Dear Serial Readers,
I did want to provide some London touring here, and it happens that just last Friday and Saturday I was walking around areas mentioned in this section of the novel: Southwark (just behind today's Tate Modern) and St George's Church, Borough Street (both near today's Imperial War Museum). You'll see here a photo I took from a bridge over the Thames looking toward the Waterloo Bridge; Blackfriars Bridge is just beyond Waterloo Bridge to the east.
This installment introduces a few new characters, including the Plornishes, Mr Casby and Flora Finching. I love how Dickens frequently endows his characters with verbal traits, and that's especially true with this cast--from Mrs. Plornish's 'not to deceive you' and Plornish's 'no ill-conwenience' to Flora's syntax of commas without full-stops and Mr. F's Aunt's non-sequiturs. Nearly every character seems to have linguistic features that even overshadow facial ones. Flora's circumlocutionary habit mirrors in this small way the Circumlocution Office, and Mr. F's Aunt (her name notwithstanding) another instance of perplexity and verbal style.
I was also struck by Dickens's accentuating not just places but temporalities, something that has particular significance in a serial novel released across time. Flora's name emphasizes the ephemerality of youth (along with the vagaries of erotic attraction and love). But for all her silliness and overgrown state (in contrast to Arthur's memory of her as a "lily"--now transformed into a 'peony'--), I was impressed that Flora *knows* she speaks nonsense ("I am sure I don't know what I am saying")and she *knows* that aging is a liability for women, but not so for men. Some interesting lines too about the Present, the Past, the Future (along with Dickens's agile and varied use of verb tenses, something we noticed with DOMBEY AND SON). Still, for my own personal reasons, I would hope for a finer character named "Flora"!
The final chapter of this number, "Little Dorrit's Party," returns to the notion, raised by earlier comments here, of human resourcefulness under bleak conditions of poverty and incarceration. After all, Amy Dorrit's "party" consists of the stars shining in the night sky when she and Maggy are shut out of their home in Marshalsea Prison. This point also seems to accord with the value Dickens places on Fancy in HARD TIMES, his previous novel. What did you make of the prostitute who speaks to Little D. in the London streets at night? I was also intrigued by the narrative attention to point of view--at least the gesture of giving this "history" to "Little Dorrit's eyes"--although she is still caught within the gaze of Arthur Clennam (and the narrator's and the reader's) who follows her from his room in Covent Garden. By the way, do you think that's Cavelletto who has been injured by the Mail collision? Why else would we get this London street mishap? The networking web of Dickens's multiplotting continues....
Next week, chapters 15-18!
Serially yours,
Susan
3 comments:
Second only to the linguistic features of characters in Chapter 12 is what I think is one of Dickens’ most amusing character names—“Panks,” “tugboat” and rent collector (Thanks!).
I enjoyed the time travel involved in trying to picture Casby as a boy and was saddened by the bitter, not sweet, sight of Flora, after all those years, and also Arthur’s musings, in Casby’s parlour, such as “in the great social Exhibition, accessories are often accepted in lieu of internal character.” At the end of Chapter 13, I imagine Arthur, in the way Dickens describes him, a character played by Gregory Peck or Jimmy Stewart!
Then there is a dark dive into Little D in Chapter 14. I hesitate to say, but her noble suffering and her attitude toward her father and Maggy seem almost too sentimental for my taste. What seems perfect is the irony of the party. I also loved the description of not-yet morning after the prostitute departed. Sound begins to lift the burden of the night, even while the sky is still dark. “No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of the streets; in the wagons, carts, and coaches; in the workers going to various occupations; in the opening of early shops….”
I don't have much to add to the comments everyone's made already, but I can say that I'm pretty much in awe over the plot. I've read this novel before and I can barely remember how some of these threads all tie together. (In fact, some of the connections have completely slipped my mind.)
I also love the stylized, individualized speech that each one of these characters gets. Especially Flora, who amuses me every time I read one of her breathless and confused speeches.
Ah, I did say it's not the most subtle Dickens, and I stand by that, but at the same time I was struck by how rich it feels. That must partly be due to those variations in voice of each character that Susan mentions as their verbal traits, including the ways the Plornishes support each other's statements. Well, and the way that actions are exposed by their effects sometimes--there's none of that ponderous extrinsic narration of a contemporary mystery novel (one of my fave genres). For example, the narrator describes Arthur as walking in and sitting down at the Plornishes--no specifics because Arthur acts as he always does when sitting down at someone's home. But Mrs. Plornish puzzles the reader (and Arthur) "Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it. . . and I take it kind of you." What? Well, his puzzled face elicits her appreciation that he took off his hat, even though it's a poor household. That tells so much about class, about why the Plornishes and others at the debtor's prison would be impressed by Dorrit's foolish airs and sensitivities, and about Arthur as well as other characters we know show up at the Plornishes--Pancks, for example. (Pancks, of course, not a model of gentility.)
I couldn't help but be a wee bit disappointed at the depiction of Flora--I get tired of fat and 40 as a signifier of stupidity and unattractiveness. It's interesting to me how Flora is a somewhat distorted mirror of Little Dorrit. Like Amy, Flora graciously cares for an older woman with some sort of dementia. But unlike Amy, Flora is large, the same age as Arthur, and quite talkative. Also, she seems to be much more focused on herself in conversation than on others, and Amy focuses so on others.
I like that photo, Susan! And I liked Little Dorrit's party, and appreciated the cleric who was so thoughtful to the famous Amy Dorrit.
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