Dear Serial Readers,
As always, your comments are terrific! I definitely see Julia's point about the Gothic cast to Dickens' rendition of places as a way to align and blur the London prison and the Continental European landscapes. Amy's letter to Arthur at the close of this installment makes a related point as her "travelling mind" links the shadows cast in old Italian cities (specifically here, the shadow cast by the tower of Pisa) with shadows on the walls in Marshalsea. All her observations of the wonders of Italy seem to lead back to life before the "change in our fortunes" when she had a sense of purpose--perhaps part of the "homesickness" she confesses to Arthur in this letter, though I suspect he is very much the object of that homesickness.
It occurs to me that Amy is struggling to do what Arthur has also resolved to do--to repress or cast overboard, down the river, an unrequited love by dedicating herself selflessly (without hope of mutuality) to Arthur. It seems possible that Arthur and Amy will end up together in this story, and less likely that Pet/Minnie will unite with Arthur. Not that I think her marriage with Gowan will last, or that he will last (somehow I suspect he's headed for a full demise, maybe foreshadowed by Blandois's treatment of their dog), but now that she has a son, I can't imagine that she can remarry another man. Perhaps we'll have the new domestic triangle at the end of the novel--Arthur, Amy, and Minnie---with son. It seems many mid-Victorian narratives end this way. I'm thinking here of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh--which had just been published when Dickens was writing these installments and is full of Italian scenery. The Dorrits and Gowans in Italy recall the many expats, artists and writers too, British and American, in Florence in the 1850s. I wonder if Dickens ran an article on the subject in Household Words?
Also a major Gothic motif, secrets flood the chapter on the Clennam household where Blandois appears, after his mysterious encounter with Miss Wade and Tattycoram. Through Arthur, we're seeing so many puzzling pieces, still to be fit together--if all of them can be. What is Blandois's relationship to the Clennams and to Flintwinch? Why does Miss Wade have dealings with him? What are the deeper secrets that haunt the Clennam family? "What is going on here?" as Arthur puts it to Affery. Blandois seems like a stock villain figure, curling moustache and all--from stage melodrama--what is he doing here?
I noticed too that this number is set almost entirely in London, just as the twelfth installment is in Italy, with Little D's letter as a link between the two places. Her letter reminds me too of Esther Summerson's narration in Bleak House--the modest, self-effacing feminine voice that jars with its sharp, acute perceptions of other people and circumstances. And just as John Jarndyce renames Esther with all kinds of nicknames, so has Arthur names Amy "Little Dorrit" as she reminds him (and us) in this letter. What do you make of that?
Finally, Serial Readers just had its second year birthday! I posted initially on this forum on June 2, 2008 on the first installment of Dombey and Son. Happy Birthday, Serial Readers, and may the third year be filled with more slow reading pleasures!
Next week, II, chaps 12-14 (for Jan. 1857)
Serially in secrets,
Susan
4 comments:
I have puzzled over the title of Chapter 8 to no avail: “The Dowager Mrs. Gowan Is reminded That It Never Does.” What’s “It”? “Never Does” what? I am also curious about the four-page start of Chapter 8 at the firm of Doyce and Clennam, where the partners suffer under a Circumlocution Office which equates invention with felony.Perhaps this preface of Circumlocutionary suppression serves to underscore Arthur's “life of slight variety" and sets up the void Amy has left in his life. He misses her need for him in the same way she misses her father’s need for her, as it existed at the Marshalsea. In loneliness, Arthur recalls the night when the roses floated away on the river, since when he has considered himself a man older than his years. Perhaps by the end of the story he will reconsider his unfitness for younger love. Meantime, no wonder at nightfall along the Strand he gets caught up in the mystery adventure of following Tattycoram and “the strange man,” who lead us back to Miss Wade, and then on to the Patriarchal door, and to Flora. What IS going on here? And what is the “great final secret of all life” mentioned mid-Chapter 10 when Clennam muses about his father and mother as he draws near the house where he grew up?
Well, I just got back from no-social-network land, aka China. I thought I could blog from there, and I carefully cut out the pages from my copy of Little Dorrit to take with me--but I couldn't get to any blogs, so I slowed my reading down immensely! But I did read the first four chapters, and was quite struck by the description of Amy's experiences of traveling, when she takes time to focus on her environment, in Chapter 3, "On the Road." I was powerfully struck with how much the long description of what she saw,
"a whole day's dream," "of "the day's unrealities"--that sounded so much like I felt walking and riding through China, where "misery and magnificence wrestl[ed] with each other upon every rood of ground." Honestly, that's more descriptive of India today--I was in some parts of China where it was hard to imagine misery, and some parts where it was hard to imagine magnificence, but indeed, they co-existed. And travel still seems so full of unrealities--then just as strong when one comes home, where I dream of travel and wake to the unreality of my own room.
I had two actual encounters with Dickens in my travels: first, when we were at Tiger Leaping Gorge, walking on a cement pathway through the gorge with 100s of Chinese tourists and a couple dozen other Western hemisphere tourist. I saw a woman wearing beige pants with a paragraph printed on several times, in several directions. I could read the top line, which was in a bigger font, and said "It was the Best of Times it was . . . " and after that I couldn't read, though I had my guess as to what it said. That doesn't mean my guess was right--I saw plenty of wacky quotations. But Dickens pants! How amazing.
Then, the Korean Airlines magazine had an article about how Dickens' poor childhood shaped his adult writings (he's willing to remember!). I guess it was partly a reason to travel to England--see all the places CD worked and lived and his dad was imprisoned. But it struck me as somewhat random that it was Dickens. Makes me wonder if Koreans are interested in Dickens?
Then, when I did start thinking about our blog and reading my Little Dorrit exceedingly slowly, I thought, what sort of Dickensian eye can I have on China? Well, it's pretty easy. But I think it's often easy, right? I'd say, again, that India is more filled with officials from the Circumlocution office--China has tyranny instead. Modified tyranny, of course. (and, by the way, I *could* have figured out a way to use blogs, etc., but I wasn't there long enough with enough time to do it. There is a work-around. And I hear one day this week all of the blocks were temporarily broken.)
I enjoyed the openings of Part 2, but wanted poor Amy to get home to England--for some reason it seemed less threatening, though I'm not sure why. After all, Affery has waking dreams back in London. I also hurt a great deal for poor Minnie. I'm happy to see Fanny and Sparker seemingly about to end up together--they deserve each other. I was so happy when the narrator burst in to Amy's defense, but sorry when her foolish father missed the clue. But forgive me for all of those unattractive fs! I think it makes my lips open rather a lot, somewhat forcefully.
Part Two of my comment!
I believe that Lady Gowan, whom I would love to see married to Blandois as a suitable punishment, "is reminded that it never does" to try to mix with the lower ranks of her in-laws--almost a delightful chapter title as she *should* be reminded that it never does to make a mythical world, but he goes home to live in her myth.
It also seems that Clennam is thinking about death, that "final secret" that his mother is facing down. She's just waiting for death and what she will see after.
I was amazed at how fast Blandois/Rigaud can travel when he wants. I was relieved that the Meagles went to be with Minnie, and I also enjoyed Amy's letters, that are so warm and have such an interestingly different perspective on events that have been told from other vantages. Her letters also seem to move the narrative forward through rather long periods of time.
For me, this installment livened up the sometimes slow narrative of Little Dorrit. Dickens sets up the suspense so beautifully with the reappearance of Tattycoram, Miss Wade, and Blandois in London and I'm beginning to feel reassured that the multiple plot strands really can come together at some point. I was waiting for this moment!
Dickens descriptions of place were so compelling in this installment, too. I loved the passages about the Strand at night, from the lamplighter's work resulting in "so many blazing sunflowers coming into full-blow all at once" (p. 509), to the "sudden pause in that place to the roar of the great thoroughfare...like putting cotton in the ears" (p. 509), to the description of Mrs. Clennam's house and neighborhood, the "grim home of [Arthur's] youth" as the "depositories of oppressive secrets" (p. 520). These are the passages that make me love reading Dickens!
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