Dear Serial Readers,
Thanks for all those comments! I will keep mine short because I am here to do research of a different sort. Like Josh, I was struck by the paratactic (as in parataxis) style of the first installment where there are different scenes and casts of characters that don't seem linked together at all--except only loosely by the theme of imprisonment. As a reading act of faith to persevere--perhaps that depends on being an experienced reader of Dickens, as Julia suggests (although, strictly serially speaking, someone reading the first installments of DORRIT in late 1855-early 56 wouldn't know the MUTUAL characters). But yes, Dickens is a very particular kind of reading experience, as all of you mention in different ways. This novel seems to intensify what it means to try to catch your bearings in a vast fictional landscape. I am so struck by the opening chapters set on foreign soil, rather than London or the English countryside. Will we exit England again in this novel?
This second installment provides some back story about the "little" needlewoman Amy Dorrit (although her first name appears very rarely)--the Child of the Marshalsea prison. Arthur's suspicion seems to drive his curiosity (and ours) about her--and I'm interested to see how this "secret" wrongdoing--the "fall" behind the debtor Dorrit in prison--emerges. Is one of the Dorrit children fathered by Mr. Clennam? Why would Mrs. Clennam want to make amends by hiring the Child of the Marshalsea? I was also intrigued by the rather detailed portrait of Mrs. Dorrit in labour--in confinement while in confinement!
I'm sure you all know that when Dickens was 12, his father was imprisoned for 3 months for debt, and young Charles had to suspend his schooling to work in a factory. So Dickens's lavish attention to the social problem of the imprisonment of debtors has this strong autobiographical keynote. Odd too that despite the horrors of the place and the idea of a child born there and raised there, bits of humor and humanity shine through the bleakness.
Next week, number three, chapters 9-11.
Serially yours,
Susan
3 comments:
At first when she was referred to as “Amy Dorrit,” I thought, Who’s that? I like how the other references to her increase her mystery.
This Mrs Clennman in Chapter 5. Her every gesture and facial expression underscores her severity. She deflects Arthur’s inquiries and throws them back on him, again and again. I think she doth protest too much. I don't know why it struck me so, but I love the five lines Dickens took to describe Mrs C.’s plate of oysters at the end of her long protest. A few paragraphs later, I was again delighted with what became of Little Dorrit “between the two eights." Is that a familiar British expression of time, or is it Dickens being Dickens? Just curious.
I’m also interested in the anthropomorphizing he does in descriptions earlier in the book and again in Chapter 5, as Arthur looks through the house. The lethargic rooms, the hiding furniture, the dead-cold hearths. And then, another double in the “meager mirrors,” and the upside down, undertaker-like Cupid! Very curious.
In Chapter 6 Dickens hits hard the ineptness of government with the tangle of smugglers and debtors habitually consorting “except at certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about. On those truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this somebody pretended to do his something and made a reality of walking out again as soon as he hadn’t done it….” Brilliant. Later in the chapter, the turnkey’s ironic, protracted sales pitch about the prison, which includes his claim, “It’s freedom, sir, it’s freedom!” In Chapter 7 we see Little Dorrit passing through the gate, leaving “freedom” behind, and entering “the care-laden world,” and then we are presented with the “mystery” of why she was “inspired,” like a poet or a priest, to be something, “which was not what the rest were.” It’s all wonderful.
Little Dorrit’s familial relationships begin to unfold in Chapter 7, not the least with her father, but there’s also Fanny, Tip, and “the ruined uncle” (doesn’t everyone have one?). I’m wondering what will become of them as the story moves along, and what will be the fallout of Little Dorrit's habit of “preserving the genteel fiction” within the “changing family” in the prison. These are small questions, with subtle implications for the story. Arthur’s questions at the end of Chapter 8--about death and escape, and the “what if” about his mother--are the big ones.
I have never read this novel before, but I did see the 1988 two-part movie, which I have almost entirely forgotten, except for one aspect of the outcome, which I may misremember, too.
So, I didn't recall that they said in Chapter one why the characters were in jail; I'll look at that again. It was a very intriguing opening, with the first two chapters seemingly unrelated and the third only loosely connected. At first I was relatively uninterested, but I was caught by the end of chapter 4, and definitely by the end of the second section. I hope we finish by mid-May, but I guess that's unlikely! I'll have to read ahead for the weeks I'll be out of blogging ability in May and June.
I admit to being charmed by the Meagles in Chapter 2, but then it occurred to me that their name may note a certain narcissism that could be problematic.
There is an interesting focus in the first two chapters on the uncertainty of imprisonment-lack of knowledge of what will happen next. It seems Mr. Dorrit at first had that uncertainty at Marshalsea, but chose to change his outlook and become certain and at home in the Marshalsea. Freedom perhaps is determined more by self-determination than by an ability to go where one likes, to pick up on Readerann's quotations on "freedom."
Like Readerann, I was also fascinated by the anthropomorphized house and the completely inept inhuman government--inhuman less because it shows no concern for humans and more because it seems to run like a balky machine with many unconnected and random parts.
As Arthur Clennam (in the first installment) neared his home, I kept expecting him to end up at a poor family's hovel, since in other novels (by Dickens and others) the river area is filled with the poorest dockworkers and prostitutes. I was surprised he got to this formerly rich dwelling, and I imagine the poverty encroaching on all sides as the house falls down from within. So far, however, the novel hasn't seemed to make much of that world of unpredictable poverty right outside the rigid Mrs. C's door.
I look forward to more Affery!
I just wanted to add to my last comments that I went back and re-read the first chapter and now recall Rigaud's murder of his wife, which was odd there, and seemed so removed from the second chapter. I was thinking at first that merciful girl was Amy D., as I think someone else was. That chapter does introduce the themes of a merciful girl, clocks, birds/cages, mastery as control over others . . .
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