Dear Serial Readers,
Is anyone out there in Serial Reading Land? I would love to know that you're reading along serially, either the novel or these entries, or both! For the next selection, how about branching out with a Trollope or Collins novel? Check the MOUSEHOLD WORDS catalogue which includes both Trollope's HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT and Collins's THE EVIL GENIUS. Or Trollope's wonderful THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON (a magazine serial) would be a nice change of pace. If you'd like to vote on one of these, or suggest another Victorian serial, please indicate your choice here or email me. We'll be ready to start the next novel in early January. And one more thing--I'd appreciate it if you'd email the link to SERIAL READERS to at least one other person, and encourage anyone to share this blog with book club readers. There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about book clubs including the online variety (Joanne Kaufman, "Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?") in which the mere suggestion of reading Trollope appears to prompt a violent reaction. I hope whoever wants to read Trollope joins THIS group!
This fourth (of six) installment of DROOD is superb! Rather than the "mystery of Edwin Drood" and his rather predictable disappearance at the hands of Jasper, we're prompted to pay close attention to the peripherals, especially the somersaulting mind and behaviors of Jasper, and the accumulation of clues, even circumstantial evidence that we know adds up to a false accusation against Neville.
Again, I marveled at all the allusions to time--the early reference to the "revolving year" (crucial to the serial form itself) as Miss Twinkleton's young ladies leave for the holiday season; the references to time of day as well as time of year in chapter 14 where Edwin's watch has stopped, the description of Edwin "surrounded by vestiges of old time and decay," the image of time torn asunder--the hands of the Cathedral clock destroyed by the night wind, and finally in chap 16 the discovery of Edwin's watch in the Weir, "run down, before being cast into the water." All these sundry references in the larger context of putting readers (both internal and external) on the watch--for the "mystery" of Edwin's disappearance, for signs of his body, for signs of Jack's guilt. The most melodramatic instance of this last item is Jasper fainting upon hearing that his motive for removing his nephew as an obstacle to his marriage plotting against Rosa no longer holds. And all this time I thought that illustration of the body on the floor *was* the Mystery of Edwin Drood!
Related to this halting of time is chapter fourteen, where Dickens employs that increasingly suspenseful present tense. I loved the staginess of this chapter which begins with sentence fragments without verbs at all, like stage directions to set the scene: "Christmas Eve in Cloisterham. A few strange faces in the streets..." Then the chapter divides into three parts, each following the key actors of the scene, all bound to converge at Jack's house for the fateful encounter, as each of these sections on, respectively, Neville, Edwin, John Jasper concludes with "And so *he* goes up the postern stair." Yet of course that pivotal scene is foreclosed from the narrative. We can only speculate and test our hunches against the narratives Neville and Jasper provide of last seeing Edwin.
The last point I want to mention is the treatment of Neville as suspect. Besides the heap of circumstantial evidence, all given with many large grains of salt, Dickens suggests the prejudice of racism--the mayor's assessment of Neville's guilt ("the case had a dark look") linked to Neville's "Un-English complexion," and then the passage about "the wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report arose against" Neville. Here these rumors picture Neville as a ruthless imperious force who "had caused to be whipped to death sundry 'Natives.'" I found this passage especially double-edged, since on the one hand it seems to ridicule the ignorance of Cloisterham people about others across the globe, Neville included. On the other hand, Dickens seems to ridicule their ideas of "Natives" as "nomadic persons" who were "vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always black, always of great virtue..." Neville's "Un-English complexion" incriminates him in the eyes of these cloistered English people, yet the narrator sets the reader up as more worldly, less prejudiced, since we know--as much as we can for certain--who is responsible for Edwin's disappearance. And here I must mention the female opium eater Edwin encounters just before he goes to his uncle's house. He recognizes in her curious state the signs of opium usage he'd noted in Jack. But there is another mystery: how does this woman know that "Ned" is a "threatened name"? We know she must be the "haggard woman" of the opening of the novel in an opium den in London. But how does she make her way here with this remark about "Ned"? Although she's less a character than a suspense intensifier, I'm still intrigued by the female characters in this novel, and wish Helena had appeared in this installment!
I'm steeled for many unresolved pieces of this story, since I know Dickens had already died in July 1870 when these words were first read in the fourth number.
Serially devoted,
Susan
POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins
07 December 2008
24 November 2008
Edwin Drood #3 (chaps 10-12) June 1870
Dear Serial Readers,
This third installment came out just before Dickens's death on 9 June 1870. I mention the coincidence because of the different ways death, or the culture of death, emerge in this number: allusions to Rosa's father's will, the ring from Rosa's mother's "dead hand" after drowning (kept by Mr. Grewgious who passes it on to Edwin for Rosa), and finally the "unaccountable sort of expedition" in the moonlit graveyard and the crypt (where Jasper again plies a companion with spirits of the alcoholic variety). All this attention to death and the realms and documents of the deceased does pave the way for an impending death. As Kari pointed out, the title sets up our expectations.
Although I had already read this installment before I read Julia's comment about nonverbal communication, her remarks do remind me of the many instances of what I'd call indirection, or oblique communication about what lies ahead (foreshadowing of sorts), as I'm compelled to read for clues. Take, for instance, the odd narratorial moment in chap 10 when Crisparkle visits Jasper and startles him awake: "Long afterwards he had cause to remember how Jasper sprang from the couch in a delirious state between sleeping and waking, crying out: 'What is the matter? Who did it?'" And then, during the conversation between Jasper and Crisparkle, the many times the word "perplexed" or "perplexing" describes Jasper's face from Crisparkle's perspective. Or later, Mr Grewgious's uneasiness about the ring he's given Edwin, or in the final chapter of the installment, the parenthetical remark about Jasper "always moving softly with no visible reason," after mentioning again the "unaccountable expedition" in the graveyard.
I was also struck by the attention to containers and receptacles and hidden or out-of-the-way spaces. My favorite passage comes early in this number, the description of Crisparkle's mother's "wonderful cabinet" in chapter 10. A comic version of the crypt of bones and ghosts a few chapters later, this "rare closet" has an usual locking mechanism that is a "double mystery," where the interior is "disclosed by degrees." Then the contents of condiments that people the shelves--I love this gorgeous little show of Dickens's descriptive powers which unfold a thick inventory of a Victorian kitchen cabinet! I wonder if this cabinet might work as an extended metaphor for the serial novel itself, a large container that houses many remarkably detailed small containers.
I want to invite everyone to think about how the serial format affects your process of reading here. I'd also love suggestions for links to other sites that might enrich our hypertextual networking around this Dickens novel! I'll post on #4 (chaps 13-15) in two weeks.
Looking forward to your comments--
Serial Susan
This third installment came out just before Dickens's death on 9 June 1870. I mention the coincidence because of the different ways death, or the culture of death, emerge in this number: allusions to Rosa's father's will, the ring from Rosa's mother's "dead hand" after drowning (kept by Mr. Grewgious who passes it on to Edwin for Rosa), and finally the "unaccountable sort of expedition" in the moonlit graveyard and the crypt (where Jasper again plies a companion with spirits of the alcoholic variety). All this attention to death and the realms and documents of the deceased does pave the way for an impending death. As Kari pointed out, the title sets up our expectations.
Although I had already read this installment before I read Julia's comment about nonverbal communication, her remarks do remind me of the many instances of what I'd call indirection, or oblique communication about what lies ahead (foreshadowing of sorts), as I'm compelled to read for clues. Take, for instance, the odd narratorial moment in chap 10 when Crisparkle visits Jasper and startles him awake: "Long afterwards he had cause to remember how Jasper sprang from the couch in a delirious state between sleeping and waking, crying out: 'What is the matter? Who did it?'" And then, during the conversation between Jasper and Crisparkle, the many times the word "perplexed" or "perplexing" describes Jasper's face from Crisparkle's perspective. Or later, Mr Grewgious's uneasiness about the ring he's given Edwin, or in the final chapter of the installment, the parenthetical remark about Jasper "always moving softly with no visible reason," after mentioning again the "unaccountable expedition" in the graveyard.
I was also struck by the attention to containers and receptacles and hidden or out-of-the-way spaces. My favorite passage comes early in this number, the description of Crisparkle's mother's "wonderful cabinet" in chapter 10. A comic version of the crypt of bones and ghosts a few chapters later, this "rare closet" has an usual locking mechanism that is a "double mystery," where the interior is "disclosed by degrees." Then the contents of condiments that people the shelves--I love this gorgeous little show of Dickens's descriptive powers which unfold a thick inventory of a Victorian kitchen cabinet! I wonder if this cabinet might work as an extended metaphor for the serial novel itself, a large container that houses many remarkably detailed small containers.
I want to invite everyone to think about how the serial format affects your process of reading here. I'd also love suggestions for links to other sites that might enrich our hypertextual networking around this Dickens novel! I'll post on #4 (chaps 13-15) in two weeks.
Looking forward to your comments--
Serial Susan
10 November 2008
Edwin Drood #2 (chaps 6-9) May 1870
Dear Serial Readers,
Apologies for my tardiness--somehow the world-outside-the-serial (aka American presidential election) distracted me from DROOD. But I'm back on track now, and will post on #3 installment (chaps 10-12) in two weeks on Nov 24th.
I'm going to frame my comments on #2 through those posted by other readers on the first installment. At the end of her post, Catherine mentioned the tension between Jasper and Ned, and Kari noted that Jasper seems to have a rather strong interest (perhaps "in love") in Rosebud. And Julia remarked on the accumulating suggestions of violence. In this installment, I had the sense that Jasper, with his mysterious mixing of mulled wine which he bestows on his guests Ned Drood and Neville Landless, had his own interests in provoking this "daggers drawn" scene between the two young men. Is this a set up or framing of sorts for the promised "mystery of Edwin Drood" to come, possibly his murder with Neville as suspect, but Jasper as perpetrator? Just guessing--I've not read this novel before! But the reading paranoia that Victorian novels (especially sensation and detective ones, which seem cousin genres to this novel) often perpetuate certainly has infected my high-alert for clues of what's to come.
The tone too is so curious--the quiet, quintessential English cathedral village of Cloisterham laced with very bizarre characters, odd eruptions of violence or cruelty or mystery, and many of the staple features of sensation fiction (drug use, the Gothic traces via old Catholic England with the Nun's House, the will plot, secrets accruing), yet the Dickensian humor too. Mr Grewgious with his Memoranda that even includes "Leave" provided a bit of comic relief after the weird "daggers drawn" incident and its gossipy aftermath.
Julia mentioned the way that rural England in the novel is joined to the wider world--a kind of Victorian globalizaiton with references across the British Empire. In this installment we meet those intriguingly strange "Landless" twins delivered to Cloisterham by Honeythunder. Is "Landless" an allusion to the colonized other, robbed of land by imperial forces? Or a marker of their in-between and geographically decentered status, not quite English, not quite Sinhalese or Indian, from both cultures or neither? From a "wretched existence" in Ceylon, both Neville and Helena are described in hybrid terms with lots of attention to their dark "gipsy" complexions, their hot tempers. Drood insults Neville about his "dark skin" and Jasper comments on "something of the tiger in his dark blood" when describing Neville to Crisparkle.
I'm especially intrigued by Helena, with the "slumbering gleam of fire" in her "intense dark eyes," after Rosa confesses to her that Jasper holds her under his Svengali-like power (even though three decades before Du Maurier's novel TRILBY introduces this character). She reminds me of other fiery, rebellious Dickens heroines, and I can't think things will end well for her.
What did you notice in this installment and where does this narrative seem to be heading?
Until next time,
Serial Susan
Apologies for my tardiness--somehow the world-outside-the-serial (aka American presidential election) distracted me from DROOD. But I'm back on track now, and will post on #3 installment (chaps 10-12) in two weeks on Nov 24th.
I'm going to frame my comments on #2 through those posted by other readers on the first installment. At the end of her post, Catherine mentioned the tension between Jasper and Ned, and Kari noted that Jasper seems to have a rather strong interest (perhaps "in love") in Rosebud. And Julia remarked on the accumulating suggestions of violence. In this installment, I had the sense that Jasper, with his mysterious mixing of mulled wine which he bestows on his guests Ned Drood and Neville Landless, had his own interests in provoking this "daggers drawn" scene between the two young men. Is this a set up or framing of sorts for the promised "mystery of Edwin Drood" to come, possibly his murder with Neville as suspect, but Jasper as perpetrator? Just guessing--I've not read this novel before! But the reading paranoia that Victorian novels (especially sensation and detective ones, which seem cousin genres to this novel) often perpetuate certainly has infected my high-alert for clues of what's to come.
The tone too is so curious--the quiet, quintessential English cathedral village of Cloisterham laced with very bizarre characters, odd eruptions of violence or cruelty or mystery, and many of the staple features of sensation fiction (drug use, the Gothic traces via old Catholic England with the Nun's House, the will plot, secrets accruing), yet the Dickensian humor too. Mr Grewgious with his Memoranda that even includes "Leave" provided a bit of comic relief after the weird "daggers drawn" incident and its gossipy aftermath.
Julia mentioned the way that rural England in the novel is joined to the wider world--a kind of Victorian globalizaiton with references across the British Empire. In this installment we meet those intriguingly strange "Landless" twins delivered to Cloisterham by Honeythunder. Is "Landless" an allusion to the colonized other, robbed of land by imperial forces? Or a marker of their in-between and geographically decentered status, not quite English, not quite Sinhalese or Indian, from both cultures or neither? From a "wretched existence" in Ceylon, both Neville and Helena are described in hybrid terms with lots of attention to their dark "gipsy" complexions, their hot tempers. Drood insults Neville about his "dark skin" and Jasper comments on "something of the tiger in his dark blood" when describing Neville to Crisparkle.
I'm especially intrigued by Helena, with the "slumbering gleam of fire" in her "intense dark eyes," after Rosa confesses to her that Jasper holds her under his Svengali-like power (even though three decades before Du Maurier's novel TRILBY introduces this character). She reminds me of other fiery, rebellious Dickens heroines, and I can't think things will end well for her.
What did you notice in this installment and where does this narrative seem to be heading?
Until next time,
Serial Susan
20 October 2008
Edwin Drood #1 (chaps 1-5) April 1870
Dear Serial Readers,
I hope you received your first installment of DROOD via Mousehold Words, or, if you prefer the book format, that you've acquired a copy (I recommend the Oxford edition). I've installed a "gadget" (see right margin) of the image that appeared on every cover of the six installments of DROOD. You can see at the top center a cathedral entryway, and buried at the bottom, a dark underground, crypt-like space, complete with a key and shovel above it, the stomping ground of Durdles the grave stonemason. I wonder if the titled "mystery" will have something to do with Durdles and his tombstones (or "Tombatism," as he puts it).
Other scenes anticipated or shown early in the novel encircle the wrapper for DROOD, including a wedding couple to the front of the cathedral, upperleft, and then at the bottom right, someone smoking a pipe beneath a serious cloud of smoke. This figure seems of an Orientalized nature to me--the clothes, the shoes, even the face. The image echoes the opening disorienting passages of Jack Jasper in a (presumably London) docklands opium den, with three doped companions, a "Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman." A Lascar, according to my Oxford English Dictionary, is a sailor from India or SE Asia (with lnks to Urdu and Persian army). The contrast between the quintessential English Cathedral Town and the outreaches of Empire frames the novel's opening. I wonder where the narrative is headed, geographically speaking, with Ned Drood's plans to marry Rosebud and head "to the East" (or rather, southeastward) to Egypt as a civil engineer (the Suez canal was opened in 1869, and British interests in the area were growing).
About Ned and Rosebud--I was intrigued to see Dickens roll out the arranged marriage plot so soon again, on the heels of OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, the novel that immediately precedes this one in the Dickens canon. Unlike Bella Wilfer and John Harmon, though, Ned and Rosebud (which I prefer to "Pussy") seem to be moving along steadily, their arguments notwithstanding, toward their predestined marital future. But I suspect there's a major roadblock up ahead.
One more thing--the novel so far seems to have strains of that most popular serialized novel of the decade, sensation fiction. I couldn't help notice all the neo-Gothic elements, the Catholicism hinted at in Clositerham's ancient past, with the Nun's House, and the crypt, yet on the surface, a quaint English village with its proper Anglican hierarchy of dean, verger, clerk. Despite this atmospheric emphasis on the deep past, the narration is thoroughly in the present tense for the duration of this installment. That strikes me as unusual. Will this present tense last? Where will it shift to the past tense?
Please post a comment on anything at all about this installment of the first five chapters. You don't need to be seasoned Dickens reader, or even up on Victorian novels of the day. You can pick up on something I've mentioned, or head out in another direction entirely. The plan is to read and comment on the next installment (chapters 6-9) in about two weeks. I'll post my next comment around Nov. 3rd, but if you'd like me to post yours instead, please email me your remarks!
In the fullness of serial time,
Susan
I hope you received your first installment of DROOD via Mousehold Words, or, if you prefer the book format, that you've acquired a copy (I recommend the Oxford edition). I've installed a "gadget" (see right margin) of the image that appeared on every cover of the six installments of DROOD. You can see at the top center a cathedral entryway, and buried at the bottom, a dark underground, crypt-like space, complete with a key and shovel above it, the stomping ground of Durdles the grave stonemason. I wonder if the titled "mystery" will have something to do with Durdles and his tombstones (or "Tombatism," as he puts it).
Other scenes anticipated or shown early in the novel encircle the wrapper for DROOD, including a wedding couple to the front of the cathedral, upperleft, and then at the bottom right, someone smoking a pipe beneath a serious cloud of smoke. This figure seems of an Orientalized nature to me--the clothes, the shoes, even the face. The image echoes the opening disorienting passages of Jack Jasper in a (presumably London) docklands opium den, with three doped companions, a "Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman." A Lascar, according to my Oxford English Dictionary, is a sailor from India or SE Asia (with lnks to Urdu and Persian army). The contrast between the quintessential English Cathedral Town and the outreaches of Empire frames the novel's opening. I wonder where the narrative is headed, geographically speaking, with Ned Drood's plans to marry Rosebud and head "to the East" (or rather, southeastward) to Egypt as a civil engineer (the Suez canal was opened in 1869, and British interests in the area were growing).
About Ned and Rosebud--I was intrigued to see Dickens roll out the arranged marriage plot so soon again, on the heels of OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, the novel that immediately precedes this one in the Dickens canon. Unlike Bella Wilfer and John Harmon, though, Ned and Rosebud (which I prefer to "Pussy") seem to be moving along steadily, their arguments notwithstanding, toward their predestined marital future. But I suspect there's a major roadblock up ahead.
One more thing--the novel so far seems to have strains of that most popular serialized novel of the decade, sensation fiction. I couldn't help notice all the neo-Gothic elements, the Catholicism hinted at in Clositerham's ancient past, with the Nun's House, and the crypt, yet on the surface, a quaint English village with its proper Anglican hierarchy of dean, verger, clerk. Despite this atmospheric emphasis on the deep past, the narration is thoroughly in the present tense for the duration of this installment. That strikes me as unusual. Will this present tense last? Where will it shift to the past tense?
Please post a comment on anything at all about this installment of the first five chapters. You don't need to be seasoned Dickens reader, or even up on Victorian novels of the day. You can pick up on something I've mentioned, or head out in another direction entirely. The plan is to read and comment on the next installment (chapters 6-9) in about two weeks. I'll post my next comment around Nov. 3rd, but if you'd like me to post yours instead, please email me your remarks!
In the fullness of serial time,
Susan
15 October 2008
Coming Attraction: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Dear Serial Readers,
We're starting our next serial novel, Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We'll read this novel in the six installments in which it was originally written and published monthly from April to September 1870. Dickens died suddenly in June 1870, before he completed the novel. So we should have a lively discussion joining nearly a century and a half of readerly (and theatrical) speculations on this unwritten ending.
Here's how our reading schedule works. First, you can order the electronic delivery of your installments (in double-column format) from Mousehold Words (see sidebar for the link to this site). You can specify the schedule of delivery, from a limited set of choices. I suggest signing up for weekly delivery on Mondays (Saturday is the other option for weekly delivery), beginning this coming Monday October 20th. However, we'll discuss the installments on a biweekly schedule, starting next week. (Mousehold Words does not offer a biweekly delivery.) Our reading schedule means that the weeks of Oct 20, Nov 3, Nov 17, Dec 1, Dec 15, and Dec 28 either I or a guest blogger (one of you, I hope) will start off our conversation about the respective installment (#1 for Oct 20, #2 for Nov 3, etc). So be sure to check the blog and then post a comment on the installment we're discussing.
Of course, you can get a book version of the novel, and read that. I recommend the Oxford edition because it indicates on the top right of the left-hand page the installment. The first one consists of five short chapters, 36pp in the Oxford, or just over 19pp in the Mousehold Words format. I'll also include in my posts the next installment chapter spread, for those of you using editions without the serial notations.
Please circulate this website address to anyone who might possibly like to join us. If you have received this message by email, let me know if you prefer not to be notified each time I post on the website. Otherwise, I'll leave you on this list. If you haven't received an email notice of this post, but would like the reminder in the future, just email me. Anyone can join in!
Until next week,
Serial Susan
We're starting our next serial novel, Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We'll read this novel in the six installments in which it was originally written and published monthly from April to September 1870. Dickens died suddenly in June 1870, before he completed the novel. So we should have a lively discussion joining nearly a century and a half of readerly (and theatrical) speculations on this unwritten ending.
Here's how our reading schedule works. First, you can order the electronic delivery of your installments (in double-column format) from Mousehold Words (see sidebar for the link to this site). You can specify the schedule of delivery, from a limited set of choices. I suggest signing up for weekly delivery on Mondays (Saturday is the other option for weekly delivery), beginning this coming Monday October 20th. However, we'll discuss the installments on a biweekly schedule, starting next week. (Mousehold Words does not offer a biweekly delivery.) Our reading schedule means that the weeks of Oct 20, Nov 3, Nov 17, Dec 1, Dec 15, and Dec 28 either I or a guest blogger (one of you, I hope) will start off our conversation about the respective installment (#1 for Oct 20, #2 for Nov 3, etc). So be sure to check the blog and then post a comment on the installment we're discussing.
Of course, you can get a book version of the novel, and read that. I recommend the Oxford edition because it indicates on the top right of the left-hand page the installment. The first one consists of five short chapters, 36pp in the Oxford, or just over 19pp in the Mousehold Words format. I'll also include in my posts the next installment chapter spread, for those of you using editions without the serial notations.
Please circulate this website address to anyone who might possibly like to join us. If you have received this message by email, let me know if you prefer not to be notified each time I post on the website. Otherwise, I'll leave you on this list. If you haven't received an email notice of this post, but would like the reminder in the future, just email me. Anyone can join in!
Until next week,
Serial Susan
12 October 2008
Dombey #19-20 (chaps 58-62) April 1848
Dear Serial Readers,
Finis! I savored this concluding double number and will miss this wide cast of characters! The additional length of the last issue offers a textual fanfare of a finale. Apparently there were even more words in Dickens's initial ending, but he had to strike the last two paragraphs due to space restrictions. Those lines (reprinted in the Oxford edition), about the "voices in the waves," reiterate the watery, timeless or eternal present "voices" at the end of chap 16 when Paul dies. And they also echo the very opening lines of this number, a nice cyclical shape tied to the passage of "Time" within the story and even the passage of a year and more in the delivery and reading of the story.
And the novel concludes with a different repetition, the second generation of "Paul" and "Florence," with the past now improved in the present, the affective childhoods of this Paul and Florence much more promising given the rehabilitated Dombey.
The latency of the attention to the "Daughter after all" (as Miss Tox puts it in chap 16) continues in these last paragraphs about Dombey's secret "affection" for his granddaughter Florence: he "hoards her in his heart" and no one knows. While Dombey seems redeemed as a kindly grandfather at the end, Alice and Edith do not enjoy earthly redemption, although we do learn why they resemble each other. Both are evidently moribund in one way or another--the fallen women who perish for their transgressions.
I did appreciate Edith's resistant stance towards repenting--or rather her insistence on what amounts to a contingent repentance. It's in that section of chap 51 where Edith refers to Dombey's "own present" in relation to her "past." I found this notion of one's own present intriguing, a way to recognize the variety of presentnesses within and through the reading of the novel. Dickens continues to wield the present tense strategically in this final number, most notably perhaps when Florence returns to her wrecked father in the "ruin" of the house.
The "Retribution" chapter about the dismantling of the Dombey household--all in the present tense--makes evident that the "house" of Dombey has at least three different meanings: the business, the household--both staff and the material objects that are sold, and the family itself. It seems that only in the last sense does "Dombey and Son" survive and prosper, and only through the angelic and reproductive "Daughter after all."
Stay tuned for our next serial show, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD!
Serially signing off from Dombey and Son,
Susan
Finis! I savored this concluding double number and will miss this wide cast of characters! The additional length of the last issue offers a textual fanfare of a finale. Apparently there were even more words in Dickens's initial ending, but he had to strike the last two paragraphs due to space restrictions. Those lines (reprinted in the Oxford edition), about the "voices in the waves," reiterate the watery, timeless or eternal present "voices" at the end of chap 16 when Paul dies. And they also echo the very opening lines of this number, a nice cyclical shape tied to the passage of "Time" within the story and even the passage of a year and more in the delivery and reading of the story.
And the novel concludes with a different repetition, the second generation of "Paul" and "Florence," with the past now improved in the present, the affective childhoods of this Paul and Florence much more promising given the rehabilitated Dombey.
The latency of the attention to the "Daughter after all" (as Miss Tox puts it in chap 16) continues in these last paragraphs about Dombey's secret "affection" for his granddaughter Florence: he "hoards her in his heart" and no one knows. While Dombey seems redeemed as a kindly grandfather at the end, Alice and Edith do not enjoy earthly redemption, although we do learn why they resemble each other. Both are evidently moribund in one way or another--the fallen women who perish for their transgressions.
I did appreciate Edith's resistant stance towards repenting--or rather her insistence on what amounts to a contingent repentance. It's in that section of chap 51 where Edith refers to Dombey's "own present" in relation to her "past." I found this notion of one's own present intriguing, a way to recognize the variety of presentnesses within and through the reading of the novel. Dickens continues to wield the present tense strategically in this final number, most notably perhaps when Florence returns to her wrecked father in the "ruin" of the house.
The "Retribution" chapter about the dismantling of the Dombey household--all in the present tense--makes evident that the "house" of Dombey has at least three different meanings: the business, the household--both staff and the material objects that are sold, and the family itself. It seems that only in the last sense does "Dombey and Son" survive and prosper, and only through the angelic and reproductive "Daughter after all."
Stay tuned for our next serial show, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD!
Serially signing off from Dombey and Son,
Susan
29 September 2008
Dombey #18 (chaps 55-57) March 1848
Dear Serial Readers,
There's a powerful tempo to these last numbers that I'm finding really compelling at a time with plenty of serious reading competition going on in my daily life! The three chapters of #18 provide that delicious tonal range, from the melodramatic and monomaniacal to the soothingly sentimental.
I've often commented on Dickens's verb-tense switching in DOMBEY. What I found especially astounding in chap 55 on Carker's mad flight from France back to England was the suspension of verb tenses altogether. I marveled here at Dickens's verbal (without verbs no less) brilliance, how his style beautifully captures the frenetic fugitive. Especially effective was the long section (pp 817-19, Oxford UP) of prepositional phrases starting with "of"--the possessive and compulsive syntax that conveys Carker's mental condition. Sections like these surely seem like a postmodern Dickens to me--a different strain of psychological realism than we get in Eliot's novels. While I wouldn't say that this chapter renders Carker a sympathetic character, still I'm fascinated by Dickens's adroit handling of Carker's frenzy, something that reveals the flipside of his otherwise iron-clad controlling nature that now drives himself rather than manipulates others.
This chapter anticipates a later Dickens monomaniac and his demise, namely Bradley Headstone. I'm sure other readers can think of more parallels, more doubles. And speaking of doubles, I thought the railway "monsters" provided a phantasmagoric touch, a frightening modern machine that Dickens seems to link with Carker and with Dombey at the end of the chapter. Here I thought of Frankenstein and his creature and their mutual pursuit and flight.
The other two chapters offer comic relief and softer tones, with the obvious contrast of Florence's wedding from not only the one briefly mentioned at the start of chap 57, but more pointedly from the earlier marriage between Dombey and Edith.
What do you make of Florence and Walter sailing away from England? What's the significance of this exodus, that their cross-class match can't be sustained in a traditional, class-bound, materialistic society? Since others here have mentioned Gwendolen and DANIEL DERONDA, I also thought of the ending of Eliot's later novel--only Daniel and his new bride don't set sail in the narrative, while this chapter ends with the newlyweds at sea, in the present tense of those whispering waves "not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time."
Only one more number to go! In my ongoing commitment to "part-numberness," I won't divide my posts on this last double part-issue (#19-20, chaps 58-62). But I will likely take two weeks--and aim for Oct. 13th.
Remember that DROOD starts on a biweekly schedule on Monday Oct. 20th. The parts are shorter in length, and we'll take two weeks per number, and there are only six. Sign up via Mousehold Words (see link on sidebar of blog) and spread the word!
Serially yours,
Susan
There's a powerful tempo to these last numbers that I'm finding really compelling at a time with plenty of serious reading competition going on in my daily life! The three chapters of #18 provide that delicious tonal range, from the melodramatic and monomaniacal to the soothingly sentimental.
I've often commented on Dickens's verb-tense switching in DOMBEY. What I found especially astounding in chap 55 on Carker's mad flight from France back to England was the suspension of verb tenses altogether. I marveled here at Dickens's verbal (without verbs no less) brilliance, how his style beautifully captures the frenetic fugitive. Especially effective was the long section (pp 817-19, Oxford UP) of prepositional phrases starting with "of"--the possessive and compulsive syntax that conveys Carker's mental condition. Sections like these surely seem like a postmodern Dickens to me--a different strain of psychological realism than we get in Eliot's novels. While I wouldn't say that this chapter renders Carker a sympathetic character, still I'm fascinated by Dickens's adroit handling of Carker's frenzy, something that reveals the flipside of his otherwise iron-clad controlling nature that now drives himself rather than manipulates others.
This chapter anticipates a later Dickens monomaniac and his demise, namely Bradley Headstone. I'm sure other readers can think of more parallels, more doubles. And speaking of doubles, I thought the railway "monsters" provided a phantasmagoric touch, a frightening modern machine that Dickens seems to link with Carker and with Dombey at the end of the chapter. Here I thought of Frankenstein and his creature and their mutual pursuit and flight.
The other two chapters offer comic relief and softer tones, with the obvious contrast of Florence's wedding from not only the one briefly mentioned at the start of chap 57, but more pointedly from the earlier marriage between Dombey and Edith.
What do you make of Florence and Walter sailing away from England? What's the significance of this exodus, that their cross-class match can't be sustained in a traditional, class-bound, materialistic society? Since others here have mentioned Gwendolen and DANIEL DERONDA, I also thought of the ending of Eliot's later novel--only Daniel and his new bride don't set sail in the narrative, while this chapter ends with the newlyweds at sea, in the present tense of those whispering waves "not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time."
Only one more number to go! In my ongoing commitment to "part-numberness," I won't divide my posts on this last double part-issue (#19-20, chaps 58-62). But I will likely take two weeks--and aim for Oct. 13th.
Remember that DROOD starts on a biweekly schedule on Monday Oct. 20th. The parts are shorter in length, and we'll take two weeks per number, and there are only six. Sign up via Mousehold Words (see link on sidebar of blog) and spread the word!
Serially yours,
Susan
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