For me, this installment took off slowly, with the "bleak" (a word used a few times) Christening of Paul. But as I turned away from the pages about Dombey's library, I heard on the news that Dickens's desk was auctioned in London for a pretty penny (or hundreds of thousands of pounds). Check out the wrapper design (reproduced in the very first pages of the Oxford)--there are ledger books and a desk.
http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2008/06/06/Charles_Dickens_desk_sells_for_855K/UPI-66811212766142/
Chapter Six I loved. This movement out into the streets and northern neighborhoods (Camden Town) of London results in more substitutions--the temporary exchange of the Toodle and Dombey babies and then "Good Mrs Brown" substituting Florence's clothes for garments that amount to "a heap of rags." Do these exchanges suggest that social class is fluid or malleable, a matter of costume, manners, and the like? Polly Toodle aka Richards is a working-class angel in the Dombey home, a far better surrogate parent than Dombey to his children. Florence "lost" in the streets of London seems to have some happy benefits--her chance encounter with Walter Gay (and fairy tale romance plot--although Dickens does seem enchanted with little girl bridal imagery), and her being "found" or returned to her father's momentary regard. But this event entails a more serious loss, or "deprivation" of the working-class angel in the middle-class Dombey home.
The description of London in flux, its "hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness" reminds me of Ford Madox Brown's painting WORK from around this same period--that sense of the modern Victorian city dug out, inside out, under construction (here, the "Railroad in progress"). Here's a link to that painting: http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/fmb/paintings/hikim2.html
I also noticed that, like the first installment, this number ends with the introduction of a new character--Major Bagstock.
For the next installment no. 3 (chaps 8-10), I'd be happy to paste in someone else's "review" first, if someone can email me one by Monday morning. All lurkers welcome, but active bloggers applauded! I look forward to more thoughts from all Serial Readers!
Yours,
Serial Susan
6 comments:
I also saw the news that Dickens's desk had been sold. It's interesting to me that a piece of furniture has taken on such an aura from its owner--this is very Dickensian in its own way!
I found myself thinking during this installment about the way the novel at this early stage tantalizes the reader with possible plot developments. As Susan said in her post, there's a lot of attention devoted to a possible future romance between Walter and Florence. The last chapter similarly suggests a romantic development between Miss Tox and Dombey Sr. The emphasis on surveillance in the scene with the witchy Mrs. Brown hints at the possibility of a reemergence of that character, too. And the mysterious Carker with white hair and bent body, "bowed as if by the weight of some great trouble" (64) surely hints at things to come. But the serial reader can't be sure. The invocation of an alternative fairy tale world (pp. 65-67) suggests to me that anything is possible.
The multitude of potential plot lines brewing in this installment seems to parallel the "multitude of plans and speculations" resting on Paul junior's head (74) at the very end of Chapter VII.
I'm very convinced by this reading of chapter six -- it does indeed seem that social class and physical location are in flux. And of course the railroad would play into that. This is an element of the text I'm watching carefully; I'm fascinated by thinking about what a major change in transportation that must have been. I'm interested here to see that the narrator gives us a paragraph describing the scene as though an earthquake had occurred, and only then explicitly bringing up the railroad. The metaphor naturalizes the development of the railroad, certainly, but it also calls attention to the trauma it causes on the landscape. I'll be interested to see how the railroad motif is shaped throughout the novel.
I'm also intrigued by the "bird's eye view" provided in chapter seven. The introduction of Major Bagstock and his arrogant confidence allows the narrator to filter impressions of Miss Tox's house and her interactions with Paul -- we get a deliberately distanced view here. Then we get a brief dialogue between two characters, and finally two paragraphs discussing what two different characters (Bagstock and Paul himself) are unable to know. I'm not sure what to make of the shifts in perspective, but I'm certainly admiring the technique involved in pulling this off.
And what do we make of Dickens' use of fairy-tale tropes and patterns? Especially the fact that he calls explicit attention to it (mentioning Cinderella by name, for instance)? I remember reading Ian Duncan on the Victorian novel's use of the fairy-tale romance; he argues, against Franco Moretti's claim that the English novel is hopelessly childish (!), that this complex relationship between realism and romance is a major source of the English novel's strength. The Paul-Florence situation here might be a good test of these two theses.
I was struck again (as I was, very much, in part I) by Dickens's enormous sympathy for and understanding of children, especially Florence Dombey. In David Copperfield and Great Expectations we're reminded of the deprivations of Dickens's own childhood. Here, from the start, I'm reminded that Dickens was a father of ten (though I don't know how many there were in 1846). He clearly loved children, as well as understood them. I found breathtaking and heartbreaking the statement that Mr. Dombey "had never found" Florence, a statement that to me had relevance much wider than the immediate situation.
As for Miss Tox, is it possible Dickens slipped in a double entendre for his more knowing readers when Miss T makes little Paul's "cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses"? Is this a hint at how her potentially oppressive affections will result for the elder Paul?
One more small point: I agree with Susan's comment that the very bleak first chapter of this part moved slowly, with its palpable autumnal gloominess. I went back to check and, indeed, this part was first published in November, an exceedingly gloomy month in London. I wonder if there's any research on whether or to what extent serial writers tried to match seasonal settings to the time of publication.
I assume tardy posts are allowed.
Since part of our premise is to appreciate the serial nature of the novel, I wanted to note how the second number, as much or even more than the first, is very satisfying as an independent episode. Like number one, its beginning is truly a beginning--here a christening, there a birth.
The endings of the two numbers are not really endings, of course, but are very satisfying closings, and echo each other. Both are pictures of modest domesticity beyond the jurisdiction of the Dombeys. Both establishments are out-of-date and almost anachronistic. The Midshipman is behind the times in its technology, and Miss Tox's home is frozen in the late eighteenth century fashion of powdered head and pigtail. But both places are cozy, each in its own way.
As Susan pointed out, both numbers end with the introduction of a new character. I further note that these two characters, Cuttle and Bagstock, are similar in various ways. Both have a military/nautical air, both are supporting players in a supporting plot, and both are comic figures.
Everyone has commented on the tour-de-force that is Chapter 6. I share your enthusiasm. It is well-crafted and exciting. I love the way that all the characters we have met so far coalesce in a coherent and nearly plausible way, which I think is unusual for so early a chapter in Dickens. I would admit that the Florence-Walter meeting reeks of Dickensian coincidence, but otherwise it doesn't seem too contrived.
Finally, because I can't read any novel of Dickens without thinking of the others, and because I recently read Nik Nik, and because I've read D&S before, I predict we will see obvious parallels between Mr. D. and Ralph Nickelby, specifically between the former's relationships with his two children and the latter's relationships with Nicholas and Smike.
--Maura
All the portendings of little Paul's inevitable death are in Chapter 5. Even allowing Florence to sleep beside him hints of danger (wait, that's cats isn't it?). But all at the christening earned at the least a bad cold.
After the breathless action and tension of Chapter 6, Dickens allows a us retreat to enjoy the masterful examination of Miss Tox's abode and enjoy the humor of Major Bagstock's spying on Miss Tox through opera classes, while she continues to forget him "with compound interest." These are the lines that send me to the telephone.
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