Dear Serial Readers,
I found this number more tightly wrapped together than usual with its intense focus on the Dombey plot, from Dombey's "confidential agent" to his estranged wife and haplessly, hopelessly miserable daughter. As I read through these four chapters, I thought about Julia's comments about isolation despite all the networking of plot lines; like so many of the characters in the novel, we as readers are likewise isolated as well as linked through this common project of serial reading. But I also thought about how anger, resentment, jealousy do unite several characters. The affective ties among Dombey, Edith, Carker, and Florence may not be sweetness and light, but there are definitely strong connections among them. Even hatred--rather than indifference--forges anew Dombey's relationship to his daughter.
When it comes to the depths of miserable marriages in Victorian novels, I don't tend (until now) to think of Dickens, but rather Eliot's depictions in MIDDLEMARCH (Dorothea and Casaubon, the Lydgates) or DANIEL DERONDA (Grandcourt and Gwendolen), or even more so, Isabel Archer's marriage in James's PORTRAIT OF A LADY. But Dickens gives us a finely wrought horrendous marriage, for both wife and husband, and for the daughter as well, more than any other Dickens portrayal I've encountered. Dickens's hallmark of sentimentality in this number has clearly leaped away from the saccharine to bloody hell.
Although the dismissal of "the Nipper" seemed an unexpected blow to Florence who no doubt will encounter even worse, I loved her defiant declaration to Dombey about his mistreatment of Floy, words that expand upon the narrator's admonishing interventions earlier in this installment: "Awake, unkind father! Awake now, sullen man!"
Edith's self-harming, her rage turned against herself rather than directed where it will have catastrophic effects, also reminded me of other Dickens heroines who are disabled or disfigured (Lady Dedlock, Esther Summerson, even Jenny Wren) in powerfully symbolic ways. Edith's blow to her hand accentuates her disabled power, her clipped agency, as a woman whose husband views her as his personal property, also magnified by Carker's role as "agent" of Dombey's will toward her. Then the installment concludes with Carker kissing Edith's "maimed" hand, surely a gesture pointing toward more disasters in store for Edith. But I also found fascinating the way Carker insinuates a kind of liaison with Edith as he points out that they are both bound and subject to Dombey's inflexibly selfish will.
Finally, what about that portrait in Carker's home, the woman who resembles Edith, who is even pictured in the first illustration? I love the way Dickens keeps up the tempo of these serial part issues with a scattering of different seeds of suspense and mystery to be worked out (or left over) in the remaining segments.
This reminds me that we have only FIVE numbers left (given that the last two--19/20--were published as a double installment). What about a shorter Dickens next--EDWIN DROOD (which was left unfinished by Dickens's untimely death)? There are only six numbers, and we could even read them at a slower, biweekly pace. I'd recommend this pace in any case, even if we turned to a longer novel, like LITTLE DORRIT. But do let me know if you're interested. I promised several potential readers that I'd give them a month's head's up for the next serial reading project.
Until next week and #15 (chap 46-48),
Serial S.
2 comments:
First of all, of course, three cheers for Susan Nipper, who finally says what readers -- or at least this reader -- have been wanting to hear for hundreds of pages. Her speech is a really fun piece of writing, both comic (I particularly liked the reference to "Meethosalem") and a successful rhetorical performance on its own terms. She introduces a series of comparisons -- she's not Methuselah, a Fox's Martyr, an Indian widow, etc. -- that diminish her but simultaneously elevate her claims. If this were a sitcom, we'd hear the studio audience cheering at the end. (Which reminds me -- did Dickens read from Dombey and Son during his public performances? Anybody know?)
I'm also surprised by how little we actually know about what the plot has in store. This novel is pretty content to let its mysteries come to a slow boil. Even the confrontation between Edith and Carker doesn't tell us as much as I'd thought it would have. No doubt a consequence of the enormous space available to this novel ...
I'm up for another one of these, if others are interested. It's been a lot of fun letting the novel become part of my Monday routine.
I'm coming late to this week's post, but I did want to respond before we start in on the next installment tomorrow...
Following Susan's comment about the strong connections that are forged through negative emotions, this installment's powerful depiction of the growing intrigue between Carker and Edith suggests the ways that characters may be united despite their best attempts to prevent it. If isolation is one of the problems that the novel has foregrounded, especially through the character of Florence, the false relationships of "interest and convenience" (p. 524) appear to be another. And there's a sense at the end of the installment that much more is in store for Edith (with her maimed hand) and Carker (with his hand at his breast).
This installment also highlighted for me Dickens's powerful simultaneous development of the static and dynamic qualities of the Dombey plot characters. In keeping with earlier installments, Carker continues to sport his "glistening mouth" (521), Dombey remains the cold (even frosty) gentleman, and Edith maintains her haughty and aloof beauty despite her crumbling marriage, with "enforced composure on her face" (521). These depictions reinforce the sense of a veneer that is unchangeable, and a public face that is impervious to any circumstance. On the other hand, Dickens gives the reader insight into the hidden passions of these masked creatures through their looks and glances. My favorite example is Carker's transformation into a gargoyle:
"Mr. Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked down at Mr. Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr. Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding ring" (500).
We see this kind of thing again in the last chapter, when Edith speaks to Carker “bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling neck…” (522) and he looks back into her “kindling eyes” (523).
These moments of fluidity--when frozen characters break from their molds and become animated--are what make the novel come alive for me. In this respect, I have to say that I look forward to Carker's appearances notwithstanding his loathsomeness!
And on the topic of “kindling eyes,” Edith's earlier scene of gazing into the fire, "watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as if her thoughts were tangible..." (504), connects her with the likes of Louisa Gradgrind and Lizzie Hexam.
I’m definitely up for another round of serial reading. I haven’t read Edwin Drood or Little Dorrit, so I’m enthusiastic about either choice!
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