Dear Serial Readers,
I am thinking of changing this enterprise from "Serial Readers" to "Slow Readers." I would love to hear your thoughts on what this slow reading is like for you, how it differs from other ways of reading Dickens or reading novels or any kind of immersion reading that you enjoy. Does reading installments on the once-a-week plan pose problems, does it enhance suspense or confusion or enjoyment or frustration? Does reading this way give you an awareness of part-ness, of the craft of Dickens's serializing each number, each set of chapters, as an integral text, like the episode of a television serial? Please reply even if you're not caught up or reading along with this program these days!
As for Part Seven of Little Dorrit, I enjoyed the mix of scenes and the play with different kinds of secrets, from the larger mystery behind Dorrit's imprisonment and the connection with the Clennams, to "the Planck mysteries." What is Planck's fortune-telling about? Is he really on a mission to get Little D to accept John Chivery, or is this fortune telling about something else? His watching Little D made me think of how many eyes are upon this needlewoman, from Arthur to the narrator. But what would be Planck's motivation to facilitate her marriage to John Chivery? Then there's Little D's own secret, which she hints at in the story of the Princess and the "little tiny woman" and the "Shadow of someone" she holds onto in secret. I took Little D's fairy tale to be about her own secret love of Arthur Clennam. Plancks's fortune telling also seems a kind of foreshadowing with the hint that he will have some role, if behind the scenes, in Little's future.
I confess I enjoy Flora and Mr F's Aunt (although I take Kari's point about the caricature of women here)! Such an interesting pair whose words underscore the challenges of verbal communication: Flora with her lack of commas and full-stops (her "loquacity" and "scattered words" as a "loose talker") and Mr F's Aunt whose relative terseness still produces words that are difficult to comprehend--as if each suffers from different kinds of aphasia--Flora can produce only metonymic strings and streams of words, or untamed syntax of too much context, while MFA (Mr F's Aunt) economic sentences that have no evident relationship to her verbal environment or the speech acts of others around her. Perhaps Dickens is highlighting different problems of styling narrative threads in a serial, multiplot novel.
Finally, I was struck by the passage on foreigners following Cavelletto's treatment at the factory and Bleeding Heart Yard. Since Dickens wrote this after Gaskell's NORTH AND SOUTH, with its portrayal of poor Irish workers breaking the factory workers' strike, I wondered if Dickens was widening this canvas of refugees in England by including an Italian who has come from France? The passage (in chap 25) seems to assail English chauvinism and builds sympathy for "the foreigner" through the sarcastic treatment of the "Bleeding Hearts": "they had a notion that it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did things that the England did not...." Given that Dickens did not always handle foreigners or foreign places (I'm thinking of Mrs Jellyby's philanthropic work in BLEAK HOUSE) with particular care, this criticism of English ethnocentricity (along with the foolish comments characters like Flora make about China) stood out for me.
Next week, chapters 26-29. Please do chime in, even if you're not at this point in the novel--as my opening questions encourage!
Serially sailing,
Susan
3 comments:
Hmm, did my comment not get posted last time? I composed it so carefully! Ah, well, I forgot it now. I thought also of responding to readerann's comment last week--I liked the observation of the differences between how Mr. D. treats his brother and his daughter--it seems to me he acts in the way that will most advance himself in both cases, and he in part responds to their personalities--very skillful of him.
And it was impressive that Little D. knew Arthur's footstep--sounds like she is pretty attached to him.
I find the slow reading at times exasperating because I'm so fond of plot, but Dickens in particular is so good at nuanced prose that he can be so fun to read twice and read slowly. I find Mrs. Merdles, for example, not a nuanced character, and the dinner party and Powder boring, but the discussions between Mrs. Merdles and Fanny quite compelling and understated.
I will say I'm always happy when the chapters are long! And when there are 4 instead of 3.
In this section, I do not believe that Pancks is at all interested in marrying Little D. to John C. I think he just wants to help Little D.--I suspect Pancks is somehow trying to right some wrong that he knows of. Indeed, I find Pancks increasingly sympathetic in this section and his attitude toward "business" as charming as Mr. Meagles attitude toward "practicality"--both of them include a great deal of compassion in those terms. I expected that Pancks would be more like the behind-the-scenes Fascination Fledgeby--would be the real power while his boss was ineffectual. That may be, but it seems that Pancks is not the heartless lover of money I thought he'd be.
I also very much liked the way Flora treated Little D. Although I don't entirely trust Flora's motives, she seems to be incapable of being truly unkind to Little D. In that way, she seems to be similar to Arthur in his treatment of all people with the same level of respect. (And, as an aside, with the same lack of kowtowing, as in his temerity to visit the high Barnacle at home.)
I'm headed off to immediately start the next reading! I'm ready for riches, waiting for us at Chapter 36.
I'll try to add something on this week's reading in a little bit -- I've been following along with everyone but have been too busy to post! The "slow reading" means that for four or five months the novel just becomes part of my weekly routine. It's nice for me to know that I've got an excerpt of this bigger work waiting for me during the week, whenever I can get to it. On the other hand, I think that my reading comprehension goes down a bit when I read at this speed. I have to turn back to previous installments and figure out what's going on a lot more -- if I'm reading a novel under other circumstances, I'm rarely more than a few days of real time removed from something that happened earlier in the plot. Here, I could be two or three months away from having read something, and I find that a lot of the details have sort of drifted off.
I think I enjoy some novels at the slower pace more than others, too. Gaskell was a lot of fun with this "slow reading," because I didn't mind the slower stretches of plot in the novel -- I was just enjoying being back in that world for another hour that week. On the other hand, Dickens is a little harder for me if I force myself to stay on schedule, since it becomes harder for me to keep everything in my mind, and I feel like I start to miss quite a bit. I still enjoy it a lot, though.
I’m a little suspicious of Flora and her ways with Little D, suggesting for example “…that we should begin by being confidential about our mutual friend…,” and implying that she and Arthur currently mean more to each other than they do, at least Arthur's enthrall with her at this point. On the other hand, she perceives what she calls “coldness” between Arthur and herself I think because she won’t accept a bygone for what it is. Whatever Flora is up to with Dorrit, I add it to the other mysteries and secrets. We’re three hundred and twenty-some pages into this yarn, and still there are many more questions and loose ends than answers and clear developments.
“You shall live to see,” Pancks says to Little D, and I share her perplexity. She seems more incisive and less naïve and solicitous toward him than toward almost anyone else she encounters, except John C. “I have heard him called a fortune-teller,” she says of Pancks, “but I doubt if he could tell many people even their past or present fortunes.”
Slow-reading this novel, section-by-section, works well for me. There is so much going on, or so many people with whom something is going on, that I lose track. The questions, comments, and discussion help me home in on specific things when I feel quite scattered sometimes in the reading.
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