There are violent fathers, kindly paternal surrogates, stern but caring lawyers, wild but loyal best friends, and competing love interests blessed with different Dickensian ideals.
It is common in some societies which still live in culture of poverty (Dickensian), where people tend to be narrow-minded and of low social intelligence.
Her acting career was interrupted in the 1940s by serious personal problems, her own life becoming more Dickensian than the characters she portrayed on screen.