Dear Serial Readers,
I'm picking up the pace although I'm not sure I have co-readers with this serial. Any suggestions for rescheduling the pace are welcome.
With the June 20, 1840 issue of MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, Dickens devoted the entire weekly to this novel, with two chapters per installment. These segments are much shorter in length than the monthly part issue numbers, and perhaps that makes for a tighter unit rather than the variety of scenes and plot lines in the monthly serials.
In the June 20, 1840 installment (chaps 9-10), Nell's susceptibility to her grandfather's plight and to Quilp's evil machinations around money gets lots of attention. The child/adult inversion, especially with girls, is evident too as Nell seems more the parent, more the one with good intuitive sense, than her grandfather. She tells her grandfather that homelessness and begging would be better than imprisonment in the house/shop which Quilp repossesses once he exploits the grandfather's nightly secret of gambling. In contrast to Nell's perverse home which the "crafty dwarf" invades is Kit Nubbles's jumbly family home. So does Kit's benevolent gazing contrast with Quilp's malevolent leering at Nell. Dickens seems to be dishing out lots of opposites here with these characters who surround Nell, although the grandfather's gambling vice is ameliorated by his desire to save Nell from a life of penury.
Chapters 11/12 (June 27, 1840) show Quilp in possession of Nell's home now with his legal advisor Mr. Brass in tow. Again I see the coding of Jewishness here with Brass from Bevis Marks, the City of London neighborhood where the first post-resettlement Jewish synagogue stood (and stands). I think that association would have been legible to Dickens's earliest readers. What's creepiest of course is Quilp's lecherous desire to take possession of Nell as the most valuable object in the household. Kit's banishment by the grandfather (due to Quilp claiming that Kit divulged the grandfather's gambling secret) makes Quilp's intrusion even more horrific. Yet the grandfather takes up Nell's suggestion that they choose homelessness over this unhomey home, and the episode closes with their fleeing the house as "two poor adventurers, wandering they knew not whither." In this sense of wandering, they are symbolically associated with diasporic Jews without a home.
Next time, two installments again, which translates into four chapters: 13/14 and 15/16.
Serially yours,
Susan
POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins
11 March 2012
The Old Curiosity Shop #4/#5 (chaps 5, 6-7), May 30 and June 6, 1840)
Dear Serial Readers,
With these early segments of Curiosity Shop, Dickens was still including in his new magazine Master Humphrey's Clock other short items in addition to this story. In the May 30, 1840 issue along with the fifth chapter of Curiosity, Dickens ran a piece that harkens back to his first serial Pickwick: "Sam Weller's Clock." Apparently TIME gets lots of play in the short pieces in the magazine too, as it does in Curiosity Shop. Given the serial form's dependence on reading in time, I'm intrigued by the CLOCK theme.
Chapter Five brings the beautiful child Nell to her antithesis, the "hunchy" grotesque Quilp. Again, Dickens seems intent on "curtain scenes" like Nell's mysterious message to Quilp to get readers to return the next week. Quilp is clearly implicated in shady monetary matters with his waterside counting-house. Although he's not explicitly marked as Jewish, Quilp does seem to have some traits notoriously close to the anti-Jewish arsenal of Dickens's day: his voracious and uncouth appetite, his excessive embodiment with its misshapen ugliness (clearly deviating from the normative), and finally his nefarious powers linked to money in the City of London and east of that neighborhood. That he'd like to elevate Nell to Mrs Quilp #2 when she's a bit older and when #1 dies is both comical and appalling.
Nell seems rather heavily marriage plotted in the paired chapters of 6-7 (the June 6, 1840 installment)--Quilp's plan may be the comical-grotesque, but her brother Fred's design with Swiveller isn't delicious either. Yet is it clear that Nell is in line for a nice inheritance? Or is this Fred's fancy as the unfavored grandson? In any case, Dickens has (to jump ahead in the time of his career) many brothers who try to take advantage of their sisters' good looks or other attributes--Tom Gradgrind and Charley Hexam are two that spring to mind.
Next time: chapter 8 (which appeared along with "Master Humphrey from the Clock Side"); chapters 9-10. After chapter 8, Dickens turned the magazine entirely over to Curiosity Shop. I supposed his readers were sufficiently Curious to merit this move by then! See if you notice some kind of shift in the story at this stage.
Serially yours,
Susan
With these early segments of Curiosity Shop, Dickens was still including in his new magazine Master Humphrey's Clock other short items in addition to this story. In the May 30, 1840 issue along with the fifth chapter of Curiosity, Dickens ran a piece that harkens back to his first serial Pickwick: "Sam Weller's Clock." Apparently TIME gets lots of play in the short pieces in the magazine too, as it does in Curiosity Shop. Given the serial form's dependence on reading in time, I'm intrigued by the CLOCK theme.
Chapter Five brings the beautiful child Nell to her antithesis, the "hunchy" grotesque Quilp. Again, Dickens seems intent on "curtain scenes" like Nell's mysterious message to Quilp to get readers to return the next week. Quilp is clearly implicated in shady monetary matters with his waterside counting-house. Although he's not explicitly marked as Jewish, Quilp does seem to have some traits notoriously close to the anti-Jewish arsenal of Dickens's day: his voracious and uncouth appetite, his excessive embodiment with its misshapen ugliness (clearly deviating from the normative), and finally his nefarious powers linked to money in the City of London and east of that neighborhood. That he'd like to elevate Nell to Mrs Quilp #2 when she's a bit older and when #1 dies is both comical and appalling.
Nell seems rather heavily marriage plotted in the paired chapters of 6-7 (the June 6, 1840 installment)--Quilp's plan may be the comical-grotesque, but her brother Fred's design with Swiveller isn't delicious either. Yet is it clear that Nell is in line for a nice inheritance? Or is this Fred's fancy as the unfavored grandson? In any case, Dickens has (to jump ahead in the time of his career) many brothers who try to take advantage of their sisters' good looks or other attributes--Tom Gradgrind and Charley Hexam are two that spring to mind.
Next time: chapter 8 (which appeared along with "Master Humphrey from the Clock Side"); chapters 9-10. After chapter 8, Dickens turned the magazine entirely over to Curiosity Shop. I supposed his readers were sufficiently Curious to merit this move by then! See if you notice some kind of shift in the story at this stage.
Serially yours,
Susan
03 March 2012
The Old Curiosity Shop #3 (chaps 3-4, May 23, 1840)
Dear Serial Readers,
Sorry to be languishing a bit with the pace here. I was waiting for a few more to jump on this Serial Reading Train before picking up speed. What about two weekly installments per week? Since these are shorter than the monthly portions, the amount of reading would be about the same as with Dickens's monthly numbers.
Yes, interesting about our Man of the Crowd narrator Humphrey, who in the middle of this third installment announces he's stepping back into the crowd--or, as he puts it, "I shall for the convenience of the narrative detach myself from its further course...." I wonder if this shift is also a marker of the transition from short story to a longer narrative form?
Balancing this retreat of Humphrey the narrator with his benevolent eye on Nell is the introduction of the notorious Daniel Quilp. This character seems almost anachronistic to me, a throwback to earlier literary devices of the "low" character whose body mirrors his social status and moral depravity. I'm sure disability theorists must have written about Quilp the "dwarf"--a small specimen in the meanest sense (as a husband, as a moneylender) of humanity. I suppose he's also a counterpoint to "little" Nell. I found myself cringing in response to the grotesqueness of Quilp, and his society of women including Mrs. Quilp as "martyr" and her mother Mrs Jiniwin, with her weird protests about the abused wife (with suicide as one solution). I'd much rather have the scenes of Nell, Kip, and company--so I'll be back for the next segment and hope to learn more about the life of Nell. She and her grandfather appear to be under the power of Quilp who wants to learn the grandfather's secret. I assume it's about money.
Next time: part #4 of this novel (actually #9 of Master Humphrey's Clock), chapter 5
and part #5, chaps. 6-7 (for a grand total of three chapters--5-7-- next week).
Serially yours,
Susan
Sorry to be languishing a bit with the pace here. I was waiting for a few more to jump on this Serial Reading Train before picking up speed. What about two weekly installments per week? Since these are shorter than the monthly portions, the amount of reading would be about the same as with Dickens's monthly numbers.
Yes, interesting about our Man of the Crowd narrator Humphrey, who in the middle of this third installment announces he's stepping back into the crowd--or, as he puts it, "I shall for the convenience of the narrative detach myself from its further course...." I wonder if this shift is also a marker of the transition from short story to a longer narrative form?
Balancing this retreat of Humphrey the narrator with his benevolent eye on Nell is the introduction of the notorious Daniel Quilp. This character seems almost anachronistic to me, a throwback to earlier literary devices of the "low" character whose body mirrors his social status and moral depravity. I'm sure disability theorists must have written about Quilp the "dwarf"--a small specimen in the meanest sense (as a husband, as a moneylender) of humanity. I suppose he's also a counterpoint to "little" Nell. I found myself cringing in response to the grotesqueness of Quilp, and his society of women including Mrs. Quilp as "martyr" and her mother Mrs Jiniwin, with her weird protests about the abused wife (with suicide as one solution). I'd much rather have the scenes of Nell, Kip, and company--so I'll be back for the next segment and hope to learn more about the life of Nell. She and her grandfather appear to be under the power of Quilp who wants to learn the grandfather's secret. I assume it's about money.
Next time: part #4 of this novel (actually #9 of Master Humphrey's Clock), chapter 5
and part #5, chaps. 6-7 (for a grand total of three chapters--5-7-- next week).
Serially yours,
Susan
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