Dear Serial Readers,
New design features available, so I did some redecorating. I don't think I'll hold on to the background though--too busy.
This installment did surprise me--I had no idea that Amy and Arthur would be reunited through the Marshalsea romance (and, the poverty-is-better-than-wealth conceit) again! At least, that's how things wind up, with Arthur, and his altered fortunes, weeping for need of Amy's devotion. And of course we know that Amy was most happy tending to her father in prison, and now Arthur, long a father figure in the making for her, is back at the old home, waiting her return. But Arthur going into debtor's prison seems so clearly a kind of martyrdom, his insistence that he take the punishment for ubiquitous financial crimes of others, because his speculations have caused harm to his innocent partner Doyce, even though Arthur was never motivated by self-gain (unlike the likes of Merdle and Barnacles).
So many passages in this section could, with a bit of tweaking, come straight out of our own times--ruthless financial speculation that causes the ruin of many due to the unethical conduct of a few--Wall Street 2008 echoes here, as well as suicide--try Googling "financial suicides" and you'll see what I mean--the rate spiked in late 2008, early 2009. Merdle's suicide in the public Baths surprised me--quite spectacular and gruesome, seemed to echo Marat's death in his tub, meant to look like suicide although the work of Charlotte Corday. Even Merdle's weapon--Fanny's penknife--seems an allusion to Marat's death, and the 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David, which shows pen and knife and letter (see sidebar).
The extended bit about "Physician" and "Bar" rolls out all the cliches about lawyers as low-life manipulators, but also the physician as "a great reader" and the modern-day confessor, or the one who penetrates into (or is told) the secrets of others. Dickens aligns Physician with "reality" through this ability to gain knowledge beyond people's surfaces. Is Physician in this sense like the narrator of a realist novel?
Finally, Dickens also attributes an "equality of compassion" to Physician, and here I want to return to Kari's comment last week on the subject of compassion and Miss Wade's Narrative. Through Miss Wade's story, Dickens seems to ask why would someone spurn compassion, or refuse to see compassion as anything more than pity and condescension? I see here a kind of struggling with certain profiles of liberalism and social justice--not so much (as Kari puts it), "she made me do it" (that Miss Wade is so miserable that her mistreatment is really her own fault due to that bad temper), but "we gave them every opportunity, and still they persisted in their bad, mad, ways." This is a long way of saying that perhaps Dickens is showing the limits of compassion, or that sometimes compassion is simply not enough. I don't think he provides answers here, but does generate lots of questions about social and psychological behaviors that seem puzzling, reprehensible, or worse. Is Miss Wade taking in Tattycoram motivated by compassion, by revenge, by something else?
Nevertheless, compassion will rule the day in the world of this novel, I bet. Even Young John shows some compassion as he reserves that special room (ie, where William Dorrit once lived) in Marshalsea for Arthur. And we know how Little Dorrit, aka Amy, longs for the old Marshalsea days when she could provide solace and comfort to her father. Now she'll get another chance to return. But is this compassion at its best? There are still many threads (including the secret about Blandois and his mother which Clennam tried to extract from Affery)to be worked through to the end. And Fanny's baby in the works!
Only two more installments (since the final one is a double issue)! We'll finish this novel in two weeks (I'll post the last on this novel on July 19), and then we're launching THE MOONSTONE!
Next week, #18, part ii, chaps 27-29.
Serially speculating,
Susan
3 comments:
Suffering the boredom of the rich, Fanny is by turns calculating (“shine in society” or die), disingenuous (in her sympathy for Amy), and cantankerous (in her discourse with Sparkler on the fan). It’s all worth it, though, just to hear Sparkler’s remedy, aromatic vinegar. I wouldn’t mind a jar of it myself. To what “tendency” at the bottom of Amy’s heart is she referring? To her sister’s, (“Twoshoes,” as she calls her) soft spot for Arthur?
It’s amusing that only thoughts of Mrs. General dispel Fanny’s torpor.
I’m with Mr. Rugg on Arthur’s decision to go to prison. Tell me this is not how the story ends—Amy finds meaning once again at the Marshalsea, serving the needs of a man to whom she’s devoted. That’s not my idea of compassion.
Let's see, I got a comment from readerann in my email, but I don't see it here. I wonder why?
I enjoy the connection between Marat's death and Merdle's suicide, which also surprised me by its public nature. It was fascinating to learn that the Butler *had* been so judgmental of Mr. Merdle all along. And the contrast between Fanny's frustrations with the longest day ever, and Mr. Merdle's intended suicide made for some rather black humor, I thought. Or perhaps just black commentary.
About Mrs. Wade, I did say she acts as though others create her emotions, and that others' actions are entirely centered on her, but I don't really think she has experienced any "mistreatment." I think she imagines mistreatment, and then runs off as soon as she can, and this is the behavior I attribute to abusers, in particular abusive men: they imagine that their companions' behavior is a response to them and is a critique of them, and they lash out with abuse or they run off. What's the mistreatment Miss Wade has experienced? Her tale has no substantiated mistreatment other than her perception of others' attitudes.
Arthur is in so many ways the opposite, since he willingly brings down negative opinion on himself so that he can spare his partner such negative opinion; indeed by doing so he brings even more negative opinion than he would otherwise bear. So, he becomes a sacrifice for others who are suffering from the financial crash, while Mr. M. either sacrifices himself or escapes sacrifice, depending on how one views his suicide.
So, yes, in what way will Amy come in and save the day? How can she have any money left, or can she? Perhaps Doyce will come home rich and solve the money problem. Or Mr. Meagles! I miss the Meagles. I do also wonder how Mrs. Clennam will respond.
I was also struck with the Physician's ability to read, and how much everyone *loved* him because they felt known by him.
I'm growing fonder and fonder of Little Dorrit as the novel reaches its end, and I am particularly interested in the way that Dickens creates complex series of permutations around the constellation of money, crime, and penal institutions. These terms have been floating around from the beginning, but I think Dickens is now bringing them closer and closer together.
In this latest installment Blandois is identified as an "assassin" and the former inhabitant of a French prison. He's the classic violent criminal as we’ve known from the beginning, a figure that characters like Amy instinctively dislike. On the flip side, we see the good-hearted Arthur dubbed a kind of criminal in this installment as a debtor locked up in the Marshalsea. His crime is based purely on money—in this case the lack of it. Dickens gives us two kinds of criminals and two kinds of prisons here, which seems like an easy comparison. The figure of Mr. Merdle complicates matters, however. He seems to unite the terms—his crimes are financial, but they are destructive too (“Forgery and Robbery,” p. 737) and his response is the violent taking of a life (albeit his own rather than that of another). He “cheats the gallows” (737) the narrator tells us. As I see it, Merdle’s affinities are with both Blandois and the inhabitants of the Marshalsea (a fact that is underscored through the description of the deceased Merdle as a “a heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common features” (p. 732)). The novel thus provides a wide spectrum of money-related crimes, those that relate to overt actions (murder for hire or robbery) and those that relate merely to status (being a debtor). Financial crime is everywhere, but it is clear that not all financial crimes are equal.
This brings us to the unresolved mystery of the novel—Mrs. Clennam. Since this is my first time reading the novel, I'm wondering how Arthur’s mother will play into this matrix. Will she be another example in which crime and money meet in sinister ways? Will she be subjected to any penal institution other than her own decaying home? This darker portion of the story has captured my attention far more than the narrative of goodness surrounding the long-suffering Amy. I hope that doesn't align me too closely with Miss Wade!
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