POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

13 June 2008

Dombey & Son #4 (chaps 11-13) Jan. 1847

Dear Serial Readers,

This installment again prompts my thoughts about time, about the passage of time, both within the narrative and as experienced while reading the novel--or this part-issue number in particular.

Does the narrative seem to move slowly, and does this suggest that there's little happening, not much suspense or excitement or plot turns and twists, not enough compelling (character or plot) interest? I was thinking about the notion of pacing--fast-paced, absorbing reading or slow-paced reading that seems to demand more effort. But is slow reading necessarily wrong or an indication of a flaw? Does serial reading encourage a kind of slow-reading style, one that might be an acquired taste and clearly time-consuming, yet rewarding in its own way (like the slow-food movement)? And what hints accrue within the novel (especially around education) about how to read--fast, slow, close, distant, sporadically, selectively, or otherwise?

There are two places in these chapters that caught my attention around these questions. First, Doctor Blimber exemplifies a kind of distance reading quite literally as he "held a book from him at arm's length, and read" (ch 11, 157). The narrator indicates that this style of reading isn't admirable: "There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work." This passage seems to promote reading that is variable, open, passionate, and perhaps not like "work." Blimber's pedagogy inculcates "fast" learning (and reading) around the clock in a methodical fashion: "The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were always stretched upon it" (ch 12, 173). Not a felicitous vision of reading and learning!

Two last thoughts on this number. One way in which the novel seems to move slowly is that we're watching Paul grow without large leaps so far (no. 1 on infancy, no. 2 second year of life, no. 3 age 5, and no. 4 age 6). It's sort of like watching plants grow (to use a favorite metaphor of Dickens's), not particularly thrilling since changes are slight. And Paul is paradoxically both young (in body) and old (in spirit), something that complicates the matter of his chronological aging. If he's prematurely old, are there hints that he'll die early too?

Finally, I noted how Florence manages to pursue both female and male curricula, how in addition to "her own daily lessons," each evening she "track[s] Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways of learning" (chap 12, 177). I guess we'll see whether Dickens endorses this mixed educational diet.

Yours in numbers,
Serial Susan

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I really like these questions about reading and pacing, and I'd call attention to Paul's new course of study at Doctor Blimber's. When Paul is presented with a heap of books, he doesn't know what to make of them -- everything becomes disorganized and "when Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one," and so forth. It falls to Miss Blimber (who only interests herself in dead languages) to introduces linear order here. On the one hand, the obsessive scholarly interests are satirized, especially Miss Blimber's rejection of living languages and Dr. Blimber's use of the Greek New Testament as a punishment for Johnson. But this rigor and precision is necessary for Paul to make some genuine progress in learning, and it's an operation that amplifies what makes him strange and interesting in the first place.

And reading Dombey and Son itself is a different type of reading from all these examples, for several reasons. It's done according to a more leisurely serialized schedule, as we've mentioned before. But it's also a text that, to steal from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, has as its immediate object pleasure and not truth. Is there something about specifically literary reading that resists or fits the models of reading outlined in these chapters? I'd be inclined to say that reading fiction like this combines the good of both approaches. It requires rigor and focus; you can't just hop around from chapter to chapter without losing the meaning of the text. But its pleasure comes from the entire reading experience, not the reduction of the text to known facts.

And once again we have an installment that ends with the introduction of a new character. It's an effective way to build interest for us to keep reading, especially in sections like this one that don't develop the plot much.

Julia said...

I'm sorry to be a bit late with this post. I'm catching my breath after a very busy week!

To follow the existing thread on reading/education, I too was struck by the passage about Paul's linear education: "You must take the books down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day's installment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. And now take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are master of the theme" (136). This passage caught my eye because it seems so unlike serial reading with its continuous partial knowledge, notwithstanding the common term "installment." Yet this method of education seems to work better for Paul than simultaneous reading.

The subsequent description of Paul "wandering about the house by himself"..."in those short intervals when he was not occupied with his books" (140) is also intriguing because it inverts the serial reader's experience. On the one hand, Paul, who is forced to read all day, fills his "short intervals" with other activities. He flees from books. Many of Dickens's readers, on the other hand, would have been filling their "short intervals" of reprieve from their usual work with books.

These passages position serial readers of Dickens's novel in diametrical opposition to the students in Doctor Blimber's school. Our reading (as opposed to Paul's) is not confined to a linear, time- and fact-driven environment, even though each installment does come only periodically. And Dickens's use of the word "installment" in the first passage I quoted seems to draw attention to this important difference.

Unknown said...

I got a little ahead of myself by mentioning the clock in the third portion comments. Appreciated Susan's comments about time. The timeless sea beckons to Paul, Sol's business is saved in the nick of time, and suddenly Paul is 6 years old and off to the awful Blimber's school where the great clock constantly recognizes him. The hiliarity of Dr. Blimber's way of walking balances the tone. I could not, however, personally replicate it. I tried.

Maura said...

I'll return to a previous question from the last group of posts about how closely our serial reading experience can replicate the Victorians' since (perhaps) we already know what will happen in this book, and (certainly) we all have some degree of familiarity with the rest of the Dickens corpus. For me, that means connecting the character types and thematic interests of Dickens that he has treated before this book and that he will treat in the future. With this mid-career book, that gives me twice what the Victorian had. This extra knowledge is probably more good than bad for us as readers in general, but it does make it impossible for us to approach the book with the freshness of an original reader.

That may be particularly significant with this book, which, according to the preface writer of my additions, opines that this is the first truly mature Dickens novel, where the hero(es) is less a picaresque who moves through events and a suite of eccentrics, and more a person who lives through, responds to, and is changed by events. If that opinion is right, the Victorian reader's expectations based on CD's earlier works would be constantly upset.

Tying these general observations to the educational system explored in this number raises obvious parallels between Squeers and Dotheboys Hall and David Copperfield's school (which I can't remember) and Dr. Blimber's establishment. It is really difficult to see Dr. Blimber's as such a terrible place after Squeers and Dotheboys! More interesting is that we learn a lot more about Paul in his Blimber period (as y'all have discussed) than we learned about Nik Nik at Dotheboys. We learned that Nicholas was a spirited young man who would not brook brutality and unfairness, but we learned that through almost every experience he had. We learn quieter, more subtle things about Paul, as he struggles with the insides and outsides of books, gazes at the sea thinking of death, and interacts with his new co-tenants. At six, he is already less a "type" than a rounded figure.

I think this number still manages to keep up a parallel structure with the prior numbers. It begins with yet another beginning for Paul, this time his transfer to Blimber. And it ends with another (2 being the exception to this rule) development in the life of Walter and his relation to the Dombeys. In fact, thinking about the Walter story, the secondary plot here, each number shows a significant development: 1. Walter has just joined D&S; 2. he rescues Florence; 3. he gets the loan; 4. he is dispatched to Barbados.

One last thought: one of the Dickens types is the faithful retainer. Walter might be the man that fits that role here. But if he is, he's unique in that he also (it looks like) will get the girl. --And, by the way, is it just me, or is it a little creepy that he's had his eye on her since she was 6?

Maura said...

Of course I meant "edition" not "additions"!

MJ said...

I've just finished part IV, and I'm glad this time to be able to post my comments after reading so many others. I've had two anachronistic thoughts reading these chapters: how much Mrs. Pipchin prefigures Mrs. Sparsit of *Hard Times* (even to calling Blimber [?] a "noodle"); and how Florence's desire to help Paul with his studies prefigures Maggie Tulliver's desire to help Tom (also by reading his books) in Eliot's *The Mill on the Floss.* Interestingly, no one here is telling Florence that as a girl she can't do it.

I remain fascinated by Paul's introspection and wisdom, and am haunted by the monotonously questioning clock and Paul's thoughts of death as he looks out on and listens to the sea.