Dear Serial Readers,
Back across the Atlantic to Martin and Mark's new Eden adventures. Following Josh's lead, I'd say one of my favorite passages in this installment is the very first one which begins: "The knocking at Mr. Pecksniff's door, though loud enough, bore no resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at full speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this frank admission,lest the reader should imagine that the sounds now deafening this history's ears have any connection with the knocker on Mr. Pecksniff's door, or with the great amount of agitation equally divided between that worthy man and Mr. Pinch, of which its strong performance was the cause."
I guess this opener answers my last question: Dickens's comparison between old/new, England/America. At least, the narrator challenges the reader to make "any connection," either literally through the sound of knocking on Pecksniff's door and the roaring American train, or more broadly between the cultures. But the movement of these installments does encourage such intertwining.
And we get some amusing caricatures--General Cyrus Choke on "Britishers" and the supposed political suppression of news there in contrast to the wide dissemination of that news to the "locomotive citizens" of America. The General readily admits to Martin he's only been to England "in print,"--perhaps Dickens's allusion to the widespread reprinting of his own words in the American press. There are some other choice comparisons made between US/UK through American eyes, a comic counterpoint for Martin's reverse comparisons.
The Eden settlement--or "lo-cation in the Valley of Eden" is of course a huge send-up of the scamming of Martin-types, foreigners drawn to pioneer outposts to make their fortune through colonizing the land--with a few references along the way to forerunners like Columbus and Crusoe. We meet some choice specimens of Americans, like Mrs Hominy on the steamboat passage (more transits) to New Thermopylae (another settlement like Eden, perhaps a parody of New Harmony). But I was struck by the sheer resistance of the land and landscape--"so choked with slime and matted growth was the hideous swamp which bore that name." If Eden is depicted as a kind of environmental wasteland, it also repels these two English settlers who can't cultivate this land, perhaps because their knowledge of farming is wholly in terms of English soil. If nothing else, Martin wants to go "home"--and his lust for the American dream of rich speculations has been pinched.
Now, back "home" to England in the next installment? Next time: chaps. 24-26.
Setting Sails Serially,
Susan
2 comments:
I missed that
Opps! Previous attempt to post didn't work. What I missed is something Susan pointed out in an earlier post--that as critical as Dickens is of American culture via Martin's experience, when the action is in England, he is also critical of British culture. Interesting also what Susan says about Eden as the name for the scamland. I also thought how empty the pursuit when the grass seems greener, as it did when Martin left England in a huff. On another note, I loved the handshaking scene in Ch 22, the physicality of all those hands.
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