Dear Serial Readers,
Julia's comments about Carker's "lynx-eyed vigilance" remind me of the opening of this number (where that phrase appears). The first chapter--later titled "recognizant and reflective"--also underscores that Carker's sharp vision has its blind spots: deep in his own reflections riding about the city, he fails to take note of "the observation of two pairs of women's eyes." While we readers see the immediate effects of Carker's seduction of Edith (rendered via Florence's vantage point), we also see that there may be a revenge plot afoot by Alice Markwood, who has been established as a kind of mirror image of Edith. That Carker's power over others, especially women, may have its come-uppance, this along compels me to read on!
I found the middle chapter where Edith descends (and falls as a fallen woman) on the Dombey staircase a variation on melodrama, or even a precursor to sensation fiction, with lots of high drama and suspense as Florence senses something very very amiss. Yes, Dickens seems fond of the staircase trope, as we readers find in his later novel HARD TIMES.
But what was most intriguing to me in this installment is the lengthy narrative intrusion near the start of chapter 47, where Dickens dismantles any sturdy distinction between "natural" and "unnatural" in the context of the disintegrating Dombey marriage, and at the brink of Edith's elopement. Dickens's treatment here of sinfulness, corruption, and human nature seemed to me a strong echo of SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE, so much so that I almost expected some mention of Blake. But did Victorians read Blake? Take these lines, for instance: "Then should we stand appalled to know, that where we generate disease to strike our children down...infancy that knows no innocence, youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in nothing but in suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we bear. Unnatural humanity!" Like the use of present-tense passages and chapters, this intervention seems another strategy to connect with readers in a tale about isolation that we read in solitude, although collectively (as Julia has pointed out).
'Tis the season (not December, when this number first appeared, but September, when the semester calendar resumes), so my posts will be shorter. But I'd like to continue with this serial readers blogging, even so! Should we read DORRIT or DROOD next? Let me know if you have a preference for shorter or long. But in any case, let's switch to a biweekly schedule.
Does anyone know if DOMBEY was ever adopted for stage or screen?
Until next week's #16 (chaps 49-51)--
Serially yours in September,
Susan
3 comments:
I'm getting to this a little late, but I'm glad we've noted the nature/culture complexity that Dickens develops here. In some ways, it seems like the darker side of a digression made in The Mill on the Floss. The narrator argues that "character" is too often understood as an essential tendency isolated apart from culture, when in fact determined and innate tendencies develop differently based on the context they inhabit. (Eliot's great example is a Hamlet whose father never died a suspicious death, and who lives to a ripe old age with nothing worse than some eccentric tendencies.) Dickens has the counterexample: what good does it do to discuss Dombey's natural characteristics if he lives in a London that encourages malice, pride, etc.?
I should also shift gears here and note that I really enjoyed the plotting in this installment. Chapter 47 is masterfully done -- you can see the tension rising quite nicely, and the moment when Dombey strikes Florence is brutally effective (I might have actually gasped when reading it!). And the new information Captain Cuttle gets, but doesn't yet share, made it tough for me to resist moving on.
No real preference for Little Dorrit or Edwin Drood -- I'm game for whatever anyone else prefers.
I'm still in catch-up mode, so this will be a brief post with a few observations. I'm hoping to get back on schedule tomorrow!
It so happens that I’m reading Jane Eyre simultaneously, and I was struck by the similarity between Dickens's depiction of Edith "crouching down against the wall" and "crawl[ing] by [Florence] like some lower animal" (552) and Bronte's depiction of Bertha Mason (locked in Rochester's attic) as "grovell[ing], seemingly, on all fours" (Norton, p. 250). Edith isn't growling, and isn’t insane, but the invocation of animal traits in both instances is interesting.
Edith’s rejection of her diamond tiara and bracelet also reminded me of the poisoned diamonds in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. The similarities between these two fictional bad marriages has been mentioned before, and it seems to me that these continue to multiply. Clearly, humiliation is at the heart of both. Might we think of Carker and Lush (as agents of humiliation) as remarkably similar as well?
I have just finished reading part 15, and I'm so glad to be staying with this novel! I, too, saw the resemblance Julia notes between Edith's diamonds and the poisoned diamonds given to Gwendolen Harleth, but did not make that very apt Carker-Lush connection. I wonder whether Eliot was influenced by this scene, or if the idea of "tell-all, punish all" diamonds was current at the time. I'd hope not the latter, actually, as in each of these two cases the description appears unique and so powerful.
Like Joshua, I was tempted to confirm my suspicions about Captain Cuttle's news, but decided to read this blog instead. I hope soon to find out what all the rest of you now know, having read parts 16 and 17.
As for the scene at the dining table: wow. Maybe I'll just end there.
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