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
1 comment:
I was fascinated with chapter 4. Not only does Mr. Q seem unmoddern (would his presence in contemporary fiction be politically incorrect?), so does the long and terrific description of him, compared with the fewer strokes that would draw any character in contemporary fiction. Or is it just what I’m reading? The narrator seems to qualify the extended description by explaining why he had time for such a long look. I loved the gaggle of women too. I thought the mention of marrying the dwarf “in one of those strange infatuations of which examples are by no means scarce,” spoke not so much to why Mrs. Q married the dwarf, but why any number of people marry each other when it seems better if they would not have done.
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