Dear Serial Readers,
This week, ReaderAnn has generously written a post to launch our conversation. I'll have the opportunity now to offer a comment later this week! Thank you, ReaderAnn!
For next week, chapters 30-32. --Serial Susan
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For some reason, the moral and philosophical tone of the first paragraph of this installment immediately seemed such different territory from the fortune tellers and conspirators of the previous installment that I felt as if we'd been on a detour and now have returned to Dickens. Arthur's moral tug of war plays throughout the chapter, first in his conversation with Doyce, who wants A.'s company in disparaging Gowan (how tempting!). All the while, though, A. advocates for fairness and generosity over judgment. What do you make of the many references to "nobody" and "Nobody" and "somebody"? It all started in Chapter 16, when he made the "resolution" not to fall in love with Pet. Who is Nobody? Somebody?--Anyone?
No rest for the weary, A. is up against it again in his encounter with Gowan, and then he's blindsided by the "dreaded" invitation to meet G.'s mother. Taxing as the day was for poor A., I appreciate his enduing it for what was rendered in narrative: Mrs G. "who must have had something real about her, or she could not have existed, but it was not her hair or her teeth or her figure or her complexion...." Then there was the "Refrigerator" who had "iced several European courts in his time," and the talk of Barnacles and Stiltstalkings. All great fun and the perfect set up for what Mrs G. really wanted to talk with A. about--that plebeian, Miss Mickles/Miggles, Pet.
Dickens has been letting Pancks lurk in the shadows, with notebook and without purpose, until now. In Chapter 27, it seems clear that Pancks will be the one who at last "brings to light" why A.'s mother took in Little D.
I was very happy to meet up with Miss Wade and Tattycoram again. Tattycoram's "if only I'd had a mother" woes remind me of Gaskell's Cynthia, but never mind. How will Miss Wade and Tatty play in how things develop?
In Chapter 28, what seemed A.'s mere rebound musings about falling in love with Pet suddenly appear to have been more serious. Doesn't his attitude seem a bit patronizing when he spots Pet's error in thinking that one day her father and Mr G. will fully appreciate one another? Or is his a fair perspective, given the difference in age and experience?
Doubles come up again--Pet's dead twin, who, Mr Meagles observes, grew as Pet grew and changed as she changed. He continues, "I feel tonight, my dear fellow [Arthur], as if you had loved my dead child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was like what Pet is now." What? Then, in the Chapter, "Nobody's Disappearance," it's back to the river of Chapter 16, where and when Nobody first appeared. Poor Arthur tosses the roses, "pale and unreal in the moonlight," that Pet had given him, and they "floated away upon the river." Is he "over" Pet? If A. is not Nobody, who is he? Will this river flow through the entire novel? Will it return Pet to A.?
--ReaderAnn
4 comments:
All the "Nobody"s and "Nothing"s in this number seem to coalesce around suppression, repression, oppression. Clennam struggles to suppress his feelings for Pet/Minnie, while Tattycoram's refusal to suppress her sense of oppression (and Miss Wade's affirmation of this self-expression rather than repression) prompts Meagles' "five-and-twenty" recipe for self-discipline--or suppression. This novel seems chocked full of leaky suppressions--the secret behind the Clennams and Little D, the full story of why Father D lands in debtor's prison, and much more. That's my take on ReaderAnn's question.
I also wanted to thank everyone for taking up my question last week about the experience of weekly serial reading this novel. I too find it's hard to keep all threads of narrative bits and respective characters straight. And this is reading by the week, not the month, as Dickens was originally written and read! I do, however, see the segments as somewhat self-contained or discontinuous just because I'm reading in this way.
Interesting idea that the nobodys and somebodys are about suppression/repression/oppression. I'd like to think about that idea more. Certainly they are at times about secrecy. I was glad Reader Ann brought that idea up again, as it allows me to go back to Chapter 24, too, and in part the Princess story--it seems to me we didn't talk about that, is that right? First, Pancks has said "I am nobody. . . . Take no notice." I suspect, however, that he is about to be very important. And then, in the same chapter, Little D. seems to reach a state almost of despair when she tells her story of "the poor little tiny woman" who keeps "Some one's" shadow. It seems to me to be a commentary on Arthur C., but he has absolutely not left. Instead, she has spent time avoiding him. And she goes on to assert that Pancks is unable to tell the tiny woman's fortune--ah, how wrong I am sure she'll be.
And now in our section, Arthur is nobody again, and in love with, in Mr. Meagle's pleasant fancy, the missing twin, but letting go of his non-love love. To some extent, the consistent negative expression of that love perhaps makes it less of a threat to the plot his readers are somewhat led to desire: the Amy-Arthur love plot. I'm intrigued that Amy is *not* a nobody to Arthur, but becomes a "blank" to him (ch 27). In fact, Amy becomes a blank at the beginning of Ch. 27, which is the chapter about Tattycoram becoming "lost."
This leads me to another way that reader expectation may be thwarted: there are so many hints that the Dorrit's are the mis-treated family by Arthur's father's business--Mrs. Clennam is almost shockingly kind to her, Pancks is the one making inquiries, and Mrs. C. turns the watch (that guilty watch that Arthur's dad asked him to send back to Mrs. C.) But in my love of imagining plot twists, I wonder if Tattycoram or Mrs. Wade was somehow connected to those wronged by the Clennam business and the Dorrit family's problems came from elsewhere. Certainly Pancks et al have to go far afield to sort out the issues, not just into the Casby and Clennam vaults. I was struck by the way chapter 27 started with Amy and proceeded to Tatty, but that may just be Dickens' chapter transition method.
I did think Mrs. Gowan was delightfully awful, but why did Gowan take Arthur to see her? And this *is* a complex plot/set of characters, isn't it?
Finally, I was enthusiastically dismayed to see Mr. Upward Mustache (foreigner) appear at Mrs. C's door--like when the villain comes on stage and it's so fun to boo, and that shudder thrills through the spectator's body. But I was quite intrigued that the noise that has been bothering Affery also was frightening to Rigaud AND that Rigaud was unknown to Mr. F. but Rigaud thought he knew Mr. F--must be a reference to mysterious look-alike from early on.
I think if I were getting monthly sections of the novel I'd read each section at least three times, so it might be easier to keep track of the characters and places. I think it's like the way some people like to watch their favorite comedy skits over and over.
I've decided I have to cut out the sections that you'll read when I'm in China and take them with me! You'll be glad to know I returned my library book and now have my own copy.
I missed Chapter 29 in this installment and was going to let it go without comment, but since Kari mentioned the reappearance of the watch (!), I’ve reconsidered. Dickens’ continual references to time interest me. Passing time reflected naturally in the flow of the river, and at the beginning of Chapter 29, in machinery, “like a dragging piece of clockwork.” That juxtaposed with the wheeled chair, in the next paragraph, which goes around collecting memories of people and places as they used to be. I can’t help but think that Dickens is doling out lots of clues here for solving the relational mysteries he has set up. He describes the pinched perspective of the invalid and recluse, Mrs. C (greetings, Miss Havisham). Who else is stuck in time? Who else fails to “measure the changes beyond our view”?
I also have been keeping track of references to time, clocks, watches, and the like. And I'm reading a terrific study of anachronisms in Victorian novels, like Miss H and Mrs C, and even Pet's twin sister who lives beyond or out of her time. Along with this is the serial form itself as a time-rooted publication. When we read DOMBEY AND SON, I was especially keen on Dickens's occasional and pointed use of the present tense as a way to accentuate the rift between the past time of the story and the present of its telling. But I haven't found such passages in this novel.
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