dickens and the Broken Scripture, Janet Larson examines the paradoxical role of the Bible in Dickens' novels, from such early works as "Oliver Twist" and "Dombey and Son," in which the Bible and the "Book of Common Prayer" were drawn upon for the most part as stable sources of reassurance and order, to the far more complex novels of Dickens' maturity, such as "Bleak House," "Little Dorrit," and "Our Mutual Friend." In these later works, biblical allusion performs an increasingly contradictory and dissonant role that brings into question not only the moral character of Victorian society...