digitool.library.mcgill.cadigitool.library.mcgill.ca/thesisfile43680.pdf · dan~el quilp in thé...
TRANSCRIPT
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ThesiS, Supervisar: Professor Alec Lucas
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. '~ Villains in Dickens" s" Early Novels:
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A'Study of Alfred J~ngle in Pickwick papers,
Dan~el Quilp in Thé Old Curiosity Shop,
James Carker in Dombe~ and Son
@ Paul T • Murphy
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Submitted in Pàrtial Fulfi11ment
of the
and
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,Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts' 0
McGill University
:Mareh, 1981
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Villains in Dickens's Bprly Novels: A Study of
Alfred Jingle in,pickwick PaEers, Daniel Quilp in The
Dld Curiosity Shop, and James Carker in Dombey and So~
; by Paul Murphy
Abstract
Thi~ thesis closely in~estigates three of Charles
Dickens's early villai~s and analjzes how each one not only
presents 'a study of an evil psyche, but also helps to present
a study of an evil society_ Alfred Jingle, of Pickwick
Papers, is not r~ally a villain, but a victimi his deception \
is his logical reaction to a fallen world. Daniel Quilp, ,of
The DId Curiosity Shop, is Dickens's greatest conception of
a concentrated evil; he is hirnself both an evil individual repre'3eA\1S
and"evil society: the representative of one pole, in a nove+,
of great p61arity. James Carker, of Dornbey and Son, ~s- a
small part of the evil of his novel; he derives rnost of his
villainous power frorn a soci~ty which re~ards heartlessness. '" \
This study is selecti~e- for the purposes of concen~ration
but is designed to be an aid in the appraisal of' aIl Dickens's
villains~ \
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'Les Vilains dans les pre,miers romans'de'Dickens: ,
étude d'Alfred ,
Jingle dans Pickwick Papers, de
Daniel QÛilp dans The Old Curiosit~ ShoE ;:
et de James Carker da,ns bombey and Son.
I! par Paul Murphy
Abrégé'
,~
. En scrutant trois des premi~rs vilains d,e Charles
Dickens, cette th~se mettra en évidence non suelement
leur méchanceté foncière mais aussi leur engagement dans 1
, . 1 ' eng qmage d'urie soc i été pe rni,~ ieuse. l Al f red J ingle des
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Pickwick Papers est plutAt victime que vilan; la corruption
d'un monde déchu l~ pousse à" la fourberie. Daniel Quilp de
The Ola CuriositY Shop est le scélérat par excellence de
'Dickens: sa propre méchanceté est celle de la so.ciété. _ ~ l _ ..
Dqns ce roman d'antithl!sis, il représente le "pAle noir de
la perversité •. James Carker de Dombey and So~ n'est qu'un
personnage dangereux: sans etr~ positivement mauvais, il peut
e'xposer à quelque' maal. Sa malice provIent surtout de son
milieu'où la cruaut~ tr~ve,toujours sa rééompense. Toute
restreinte qu'elle soit, dans le but de délimiter sori sujét,
cette étude constitue néanmoins un guide pour l'évaluation
~e tous les vilains de Dickens • .!\.
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Copyright 1981 by paul Murphy
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Preface " '
?ickens's villains rank arnong the best of his charayters -rI'"
and are sorne of the most ~ividl~ presented and rnemorable ,1 - •
characters in English' literature ,as a whole: In alrnost eve,ry
book th~t Dickens wrote, o~e or'~ore villains stand out among
a large ~st. Oliver Twist~ to' cho~e an obvious exarnple, is
rernember~d today for it~ characterizatiohs of Fagin and of
__ tl1ol;t~ __ ~~ught il1_ Lgndpn' s underworld; the Maylles _and _the, ,-f
Brownlows of the nov~~-ând the society they represent, are o • ,
aIl quickly forgotten.in th~ face Qf a!more formidable, evil
world. Dickens' s two historical novels" Barnaby Rudge and A Cl
Tale of Two Cities, a~e rernernbered for their views of the
frènzies of mobs and those in mobs; Madame Defarge and Dennis
the hangrnan are more striking figures than Charles Darnay or
Dolly Varden. Sirnilarly,_ indiviClual villains such as wapk
ford Squeers, Seth Pecksniff,,' and John Jasper are the f inest
and cio~t-carefully presented characters in their novels, and
UFiah Heep, Mr. Merdle, and Bradley ~eadstone also have
brilliant ana rnemorable roles. "
"Each one of Dickens' s villains' is successful in bis own
ways. It would be impossible to equate, for example, Ralph
Nickleby's villainy with Edward M~rdstone's in motivation,
intent, or acti Dickens's villains are more rernarkable for
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their differences than tWeir similaritiesJ Although these
differences usually seem'obvious, there are indications that
to sorne crifics they are note G. K. Chesterton tends ,to min-l
imize these differences 'when he writes.: .' ,
/ Nob~dy ever made less attempt 'to whitewash evil / ,than ,Dick~ns. Nobody black was ever less white 'han Dickensls black. He painted his villains and l st characters more black than they really are. H crowds his stories with a kind of villain rare in modern fiction -- ihe villain really without ny "redeeming point."
This statement implies that Dickens created a series of evil
things,\ that, aIl his villains are charactèrs of unrelieved .
darkness -- interchangeable foils or closely related demons
who aIl react to thè demands of reality in the sarne way~- in
a conscious, monotonous attempt to do evil for evills sake •
.oThis conception is just not true. Sorne of Dickens "s villains
tend to express or embody one vice rather than aIl of them.
John Fo+ster writes of Dickens's plans with Dombey and Son:
nIt was to do wîth pride what its predecessor had done with
Selfishness. n2 Selfishness is the one vice that Pecksniff
embodies, just as Mr. Dombey embodies cold mercantile pride.
A study of such marginal villains in Dickens is interesting,
but beyond·the scope of thlS thesis (except in the case of
Dombey, who ia atudied, of course, in the chapter on James ,
Carker). l intend instead to investi~ate three characters
who appear to be villa~ns in a sense closer to Chesterton's:
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men~~~be prone JO ,a~; 'v';'~e, and who embrace evil
a others -. emb~ce ~~ne'ss -- char~cters that at fir,st glance
might ppear to'b, de~~ather ,than men. By closely inves
tiga~'ing lfred Jing e in P'iPkwick Papers, Daniel Quilp in The
, 01 mes~ rker in Dombey 'and Son, 1 hope ..
to pro Di ens' s f-ert' ination was far above 1
churning oùt similar ' interchang embodiments of
Evil. Although one of t e character
-- is just pUcp an Evil char cter and mor 1
stigate -- Qullp
the'study of the
other two should suffice to sho that Dickens evolu-
tionary co,ception of Evil r and as ~ at conceptio deve ped,
so did his concept~on of the evil 'illdivi al change.
I s~ecifically limited my study t6 thre of Dickens's
early novels, for it is in the earlier novels th evil,. when
it exista, i~ much more the attribute of an individua psyche
than the attribute of a diseased society. The idea of tH
evil psyche, 1 hope to show, finds sorne expression (with more
than a hint of it? shortcomings) in Pickwick Papers, and finds
its greatest expression in The CId Curiosity Shop with Quilp.'
In Domber and Son, that idea has largely dïsappeared7 indi
vidual evil is certainly seen in Carker (and others!, but
that evll ls subordinate to the greater evil that is iound
in society as a whole.
a minion. ,
Quilp is a master ~f Ev!l, Carket is
The three novels, then, aIl show Dickens grappling with
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the concept of the evil man and the evil soci , ' 1,
Pickwick .,
·J?apers, though the earliest of the three, . is the In t ftlexiblè' ., in that i t· atte~rts to disttngui~h between and treat. ,b h
individual and social evil. Pickwick Paper~ is the most op o
mistic of Dickens's novels, but evil still has a major role .
in it. Pickwick's lesson is not that his worl~ ii a~ Eden~ ..
but' that, even though the wo'rl<f' is. a fallep one ~ he can still,
thr,ougn benevolence and conviviality, be a happy ma~ in it.
To come to this çonclusion, Pi,èkwick must first l-earn the
hard truth that the world is indeed fallèn.·' 'Alfr~~i-ngle -------. li r '
is pi.ckwick 1 s first re~l example of a citizen of a fallen .~, '
world. In t~ limited s~, Jlngle cân ~e viewed as a snake , in Eden. This is much how Pickwick v·iews him at first, when'
he traverses En'gland to crush the beast; to Pickwick, for q
long ~hile, Jingle is,the only bad in a good world. IPickwick l " \
must change h~s views in time, however, as mùst tbe reader,
-J .0 for Jingle" is the"' victim of .~ harsh world, rtot the corrupte'r ~ ~ -~.~_~ne.~ His mo~ives for equ1vocatio~ and pretension
-~~~~~~it i~ impossible to accuse Jingle of unquali~ied "Evil") ,arê ... ca~ by his fears -- fears of starving to death, fears of
. ( a clasS stem that .rejects .him, and well-9r~unded fèars'that
the exposure 0 self ~ould' lead to his downfall. ~ ___ _ 1"'-
Jingle is for~ver ca by the 'pre,ssing needs of a~day-to-
Pickwickians are,miraculously \
to survive by creating
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various roles, whicQ are ~sually designed to tell people what
,.the,y want t'Q hear 'in return. for a rneal, a dr ink, or' a shel ter. "~ ,
EacQ,role that Jingle assumes intensifies his fea! of expo-
, sure, and that fear leads to a greater ,nee~' to Ià.ssume roles.
Jingle's evi!, then, is born of hunger; he is certainly nct ,
____ motivated by an irrational need to ~e evil-for ~vi!'s sake.
:pickwick may see Jingle as a sort of foil, but this is "an ",
illusion as much as are windmills' to Don Quixote. Jingle
is, rathe,r, a teacher; he prep~res Pi,ékw'i'c~ :for -ffie 9 re~et' .=-=,:::
\ evils he faèes in the Fleet.
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The Fleet 1 a recur rent ~ymbo! in Di'ckens 1 s work s, reduces, ,
le to near nothingness and makes clear to Pickwick Jin-
ole as the victirn of a society capable of evil~ In
this Pickwiêk Papers is closer in theme to'Bleak House
or Little r'ri t or Dombey and Son thàn i t ià to The Old
CuriosH.y Shop," than The Old Curiosity Shop r~ to these
others. l realize thà ~ l consider Jingle' s evil a defense
rnechanism rather than an active fight against. good, then
Jingle can hardly be thought -of as a villain at aIl,' yet l
include hirn in this thesis because.his characte~ is the first ~
of Dicken~ls'atte~Pts in his novel-writing to place evil, in
any form, \ in an individual, and because the reaSons for Jin
gle' s lack of villainy offer a Jiew of Dickens' S later f~s-:
cination with,social evils and evil society. Jingle is, as
,~ell, one of 'Dickens~s rnost vivid and hurn6rous characters,
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and, evet). i'f he is bad, his ch(lracter ,is optimistically pre'-\
sented, a~d he is redeemaole. JingIe's saivation Cand the , ~
, fact that he -i8 the only ch'aracter l concentrate on in this
\ thesis who makes it' ta the ënd of hi!?' no~l>,' -!s cèrta\~nIY no \~
\\, accident, and this fa~t aione makes him a valuable,study iri
~ c~ntra~t~th~r Vl~l~lns in Dickens.
\, Dlckens' s ,cohceptlon, first seen in P'ickwick Papers, of \ . , -
-a-s~ial ev'il grêater than an individual one, 'is not consis-
tentl~ devel?ped
Oliver\Twist, i8 \ '
in' his,.following novels. His next book,
directIy opposed to th}s idea1 it is the \
,criminal'I? who create and perpetuate their evi~ ~ociety, not ~ ~
the other wayaround. l very much regret that"I am unable to
discuss Oliver Twist at length in this thesis, for it, is that
novel that contains several studies of individually evil men:
Sikes, the boys, Monks,' and of eour,se Fagin are aIl examples.
l believe, however, that l shall serve my purposesbetter
by offering thr~~ specifie examples of evil individuals .' ~
and by allowlng 'those examples to form tbe,~asis for an "'
appraisal of aIl Diekens'~ villains, and_ especialiy pis early
ones. l shall certainly not hesitate to mention'other Dickens ..' . ."
villàins where they will further my specifie arguments.
Fagin's cha~aeter, for example, l shall certainly mention
in my section- on 9~1lp.
feel tbat\Ou11p . - \
. l study Qu11p after Jingle, "because l
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embodied, il,n f.n ..v
1s th: greatest example-1n Dickens of Evil
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individual. F~gins, Sikes, Squeers, John Chester, Pecksniff,
and other~ ~ê ;ndi~idua~s who embody. sorne .evil or sorne sort
of vice, but~P, 1 believe, is that char.cter in whicb'
Dickens allowed aIl his energi~s to go .lnto creating a~ alle
g~rical representation of Evil.
There is not,hing, like Pickwick' s Fleet in" The Dld Curio
sity Shop. Society in that novel is far from a pervasive . '
influence, and is usually ,toyed with by Quilp, who uses and -
abuses bis lawyer and the law alike to suit,his fancles. The -
novel is close~ to a·fairy tale or allegory than any othér
by Dickens and is lar,gely played out on a leve.1 that is above
so~iety in'la way that even the imaginaiiVe PiCk~i7k Papers is
riet., Quilp himself can be s~en, among other ~hin9s, as an ' , 'r
allegory ~f an evi! society. -One of tHe greatest failings
of critics in discussing Quilp, however, ~s that they try
to limit his allegQrical nature to one evil or another.
Such attempts usual1y e~d in silly conclusions •• . (
In the section on Quilp and his evil 1 must' diseuss Nell
land her corresponding good. Where Quilp ia ~aterial and 'i
earthy, Nell is spiritual. \Where Quilp is 'spitefully child~ 1 . ~ ,
'ish, 'Nell "ls mature far beyond her years. " It is in this nove! '"
that Dickens writes: "Everything'in our 17' es, whethe'r of good
or evil, affects us mdst by contrast •• .J and it ls ~n , 1
this novel, that- that !'detr finds its fullest expression. Un-(
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(ortunatelY, this concept leàds ta the mini failing,s of the
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void of interest. It ia what s~rrounds her that is bril -
liantlyand successfully presented, and it is'Quilp, above
aIl, who surrounds her: he is connected, directly or indir-. . ,
ectly, with almost every evil in the novel. ~
Even if Quilp is Dickens's greatest realization of an
evil man, he still does not conform to Chesterton's ide a of ,
blackness. His liveliness makes him a character far above
that. If'anything, QUilp is too colourful in his vividness.
Pickwi
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his overpoweringly allegorical significance both
the expense of the social realism se en somewhat ~n
Quilp's evil is largely for its own sake,
qt best espoused for extremely
spurio s reasons. Quilp is certainl~ not faced with any of )
the de of reality that face Jingle. There \
is not ing that wo~ld lead the reader to believ~ tha~ Quilp /
ia any less weIl-off than Pickwick.
Th's closed, quilpian universe in The Old Curiosity Sho~,
far ved from reality, was a dead end for the socially "
s Dickens. In later novels, evil is not allegorically
displaced, but becomes more and more rooted in Dickens's idea ~
of v!ctb{1an social reality.
For tbis reasOD; l have selected James' Carker as the
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th'1rd -villain 1 study. here. Carker is ,by no means a very "
suçcessful char acter -- far less vivid than either Jingle or 1
Quilp or man y of. Dickens's other villains.
~n's success depends largely upon Carker's
But Dombey and
very blandness.
He has none of Quilp's inherent energy. Instead, Quilp's \ \
energy is t-ransfer red to a seething society a society that
allows for the heartless growth-of th~'firm of Dombey and
Son, that de faces cities overnight to allow for the growth
of train travel, and that finally kills little Paul: here,
society becomes the monster to parallel Quilp'somonstrosity.
Cérkei ls only the tool of that monster, and his role as
manag~r is brilliantlY apte Through most of the novel his
" whole personality is devoted to furthering the growth of t~e
world of business, or money-int'erest, at the expense of his
own feelings and the feelings of others. Carker finally 'be
cornes, .lUe Jingle,~ a victim of society, as he is obliterated ,/ -'
by the ~'prces ~hat he is id~ntified with for- most of the
novel. Unlike Jingle, however, he is 'a strong sUI?Porte"r of
the new morality that surrounds'him -- in his case, a money
morality, one of development and acquisition.
When Carker gives ,up his position at the vanguard of - \
this new societ~~o~flee to Dijon, he dies. The train
~hat kills him, and trains in generàl, are an important image
in Dombey and Son, and 1 will ca~efully investigate that image
in this thesis.
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Carker's role as a servant to society forces hirn to be
a rather grey villaine He cannot be apart fro~ society as
is Jingle, or above societr as is Quilp, but must be a part
of its very dreariness. In this, he sets the tone for Many
of the yillains that follow him --, villains that rnay be more
vividly and successfully presented, 'but who are, liké Ca.rker,
clambering upan social ladders,~servin9, however selfishly, If
the iriterests of a growing world. Later villains become much h
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less powerful and significant in the face of stronger evils,
which are sometirnes anonyrnous (the fog and the Chancety suit,
or the Marshalsea) and sometimes semi-anonymous (Boodle, 1
Coodle, Bar, Bench, ~~ Bishop). Domber and Son 1s the first . major step away from Dickens's early novels and the first-
step towards later ones in this sense. l believe that Dornbey
and Son is much closer in theme to Bleak House than it is to <
The Old Curiosity Shop, and a close study ~f Carker's role
should make that trend clear.
Al though the three villains l have chosen to study' are r j
very different from one another, l have not chbsen them (to
the exclusion of others) fo{ this reason. A similar study
of Fagin, Pecksniff, or Heep would suffice to prove the fool
ishness of that idea and would help to show the scope of , 0
Dickens's imagination. The three l bave chosen, rather, are
characters that are important steps, in the development of
Dickens's conception of good anà evil, and of the individual
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and ~ciety. Only one of the three (Quilp) 1 se~ as the full
realization of a conception (that of the comp~etely evil ~
individual) • * ,The other two have been chosen because they .
illustrate trends toward and away from this conception.
Therefore 1 would like to make it clear that variety is in
no way the reason for my choices, but it is no coincidence,
ei ther: i t reflects the variety and greatn~ss of"Di~kens' s
work.
,;
1 would like to thank aIl those people who made my
writing this thesis a pleasurable and rewarding experience • .
First of aIl 1 would like to thank the staffs of the l!b-
rarieswhere 1 spent ma~y hours: the'Boston Public·Library,
Bapst Library a~ Boston ~ollege Library, the Weidner Library
at Harvard University, and Mc~nnan Libr,ary at McGill Univer
sity.
Also, my thanks to the English Department at McGill for ~
constant help and encouragement, throughout my years wi fh the
un~versity.
The list of those w~o gave me moral and intel~ectual
solace at those points in my study when the thesis seemingly
* The finest realization, of an evil society in Dickens 1 believe can be found in Bleak House, but the study of Dombey and Son should amply show the trend in that direction, and l have chosen to pinpoint the transition rather than, the fullest realization of the concept. A full study of that' realization wouldfbe the mater!al for another work.
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had ~o foréseeable end is to~ong' to
list three" families: the Dufgjns, _the
mention; l àhall simply
Gosling~, and the
Murphys, for whose encouragement l am now, and will be,
forever grateful.
l give special thanks ta Mrs. Henriette Salek for
providing much-néeded help,on the French abstract that~ 'J'
_ accompanies this thesis, and very special thanks to my uncle,
Robert Carrig, who made my typing duties much easier by
providing much computer and persona! tirne (and patience).
He is largely responsible for the final format of the thesis
Cwhich is, incidentally, a computer printout). ~,
- /
Finally, l would like to sincerely thanK my thesis
adviser, Alec Lucas, . for helping me to tur-n a v;a~ùe 'c'onception
iota a ,thesi~. His encouragement (concerning the thesis,
among.other things) was always available and his criticisrns
were always helpful. Also, his editorial corrections were
much needed and weIl appreciated. Of course, any errors now
in the text are exclusively my own.
Textual Note: AlI quotes from Dickens's works are taken from
the relevant edition in the Penguin Engli~b Libr~ry -- texts
which, with few exceptions, l have found consistently well
edited and annotated. Therefore l am following the Penguin
house style in omitting the full stop after such wor'ds as ~
"Mr" when quoting from Dickens. l hav~, however, for the
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purposes of uniforrnity, gone-against P~nguin .style in usibg
double q'Uotation marks to 'enclose a quote- (they ùse single"
marks). Al~ quotes ~hat are from the -text will be given by
-both chapter and page number.
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. ,
. . Notes
\ -t- ""
K. Chestertorl,' Charles Dick.~ns (London: MetJi;en;J' 1 G. ". ~ 4
1906), p. 281.
2 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J. W. T.
Ley (London: Cecil Palmer, 1928), p. 471.
J Charles Dickens, The Rld Çuriosity Shop (Harmondswor h: \
penguin, 1972), p. 493.
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Table -of çontents'
Preface / 1: The Actor: Alfred Jingle
II: The Monster: Daniel Quilp
I~I: The Manager: James Carker
Conclusion
B'ibliogr--aphy .\
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P~ge
iii
1
34
75
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1: The Actor: Alfred Jingle
~
In mfs essay "D~ngley Dell and the Fleet," W. H. Auden
lists ten axioms which he believes are chara:'C:~eristic of aIl ~ .~.,
'-'lIo" "dream Edens," and thus cha~acteristic of ~ie Eden he sees in
Pickwick papers. The third of these axioms is as follows:
There is no distinction between the objective and the subjective. - what-a.person appears to others to be is identical with what he is to -himself. His name and his clothes are ,as much his as his body, so th1t, if he changes them, he turns into someone el'se. -
For the tirst few pages of the, novel, aIl characters of'
Pickwick Papers conform to this principle. Pickwick sees
hims~lf and 1s seen as an affable, benevolent gentleman. ,
Winkle, Tupman, and Snodgrass see themselves and are seen, at
first, as a sportsman, lover, and poet, respectively, and
although these appearances are later questioned, they are
questioned subjectively as weIl as objectively: any deception
in their ch~racters is both external and interna11 always
hum,orous and never, truly dangerous, and nev~l disruptive or
maliciously equivocal.
Pickwick, then)is surrounded by men who are exactly what
they seem to be. Never knowing human nature in Any other way, J
he expects to see this harmony in aIl men. When he steps
from the Eden pf the Pickwick Club into the streets of London,
however, he finds that human nature ls not always so perfecto
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Pickwick's first experience with equivocation occurs when he
talks with a London cabman in chapter two:
\
"How old is that horse, my friend?" inquired Mr Pickwick, rubbing his nose with the shilling he had reserved for his fare. ,
"Fort y-two, " replied the drivér, eyeing him askant.
"Whatl" ejaculated Mr Pickwick, laying his hand upon his notebook. The driver reiterated his former statement. Mr Pickwick looked very hard at the man's face, but his features were immoveable, so he noted down the fact forthwith. 2 -
Pickwick shows sorne doubt here, but he eventually -
believes this complete lie when he sees that the cabman's , "
external appearance is hones,t (" immoveable")' and wh en he q . -
equates the expression of honesty with honesty itself. At
this point in the story, Pickwick is too much a moral and
philosophical virgin to be aware of the exi~tence of a bald--
2
faced lie or of a dual nature. That awareness comes to Pick-
wick later, largely at the hands of one that Dickéns calls na
very different character from any l have yet described, who l,
flatter myself will make a decided hit"J-- Alfred Jingle, of
No Hall, Nowhere.
/ Jingle is described by Dickens in his list of characters \ \
as "an itinerant actor" Cp. 64), although the reader never
~ctually sees or even hear1P about him performing on stage to ';"
eafn a living. This i8 not to say that the reader never ~es
J,ingle ~,- however, for he does so throughout the novel. On
a simple level, he ia seen to be an actor when he employa
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stage actions in everydày situations. I~ the scene where he \
propo~ed to Rachel ward~, for example, he spoke "in a stage
whisper," and he "sigh~d d~eply, fixed his eyes on the . spinster aunt's face for a èouple of minutes, started melo-
3
dramatically, and suddenly withdrew tpem.* Later in the scene
he "fell on his kneeé and remained theIeupon for five minutes
thereafter" CCh. viii, pp. 181-184). This scene is one in
which Jingle's equivocation is esp~cially called for '-- it'is
here that Dickens calls him "that insinuating gentleman" (p.
182) -- yet such stage conventions are always -an important
facet of Jingle's ~~rsonality. Early in the novel, wh en
Jingle tells a sad story, he ends up "applying ta his right 1
eye the brief remnant of a very old cambric handkerchief" (Ch.
ii, p. 81), and at the ba'~ at Rochester, he "commenced gazing "
with an air of respectful and melancholy admiration on the fat
countenance of the little old lady" (Ch. ii, p. 90). Th~se
sorts of actions certainly draw attention ta Jingle's insin
cerity, but taken by themselves they show the insincerity of
a Vince-nt Crummles, and are exaggerations rather than fab-ri
cations. Jingle's character as an actor is more fully seen
when he uses acting to create lies -- when he builds complete
roles around a series of lies, and gives s~stained perfor
mances ta achieve his ends. J. Billis Miller writes of
.Jingle: ,"
he i8 a liaI and a shape-changer. He i8 constantly ' .
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reinventing himself to fit his 'situation ~ W atj is involuntary for other characters is delib~r te~for J+ngle. He fits himself instantaneou~ly i to eaeh new situation, and initiates a new Iole f r himself with the facilityof a skilled.ac~or. • hnd just as Jingle invents his ,identity aS
4 e goes
along, 50 he invents a past to fit it. r 1 •
Jingle' s dependenee on roles is responsiQle: fqr his false
appe, ance. He is quite different to' others/than he is to
and in this way he is a foreigner ~o Auden's
of Etlen.
- , Despi te this, J·ingle at fi rst seems to fit in weIl wi th Ill'
the Pickwickians. His early success with them happens" l'krgely
because he is 'what they want him. to be, and says what they \ ~
. ,
want hirn to say. .,.;..l,. ......
Soo~~after they meet, when Pickwick says ~ ... '\ '
that he is\n an qbserver of human nature," Jingle replies "so
am 1. If Whel1 he. finds tha~,-·s;,bdgrass "has a strong poetic
turn,"~Jf~le invenis a poe\ic and heroie event from sorne
imaginar; :as~: "JpiC poemj -- ten thousand lines -- revo-,
lution of July -- composed it on the spot Mars by day,
Apollo by night, -- bang the field piece, twang t~e lyre" <Ch.
ii, p. 79). Im~ediately after this, Jingle perceives that
Winkle is a "sportsman" and invents a dog story to fit that
taste. To Tupman hé telis of one of his many supposed, con
quests. ~or e~eh tal~ Jingle has many more: concernirig ~he
dog he has a ~hundred more anecdotes of the same animal ./
• • •
and concerning his romance he has "fifty more if you like to
hear 'em" <Ch. ii, p. 8l>: The Pickwicki4nS completely
ft
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believe i:n a-i-ngl-e-', s stor ies; by the time they reaéh Rochester
Bridge, Wthe note-books, both of Mr Pickwick and Mr Snodg~ass,
were completely _filled with selections from his ad~entures"
(Ch. ii, p. 82). These notebooks are-a sure sign of the Pick-.
wickians' gullibility. They are fille~ only with hearsay, .
with the complete fabrications or at best the half-truths of
Jlngle, the cabman, and others. After ~illing his notebook on
the road to Rochester, Pickwick states of Jingle that he is . , "evidently a traveller in'many countries, and a close observer
1 ! of men and things" (p. 83), and at the time there seems, for \
Pickwick, to be ~o'distinction betw~en the evident and the
real. The truth~ of the world, it s~ems, need not be jotted
down, however; Pickwick i6 nev~r mentioned as touching a Jo"
notebook, for example, when he is >ifil the Fleet. The graduaI.
fading out ,of the notebooks parallels Pickwick's graduaI
enl ightenment . . ! --:: \
Jingle's stories, like ~s, are aramatic rather "
t,han, real/.'t,cThey come from an assumed past, and exist only for f)
the presen~. As Miller poirits out, his stories, his atti-
tudes, his mannerisms p- his whole identity -- changes imme-,",-,
~
diately as one situation gives way to another. When the \ /
Pickwickians, Jingle, and Wardle return from a celebration at
Muggletoh, â11 (except perhaps Jingle) quite drunk, Jingle af
one moment participates in the groupls antics, and at the next
m~~ent -- when faced by new characters and ,new attitudes
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changes hi~ manner complete1y:
"What a shockinç scene 1" said the spinst'er aunt.
"Diè-gustingl" ~jaculafed both the young ladies. .) ,
"Dreadful -- dreadfull" said Jihgle"looking very grave: he was about a bottle and a half ahead of any of his·companions. "Horrid ppectac1e~-very!" (Ch,. viii, p. ·~178).
6
,
Jingle here s~ys what is perceived as the right thing at the
right time, and he is instantly popular ,with his new acquain
tances ~ This sort of populari ty is, l'lere and throughout·, 1
\ nece~sar 1'ly ,immediate, ~nd usually ,ephemera1, intended to \
provioe the next'meal or sh~lter for the nig~t. It is tpe
popular i ty of a. theatr ical actor, caJ:cul-ated to gain quick
satisfactïon and applause, and unre1ated to other :ro1es in
other pèrformances.
Jing1e does more than simply believe that the world ~
stage. He believes that the world is his stage. He uses lies
to force hurnan interaction to conforrn to his will. His lies
~ompel_Tuprnan to do éxactly that which he would never want \
to do -- ignore Rachel. His lies force Rachel, ~the Fat Boy, •
and aIl the others at,Dingley Dell to serve his ends rather \
than their own. As Robert L. Patt~n states, Jingle "m~ni-1
~ul~tei pth,rs into assurnin9.roles in plays which he directs;
in WhiJ~\he stars, and for which he is the sole enlightened. 1 •
audie~ce. ,,5 \ The illusion~ that Jingle takes great pains to o..r e.
. create at Dingley Dell, however,,. dispelle:lqu; te quickly when he ) li
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7 ~' ;
drops his role as friend to ~ll to run away with Rachel. In
- Jingle's case, the "eternal frien~ship" (Ch. viii, ~1!6)
" .
1
proposed by Wardle lasts only four days •. His great love af-
fair with Rachel lasts a week, and disappears under the influ-
ence of one hbndred and twenty I\ounds. Later, J~ngle's role
Hunter's important ,
and his. r'ole as the as Mrs. Leo guest,
Nupkins family's well-connected captain both disappear in the
presence of the avenging Pickwick. With each revelation or
exposure of Jingle's roles, Jingle shows~bis true selfish
nature. But the vision is brief; Jingle flees, only to turn
up in another place, playing another role, even if h~ has the ,
same ends in mind. Acting is more than" a way of life to
Jingle. Acting is life.
Jingle has one great reason to project his whole psyche
into creating and sustaining many roles: fear. " He ls afraid
of poverty, af~aid of being manipulated by others, afraid of
lany attack upon his self, and especially afraid of his pést.
As these fears lead 1:0 his need to deceive, Jïngle has a
greater and greater fear of exposure and humiliation (which,
in turn, only serves to intensify,his other fears). In short, \
Jingle suffers from a self ... ·fueling identity crisis •
Some of Jingle's fears cer~afnly do have a solid basis in
facto Pickwick, the Pickwickians, and even the Wellers are
happily, ev en miraculously, free trom Any sort of economic
feargreater than Winkle's fear of being ·cut off· by his , "
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father for, marrying without permissioll". ,
~ingle is, however,
faced with, and eventually suffers from, terrible poverty.
While sorne critics see the interpolated tales in pickwick
Papers as an alternate" melancholy universe, divorced from . 6 -
Pickwick's own , they are very often part of Jingle's world.
"The Stroller's Tale," told by Job Trotter's brother, de-,
scribes the tate of one actor:
r
The man of' whom l speak was a low pantomime actor; and, like man y people of his class, an habituaI drunkard. In his better days, before he had become enfeebled by dissipation and emaciated by disease, he had been in the receipt of a good salary, whichj'. if he had be~n careful and prudent, he might have continued to receive for sorne years -- not many~ because these men either die early, or, by unnaturally taxing their bodily energies, lose, prematurely, those physical powers on which alone they can depend for subs,istence. :His besetting sin gained so fast upon him, however, that i t was found impossible to employ him in the situations in which he really was useful to the theatre. The publichouse nad a fascination for him which he could not resist. Neglected diseas~ and hopeless poverty / were as certain to be his portion as death itself, if he persevered in the same course; yet he did persevere, and the result may be guessed. H~ould obtain no engagement, and he wanted bread (C~. Ill, p. 105) •
To Pickwick, this is only a nightmare. To Jingle,it i8 a
very probable result of the coursé'that he follows. Certain
ly, he finds himself not far from that point; throughout the
novel he is forced to fight against poverty. However much /
the naive Pickwickians believe his lies about his financJal
strength: -Br6wn paper parcel' here, that '.s aIl other
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luggage go~e by water, -- packing cases, nailed up -- big as
houses -- heavy, heavy, damned heavy ••• " _(Ch. ii, p. 78)
--'Dickens~ description of Jingle, with his size~-too-small -..
coat, his worn trousers, a~d his dirty white stockings, rnake
his true state immediately apparenttQ the reader. His ap
pearance does mysteriously improve when the Pickwickians meet
him at Muggleton ("His dress was slightly improv,ed, a~d he wore
boots, but there was no mistaking him" [Ch. vii, p. 162.J), \
but this windfall does not last long, a~d in the end Jingle
becomes the poorest of the poor in the Fleet, and proves that
his economic fears were justified.
pletely innocent of evil. Instead of attaining this sort of
innocence, however, Jing1e' s lies only serve to pr,ovide
Pickwick and his friends with a knowledge of-falsehood. ~
Pickwick completely lacks the sort of past that' Jingle
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tries to hide. His past is vague, and is unc10uded by evil or (
any taint of e.xper ience -- which i5, in the end, the same as
\ no pa&t at aIl. As Fred Kaplan writes:
When "Pickwick burst like another sun from his slumbers, threw open his chamber window, and looked' out upon the world beneath" (PP, II), he has no psychic inheritance to weigh down his sense of himself in the present and the future. ~e floats like a bubble of inconsequentiality across the landscape of the present that mocks him gently, then harshly. His only past is that of vague historical abstraction, the man of impractical reason from an eighteenth century ethos who believes in the 'dominance of'order, "domestic economy," and truth. He has dismissed relativism within hïmself and others. He has no autobiography -- no mother, father, family, story of origin, childhood impressions, defeats, tri~~phs, frustrations, anxieties, self-doubts • • . .
\
Auden has a similar idea: "In our minds Mr. Pickwick is born
. in middle age with independent means; his mental and physica1
powers are those of a middle-aged man, his experience of the
world that of a newborn child. ft8 The Pickwickians share in e
that ignorance. The nove! documents the progressiqn of all
these men, and especially of Pickwick himself, from ignorance
to knowledge, from foo1ishness to wisdom, and from being
apart from the real J,world to being largely in control of that
world. In order to attaîn knowl~dgeJ wisdom, and control,
hfwever, the Pickwickians need guides experienced in the ways
of the world. The two most.important of these gUidès are
~ingle and Sam WeIler.
Sam, like Jingle, does have ,a past -- one which must have
, \
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been' 'at least as t:nreatened by'poverty as Jingle' s. Tony' " J
Weller says of his son "1 took a good deal o· pains with his , i
eddication, sir1 let hirn 'run in the streets when he was we~y
young, and shift for his-self. It's the only way to make a 4'
"l, ~ >1-
:~~oy'sharp, sir" <Ch. xx, p. 353). Experiences in Sarnls past-
~nclude sleeping under the arches of Waterloo bridge for a
fortnïght, and seeing: ·Sigh~s ••• as 'ud penetrate your
benèvolent heart, and come ou~the other ~ide· (Ch. xvi, p.
290), as he tells Pickwick. A~~pough Tony Weller's remark
about Sam is ironie, it is in a senseabsolutely true: Sam' ~ .
~ learn enoug~ so that he can defend PiékW\Ck frorn the
harshest realities of the wo~ld, and by doing that, better his\ -. - -
own position. His past is ~ series of stepping-stones which
lead eventually out of poverty, and w~ich Sam imagiKes will
lead him to prosperity:
When I wos first pitched nerék and crop into the world, to play at leap-frog with its troubles • • • l wos a carrier's boy at startin': then a vagginer's, then a helper, then a boots. Now l'm a gen'l'm'n's servant. I shall be a gen'l'm'n myself one of these days, perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and a summer-house in the back garden.' ~ Who knows? l shouldn't be surprised, for one <Ch. xvi, p. 290).
Both Jingle and Sam are street-wise, and some of ~nàt wisdom
rubs off ,on the Pjckwickians. The two have completely
different ways of using their knowledge, however. Garrett
Stewart, in discussing one aspect of the two, makes this \
clear:
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Dickens makes Sam sound so much 1ike Jingle in order that we Will recognize such vita1ity as the
, shared asset Qf both men, the spontaneous and untutored poets of the street. While Sam thrives
-on this gift, however, Jingle capitalizes ~i~
\ . . /
Jingle's kn~wledge is competitive: he must manipulate and
bamboozle in order to prosper. Sam's 'khowledge, on the other
hand, is an open book, and is used to lead the Pickwickians
away from traps
guards Pickwick
rather than into them. In this way, Sam
from the law and lawyers,- f'rom the lleet, from' \
magistrates, servan~s, ~nd criminals, and from Jingle him~elt,
while Jing1e leads Pickwick into the disaster at Ding1ey Dell,
and intothe embarrassment at the girl' 5 school at Bury St.
Edmunds. Jingle finds his knowledge useful for parting fools
and their money, while Sam finds prosperity in protecting
fools and transformi~g thern into benevolent gentlemen. Since \'
Sam's past ts used to clarify and disarm the present, he can
,take p;ide in his own nature and past, but sinee Jing1e's pasto
is used to confuse and defeat others, he must deny his own
nature, and his past remains hidden.
Any exposure of Jingle's past separates him from his
liveli~ood, plunges 'him into poverty, and forces him to seek
another means of sustenance -- another narne, another iàenti~y~
ànother group of short-term friends. When exposed, Jingle1s .. insinuating facade beqornes simply another role identified with
, . his gui~ty past, and thus a part of the past whieh must be
\ . .
hidden fromall: goodorbad.helpfulordangerous.This is a
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13
major aspect of " ••• his almost fatal lack of discrimin
ation: he sees Mr. Pickwick and his friends as indistinguish
able from Dr. Slammer or Mrs. Leo Hunter. They are seen as
threats or opportunities, and he reacts accordingly
generally with parody or hostility."10 His indiscriminate
attitude may have at a time in his past been an unnecessary •
Dut profitable attribute, .but, with time and experience, it
becomes a necessary part of his personality. As he leaves
more and more victims behind him, he-must forever guard him-
self from' them so that they can never expose him to others.
\One manifestation of Jingle's careful self-protection is
seen in the use he makes of his riame. Al~hàugh Jingle first
appears in the second chapter of the novel, he does not give . ~
'his name, and it remains unknown, until close to the end of
chapter seven. When asked to give his name at the Rochester
baIl he s~ys: \
\
"No names at aIl;" and then he whisper [s toJ Mr Tupman, "Names won't do -- not known -- very good names in their way, but not great ones -capital names for a small party, but won't make an impression in public assemblies -- incog. the thing -- Gentlemen from London -- distinguished foreign-ers anything" (Ch. ii, p. 87).
When Jingle refuses to give Dr. Slammer his card (and thus his
name) 1ater in ,the same evening, he sets in motion the events \
which lead to the nea~ duel between Winkle and, Sl4mmer.
Ouring the stay at Rochester, none of the Pickwickians ever
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learn the stranger's ident~ty, even though he thoroughly
ingratiates himself with the group. Snodgrass almost puts
Jingle in a position to reveal his name, but he i8 cut short \
when _' , Dr. Slammer recognizes Jingle as his adversary. Strangely
enough, no one, seems to mind Jingle's anonymity. Pickwick -,'
introduces him to Mr. Wardle as "a f~iend of mine" ~Ch. yii,
p~ 163). When Jingle does finally reveal his name (Ch. vii,
p. 167), the Pickwickians are not at aIl 8urprised to hear it.
He has by that time so effectively projected an identity
.without a name that a name is truly unnecessary. "Stranger"
seems to work just as effecëively. Even though Jingle's
presence is felt in màny of the pages· of the novel and in manyt
pages. of Pickwick's notebook, he remains a man whose person-<
alJty i5 still hidden and strange. The constant ~se of the
word "stranger" (it is used fully fifty-six times in reference , 1
to Jing1e in chapter two aione) rnakes a lasting impression on
the read'er, so that even .when Jingle 1s known ~ Jingle, he 1s
still adequately described as "the 8tranger." \
"' In fact, \
"stranger" i8 perhaps a better term of identificatijn for the
man than "J ingle, ft for J ingle' s str~nger quality Jike his
speech pattern, transcends his name and any temporary iden-.,.
titYi it is an obvious part of his character, no matter what
facade he has assûmed for the moment, whether he is Alfred
Jing1~ or Charles Fitz-Marshall. More questionable ia wheth&r
. 'Alfred Jingle is actually Alfred J'ing1e, or whether tha"t name ,1
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is just as superficial as Charles Fitz-Marshall. Considering
Jingle's chameleon nature, it would not be tao difficult ta \ / ,..
suppose that he\would use aIl his names as others would use .
boots -- to fië~the occasion and to be thrown away when worn
out. The only strong evidence that Jingle's real name is \
Jingle is that he retains it'at the end of the novel, but this
could be so because wJingle" is the name that Pickwick knows
Jingle by, and not because that is the name that Jingle-was
born with. Viewed objectively, "Charles Fitz-Marshall w fits
Jingle just as effectively, and one could easily imagine
Jingle being called "Smuffles," "Dingle,· or even "Pickwick,"
as the occasion demanded.-\ Until the last chapters, "Jingle"
is only one identity among many for the stranger.
Wh~n Jingle assumes a new narne, Charles Fit-z-Marshall, hé
shows that he feels forced to bury one of his identities and
to fabricate a new one. The former of these identities seems
quite a positive one, one in which Jingle establishes rnany 4 '
sincere friendships Csincere on the part of others), manyof
them potentially profitable. in the long term, and one that
establishes him in an Eden of canviviality. The fact that he
gives aIl this up for a few paunds shows a tragic quality in
Jingle's nature: he is unable ta respond to human gaadness in
any permanent way, since his frjends of one day became his
enemies of the next. He is, in a way, starved; he cannat
enjoy a situation in which he is in the company of ~lose and
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long-standing friends. Instead~ he finds his pl~asure ln the
Immediate, the transitory, and the exc~ting.
That love of the Immediate is seen in every aspect of -
Jingle's·character, but is perhaps ~est seen in his spee~h.
Obviously his speech Is full of lies, which in themselves
f sever him from developing any sor~_of lastiog relationship. It
is Jingle's distinctive syntax, however, ~that most dramatic-
ally shows his psychological fixatio~ with the immediate. His
speech is unique, and unlike that of any other character in
Pickwick papers or elsewhere. "Staid scholars hav~ spent far
too much time debating from what ephemeral fiction of tbe time
Dickens may have borrowed Jingle's fantastic utterance . . . writes Edgar Johnson. Certainly, there were models at the
time that Dickens could have borrowed from (the most critic-
,,11 ,
ally accepted of which is the speech of Goldfinch in Thomas
Holcroft's Play" The Road to Ruin 12 ). In the same way, Dickens
certainly based Sam's speech on actual models of the time.
Just as Sam infuses his own life and personality into bis
jok'~s, stori~s, "WeI1erf'sms," and' simple statements, however,
50 does Jingle give his ·own ~ unique life to aIl that he
says. Many critics have attempted to explain the relation of
Jingle's·speech to Jingle himself, and °to the-novel as a
"" wnole, and the variety of the explanations implies the scope
of that relation. J. Hillis Miller believes that: "The
breathless aQd broken quality of Jingle's staccato speech / \
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repeats in_miniature the disjointed quality and rapid pace of
the novel as a whole. n1J others see Jingle's speech as a fine
psychologica~ detail: nDickens was not uhaware of t"e associ-~
ation of ideas, a~ the dialogue of Flora Finching [from'
Little Dorrit] and Jingle Shows. n14 Steven Marcus writes: ~I"
Jingle is an approximation of uninflected linguistic energy. He seems incoherent but he is not; his speech proceeds rapidly and by associations; his syntactical mode is abbreviatory and contractedi his logic is elliptical, abstractly minimal, and apropositional. ,He brings ufsinto closer / touch with the primary process."
To explain Jingle's speech, however, is to destroy sorne of its 1
magic, and, as Margaret Ganz writes:
The magic of Jingle's conversation, thatO"gift 0' the gab wery gallopin'" (as Tony WeIler, his first linguistic critic, puts it), perives precisely from its having no narl:'ow structural or symbolicfunction in the work as a whole, while paradoxica~ly seeming, in its affirmation of ~ife's incongruities, at once more essÎctial and more gratuitous than other elements. ft
() \
Whatever his syntax may say about the novel, it is,. in the
end, distinctly Jingle talking. When Jingle appears at the
Eatanswill public breakfast as Mr. Charles Fitz-Marshall, the .?
·Pickwickians need not know his name, see his face, or hear· any ,
relevant fact about him in order to know who it is aIl they
do is hear a voice saying: "Coming, my dear ma'am •• as
quick as l can -- crowds pf people -- full room -- hard work
-- very" (Ch. xv, p. 286). This obvious mark of idéntifi-.,
);. i ...... -\ ...... t,. .. ~..., ... ~""..t"-~·'IIt.~ .. .-, ... lt,.-HIt ... t' ~~,,-_ ..... ~"L. , .
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18 •
cation Ji~gle cannat hide; it is an undisquisable reflection
af the workings af bis super-imaginative and overexcited
mind.
Jingle betrays this excited mind in bis habits as weIl as
bis speech. One of the best examples of this i s his drink ing
behavior. Jingle, of course, 15 not alone in drinking heavily
'in this novel. George Ford, in Dickens and his Reader,s, men
tions that in an article of 1888: "one anti-temperance stat
istician enthusiastically camputed the number of referènces to
alcoholic drinks in Pickwick to be two bundred and ninety five
'including the Inwariable.,n 17 A fair number of these went
to the Pickwickians, the Wellers, and the Wardles. To these
cparacters~ however, alcohol is cheer, conducive to social
interact'ion and to the reaffirmation of human bonds. For
example, it i5 a combination of Mrr• Wardle' S benevolerrt
personality and the added stimulus of a'large quantity of
alconol which causes him to swear eternal friendship to
Jingle. During the same scene, Pickwick is ~rOv,S'ht, with the -
help of alcoho~, to be "shaking his head from side to side,
and producing a constant succession of the blandest and most
benevolenc sroiles without being moved thereunto by any dis-
cernible cause of pretence whatsoever" (Ch. viii, p. 175).
Jingle, on the other hand, finds no such relief; to him, any
bonds which ~rinking serve to intensif y arè bonds barn of
dec~ption. It is in the above scene that h~ describes the
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actions of his "friends" to the Misses Ward1e as "dreadful,"
, and that he indulges in so"'rne of his most blatant .t'equivocation. /
At the Bull Inn, in Rochester, Jing1e views drinking as a
sort of race, and he abuses soçial convention ,to get as much '-
as he can to drink in a short tirne: • • • • the stranger took
wine, first with him ,[Pickwick], and then with Kr Snodgrass, \
and then with Hr Tupman, and then with Mr Winkle, and then
with the who1e party together, alrnost as rapidy as he talked"
(Ch. ii, p. 84). While Dickens keeps count, Jing1e has six
glasses of wine to'Tuprnan's three and the rest of the Pick
~ickian~',two. EveQ though,th~ Pickwickians often drink in
excess, Jing1e aisplays a tendency towards a1coholism which 1
they do not share. bronically, Jingle is little affected by
heavy consumption of alcohol. There seems to be two reasons
for this. For one thing, he is presented as a seri~us and ex-,'t-.'
perienced drinker: "he emptied his glass, which he had filled
about two rninut~s before, and poured out another, with the air
of à man who was used to it" è-Ch. ii, p. 8S). On the'other
hand, his excited' ,imagination and fervent mental processes \
prove too powerful for alcohol to relax:, in the struggle of
aIl his defenses against the depressant qua1ity of alcohol,
his defenses always prove a c1ear winner. Thus, paradoxi-..
,
cally, while his defenses and his need for relaxation drive \
him to the re1axing powers of alcohol, those sarne mechanisms
prevent him from eV,er enjoying those soothing powers as the
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Pickwickiëins do. The insatiaple nëed for 1I10re is certainly .r
another' rea-son \f~r Jingle' s subsequent fall- into penury.
That fall, when it eventually .h~ppens,_.strangely seems ~
>
both inevitable and unjus~; Because of thefway he treata
Pickwick and ~ther "victims,R an unhappy end would only be , ,
poetically'just •. But Jingle's position in a debtor's prison . ~
is aSlnorally unjust as Pickwick's; his .greatest legal 'crime, , '- .
like pickwick' s, ia talling into debt., Throughout the novel, . , ~. ~
his actions, although deeme~ morally reprehensible, are
clearly ~egal. He shirks dueling with Dr. Slammer; dueling
-wa~, of cou;se, illegal a( the tim~. He is perfectly within
. his rights when he elopes with :4aqhel Wardle~ and has the law, ,
on his side when conftonted by Wardle, Pickwick, anB Perker:
when Wardle calls him "a nice rascal," Per~er says: Rpray \ . , ~r
consider -- pray.' Defamat.ion of char acter: action for dam-. ages. Calm y<?urself" my dear' sir, pray __ " (Ch. x, 1 p.' }06~.
When Jingle, through the machinations of Job Trotter, induces
_P~6kwick tb sneak onto.the grounds of the girl's school in
Bury St •. Edmunds, i t is Pickwick who breaks the law, not Jin-1
91e. One of the major themes in Pickwick Papers, of course, , '
. -<bat the law ls agame. in which the most knowledgeable --
not the most moral, proper, or just -- are winners, but Jin-. '
91e' s actions, however immoral, 'W~U1d be viewed as le9a1 in . \ \, Any reasonab1y humanistic society.
\
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If Pickwick understands aIl this, _ he stiill decides to f
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21 ,-
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pur sue Jingle on the basis of Jingle' s moral villainy: "He .'J"
deceived a worthy man once, and we were the innoè~nt cause. / , ___ r <:> \y
He sha~l not do it a~ain, if 1 c~n h~lp i~1 l'Il expose himl"
CCh. xv, p. 288>" It is Jingle' s attempts to .defend himself
from this pursuit, rather than any deltberate ma~ice on his 'f. , ~
p~rt " that lead Pickwick into' pfs Most humiliating scenes. -~~ .. ~
When Pickwick does catch up with Jingle at the Nupkins', he .. cannot accuse Jingle of being more than an impostor -- but • that" seems to be enough.
The Nupkins, like the Pickwic:k'ia.ns, become'hypnotized by
one of Jingle's facades Chere, /the facade of CpaFles Fitz-\
Marshall) :
J Charmed wi th his long list of aristocratie acquaintance, his extensive travel, and his fashionable derneanour, Mrs Nupkins and Miss Nupkins had exhibited-captain Fitz~Marshall, and quoted Captain F,itz-Marshall, and hurled Captain Fitz-Marshall at thé devoted heads of their select circle of acquaintance, until their bosom friends, Mrs porkenham apd the Miss Porkenhams, and.Mr Sidney Pôrk~ enham, were ready to burst with jealousy and despair. An~ now, to hear, after aIl, that he was a needy swindler, sornething so very like it that it was hard ta tell the differenceJ H,avenS! What would the Porkenhams .sayl (Ch: xxv, p. 429)
1
As far as is known, Jingle has no evil designs here greater .. than having free rneals, free drinks, and the introduction to
thé Nupkins' ·select circle of acquaintence.- The Nupkins do d'
not pare if Jingle is a grasping or defensive person as/long Q
.as he truly holds the place in society that he says he does.
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The only difference between the Jingle they love and the
Jingle they despise is that the latter is known'to be a \ ,
"strolling acto~." Jingle's aspiration~,. here, are the basia , ,\
for a social, not a legal, ~ransgression.
Pickwick succeeds at exposing Jingle here, and once again
separates' him from soèiety. Pick.wick bec'ornes, here and else-
where, a 'hauntin~ legacy of Jingle's past -- so rnuch so that
J~gle's fear of exposure becomes very-much a fear'of Pickwick
himself. J His constant pur suit of ..Jingle changes Pickwick from
a moral innocent into a "Knight Errant.- lB After the p'ainful , .
revelationJ with Jingle's first betrayal, that the earth can-.,
not be the Eden that he thought it was, Pickwick seerns t~want
to ~xorcise Jingle from~ every plàce that he encounters him, , .#/
,trying desperately ta hol~ on to a parad4se which, later, he /
realizes does not existe ~
w. H. Auden sees Jingle as a' serpent in Eden, and Robert \
L. Patten points out the recurring use of garden images in
Pickwick papers. 19 Jingle does fill the role of serpent in
many ways, but this analogy can be taken too far. Jingle is /
not a satanic figure; he never expresses a diabolical thought'
or espouses a diabolical cause ,in the way that Quilp certainly
does. He does not lead Pickwick to an undeTstanding that evil
exista ...simply because he is evil for evil' s sake, but rathér
shows him that the world ia nOt paradise because hunget
exista, and because he is hungry. Like Sam! he has learned to
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survive in a hoàtile w~rld. Dnlike Sam, he fights that
hostility with his own. 'His failings, are selfishness and
need, and not malice or sadism" or any fascination with evil.
Most of the hostility cornes from one class: the class of the
Nupkins, the Porkenhams, the potts, the Wardles, and the
Pickwickians -- a class that he feel;, he ,-must identify wi th to
survive. Fighting their hostility with his own 'leads to both b ,
his constant exposure and their knowledge. Sinee Ji~gle be-l .... ,. \
comes the teacher to Piekwick when he forces the fruits of his . experience upon his real and perceive'd advers"ries20 , he" is
largely responsible for Pickwick's eharaeter transformation:
"The silly' old fool, solemnly busied in the investigation of
tittlebats and tricked by any impostor, started to disappear
with the' unmasking of Mr. Jingle and has sinee faded away. "21 ,)
If Jingle ls responsible for br~nging the fruits of knowledge
to Pickwick, however, he did not pick them from one tree" but .
rather he gatheced them in the streets of London and on the
r~ads of England. The eabman, Sam and Tony WeIler, Job
Trotter, Mr. Perker, and almost every character short of the
Wardles and the P,ickwickians, are privy to at least sorne of
that knowledge. Dingley Dell may bè an Eden, but the rest of
the ",-world is a fallen place, and Pickwick 'can only gain by
sharing in the world's knowledge.
Jingle's human, undiabolical nature, ia best seen in bis
pitiful ... fal!. His inearceration for debt cannot-be seen as \
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anythin~ other than a great wrong, and if Jingle is evil, he
is thwarted by an evil much greater thàn he is: "Dickens al
lows Jingle, the keenest of blades L to lose al1 his wonderful
/ skil1 at thrust and par ry in order that' the evils of the Fleet ,
('it's unekal, and that's the fa~lt on ~t') should be im-
~ressed upon thè reader.~~ The !leet exposes the absurdity of
\ Pickwick' s unceasing crusade to show Jingle as a snake in
Eden, and shows the foolishness of the assumption that
Jing1e's elimination from this or that &ircle of acquaintance '-would transform the world into a Utopia. When he'is thrown
into <the Fleet, Piekwick i8 thrust into a part of society
which .he has never seen before, about whieh 'Tony WeIler says
"He gdes in rayther raw, Sammy ••• and he'll come out,
do~e so exceedin' brown, that his most familiar friends won't
know him. Roast pigeon' s nothin' to it, Sammy" (Ch. ~lvi, p. /
699). The world' of the law courts and the Fleet-is one in , ,
1
which experience ~nd worldly wisdom ie essential, and its lack ---y '
could be fatal. -The,world ls a part of a great~r world in
which exists: " ,
the polarities of cQntention and resolution: men of business <competitive lawyers ~nd physicians> versus men whose business is mankind~ to' those who attend to the letter (lawyers, ministers) versus those who attend to the spirit; those who employ language to deceive Clawyers, doctora, actors, pretenders "to ,knowledge) versus those who ~mploy it to reveal, bbwever ineptly they may set about doing it. And these polarities appear in mu1tjple ~»ises, positive, inverted; comie, serious. j \
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Jingle is certainly one of tbe~ rogues in ~his -list, but he i5
one among many. With the advent of Dodson and Fogg, pick-/
wick's knightlY qu~t is distracted and interr~pted -- )
Jingle's evil is nothing compared to the evil they represent.
When Pickwick meets Jingle in the Fleet, he sees a feLlow
human belng broken by a universal and powerful evil. The
atti tude of the reader" like that of Pickwick,- towards this -,,-
crushed Jingle changes guickly from one of antipathy to one of
sympathy. Suddenly, Jingle i~ no l~nger a stranger tp Pick-
wick, but a comrade'. Wi th no reason to project any sort of
facade other than a need to preserve a semblance-of human
dign-ity;\4: breaks down" and what Pickwick finds is the
remnant of Jingle's true nature. What ls left of his pride
causes-Jingle to make weak attemmpts at humorous deception
which he kn~ws are useleas.
~alk!] t,o J ingle in the Fleet:
For example, when Pickwick first \
"You have.forgotten your coat," sa id MI Pickwick, as they walked out to the staircase, and closed the door after them.
"Eh?" said Jingle. "Spout -- dear relation uncle Tom -- couldn't help it -- must eat, you know. Wants of nature -- and aIl that."
"What do you mean?" "Gone, my dear _sir -- last coat -- can't help
i.t. 11ve~ on a pair of boots -- whole fortnight,. Silk umbrella -- Ivory handle -- week -- fae~ --honour -- ask Job -- knQws it." '.
"Liv,ed for three weeks upon' a pair of boot:s', and a sil-k umbrella with an ivory handle!" exclai~ed Mr Pickwick, who had only heard of auch thingB in shipwrecks, or read of them in Constable's Miscellany. .
"True,· said Jin91e, nodding his heàd. Pawn-
\ , " -'~':J .. 'r., ~~~ ,.'""/ .. \ .... , . ...,!_ .r ,,,,,",,'C"""''''';/rh,~r-O;:'''r'''''''T'~'''''''''I'.....,~...,.,.,r,..,~r.kct"1'''?'''t';1?~,#\''''f''~~~~~~
broker's shop -- dupltcates here -- small surns mere nothing -- aIl ras"cals~ <Ch. ~lii, pp. 688-690>;
26
What rnay once have been a deception on Jingle's part i5 now,
at most, an euphernism, and for once Jingle uses his speech to
enlighten Pickwick rather than confuse hi.m. Jingle' s' language
may still be colourful, but it is no longer equiv~cal.
The meeting between Jingle and Pickwick, and the Fleèt
itself, is painful to Pickwick~ but is Very necessary for his
development. Only when Pic.kwick himself ia a -victim can he
understand the system that makes victims of other men. Only
when Pickwick sees the world that Sam, Jingle, Job Trotter,
and others have coped with and fought to stay whole in sLnce
birth, dQes his role as benevolent gentleman become more than , .....
just a humorous attribute. 1
Pickwick is a benevolent gentleman from the,beginning of
Pickwick Papers. His benevolence in the gardens of Dingley
Dell, Eatanswill, and Bath, however, is of a passive type, \
often associated, as has been seen, wlth drunkenness. The
energy is there, but finds littl~ expression for rnost of the
novel except in giving cheer. With the education given him
throughout the novel, however, Pickwick 1earns to direct that \,
energy, and is able to provide h'ope, as weIl as cheer, to the
world •. Although P~ckwick shuts himself away from the horrors
of the Fleet '("My head"'aches with these s,cenes, and/my heatt "\
too. Henceforth 1 will be a prisoner in ~y own room n ' [Ch.
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xlv, p. 737J), he stiil finds a way to show everyone his
benevolence: leaving the Fleet, "He turned • .' . to look about
him, and his eye lightened as he did so. In aIl the crowd Qf
wan, emaciated faces, he saw not one which was not the happier
for his sympathyand charity" CCh. xlvii, p. ~60). Even in
this place (or even because of this place) there is a sense of \ -
exhilaration. Harry Stone wr~tes:
\
Mr. Pickwick's exit from prison i8 a fairy tale pure and simple: he takes with him his entire entourage -- Jingle, Job, Mrs. Bardell and Sam -enemies and persecutors as weIl as friends. Dickens is projecting his childhood daydream of rescuing his fathei, releasing his father's friends~ and pardoning his father' s pe.rsecutors~4 he is triumphing vicariously over ~he past."
Despite the glory of this scene, Pick~ick's triumph ia only
a partial one. He does not crush the Fleet, or do anything
major to change the system that the Fleet represents. He
,saves sorne of the victims, but leaves behind others. His
1 triumph is not in magically trarisforming the fallen world, but
in learning to cope and in helping others to cope in it:
The "moral" of the story, if there is a simple one that can be expressed in a few word~, is that one must act on the basls of a determined optimism~ and practise charity towards aIl. For, whatever the outcome, as perker observes about Pickwick's benevolent treatment of Job and Jingle, that Act ia worthy. Though one should know of its existence, one ahould not brood on the dark side of life -such a point of view only intensifies and spreads the darkness. ,And one should develop the capaci ty to distingU~sh between darkfictions and dark . realittés. 2 "
Jo'. '~j ,
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Jin'gle ls not only saved, but is transformed I>y Pick--
wick. When he iB first~ Been after he gets out of the F1eet,
he iB described as "decently and cleanly dressed" (Ch. liii, i
pp. 840-841). Refering back to Auden's third axiom on Edens,
a change of c10thing inv01ves a change of personality. Al
though Jingle-is never actually a citizen of Eden, this still
seems ta hOld,true. in an even greater way than before. Jin
gle iB a new man; his defenses, once crushed, do not reappear.
At the end of the novel Dickens writes of Jingle and Job that
they "became, in time, worthy mernbers of society, although ~;/
they have always st~adi!y objected tq ,return to the scenes of ,/1 their old haunts and temptations" (Ch. Ivi!, p'",_897). The Il
Fleet is a purge for Jingie. "When he is found by PiCkW'iCk/
his rale-making has been rendered absurd -- he cannot P~it . !
from pretense. Because he has finally reached the poverty
stricken future he had feared, the ghosts of his past have
done their worst. When Pdckwick saves him, Jingle leaves
those ghosts, and the Fleet, behind him. By staying free of
·old haunts and temptations," he remains free of the need to
hide his past behind tbe facade of a temporary personality~
because there is no one to expose him in Demerara, where he ,
makes a new life, he has no fear of exposure.
Emigration often seems ta be a magical device in Dickens:
it makes winners out of such losers as Mr. Micawber, Little
Em'ly, Magwitch, and Jingle. In Jingle's case, however, and
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/ ''perhaps in Little Em' ly' s, emigration is an almost neè~6sary 1
device to achieve self-~ufillment~-- not so much becau1e it
exposes the loser to new and magical opportunities, but be-
cause ft divorces the victim from a haunting pasto Although
Jingle's salvation is by no means certain (and Pickwick and
Pe~ker have a few doubts about this) , he is fortunate enough
--to be-given the" opportunity to do so. His salvation, then, is
a logical, but not necessary, outcome of the novel.'
Jingl~ is a bad character whom no reader of Dickens can
dismiss as completely or even as mostly evil. He is aman
who, it can be assumed, was born as free from any taint of
evil as Pickwick is at the noVel's start. The evil which he 1 \
b-~omes 'i,dentified with only cornes into being when Jingle is
faced with ~he\trials and pain of-bis reality. To paraphrase
Tony WeIler, Jingle is one of the many who wen~n raw and
came out exceedingly orown. Jingle's evi! is ~ot that ,of a
man -who worships evil for its own sake, but is the evil of a
weak man, who sees hostility as the only response to a world \
capable of being hostile. If he is a villain, it is only , ,
through a perceived necessity, rather than through inclina-
tion: "his responses to the world, in one sense preposte~ou~.
are yet emblematic approximations of genuine strate~ies by
which the human psyche tries to cope with the anamalous, para
doxical, threatening terms on which (it exists •• ,26 Pickwick
matures through knowledge of Jingle's tIue self. To the Pick-
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l ,
wick_with an infant's grasp on reality, Jingle is ,a monster,
to the adult Pickwick,' tQe "benevolent gentleman,· Jing~e is a
weakling, using the imperfect weapons of his o~n hostility to
fight the monster o~ harsh social reality.
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n
Notes
1 w. H. Auden, "Dingley Dell and the Fleet," in his The
Dyer's Band and other Essays (New York: Random House, 1962),
p.' 411.
2 Charles Dickens, The Pickwick papers, ed. Robert L • ... , Patten (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), Ch. ii, p. 73. AlI
.further references to this work appear in the texte
? "To Miss Catherine Hogarth," 21 February 1836, The '/ .
Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline House and Graham
Storey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965-), l, 133.
4 J~ Hillis Miller, Charles Dickens: The World 0 his
.... ,
Noy~ls (Cambridg~. Massachusetts:-Barvard University pr s~~~ p. 24.
5 Robert L. Patten, ed., The Pickwick Papers, by Charles
Dickens (Harrnondsworth: penguin, 1972>, p. 24.
6 For example, Edmund Wilson states that they "make a
contrast with the narrative proper." W. H. Auden states: ,"to
Mr. Pickwick ••• literature [i.e. the interpolated tales]
and life are separate universes;'evil and suffering do not
exist in the world he perceives with his senses, only in the
world of entertaining fiction." Edmund Wi~son, "Dickens: The
Two scrooges," in his The Wound and tQe Bow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1947)~ p. 10; Auden, p. 418.
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7 Fred Kaplan, Dickens and Mesmeri§m: The Hidden
Springs of Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1975), p. 140.
8 Auden, p. 416.
9 Gar-rett Stewart, Dickens and the Trials of Imagination
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard univèrsity Press, 1974),
p. 67.
10 James R. Kinca'id, Dickens and the Rhetoric of. Lau9~- .
ter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), p. 27 • ~ -
~lEdgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: The Tragedy an~ the
Triumph (London: yictor Gollancz, 1953); l, 159. For inves
tigatio~s into the origin of Jingle's speech, see Sy1~~re -
Monod, Dickens the Novelist (Norman, Oklahoma: University Of ,
Oklahoma Press, 1967), p. 109 and n.1 Louis ~ames, "Fiétibn -
for the Working Man," rpt. partia11y ~n Charles Dickens, ed.
Stephen Wall (Harmondsworth, Pengiun, 1970), p. 4741 and'
walter Dexter, "Jorrocks ~gain," Dickensian, 30 Cl934),
p. 239:
12 Thomas\Holcroft, The Road to Ruin (London: J~ Deb-J
rett, 1792), but see James and Dexter Aboye.
13 Miller, pp. 23--24
1-4 'Harv~~,~peter Sucksmith,' The Narrâtive Art of Charles
Qickens -(Oxford: ClarendoJÎ'~ 1970), p.167
15 Steven Man:us~ "La,nguage into Structure: Pickwick ;
Revisited," Daede1us, 101 (1972), p. 191. . .
, v •. ,"-._>._,_~,1i..,-"lIo."'.'-·"~~_~'Al .. h . . ~.~.'.-.....J. .... _"~'" _.~ r .......... '~._." __ .~ ... ~
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.: 33
16 Margaret Ganz, "piekwick Papers ang .. ..t-l'fe RefashiorlÎng
of Reality, Il Dickens Studies Annual, 4 (I97,?), p.' 37. i
J 7 Ge~rge H. Ford, Dickens and his Readers: Aspects of
Novel-Criticism sinee 1836 (New York: Norton,'1965J, p. Il.
18 Auden, p. 419.
"19 u Auden, p. 419, Patten, pp. 27-28 •
20 See Kincaid, p. \ 31, pattèn, p •. 24, for more on Jingle o ,
as teacher. --.
21 Johnson, I, 171.
22 John -Killharn', "Pickwiek: Dickens and the Art of Fic-
tiQn, Il in Dickens and \the Twentieth Century, ed. John' Gross'
and Gabriel Pearson (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1962),
p. 40. 2) 0
"Patten"p. 28. ,
24 Harry Stone, Dickens and. the Invisible World: Fairy' , 1
Tales, Fantasy" and Novel! Making CBloomington and London:
Indiana University Press, 1~79), p. 73~
25 Patten, p. 30.
26 Ganz, p. 40.
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. II: The ~onster: Dariiel aUilP'
ê)
·One of' the most interesting and yet easily forgotten " \ ,
facts about The Old Curiosity Shop is that ifs chief villain,
,# Daniel Quil,p, is -hardly a cr inlÏnal at aIl.. Despi te his\ un-
.
, changing and unce,asing malice, he does little that -he could be
tried for and found guilty of in a court of law. There is an 1 4
that h4 ~s involyed with the Gri~inal ~ ~,smoked his, smugg~ cigars under the very nos~
early mention
of London: he
of the Custorn HOus~"l. but nothing else of this world 'is seen \ .
or~h~ard of in the novel. His physical attac~s upon his wife
and Samps6n Brass, which occur often"seem out of the juris
diction of' the, courts of the time. The law doe's not tàke an
interest in Quilp un"til the plot to frame Kit ,for ,theft is
discovered. Quilp makes a point of "separating himself from \. 1
the crime, however,.when he tells Sarnpson Brasa: ~Now, you
know the lad, and' can guess the rest. Devise your own rneans /
of putting h1m out of my way, and execute them" (Ch. li,.p.
, 479). He is aloof enough, from the actual crime that. he Gan
truly later say to Brass: "Why do you talk to me of comb~ning
,together? Do 1 combine? Do 1
binings?" (Ch. lxii, p. 567).
\ , know anything about your cOm-
\
The ?nly testimony whlch seri-" ,
ously incriminates Quilp';-- Sampson" Brass's own -- Ois extreme-,\ '/
ly biased: "Mr Brass, in a great hurry, revealed the whole .
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35
story; beàring as heavily as possible on his amiable employer,
and making himself out ta be rather a-saint-like and holy
character, though subject he ack~owledged ta hutnan weaJç-
nesses" ~Ch. lxvi, 608). Althou~h Quilp may be the nchief
agent in this villainyn (ch.lxvi,. p. 598), be cannot be con
-sidered legally r'esponsible. His one true attempt to commit
an obViously illegal Act -- fleeing from a warrant -- is un
successful, and ends in hjs ~eath.
In a strictly legal sense, then, Julian Symons is correct
when4Q writes: "Quilp is one of~ the most extraordimiry of _
Dickens's creations, and yet one of the most unsucces~ful:
for, having created this monstrous machine, Dickens can find
no adequ~e wo~k f~r it ta do. n2 Quilp is, however, 'intens~ly alive, active, and evi~nd ~hat evil i8 usually above legal-
~ \ !
ity.' No one could be convicted of anythin~ ih Engla~d for
saying nI don't eat babies; l don't like 'em n (~h. xxi, p. \
·223), but it is such a phrase, with its evil-flavoured'humor, \
that brilliantly characterizes some sort of demon or monster , /
or some sort of Quilp.
The most monstrous of Quilp' s actions -- those whieh
force Nell and old T~ent to flee their house and eventually to
die, are not at aIl illegal. -In fact, they are sanctioned by .
" the law: "The old man's illness'had not lasted man y days when
he [Quilp] took
them, in ~irtue
premises and/aIl upon
to that effect, which - .
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36
fe~~nderstood and none presurned to calI in question" '(Ch. xi,
p. ~36). The law ls a plaything to ouilp'~ he abuses it as he
abuset his lawyer, Brass. Through the Brasses he uses the
Iaw's ·slippery and eel-like crawlings,· ra,ther th an its
"eagle-flights, which are rare~ (C~ xxxiii, p. 321). ~Until
Ouilp'dies and the Brasses fall, soèiety as a just and
avenging force ls hardly present in The Old Curiosity,Shop
where society should help Nell and hinder Quilp, lt does
nothing of the sort. In The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens
chooses ta largely ignore·social~mechanisms and lnstead to
investigate powers that transcended early Victorian~society.
Of aIl Dickens's novels, The Old Curiosity Shop ia
certainly the least rooted in concrete zeality. The chron-t:. ,
ology of the novel Is vague; at one point Dickens implies that
Queen Victoria reigns (Ch~ xiii, p. 152), but later in the
novel, ~eference ls made to His Majesty, meanin~ ei~her George
IV or William IV. Thé geography, too, is vague. Dickens
gives no names for any of the places that Nell wanders through
(even thougp these places were often based on actual loca-
tions). This deliberate obscurity tends to place the tale (
apart from specifie social issues and concerns -- so mu ch so,
/ that many cri tics see the world of The Old Curiosity Shop as
an alternate one. K. J. Fielding feels that: ·The story m~st
be read as a kind of fairy-tale.· 3 To J. Billie Miller, -The ,. 4'.
Old Curiosity .Shop ls Dickens's most dreamlike novel,· and to /
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Edg~r Johnson, "the entire tale has about it something fabu-
lous. ft)
< ., •
Harvey Peter Sucksmixh sees Nell's wanderings as "an /1
a!chetypal journey through hell and purgatory ~oward paradlse
. . . . Dickens himself is conscious of this transcen-
dent aspect of the novel when he writes of" Nell (through Kas
ter Humphrey) "she seemed to exist in a kind of allegory ,,1' •. If The_Old Curiosity Shop is viewed as a fairy tale,
drearn, fable, or allegory, the role of Quilp is given added
significance. His evil 15 not a sort of petty, amoral evil
that sort of evil that Jingle uses as a defense against real
ity -- but is a superhuman force, a conscioüs attack on good
ness, which is'almost omnipresent and yet emanates from one
being. Quilp ~s the "evil genius" of Nell and the other virt
uous characters, and no matter how far they run his presence , ~
~ . seems somehow to sur round them. Dickens, very ambitiously,
creates a character that is Evil, and one to which almost
every evil in. the novel is connected, directly oiÇ_~ndirectly,
or reflected. Dickens ~ble to maintain the cha,racter of' \
Quilp by providing him with a strong vitality, a vitality
which makes him both absolutely evil and uniquely the one man
Daniel Quilp. The legal mechanism of early nineteenth-century , ry England is in no way equipped to deal 'with such a monster as
this: although legally he May not be a thlef or a murderer,
(an~ although su ch villains certalnly do. exist i~~
Daniel Quilp ls th,e Most completely ev!l character in -
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·l Dickens's works. , \
The force whièh Daniel Ouilp embodies ls partially pre-\
sented before Quilp makes bis fir't appearaI}ce, with the
description' of .the Old Curiosity Shop itself. Thomas Heed
wrote ~n 1840, during the seriaI publication of the book (and
therëfore before its completion):
To turn from old loves to new, we do not know where we have met, in fiction, with a more'stri~ing and picturesque combination of images than is presented by the simple, childish figure of Little Nelly, amidst a chaos of such obsolete, grotesque, old-world commodities as form the stock in trade of the Old Curiosity Shop. Look at the Artist's 'picture of the child, asleep in her little bed, surrounded, or r~ther mobbed, by ancient armour. and arms, antique furhiture, and relies sacred or profane, hideQus or grotesque: -- it is like an Allegory of the peace and innocence of Childhood in the midst of violence, Superstition, and aSI the hateful or hurtfu1 Passions of the world.
Quilp is the active expression of these "hateful or hurtful 1
~ Passions," of the evil, and of the danger that is dormant
and merely potential in ttre the Old Curiosity Shop itself.
John Forster writes: "The hideous lumber and rottenness that
~urround/the 'child in her grandfather's home, take shape again
in Quilp and his filthy gang."9 Qui-lp ia more than simply one
curiosity among others, but lord over them, in the same way
that he ~s lord over his human gang. Quilp and his gang
are not simply confined to the old Curiosity Shop, as the im
material grotesques are, butjnhabit a larger world that is . hardly less cur;ous than thé shop. In this sense, even though
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the actuâl Old CUfiosity Shop disappears forever before one~
fifth of the novel passes, the title is appropriate through
out. Besides the curious world of the shop, there are the
curious haunts of Quilp, and the odd assortment of curious
places Nell discovers on her journey. More than this, though,
there are the extended curiosity shops of London, of England,
or even of the corporeal world as a whole -- and, whilel she
lives, Nell cannot escape the influence of that great' "shop."
Before Nell flees from her home, she c~tches a glimpse 'of ~
the larger c urio si t Y shop outside: "There was a crooked
stack of chimneys on one of the roofs, in which by often look
ing at them she had fancied ugly faces that were frowning over Iv
at her and trying to peer into the r,oom • • • " ·(Ch. ix, p.
120). On the jo~rney out of the city and towards a pastoral
wonderland, Nell'constantly encounter~e such curiosities
-- the Punch show, the description of the habits of carnival
freaks by the ugly "Sweet William" Vuffin in the Jolly Sand
boys (Ch. xix, pp. 204-6), the gypsies, tramps, gamblers, and
·vagabond groups" at the races, which "frightened and re-\
pelled" Nell (Ch. xix, pp. 209-210), the murderers, clowns,
and despots of Mrs. Jarley's waxworks (especially terrifying
a~ight), the hell of the Black 'country, and finally, the
mute~, disarmed i and mostly dead .curiosities of the village \
in which Nell meets her death: "a place to live and learn to
die inl" (Ch. Iii, p. 482).
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While NeIll s journey is' an attempt to free herself from
the grotesque forms of the Dld Curiosity Shop and the'larger'
curiosity shop of the city and the,world, Ouilp delights
in those forms. His London is one'larg~ curiosity shop con-
, taining a host of others: the junkyard of ouilp's wharf, the
confusion and noise of the river, and the ·summer-house" that
ouilp frequents, "a rugged wooden box, rotten and bare to
see" (Ch. xxi, p. 225), which is appropriately called "the
Wilder~ess" despite, or even because of, it~ location in the
city. There is also the Brasses' residence and office, which
Dick Swiveller calls "a most 'remarkable and supernatural sort.
of house!" (Ch. xxxiv, p. 334). G. K. Chesterton writes that /
Dickens' s "idea of 'a desolate place is a place where, anything
can happen; he has no'idea of, that desolate place where no
thing can happen" -- and in these city wastelands, it is
largely Ouilp who provides that great ~otentiality.l0
Ouilp's energy always is associated with a will to domi
nate and/ ta control his situation ·and environment completely,
aIl of which he usually does. Th~ earliest and most obvious
example of this occurs when he cornes to cont~ol the original
and symbolic curiosity shop. When Ouilp is first seen in the
shop, he seems to have a strange and uniq,ue power over aIl tne
curiosities when h~ looks "with a keen glance around which
seemed to comprebend every object within bis range of vision,
'however small or trivial • . .' • CCb. iii, pp. 69-70). That
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41
comprehensiolL-..becomes, later,' an economic control, of/he
~ouse, and a psychological and physical control of its inhab-, ,
itants, when Quilp takes over t~e shop and moves in. rHe makes
- ---a--s.Q{t of throne-rooItl in the back parlour, and is care'ful to
take "a minute inventory of aIl the goods in the place" (Ch.
,xi, p. 141). In this crowded and tiny kingdom he is happiest
when he can make an atready claustrophic at~osphere even more
so by smoking withoùt cessation. His u1timate act of p~rver
sion and dominance of the cu~iosity shop occurs when he requi-
, sitions Ne~l's bed to'use as his own -~ an action with obvious
sexual overtones: "the bed being soft and comfortable, Mr
Quilp determined'to use it, both as a sleeping place by night
and as a kind of Divan by day" (Ch. xi, p. 141). The image of
the chi1d that Haster Humphrey has in chapter one: "surrounded \
~ and beset by everything that was foreign to its nature, and
furthest rernoved from the sympathies of her sex and age" (p.
56), goes a step further in this later scen~ when the greatest
curiosity of thema1l overwhelms that one place in the shop
. which once appearèd so holy and somehow inviolable.
this point in the story that Nell ia forced to flee.
It is at
In the world in which Ouilp thrives, humans are as 1ikely
as objects t~be curlosltles. Obviously Sampson Brase 18
1ittle more than a device to,Quilp; and when he ia in the Old
Curloaity.Shop, he is called -the ugliest piece of goods in
aIl the stock- (Ch. xii, p. 150). Q~ilp delights ~n his power
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42
to control and abuse objects and people alike. That power is
strong and outgoing, and it largely dictates the actions and
energies of his thralls in London, and which finds a haunting
expression in the unending sense of persecution that Nell
encounters in the countryaide. It ia a force which is, more
than anything else, vital -- a hypnotic, unceasing, and con
suming life-force.
-~ .. -
That force is seen in every aspect of Ouilp's being. In
his physical ~ovementa he ia unceasingly active; he ia one of \.
those charactera of which "the ferocity_of their animation
suggests a large energy and life compelled into tight bonds.-ll
Be desirea that sort of animation in others; he keeps his wife
awake for a whole night to torture her, and is overjoyed to
turn the near-museum of the Curiosity Shop into a near-circus.
Even in his sleep he betrays a sort of liveliness·-- he.,sleeps
with his eyes partially open <Ch. xii, p. 150).
Quilp's symbolic role as the life force in the novel ia
emphasized by his usual, and his favorite, geographical 10-
cation the heart of London, and thus the most act,ive area
in aIl of Great Britain. When Dickens describes life upon the
Thames, he describes a world in which Nell ls lost and Qu~lp . . ia very much at home:
Coming slow1y on through the forest of masts was a great steam ship, beating the vater in short impatient stroke·s with her heavy padd1es as though she wanted room to bteathe, and advancing in her\ huge bulk like a se~ mQn~ter among' the minnows of
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the Thames. On either h~nd were long black tiers of-colliersi between them vessels slowly working out of harbour with sails glistening in the sun, and creaking noise on board, re-echoed from a hundred quarters. The water and aIl upon it was in ~ctive motion, dancing and buoyant and bubbling up • • •• (Ch. v, p. 86)
Quilp's phys~cal activity never fails ta match the activity of
the world around him.
Steven ~arcus describes Qu~lpls role , and Nell's con
traating raIe, in the novel:
Nell is the spirit moving toward the peace of death, detached in her immaculàteness from the source out of whièh spirit springs. Quilp, however, is that source; he is flesh gone wild, and in a novel whose overpowering movement is toward death, hé personifies the energy of life -- life conceived as a perver~ and destructi~e element,
\ but. life nonetheless.
In The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens makes a, balance be
tween life-force and death-force~ Nell'a death-force ia, like
Quilp's life-force, almost omnipresent and yet largely
embodied in one individual. To truly understand Quilp's great
force, it ia n~tessart to understand the force of his toile
From the plot of the book, it would seem that Quilp is
powerful and Nell iS,weak, but this i~-only true in a limited
sense. Nell, tao; has her power, but it ls a power\divorced
from the materi~l and the earthly. As A. C. Swinburne writes,
somewhat
wings at
unkindly,
once. _13
-Dickens might as weIl have fitted her vith
Nell appears ~p commune with the angels an~ j
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feast on deat~ f~om the start; the first illustration of her,
and the second-Iast one (ju~t before one that shows her being )
lifted up to he aven by a group of angels) both show her in a
"similar state: unc<?nscious (in one, dead), in bed, surrounded
by and aloof from the world of curiosities. The similarities
in the illusti'ations imply a ciose connection between the liv
ing-Nell and the de ad one -- the connection between death and
living death. John Forster is just being silly when he wribes
about The CId Curiosity Shop:
1 was responsible for its trag~c ending. He [Dickens] had not thought of -killing her, when, about half-way through, I asked him to consider whether it did not necessarily belong to his own conception, after taking so mere a child through such a tragedy of sorrow, to lift her also out of the commonplace of ordinary happy endings, so that the gentle pure little figure and form-should' never· change to the fancy.
According to Forster: RAIl 1 meant he seized on at once and
never turried aside from it again. ft14 Forster was, however, as
he n~arly admits, only pointing out the inevitable to Dickens.
While it is true that Dickens sometirnes did alter his con-
ceived plots on the suggestion of acguaintences (it was done, or':;'" ,(. \
~;, '\ for exarni'l:e, in the case of James Carker>, in tnis case Nell' s
death is a necessity from the start. Although'· Dickens can
write, at the end of ~ittle Dorrit of John Cleunam and Little
Dorrit hers:rf ~Tney went quietly down into the roaring ~
street'S, i~epaàlble-" and blessed~ and as they passed along in \ ..,.,.-~
0,
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45 ,
SUDSbiD
t and shade. the noisy and the eager, and the ~rrogant
and the forward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made
their usual upro~r .. 15 he can never say anything of the . . . , kind ab9ut Nell, a creature of extremes" forever repelled by
the things that Clennam and Little Dorrit (who is, like Nell,
a stunted and virtuous girl-child, albeit a modified on.> have
adapted to. In The Old Curiosity Shop, no compromises are
possible; it i~ efther Nell or the grotesques who must dis-
appear from the earth, and the novel ia at least enough rooted
in reality that it is Nell who dies.
Her death is a process that begins quite early iri the
novel~ when she begins to see a pastoral alternative to the
woes she and her grandfat~er face in Ouilp's London:
- , Let us walk through country placés, and sleep in fields and under trees, and never think of money again, or anything that can make you sad, but rest at nights, and have the sun and wind upon our faces in the day, and thank God together. Let us never set foot in dark rooms or melancholy houses anymore, but wander up and down wherever we like to go, and when you are tired, you shall stop to rest in the pleasantest place that we can find, and 1 will go and beg for both. (Ch. ix, p. 124).
More interesting than what they would have in this dream worl~
is what tbey would ~ bave. Money and shelter in this state,
it seems, are only things to ma~e one sad, aIl human contact
except that whicb would come through the unavoidable and
unromantic dut Y of begging -- is unnecessary, and because of
the need for perpetuaI movement, discouraged. Also missing ia
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.. ' any conception of rain or snow. In this somewhat absurd visIOn .
only the need for food holds ~ell anywhere neàr ... ~ to earth. , . .
In this scene, and in latér ones, pastoral images are " /
close1y related to death. Steven Marcus write.s of The Old
"Curiosity Shop: "The" Eng1and of the novel is nothing less than
a vast necrop~lis. Those who are not in their graves soon . will be -- they are merely the living dead-•• 16 When her
ramblings are not ,interrupted
ana Jar1eys of the novel Cand
• if • ~L
by the lively Codlins ~pd Short~ , b
sometimes ~ven when they ~re);
Nell encounters death at every turne At the firet place that Q
Nell begs, an old man, without any pro~~ting, tells' her about \
- his dead son. Soon after ~his we read that Nell ·felt a cur-.
ious k,ind of pleasure 0 in 'lingerin9 among the bouses of the
de ad • .' • • CCh. xvii, pp. 186-7). It is in a graveyard that
she meets Codlin and Short. 17 It is in the sarne graveyard
that she later meets an old woman visiting the grave of her
husband who has been dead 'fÇ)'r, fifty-si'x years. Later Nell '"j
meets the kind schoolmasterï' a' sort of guide to death, who/
~ 1eads her tO,see the schoolboy's death and later almost su
pe'rvises her own. The images of death, graves, age, slow
decline, and angels, incre~se as Nell and her\ grandfather'
progress, until, at the village in which she is to die, every
thing Is related to death and is meant to .foreshadow Nell's ~ own. She "lives in a place that is almost a tomb. Almost aIl
her acquaintances are 014 men who seem neal; death: the grave-
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47
digger, the sexton (who takes pleasure in showing Nell graves
and crypts) ~ and the -Bachelor,· who studies the history, of ~
the '<::orpses of the town. Ev;e.,ry thought and image, conscious ,
or dreaming, that Nell has, is on a happy death. The'refer-, .. 1
ences to death in the relevant chapters Clii-lv) are far too
" numerous to relate. Even the village 1s_ dying; Dickens _pur
posefully presents, and Nell realizes, -the solemn pre~énce
within,- of that decay which falls on senseless things the most b
-enduring in their na_ture; and, without,_ and round a:bout on r--
every side, of Death" CCh. Iii, p. 484). From tllis village of
death to Nell's actual death is no great step, although'
Dickens greets it with the overblown burst of blank verse
sentimentality which has tended to give the entire novel,
unfortunately, its tarnished reputation,.' In a way, though,
tliat sentimentality is necessary: Nell' s death is the bitter-<}',
tl 1 ...
swee~ triumph of her entire progress l , and ,like Christian
r~achin~ the Ce.lestial City, that deserves, sorne celebration.
The comparison between Pilgrim's progress and Tbe Old
Curiosity Shop is not an arbitrary one. Nell makes the com-$""
~ parison herself when she saya to ,her grandfather~ "1 feel: aà if
we were ,t5'oth Christian, and laid down on this grass all the '1
cares/and troubles we brought with us, never to take them up
again~_)Ch.p xv, p.17S). Like Christian in pilgrim's" Progr-ess,
Nell's adversaries have been seen _~~ especially, by
Dickens's contemporarie8 -- aa •• re foils t~' and only
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.. important because of their relation to he~. ' As Una pope-
Hennessy writes: ' / \
Neither Codl::in and Short, nor Mrs. Jarley, n'Or indeed any of the comie characters, interested contemporary readers to the sarne degree as his heroine', Nell: their .... attention and sympathy were fixed on Nell, and Nell alone. The other figures in the book were accepted as necessary to the dev,elopment of the story and as foHs1SO the angelic quali ties of "the li tUe girl. ,
The ravings of Thomas Hood and John Forster over Nell tend to
reflect this position. n,ickens may have had this view in"
mind 'for sorne' of t:he n,ovel, and especially in the fir~t ehap':" , '!.' \ '
ter, when Nell is surrounded by grotesques and is eertainly
the focal point; of the scene. But later in the novel, Dickens
writes: -Everything"in our lives, whether, of good or evil,
affects us rnost by contrast'" ,(Ch. liii, p. 493), and unlike
Pilgrim's Progiess, ev!l in The C1d Curiosity Shop is centered
around one person. If ouilp is a foil to Nell, then Nell is
just as much a foil to Ouilp. The polarizati"On between the
two sets the standard for the complete polarization of the /
novel itself. Malcolm Andrews writes:
/
More than 'any other of Dickens' s novels; The Old Cur ios1 ty Shoe' s design is dependent on tne reéJ.lization of • • • broad contrasts: youth and 'old age, beaut.y: and ,deformity, country and city, ,light and darkness" freedom and cQnstraint, illusion and reality. "'l'hey are 'amplified to such a degree that the novel virtually breaks in two, aa we follow in sequences of, cb~pters first. Nell and her grand-fat.ller in the countrvltt th"en QUilp, Kit and Dick SWiveller in London.~"
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/ 49
Andréws points out one of the greatest !aults in the plot of
The Old Curiosi ty Sho;p: after a horrifying vision that Nell
has of Quilp in the count ryside, half-way through the novel,
the two never meet again -- and the last time Quilp sees Nell
is much earlier, in ch~pter twet_.ye. In a sense, this di ver
gence matbers little -- Dickens is still able ta play off
Nell' s goodness against Quilp' s evil through theï-r inter
actions with the world rather than with each other. A far i;I T
greater problém with ~J'le novel concerns the cosmÙ: struggle
between the two" and the forces they represent. The Old
Curiosity Shop should be, on its level of myth, fable, or
allegory, the presentation of a battle for the earth, a battle
, fought between the other-worldly Nell-force and the under
worldly Quilp force. In that battle, however, Quilp is, from
the start, a winner by default. One contrast which Andrews
neglects to mention is one of the mpst important -- the con
trast between th"e ·material and the immaterial: the wor1d of
'"' the material, 'of course, being strictly Quilp's domaine , 1
In
presenting Nell as a spirit, Dickens :\is aIl too successfull , ,
Nell is the living dead' in its most 'contradictory sense. By
cornparison, Ouilp's assertion of life, and his fufillment
through controlling the things of this world..;nakes b..im one who ,
lives life in the most emphatic sense of that phrase. By
being repelled by the material, Nell i8 an impossib11ity.
Quilp' s problem, if he has one, 1s that he i8 aIl too attrac-
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ted to and triumphan.t over the material., That triumph over
,matt'er forces the reader to 'hink that matter i t~elf is- evil.
On an earthly plane, Nell' s only triumph is that she is able
to die and escape' Quilp and the material.
Quilp' s close symbolic association with the earthly and
material is se en throughout, the novel. Whereas Nell is a;;r;
to remain impossibly immaculate during her long wanderings,,'
Quilp seems always to attract dirt. Even his~washings serve
to make hrm dirtier: "Mr Quilp withdrew ,.to the adjoining room
and turning back hi p coat-collar, proceeded' to srnear his
countenance wi th a damp towel of a very unwholesome apearance,
which madehis complexion rather more cloudy than i t was be
fore" CCh. v, p. ~5). As d~rt i8 att.racted to' Qùilp, SO i8
Quilp attracted to di rt: at Quilp' s Wharf, where Quilp appears
to the reader to be m'Ost at home, he sleeps "amidst the con
genial accornpaniments of rain, rnl)d, dirt, damp, fog, and rats
••• " <Ch. li, p. 472>' In a characteristic pose, Quilp ts \
, seen "throwing himself on the ground" where he "screamed and
rolled ~bout in the most uncontrollable deliciht" <Ch. xxi, p.
227). When Nell spots' Quilp in the countryside, he i6 once ~
again associated ,with the ground in a different sense~ ".he
seemed ·to have risen out of the ear~h" <Ch. 27, p. 276).
Northrop Frye sees Quilp as an inanirnate object anima-
ted:
In ~he Old Curiosity Shop, after we have been
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introduced ta Quilp, Little Nell and her grandfather set out on their travels and see a Punch and Judy show. It occurs to us that Quflp, who ia described as a "grotesque puppet,n who lies,
'cheats, beats his wife, gets in'bo fistfights, 'drinks like a salamander, and cornes to a sticky end in, a bog6 is Punch, brought ta life as a char acter • "2 \,
51
Frye 1 s view is somewhat nar raw, however; he certainly realizes
Quilp' s vitality but redùces Hs symbolic depth by seeing him \
as an animate puppet. Arthur Washburn Brown 1 s view of Quilp
as" "king of the goblins in The Old Curiosity Shop"21 ia more
effective -- it combines the sense of matter with the supèr-. natural energy and potential which a Punch could no t, have.
Other cri tica hav~ realized that supernatural, non-spiritual
or anti-spiritual energy, and have seen Quilp as such thing$
as one of the ndevUs and demons of darkness" (with Fagin),
and' as "a n fire-eating demon, JI or as "entirely Sabttnic," and
,,22 "utterly monstrous . . . . Dickens carefully develops this
\ monstrosi ty Jn his c("eation of Quilp; and although Many
cri tics see aH of Dickens 1 s villains as monsters of one type
'or anather, only one other has a truly, supernaturally man
strous aspect: Fagin. The supernatural eneigy of these two
serves to set them apart from the more socially motivated and \
restricted villains in Dickens -- villain~ such' as Bill Sikes, (>- '
Ralph Nickleby, Jona/s Chuzzlewit, Sir Johii'<::hester, and James
Carker. 'Quilp is set apart even from Fagin in th~ complete
ness of his supernaturality; Fagin, though often seen as a
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demon, is still closely connected wrth the criminal underworld
of London and is caugQt in the workings ,of society and the
law: he, unlike Quilp, is caught and put down by a powerful ,
society'. Quilp is not nearly as, restricted. 1
Many of Quilp's actions are sufficiently amazing to' cause
th~ reader to doubt his humanity. There;âre, first of aIl, /
his supernatural appearances -- he has the ability to show up~ ri.
when his appearance is least expected and least desired. When
Nell describes her pastoral dre~m to her grandfather early in
the novel, both they ~md the r-eader are sup'rised to learn that
"other ears and eyes w~re there and greedily taking in aIl ,
that passed, and moreover-they were the eyes and ears of no
less a person than Mr Daniel Quilp •••• ft The figure's
presence causes Nell and her grandfather to "half-doubt its
'reali~yn (Ch. vii, p.124). Later, Quilp descends upon his .. wife and her friends just as they are disc~ssing him. In
another scene, a drunk~n lioli.loquy· of Dick Sw~veller' s turns
out not to be a Boliloquy at aIl -- Quilp has been the- unob
served spectator of the whole thing. Quilp later goes through
a mock res-urrection when he appears to his family and to Samp
son Brass after they believed he was dead. When Quilp appears . .
to Nell in the country, his appearance is truly magical, and
to Nell, truly demonic; he is seen "showing in the m~onlight
like'some~monstrous image that had corne down from its niche
and was casting a backwards glance at its old house" ,(Ch.
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xxvii, p. 276) ~ ..,;
It is in b.his-s~~îihe~e Quilp appears to /"
have arisen out of the earth'. ,J,
Quilp's humanity is elsewhere doubted. After viewing his \
\ -~ eating habits, his wife and mother-in-law "were nearly fright-
ened out of their wits, and began to doubt if he were really a
human creature" (Ch. v, p. 86). Their doubt is certainly --
merited, for they had just watched him as "he ate hard eggs,
shell and aIl, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads and
tails on, chewed tobacco and water-cresses at the sarne time
and with extraordinary greediness, drank boiling tea without
winking, [and] bit his fork and spoon till they bent again • •
.. His drinking habits are just as inhuman; at one pqint in • •
the Il.ovel he cheerfully puts down near-ly a half-pint of boil-
'\. ing rum <Ch. ·lxii, p. 567-8). When he asks Dick if he enjoys
his ~lass of "the noblest Schiedam," he says: "15 it good • ~Y'
• is it strong and fiery? Does it make you wink, and choak,
and your eyes water, and your breath corne short -- does it?".
TO'which Dick -- no innocent to the world of alcoholic con--_ ~ ~~f'
sumption -- answ~ "Why, man, yo~ don't mean to tell me that
you drinl( such fire as this?· (Ch. xxi, p. 226). Unlikè Jin
gle, who. betrays a dependen,cy of sorts on alcohol, Qu:i;lp de
lights in drinking fire, or eating garbage, or smoking rank
ness simply because they are so na st y, and by doing so he
shows his power over the immaterial. He ~lso finds pleasur~ .. in tor:.turing normal human beings to partake of inhuman in-
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54
Sampson B'rass is the constant v·ictim to this
Nubbles is another character who doubts Quilp' s
and she ,even sees him as Satan himself:
Qui~p derived in. the course of his journey much cheerfullness of .. spi rit inasmpch as her sOl'i tary condition enabled him to terrify ber with many extraordinary annoyances; such as hanging over the side of't~e coach at th~ risk of bis life, and starin9 in with his great goggle eyes, which seemed in hers the more horrible from his face being upside down; dodging her in this way from one window to another, getting nirnbly down wbenever they changed horses and thrusting his bead in at the window with a dismal squint: which ingenious tortures had such an effect on Mrs Nubbles, that she was quite unable for the time to resist the belief that Mr Quilp did in his own person represent and embody that' Evil Power, who was so vigorously attacked at Little BetheÏ, and who, by reason of her backsliding in respect of Astley's and oysters, was now frolicksome and rampant. (~h. xlviii,' p. 454).
Indeed, despite its overall comic tone, this_scene has some-
thing in i t o~ .such religious temptations as are found in
lives of early and medieval saints. One remarkable aspect of
O~lp seen here is his extreme agility. It is certainly t~,ue
that "Quilp leaps and quivers like a charge of pure energy. ,,2) ,~
As Dickens writes,.he had a "taste for doing"something fan-
tastic and monkey-like, wh1ch on aIl occasions had strong
possession of him" <Ch. ix, p. 124). This yen for the fan
tastic is quite incredible, considering his stature and ap-
pearance, but neither apparently has any negative effect upon
his movement. In orie scene, while playing cards, he is-~een
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55
\
t~~rether -,~
"often treading on' bis wife' s toes she cried
out or rernained silent under the infl iction" (Ch. xxiii, p.
244),' and this malicious act becornes an amazing feat, consi-
~ering Quilp's size, and considering the fact that in every ~
illustration of Quilp sitting down, his feet never come close , '
to touching tbe ground. Apparent1y, for Quilp, small size is
never an obstacle.
Quilp's inhuman appearance is the most obvious sign of
bis rnonstros~ty.··He is, without ~uestion; the rnost hideous of
aIl Dickens~ creations; his ugliness matches his evil: -Quilp
is indeed a villain out of convent~onal romance, where ug1i-o \,
,ness or beauty is no mere metapbor in morali ty, i t is the
thing i tself.," 24 Quilp ~aradoxically finds more relaxation
and satisfaction in purposely contorting his face, at times,
than in leaving it at rest. After a scene which calls for him
to maintain a serious demeanor, , Quilp is seen. "recompen.sing
himself for the restraint he had 1atel~ put upon bis counten
ance by twisting it into aIl' imaginable varieties of ugli
ness", <Ch. xlviii, p. 451). Often, cruelty and ·ugliness are
to Quilp the same thing:
Mr Quilp now walked up to the front of a looking-glass, and was standing there puttin9 on
_ his neckerchief when Mrs Jiniwin, happening to be ---behind him, could not resist the inclination she
felt ,to shake her fist at her tyrant son-in-law. It was the gesture of an instant, but as éhe did so and accornpanied the action witb a'menacing look, she met his eye in the glass, catching her in the very act. The sarne glance at the mirror conveyed
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to her the reflection of a horribly grotesque and distorted face with the tangue loiling out; and the next instant the dwarf, turning about with a perfectly bland.and placid look, inquired in a tone of great affection, .
"How are you now, my dear old darling~" Slight and ridiculous as the incident was, it
made him appear such a little fiend, and withal such a keen and knowing one tbat the old woman felt tao much afraid of him to utter a single word, and suffered herself to be led with extraordinary 'politeness to the breakfast-table. <Ch. iv, pp 85-86)
Quilp is able, here and elsewhere, to use his body to fas
cïnate -- or as a hypilotic prop. That rnesmerism is clearly
apparent in his relat~on with ~rs. Ouilp, and it is hinted
that most women would feel the same attraction when MIS. Quilp
says,"QuilP has such a way with hirn when he likes, that the
best-looking woman here couldn't refuse him if l was dead, and
she was free, and he chose to make love to her" <Ch. Iv, p. \
76). ~teven Marcus notices this great attraction: ~Despite
his monstrous deformity and uncouthness, he is endowed with a
creaturely wit and charm ~hich he directs at women -- and
they, despite' their repugnance and fear, are somehow compelled
to respond. n25 Marcus fails to notice, however, that it is
just this repugnance and fear that ailows Ouilp to dominate
others. This i5 certainly true in his handling of Mrs. Jini-
win in the above scene. His "wit and charm" are products'of
his malevolénc~, and are a mockery of the good humor and
good intentions of wit and charm. In other words, Ouilp i8
a specialist i~ satire and spi te: "He desires to hurt people
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\ the same hearty way that a good natured man desires to help
... them. "26 Quilp is forever asking after his companions' co~-
,fort, and forever'desiring them ta enjoy themselVes. In t'his
respect his attention is something like Wardle's in Pickwick
Papers. .Quilp' s concern, however, is with everyone 1 s discom-
fort. He demands that Brass enjoys the pleasures of smoking
when Brass is "winking very much in the pnguish of his pip~"
<Ch. xi, p. 139"). He is careful to ask Nell of h~r ailing
grandfather's health when he would like to' see that man dead.
When Quilp has b~en believed dead, he parodies kindness when
he encounters those that have searched the Thames for him:
"Have you been dragging the river aIl day, gentlemen?" said the dwarf, holding the door open with great politeness.
"And yesterday too, master." \ "Dear me, you've had a deal of trouble. Pray
consider everything yours tnat you find upon the upon the body. Good night!" <Ch. xlix, p. 462)
With sentiments such as this; Quilp is an excellent example of
Walter Allents statement that, in Dickens, "the difference .. between the characters we think of as primarily comic and
those we think of as sinister and melodramatic is often no' . more than a h~ir's breadth."27 Quilp is,.however, most
certainly a villain first and a comic character second: his ,
humor constitutes a vivid and necessary part of his evil per-
sonality. As George Ford writes: "Dickens's methad ~s ta make
. ... . 'strongly-marked' black characters prob~ble by gr~yin9
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58
them not with virtues but with humor. It is a form of com
plexity, diffe~ent from George Eliot's for example, but still
a form of complexity." Ford goes on to say, "for his white
cha'racters, whose goodness is • strongly marked,' h~ often uses \
no comparable ,rnethod of greying. That is one of the reasons
why the purely virt~ous figures such as Li~tle Nell, Agnes,
and Little Dorrit, seem improbable. n28 Humor is a strong ,
component of Ouilp' s liveliness, and any comparable humor in
Nell would serve only to destroY,her placid lifelessness.
Another natural human ,attr ibute that Ouilp' is overcharged'
with (and that Nell is completely and necessarily lacking) is
sexuality. Even though Quilp's sexual nature is only hinted
at, he i5 one of the few Dick"e'ns creations that truly has -a
personali ty which can be considered well-rounded enough to
include a sexual aspect. There are sorne obvious clues' in the
novel to Quilp'~ sexual activity. Although Dickens decided·to
, suppress the 1 ine of the plot thàt has Sally Brass as the
~archioness' s mother, he leaves evidence that --not, only is this
50, but that Ouilp is the girl's father; Dickens writes that
Dick Swiveller ......
, was accustomed • • • to debate in his own mind the
• mysterious question of Sophronia's parentage. Sophronia herselt supposed she was'an orphan1 but Mr Swiveller, putting various slight circumstances together, often thought Miss Brass must know better
.than thati and, having heard from his wife of her strange interview with Quilp, entertained sundry misgivings whet'her that person, in his lifetime, , might not also have been able to-solve the riddle,
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had he chosen. (Ch. lxxiii, p. 669).
sally Brass rivaIs Quilp in ugliness, and she, too, can be
seen in terms of monsters (at least by Dick Swiveller,·who
calls her a dragon several times), yet Quilp's attraction to
Sally indictes his voracious sexual appetite: "While Sally'!
moustache and other dubious charms might repel leser crea
tures, Quilp will ecstatically rape anyone who gives him~he "
most trifling excuse to drop his 'only just barely maintained
restraints ... 29 -
Quilp's sexuality finds its greatest expression, and its
~reatest perversion, when directed towards t~e sexless Nell.
Quilp Is' a sexual ~rce wholly devoid of love. Dickens in
tended Nell to be a loving creature wholly devoid of a sexual
nature, and in this aspect of her, he largely succeeded. No
one but Quilp ~ould dare entertain the idea of Nell as a
sexual ooject. It is teue that Dick Swiveller and Fred Trent
conspire to have Nell marry Dick, but Fred's motives are en-
tirely mercenary, and the easy-going Dick simply allows him
self to be persuaded. Quilp has no such motive. His contem
plations of a relationship with Nell involve the death of his
present wife:
"Sow sbould y.ou 11ke to be my number two, Nelly?" "To be wHat, sir?"
\ "My number ,two, Nelly, my second, my Mrs Quilp,· said the dwarf. .
'~he child looked frightened, but seemed not to understand him, which Mr Quilp observing, hastened
\
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,
60
to explain his meaning mo~e distinctty. "To be Mrs Quilp the second, when Mrs Quilp
the first is dead, swee~ Nell," said Quilp, wrinkling up his eyes and lu,ring her towards him vith \ his bent forefin'ger" "to be my wife, my: li ttle . cherry-cheeked, red-lipped wife. Say'that Mrs Quilp lives five years, or only four, you'll be just the proper age for me. Ha, ha! Be a good girl, Nelly, a very good girl, and see if one of these days you don't come to be MIS Quilp of'Tower Hil!. ", (C~. vi, p. 93)
The image of a "cherry-cheeked, red-lipped" Nell is one that
Quilp uses .often: he calls her "such a fresh, blooming, modest
little bud •• e such a chubby, rosy, c~sy, little Nell!~ (Ch.
ix, p.12S) , "li ttle rosy Nell" (Ch. xxiii, p. 244), and,
"chupby, rosy Nell" CCh.' xlviii, .
453) e When Quilp ob-p.
, serves Nell' s grandfather g'ive her a sexless, paternal kiss,
he says "what a nice kiss that was -- just upon the roay part.
What a capital kisSl" (ix, p. 125). By calling Nell "rosy"
Quilp gi ves her a body and a sexual identity~ what would be a
compliment to anyone else ls a grotesque perversion of Ne'll' s . , complete incorporeality. Quilp tries, through giving Nell the
s11ghtest. hint of physical colour, to reduce, her to. bei'ng part
of the material world· that he controls so successfully. As
Arthur Washburn Brown writes:
_0 (
To know Nell js to love her. To know Nellis caritative pure sprit is to desire her erotl~ally. Nell' s caritative loving nature ls almost' pure Spirit e, Qullp' s erotic force ls almost unrelieved earthiness. As long as Nell is alive she i8 forever s~rrounded by earthiness. Quilp fs, in other
, " words, aIl arO\lsd Nell aIl the time until she dies to escape him. j
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Ouilp tries to reduce other characters in the novel,
a1so, and since they are already somewhat trapped in the \. , /
61
material world, he tries to reduce 'them even further. While .
he ·perversely tries to give a human nature to Nell, to others
he tries to give an animal nature. FOr example, a1though the
reader does not ,learn the name of O~ilp's "boy" -- Tom Scott ,
-- until two-thirds of the way through the' novel, it matters
little: Quilp constantly addrèsses him as "you dog." Kit,
too, he 'often sees in this way:
This Kit ls one of your honest people,' one of your fai.JZé characters; a prowling prying hound; a hypocrite~ a double-faced, white~livered, sneaking spy; a crouching cur to those that feed and coax him, and a barking yelping dog to aIl besides. Il ( Ch • l, p. 478 )
Only if Kit can be seen in such terms can he be considered
on a level with Ç)uilp. Ouilp himself does not' escape canine
association: he had a "few di~coloured fangs that were yet
scattered in his mouth and gave h~m the aspect of a panting , \
dog" (Ch. iii, p. 65)" and he has a "doglike smile" and a
,"very dogl ike manner" (Ch~ v, p.. 85). 'l'hi s aspect of Quilp q ,
. . is no less and no more important than his aspect as earth, as
l
• Punch, as a goblin, or as a demon. AlI constitute Quilp the
monster, and aIl a'~e used, whenever effective, to con,trol q..is
world. 'l'hus he betrays his own animal nat:ure 14'1 order to
excite, and to somewhat control the ani'mal natures of Kit and
Tom when they dog-fight in chapter six. Throuqhout the novel,
,
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Ouilp.can communicate with human beings only when they ignore
their splrltua~·natures~
'-The world of ,The Old Curiosity Sho~ so far presented in " this essay is one of a black-and-white world of repulsive
con.tra~ts and c~mplete polarity; ,a world unreli~ved 6y a 1
vision of a p~int between extremes -- unrelieved, that la, ,.
except byOuilp's'malicious ~ut genuine humor -- but that
humor ia itself'always "black." Certainly, the two poles and
the', two polar charac'ters in the novel creàte a vacuum. That o
vacu~m would indeed be a,cause for the failure of the novel, if
it were unfilled, but fortunately it ls filled, and' filled \
1
qui te effe~tively, by a number of characters,c the most impor- ~ /
tant aQd ~mpresslv~ of whom i8 Dick Swiveller.
This essay cannot begin to desFribe die fun~tion of th~-. -
aptly-named Swiveller in this novel. -Fortunately, that task / -
has been done br ~abrlel Pearson, ~rid later developed by
"James R. Kincaid" and also by Garrett Stewart. AlI these 1 •
critics' realize 'that pick ia an example of the necBssa:ry int'eg-
ration 0t"the earthly' and the ~iritual'in man. Ji This does
~not mean that Dick ls i~ Any way a ~normal" human being; he is
0
0 a gr'otesque 'as muc.h as QuU.p or Jlngle' are. Indeed,' one cri-0 6 Il 1"
ti·c sees much 'of J ~ngle in Dick: in "The Old 'Cur iosi ty ShoE
" .sam,wel~~r has bée~ reinstàted, in proxima' persona, wi~h a
significant ~ouch of AlfFe~ Jin91è as weIl: the first'~mer9-0. . .
ing from the second in a .compl~x char~cterization known as
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63
\
Dick Swiveller Li~e Jingle, Dick'j humor is at
. first a barely successful defense against the hostile forces
in the world -- which in The Old Curiosity Shop, because of
Quilp, is much more in evidence and thus more justified~than
it would bein~Pickwick Papers. Dick is caught between
Quilp's è~il life-force and Nell's good death-force, and he,
along with just about eveçyone else in the novel, has elements
of,both those.character-forces. From the Nell-force, aIl
thes~ qharacters ~ave a spirituality, albeit an imperfect on~. , /
~s spirituality directs'their actiong towards that which is
"young, beautiful,land'good,· but is imperfect enough to sur
vive in an imperfect world. They gain t,hat imperfection from .. ,
the Quilp-force, and often reflect that spiritual stunting
with sorne sort of physical deformity. Kit has, to Master
H~mphrey, "certainly the most comical expression of face l
ever saw" 1
.~ ( Ch • ~, p. 49). Dick is afflicted with a stupid,
drunken face, and his attire is usually in "a state of dis-
1 1
l t 1 î i . ~
~ , ~ order which strongly induced the idea that he had gone to
bed in it" (Ch. ii, p. 61). Krs. Jarley is obese, pnd takes
constant solace in her "suspicious bottle." For aIl these
chara~ters, the physical matches the spiritual, and defects
even fleasant ones -- separate'them -from Neilis world.
For two characters in th~ novel, Haster Humphrey and the
Marchioness, deformity is ev en harsher, and is a constànt re
minder of their entrapment in an imperfect world. Master
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64'
Humphrey is a "mis-shapen, deformed old man" (Appendix, p.
675), so much so that he i's at ohe point rumoured to be a / ,-monster CAppendix, p. 674). Dickens leaves no doubt that his , '
~eformity separates him ftom co~~etelY realizing sornething,
like a Nell-nature, when he describes one of Master Hurnphrey's
childhood exp~riences: '
·A little knot of playmates -- they must have been beautiful, for l see them now -- were clustered/one day round my mother's knee in eager admiration of sorne picture representing a group of infant angels, which she~held in her hand •••• There were rnany lovely angels in this picture, and 1 remember the fancy coming .upon me to point out which of them represented each child there, and that when l had gone through all my companions, l stopped and hesitated, wondering which was Most Iike me. l re--member the children lookiRg a~ each other, and my turning red and hot, and their crpwding round to kiss me, saying that they loved me aIl the sarne; and then, and ~hen the old sorrow carne into my dear mo~her' s mi Id :fand tender look,' the truth brôk'e upon me for the first tirne, and l knew" while watching rny awkward and ungainlY spoçts, how,JteenlY she had felt for her poor crippled boy. (Appendix,' p. 676)
~
.... In this passage, no one questions the idea that Master Humph
"" rey is a fallen spirit". ~nd jat his deformity is a spiritual
anchor. ,..7--" \ )
/
The Marchioness i~a character who is in rnany ways much .. like Nell, a 'young girl abused and stunted by a cUrioaity-shop
world. Because of her upbringing, the Marchioness is eQough
d~formeèl in body and mind to remain fat- fom any perfection
like that which Nell hase A description of the kitchen at the
1 Brasses', which ia the Marchioness'~prisQn and a curiosity-shop
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in its own right, ~oes far i,n expl~ining the girl' s deformity:
It was a very dark miserable place, very'low and - v~ry damp, the walls disfigured by a thousand rents
and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate, which was a wide one, was wound and" screwed ùp ti~t, sa as ta hold no more than a little thin sandwich Qf fire. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the\çandle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe,' were aIl padlocked. There was n~ing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinch~d and meagre aspect of the place would Qave killed a chamelion. He would have known at the first mouthful that the air was not eatabie, and must have given up the ghost in despair. (Ch. xxxvi~ pp. 350-1)\
t:
This is the sort of place t6at Quilp would delight in. The , '
~eminine, passive spirit of the Marc~ioness must necessarily
suffer here, and develop mental defenses ta cope,with an im-- .\ / /
perfect world d~fenses, which 1n contrast to Nell, are de-~.
formi ties. -\
Strangely, ~he March(oness, 1<i t, and Dick ,(~nd Master
Hump~reyf grow ta be less and less deformed as the novel
progresses., Rit, nearlyan idiot-boy at the beginning of the
novel, becomes the closest thing ta a male lead b~ the end,
with the seriousness such a 'raIe usually carries in Dickens.
Dick's humorous'defense turns ïnto a spirited offènse against
evil. In this change, Dick 'loses littl~ of his humor; his .'
transformation, as noticed by Garret stewart earlier, is from
a J1ngle-typ~ to a WeIler-type. The March1oness's transform
ation 1é the most spectacular; she 'changes,from a pinched ;
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dwarf to an attractive maiden.
On thefairy-tale level on which The Old Curiosity snop
must be viewed, these changes are the logical results of
positive moral developments, as aIl three of these imperfect , !' creatures go through various trials and emerge triumphantly to
show that a persoh can live happily in a curiosity-shop world.
It is important to note that those three, ~nd- the Garlands,
and Barbara, and Master Humphrey, and Mrs. Jiniwin, and even
the elderly men of Neilis death village, aIl survive when
Quilp and Nell do note So do the, Brasses, brit their lives )
become, in a sense, spiritual death as they become animaIs and
"take their way alon-g the streets, with shuff.ling steps and
cowering shivering forms, looking into the roa,ds and kennels
as the~ went in se arch of refuse food or disregarded offal" / '
(Ch. lxxii, p. 665). While the two forces of ,Nell and Quilp
cancel each other out, the\characters who in any way combine
those forces survive.
The deaths of Nell and Quilp are within hours of each
other, even though the weathe~conditions are completely
different for each one -- Quilp dies in a tank and dark fog,
and Ne~es in pleasant weather, soon after d~ybreak. The
symbolic natures of the deaths are completely different.
Quilpls 'corpse is described as follows:
. . And there it lay, alone •••• The hair, stirred by the damp breeze, played in-a klnd of mockery of death such a mockery as the dead man himself
/
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would have revelled in wh en alive -- about its head, and its dress ~luttered idly in the night wind. (Ch. lxvii, p. 620)
67
Quilp is tIow pure matter, at one w\i th the elements, even
though he retains sorne of his maliciously humorous potential.
Neills corpse, on the other hand, lacks any sort of corp
oreality: n5he was deadJ No>, sleep 50 beautiful and calm,
so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed .. ' a creature {resh from the hand of, God, and waiting for" the
\ breath of'life; not one whq had lived and suffered death n <Ch.
lxxi, p. 652)., Ne.ll' s fI ight is complete wi th her death, as
she leaves the earth that she is never !much a part of.
The Old Curiosity Shop is unique among Dickens's novels
in its rigid Lairy-tale contrasts and its sense of reality
that is largely unconcerned with the workings of society.
Because of that disregard, Dickens can concentrate more than
anywhere else on forces that transcend society. In his por
trayal of Quilp as Evil, he,ls successful -- Quilp ls both J
evil and ehtertaining, a pure ~llegory that is alive and
unique as a character. Certain c~itics have tried to see
Quilp as 'sorne sort of social force, as for exarnple John Lucas,
who sees him as lia ver,y impressive image or, embodiment of the
infallible can~er of money-interest.wJ~ In the same way, ~
\
Julian Symons see~iIP as Wthe. sinister side of radicalism ... 34
Su ch interpretations,'however, like the views of Quilp as a,
goblin, a,demon, a dqg, or as punch, take account of his
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energy but neglect his variety; Quilp incorporates and yet
transcends aIl these attributes. Ouilp's vividness and\var
iety is ironically one of the faults ot the novel: thrown . ' into battle with such a white nothing as Nell, Quilp's energy
is an unst'oppable force. Nell r s unearthiness causes the world
of The DId Curiosity s~p to be a Man~chean world in which
deformity and atrophy is the necessary priee to pay for exis
tence )5- , Nell' s virtue is a vague ,and distant light; hurnans
rnost dwell as'best they can surrounded by the unavoidable, / " , -,
fantastic, and often dangerous curiosities of the world. 1
In later novels, aS/Dickens's vision of society develops,
he is able to concentrate on a more realistic world .. -- one
that exists sornewhere closer to the mid-point of the poles
which Ouilp and Nell embody. In that worl~, animate curios
ities have a different appearance. Humphry House writes about . \
Dickens's later novels: _
Everybody is more restrained. The eccentrics and roonsters in the earlier books walk through a crowd without exciting particular attention: in the lat~ ter they are likely. to be pointed out in the streets, and are forced into bitter seclusion; ~ocial conformity has taken on a new meaning. ~ilas Wegg and Mr. Venus are at odds
6and ends with
their world as Daniel Quilp is not.) \
To effectively describe the social reality targeted in the -
later novels, Dickens must abandon the idea of having a char-
acter in'which ois "heaped together . . • aIl possible hideous-
ness •• 37 The black and white=~ichotomy of this novel t~s, \\ ~ ~
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69
in later ones, to a greyness. that might have ch'aracters (and
criminals) who are more complex and iifelike in q,ppearance and
characterization, but who are also more restrained, less
lively, ~nd oLten less humorous than'those in earlier novels.
Quilp is Dickens's fir~t and last completely inhuman char-\
a~ter, and after him, monsters would be found much more in
society as a whole than in any individual.
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Notes'
1 Charles Dickens, The CId Curiosity Shop, ed. Malcolm
Andrews JHarmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), Ch. iii, p. 73. AlI -further references to this work appear,in the texte
~ Juli~n Symons, Charles Dickens (New York: Roy Publish
ers, 1951), p. 41.
• 3 K. J. Fielding, Charles Dickens: A Critical Intro-
duction (Bostbn: Houghton Mifflin, 1958)~ p. 67. 4 Miller, p. 95.
5 John,son, l, 325. ~ Sucksrnith, .p. 80
7 This p~ticular phrase is in a portion of The Old.
Curiosity Shop that was added when the first book edition was 4
pûblished, and ls n6t found in the seriaI version',. The sense
of allegory, however, was not lost on seriaI readers and
critics, as Thomas Hood, b~low, shows. Ch. i, p. ,56. 0
8 -. Thomas Hood, rev. of Haster Humehrey's Clock, by
Charles Dickens, '''7mthen~eum, 7 November 1840, pp. 887-8; rpt.
in Philip Collins, Dickens: The Critica1 Heritage (New York: 1
Barnes and NOble, 1971), p~. 96-7.
9 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed l', J. ~w. T.
Ley (Lo~don: fecil Palmer, 1928), p. 152. 10
G. K. Chc:;sterton, Charles Dickens (London: Methuen, ,
..).906) "l p. 279. 1 have purpose1y exc1uded Quilp' s "bower~ from
,~
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this 1ist of cutiosities~ Indeed, the hou se appears to be
q~ite cornfortable; it is on1y Quilp's appearance, and the
appearance of other grotesques ~uch as Mrs. Jin~~in"that
make it anything like a curiosity shop. Quilp often seems
an intruder in this place. The pleasant appearance of the -
71
b0wer is ~lmost certain1y the wopk of the virtuous but trapped
Mrs. Quilp, and that very p1easantness is probab1y one of the
reasons that Quilp abandons his,house for the more deso1ate
\ and qui~pian atmosphere of Quilp's Wharf •
11 Barbara Ha~dy, ,"The- Complexi ty of Dickens, n in Dickens
1970, Michael Slater, ed. (New York, S.tein and Day, 1970)',_ p.
12 steven Mareus, Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey (New 1
Y~k: Basic Books, 1965), p. 152 \ , -,
,.-13 Algernon" Charles Swinburne, "Charles Dick~rs," in Th~
Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund
Gosse and Thomas JarnesWise, The'Bonchurch Edition (New York:
Russell & Russell, 1925) XIV (Prose Works IV), 65. 14 0 Forster, p. 151.
15 Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, ed. John Holloway
lHarmondsworth: Pen~uin, 1967), Ch. xxxiv, ~f 895.
16 Mareus, Dickena From Plckwiek to Dombey, p. 145.
17 It is interesting to notice the contrast betwee~
Nel1's use of the graveyard and Codlin and Short'a: Nell
atrolls in the graveyard to commune with the dead, while J, -t
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72
Codl~n and Short use the graveyard as a li~ room (in the
broadest sense of that term); they use gravestones as tables
on which to work, and even use one as a chair for ~unch (Ch.
xvi, pp. 18)0-2).
18 Una Pope-Hennessy, Charles·Dickens (New York: H~well &
'Soskin, 1946), p. 146. "
19 Malcolm A'ndrews, Intro. to Tpe 01d Curiosity ,Shop, by
Charles Dickens·(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 18-9. r 20 '
Northrop Frye, nDick~ns and the Comedy of Humors,n in
Experience in ~he Novel: Selecfed Papers from the English ,
Institute, Roy Harvey Pearce, ed. (New York and London;
Columbia Uni~er~ity Press, 1968) p. 62 •
21 Arthur washburn Brown, Sexual Analysis of Dickens'
. Props (New York: Emerson Books, 1971), p. 99 •
22 stone, p. 83; Michael G01dbérg, Carlyle and Dickens ,',
(Athens" Georgia: Un.i versi ty of Georgia Press, 1'972), p. 209 ~
J. Murray Minck, "Daniel Quilp,n Dickensian 13 (1917), p. 73:
Arthur Clayborough, The Grotesque in Engli§h Literature
'.. "" \ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), p: 222.
2JGrahame smith, 'Dickens, Money, and Society (Berk~ly and \
Los Angeles: UniveJ;sity of Ca1ifornia Press, 1968),\ p. 35. .J
24 Stewart, p. 90 •
.... ;)-25 Marcus, Dickens: .From Pickwick to Dombey, p. 152. In
a letter to a Mr. Synge, 22 April 1846, Dickens declares his
agreement with this ,point: '"Mr. Charles Dickens presents his
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compliments to Mr. Synge, and begs to say, in reply to Mr.
Syn'1e' s letter, that he thinks ~Mrs. Quilp rn~st have had gOOd,
reasons for bearin~ witness to the attractive qualities of .
her husband. Mr. Dickens cannot speak qui te. confidently of
- any lady's reasons for anything, but. he is inclined to
believe that Mr. Quilp could have easily provided himself
with another pretty wife, in the event of Mrs. Quilp's
decease; it being .generally observable t4at men who are
very hideous and disagreable are successful in matrimonial
ventures .," Letters, ed. Madeline House and Graham Storey,
IV, 540.
26 Chesterton, p. 283.
27 Walter Allen, "The Comedy of 'Dickens, " Slater, ed, ~ ; (,
p. 9. Allen goes on to say Il obvious instances are,"'~Fagin,
Quilp and Jonas C~lewit 28 1.,. Ford, p • .140.
29 Brown, pp. 32-33.
30 Brown, p. 99 •
• and Uriah~eep." .
31 Gabriel Pearson, "The 01d Curiosity Shop," in Dickens
and the Twentieth Century, ed. John Gross 'and Gabriel Pearson
(Londen:, Rout1edge and Keegan Paul, 1962), pp. 77-90J
Kincaid, pp. 76-l04~ Stewart, pp. 89-113.
32 Stewart, p. 89.
33 John Lucas, The Me1ancholy Man: A study of Dickens's l
Nove1s (London: Methuen, 1970), p. 86.
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35
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Symons, p. 41 • .
cf. Graham Greene; s study of _the Man4chean world of
74
Oliver Twist, "The Young Dickens,· pp. 51-57 of his The Lost
Childhood and Other Essays (London: Eyre & spottiswoode,
1951) . 36 Humphty House, The Dickens World (London: Oxford
University Press, 1941.), pp. 1'34-5. -37\ Rev. Samuel Longfei1~w .(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's
brother) writing to his sister, Mrs. James Greenleaf, 9 Feb
ruary 1843, of ter meeting Dickens on 4·FebrUarY~n Henry:"
apartments. Rpt. by Edwa~d Wagenknecht, "Dickens in Long-
'" . fellow's letters and Jo~rnals," Dickel.lsian, 52' (1956), p. 9;
also in riick~ns's Lêtters, ed. Madeline Bouse and Graham
storey, III, 39-40n..
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III: The Manager: Jame~Carker
")
In 1851, just thr~e years ~fter Dickens finishèd Dombey
and Son, John Francis, in hi~ A History tN. the Englfsh Rail-j
way: 'Its Social Relations (. Revelations 1820-1845, draws ,a
r connection between a new type of businessman'" and the 'growth of
~ railtoads·:
Twenty years àgo • • • the comme~cial houses of London veré pX'incipally of that class which could claim anéestral honours. Their fathers had
,·fou9ht for commercial rights, and had been graced with commercial dlgnitiep. They had peen honoured
~ with titles, they had founded great charities, they had everobeen ready to aid an impoverished state wi,th ,their c,apita1. • i .'- By 1830, the position of these houses was beginning 'to change ••• a new race of tr,aders had arisen -to pu'sh ,th~ from their stools. -Such men made up for smaii capital by great activity. Hitherto the',oId hôuses had been pa~amount in the~r business, and peremptQry in th ir mode of conducting it. They "had fixed their ov ,terms in the ol~ times, and they refused to . change them in the new. They co~ld scarce1y,be said t~ have sought their profits; so easily hâd those profits fallen to them. They'rarely'ventured on ànything novel, and the utmost stretc'h of spec- . ula~ion was *,n spme adventurous member .. of' the firm startle is seniors by sending a,Cdurier to' Vienna to ~ake advantage. of the exchanges., .or an estafette to'st. Pete~sbur9 to forestall th~ . tallow-market. '
. The '-new men· saw at once the posi'tion .of th~e ,houses', and the prospect vl1ich <?pened ta their own ambition. • • • They w~re ~he type of earnèst, progressive spirit which'for gQod dr· il1
t ha~ inèr~ase~ for t~e las~ twenty,years! They were empn~tically men of the tlmef they'carr~ed t~at competitivé spirit into the higper bran~es of , commerce which hàd long been in existénce in the
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. ~ The consequence was so·far ap the railway is
concerned, that while the old commercial houses rejoiced in placing their sons in the directorates of insurance companies, engrossed the share~ in the New-River Company, or gave their imperial sanction to the<gas corporations, they were too determined to support their order at once to recognise th~ new and mighty power which silent~y, but surely, was abolishing aIl that .th~Y reg~ded a~ sacred., (
to Francis, the nnew man n ha? no such qualms, and
supported the railroads as weIl as other new and untried
markets: nIf the old houses wanted the will, the new houses .
wanted the ~owe~. Every shilling of their funds was employed . '
in what they were pleased to.call legitimate speculation. n1
The railway that Francis is specifically discussing here
is the London-Birmingham Line,'which was oegun in 1834~ and
which plays so great a pa,rt i~' Dombey and Son. fran~s's qyote emphasizes the fact that Dickens does not ch~e·train
" . and traiQ-l~nes haphazardly as a central image in this, his , ~ .
1 <.
novel about ah august and prestigious old hou se of the type
Francis describes. Both ~he fitm of Dornbey ~nd Son, and
England in the l830's and'1840 J s, were faced wi~h ~h~pro~lemt~ and qpvantages of·progress and,mercantile growth, and by new,
o ,
unstoppabl'e' powers that were sornet'imes destructive, sornetimes c
beneficial, and sometimes botp at the same ,time. Railroads '~~ \
were tbe most visible prooucts of that progress for the , " p -
country as a whole. For'Dombey and Son, that same type of
unceasingly powerful progression is'most thoroughly presented
in one man the manager of the firm, James Carker.
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Tlfe ima'ge of the railroad, 'and the 'conn~ction's made by \ JP
Francis, help ta show that Carker i5 not àt aIl unique, but
rather is oqe of many of those growing\numbers mf ~~éw men."
Carker d? nothing like a ~erversion of a "businessman" as
Quilp :ts a p~rversion of moneylender and landford, nor is he an
"outcast of S~ciety, like JiJ le, but is, rather, an integral lp l-
and supporting part Qf a changing world, and f~ts into
Francis'I a description of his type quite snugly. Both • ,
èarker's actions and character reilect Dicken,s's ideas 6f the', , . '
progress o! Early- and'Mid-Victorian society, a progress
whiéh was not without a great de~l of heartlessness, cruelty,
ana evil. Carker is without question the viI Iain of Dombey
~ and Son, as far as Dombey and Son has one ~il!ain, but his ~ ---
villainy is only a srnall part of the villainy present in the . society that'fosters and rewards him •
.. "Managèr R is the best wQrd to descr~be Carker, and just
as Dickens uses tne term "stranger" 'to name and describe
Jingle, he repeats Carker's position as his usual mode of
address. This is partly done to separate Jamès Carker from
his brother JOhn, but .more importantly" it is used to assoc'-.. " , \
iate Caz::ker' s entire being with that 'term; he f:inds his SI
greatest expression inrmanaging others. His job as manager //
.'
b~th helps and ~urts the firme While he brings te the job
gre4t efficierlcy and a strong sense of direction, he also uses \ ~
, Ris position to blinker the f1~m's emplOyees and Dombey aim- . 1
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» • self, largely bending them to his will by managing what they
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see or do~- Dickent sees Carker's work as similar to the,work . ' ,
of a man playiftg cards~ . '
. ,
\
The post had come in heavy éhat morning, and Mr . Carker the Mangager had a good ~eal to do. The generàl action of'a man so engageà -- pausing to loo~ over a bundle of papers in his hand, dealing
. them round in various\portions, taking 'up another bundle and examining its contents with knitted brows and pursed-ou~ lips -- dealing, and sorting~ ând pondering by turns -- would easily suggest sorne whimsical' resemblance to a player at cards. The face of Mr Carker the Manager was.in gQod keeping with su~h a fancy: It was the face of a man wh6 studied his play, warily: who made himself master of ~ll the strong and weak points of the game: ~ho
. registered the cards ih hi~ mind as they fell about him, knew exactly what was on them, what they missed, and what they made: who was crafty to find'
, ôut what the oth&r players held, and who,never bet~ared his own h~nd.
The letters were in various'languages, but Mr Ca1;;ker the Manager read them aIl. ( If there had been' anything in the offices of Dombey and Son that he could not read, th~re would have been a card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a glance, and made combinations of one letter.with another and one business with another as he went on, adding' new matter to ~he heaps'-- much as a man would know' the cards a~ sight, and work out their combinati9ns
. in his mind after they w.ere turned. Something too deep for a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, Mr Carker the Manâger sat in the rays of the 'sun that came down slanting on
2 him through the sky-'
light, playing his.game alo~e.
o ,
The image of games here certainly does not mean'that Carkeç·s
work ~s concerned with trifles -- his seriopsness and ftdepth~
" counter that ·idea. Instead, tpe image graphically describes ~ tJ ....-
his position as managerJ a position that forces him to b~
aware of every resource available to him, and to use those
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resources' c~refully.,· in' order',tô hav an advantage over 'others ~ ..
or to wr~st ~ontrol f~orn, them. . . , .' ;-':", f'Jany ëxamples are given :to . show that 'Carker manages ~ f' -;
.Dombey in this way. When Carker fJrst àppears in the novel,
~ he lB seen. subtly'separating D~mbJy ~rom\\he day-to-day act-~ \' ~ \.
ivities of the office; ~hen pombey asks:
"Have you anything for me?·~ . nI don' t know that 1· need trouble you," re'" -
turned Carker ~ ,turning: overo the papers in his hand .• "You have a commi tt'ee to-day at' three, you know."
Characteristically, Carker d~sguises his management with
humility: . •
•
nAnd one at three, three-quarters,· added Mr Dombey.
"Catch you 'forgetting anythingl" exclaimed Carker, still turning over his papers. "If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he'll be.a troublesome customer in the Bouse. One of you is enough." (Çh. xiii, p, 240) "
, When Carker visits Dombey at Lewnqton, 'after Dombey' s long
absence from th~ Dusiness, Carker answers Dombey's request for 1
business in,tell'igence vith: "There is very little •• b
Upon the whole we have not had our usual good fortune of late,
but that is of little moment to you" (Ch.~xxvi, p. 442). Dom
bey is throughout the novel little more than a figurehead; any . ... \
decision he maltes i,s either one that secures the prestige of
. the f{rm (in this way, his marriage t,o Edith is the product of
a business decision), or- one of van~ty or pride, with little
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business purppse. His exiling of Walter Gay is the best ex-. . , '
'. ample of tbisi it is a decision that he makes on a whi~ and
tegrets later, and it 1s a decision that the more business-:
tensical C~i'ke~ uses ror his own purp0ges.. .,'
Just as Cark~r is called a' "manager" by Dickens in many'
situations outside ·'the off.icé, so does ~hat, role transcend his ,
work *in the office,. ' Carker: is effective as a manipulator not ..
just be~a~~e ~e us~s the'office paper~ as his cards, but be-
cause i~side and 0utside the office, Carker' uses~every device \
available to him"-- economic stature, social codes;physîcal'
appearance, sex~al de~ire, charm, humility, and even Qlackmail
-~ to·domiPate (or maijage) ,others and to remain in complete
control "'of any situation.
One physical attribute that Carke~ uses ove·r an.d over to
achieve his ends is' his sparkling. set of teeth. ' The repi ti-\
tion (to the point of monotony) of this imâg.e is not aeeiden-.
. - ,
/
tal, aceording to Northrop. Fr=e: " 1/ Repetition which i8' excessive even by D~ckenSi'an·.! .. : standards, like the emphasis on:.Carker· s teeth in 1 l, Dombey and Son, is appropriate .for· a villain, as / .. l its effect ~s to dehumanize and eut Off~ syrn~thy. ~ 1 ' We cannot feel much eoncern over the ate of a / ~ character who is pre~ented to us mainly as a set, of .î teeth . . . . .. j ~v ~ ~ 'i ~
'l
Carker himself takes advantage ot 'this "dehümanizingW quality
given by his teeth -- he uses t~e~ to separat~ bis true self , ,
• from tbose around him; "in the fine image of the fla~hing
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81
• teeth," 'writes Jack L,indsay of Dickens, "he communicates a
sense of the' face as a tightenin; ma~k"4. Carker can use the
masK Gf his tee th to disarm others, as he does with Capta in
Cuttle, or to insinuate hi~self into the company and the good
graces ~f others, 'as he does with Cleopatra. Through his , teeth Carker maintains a facade of humility before his· employ-
er. The ease at which Carker can, drop ~his dental pretension,
is shown after'aconve~sation be?r~en Carker and Domb~y:
" As Mr Dombey.dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neck-cloth again, the,smiling face of Mr Carker the Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes, it,
·changed back, no less quickly, to its .ld expression, ,and showed him every gum o~ which it stood posessed., (Ch. xxvi, p. 442)
This .action is almost quilpian" and shows an attribute that 7'
Quilp, ,Carker, and Jin~le share: a strong control of face,~nd .
body, and the ability to use that control to create a true or
false impression • Later,'when Carker aids Dombey after Dombey , . , ,
falls from his horse, Carker shows, ~ physical agility to match
his facial control (Ch. xlïi, p. 689). \ " Another aspect of Carke~'s teeth, whic~ Fred.Kaplan
points out in Dickens and ~esmerism5, is that they can be used
- to hypnotize and in that way to dominate. Rob the Grinde? is
the mos~ obvious victim of Carker in this way; when Rob give,s
Carker information, he speaks "just as l'f the teeth of MI
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82
cark~f drew it out of him, and he had,Do P9wer of concealing
'any'thing wi th -that battery 0(, attraction in full play"' (Ch. ~
xxii, ~. 37'9). ,
Carker has more than his teeth to rely on in order to . . In' pis spotless cJ:'lil.vat, his hide his true self trom others.
>
whiskers, ~is mouth, and pis manners, he is "desperately cat-)
like" ,-,(Ch. xvii, p. 308). The imag-è serves to separate him '
. from -oth~rs, and to d,escribe hj..m further, to the reader. When..-~-=---~---~
vièweçl by others<J'in the novel, t.his 'paI;t of his nature is ex- ,~ . . ' ~
pressed 'by his neatness, by his apparent affection for ~ ~ "1..
nbetters," and by his tamenes~, as well ~s by the shape of his
face. To Carker hirnself, however, that cat-sense finès a /
cornpietely different expression: he is a heartless, instinc~-
tuaI pred~tor, who views anyone as his prey and is often
crouched and ready to spring •. Directly after the image, ~ \ '! >~-
quoted earlier, of ,carker as a winning card-player, 'we f ind
that:
Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of ·tooth,;soft of foot, watchful of eye, oilyof t6ngue, cruel.of heart, niee of habit, sat with a, dainty steadfastness and patience at,his,work, as if he ,were w~iting at a mouse l s hQIe;· ,(Ch. xxii, pp. ~72-3).
This image àescrib~s quite effectively' Car'ker' s 'business-J
# \
Sense, and a later development of the -same "image, shows that
\
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\\hiS cat-natufe is not confined to office ~ork: on the roa~
from Leamingfon tô warwick, when Dombey; Edith, Cleopatra, and
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, -. Joe Bagstock travel together, "Mr Carker cantered behind the
1
carriage, at the distance of- a hundred yards or so, and
watched it, during aIl th~ ride, as if he were a cat, indeed, . f t~ '.
and aIl its four ocçupant~, mice" <Ch. 'xxvii, pp. 464-5).
Although The 'Origin .of' th~ Species, was not f?~bl.Ç"od until 1859,
'Carker is a prefiguring example of the correlation between
'. 1 natural and social darwinism, and he shows~bot? the airtight
efficiency an~ the heartless cruelty of both ~he natural
1
.. _._l,t-heo-r-y---and-the 'social-philcsophy;- '~._. --- - ~.~ ~ _ .. _- ~- .'
As cruel as Carker may~ or e,ven because -of his" . ,
cruelty, he is indispensable to Dombey. It is !nteresting '.
to note,. from evidence given by John earker i~o discussing his,
crimes <Ch. xiii, p. 249) that Ja~es Carker and Mr. Dombey
appear eo have ~egun working at,the,fIrm a~ roughly the sa~e
,1 time. Dombey' s human crutch was., it seems, at least available
to him for aIl his working years if not actually utilized. . , . There. is quiee a bit of evidence that Carker's role'a~/a '
crutch to Dombey was used, and must have Qeen for many years
the basis of a profitable relationshl~ for bot~ men.~ MOst 6f
that evidence lies :Ln Dombey' s inc6mpetence. The firm sirnplx, . ~
coll~pses after Carker's death. Dombey~s only ,"busine~s
sense" is a p~rverted ~ense of mercantile pride which stifles
him into. incompetency. Like those in the prestig~ous houses , . ,
mentione,d by Francis, he does not seek progress, but foolishl:y -desires sorne sort of '1'11usor'y status quo. In his rigid,
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84
blinding prlde, Dombe~ is as sol~d, stubborn; decorative,
anEi useless .al? t'he Wo~den Midshipman, ob1iviou~: 'and irnper-, .,
.vious to the change-aIl about hirn. Indeed, Do~bey dresses
a,na poses as if he were a statue; he is so stiff tpat the
starch in his cravat cracks when he bows. At Dombpy's
'wedding, the Game Chicken believes nthat he's as stiff a coye
as ever he see n <Ch. xxxi, p. 522) •. ' Dickens blends this image,'
wi th anothe'r -- Dombey 1 s coldness -- to p!esent i)ombey 1 s
ludi~rous irnmobi1ify: nHe mïght have been hung up for sale ~at
a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentle~an" (Ch. v, p.
116).
The coldness that sùrrounds Dombey ls oo1y the physica1
m~nifestati0n of'Pombey's narrow Business and world view. t 1
That view, however, in its very'narrowness, can be quite
spectacular:
~ The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun-and moon were made to give them~light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbowsgave thern promise of fair.weather; winds blew for or against their enter~rises; stars and plane~s circled in their~orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they wer~ the center'. Common abbrevjations took on new meanings in his [Dombey'sJ eye~,{an? had sole reference to them. A. D. had no con~ern with anno -Domini, but stood for anno Dombei'-~ and ~on. (Ch. i, p. 50)
D~mbey c~nnot!see the beauty in nature as nature, but rather :7 \
sees its beauty in the way it aids \ a
the firm., In the same
chapter, Dombey be~rays,a similar b1indness' to the value of ~
. ., .
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85
human nature:'
To record~ of Mr Dombey. thàt he was,lnot in hi's way ~ affected by this intelligence (of his wife's fail
lng-condition], would be to do him an injustice. He was not a man of whom it could properly be said that he was ever startled, or shocked1 but he'cer~ tainly,had a sense within him, that if his wife should sicken.and decay, he would be very sorry, and 'that he would Und a' something gone from among his plate and furniture, and other household possessions, which was weIl worth the having, and could not be lost without sincere regret. Though it would be, 'a cool,., business-like, gentlemanly, self-po~sessed regret, no doubt. (Ch. i, p. 54) (
In this way, 'Dombey views Edith as\ a merè replacement for his
first wife; he expects her tG be his prope~ty, and expects her " ,
to be c,ontent to bé his property •. Because of this,. he canno,t " , '" • ...."l
help but be shocked and'confuséd by her rebell~ous attitude. \')
Paul Oombey, Jr., thè only true recipient of Dombey's , \
love ("If there were, a' 'wartn place in his frosty \heart, his son ~, .
'_ ... -. '
occupied it ••• " Ch. viii, p • .151 ), i,s ironicall,y Il
Dombey' s greatest victiDm: _RDerivirrg no reassurance from his }-~-=~
father that the "'orl~"is a céngenial or even .hu~~~ place t6 . , t ~ ..
" live in, he declines toward a death bro\lght on ,J.atgely by the ~ ." 6 '
implacable cbldness of his environment.~ Seeing in Paul the
"Son" of "Dombey and Son," and not the innocent, growing
'child, . Dombey forces upon the boy his cold, 'st'arched, and c~,
'sterile world, first at paul's frosty christening, and later
'under the tutelage of Mrs. pipchin and the Blimbers., ~ore-
over, Dombey separates Paul trom the nurturing and loving in-
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86
fluence of Polly Toodle, whose milk and warmth actu'ally make , ,
P"auJ., ~t first: nQuite thriving, Sir, and weIl" (Ch. iB, 'p.
82). Dombey seeks more a frigid clone than a son, and his
attempt to freeze the humanity from the boy, a~ it is frozen
in' himself, is fa'tal. / . -a son, or rath"er, a 'Dombey, then, must ~ook~eI8ewhete for
Son (as in "the firm of DOmbey ~~d.Son:), for tke role is at tif . "" best secondarily genetic: ' ,
, There is also Son the abstraction, a -position precariollsly filled by Paul in his short lifetime, and a .complex vacanoy after pis ~éath~L Captain Cuttl'e\ in his disastrous inte-rview wi':~ Carker proposes Walter as repl~cement, Carker in secret counBels proposes himself;( ,
Although Florence and Walter eventually do fill the vacancy,
Carker iB the only candidate who actively pursueB the role for
muctî of the -novel. He has much to qis a'dvantage in this
quest. First of aIl, he is an essential part of the firm, and , ,
an essential aid ta Dombey in almost every respect. Even
though hé i8 the true,driving force of ~he firm)he preserits
the appearance of an,almost filial d~ference and loyalty ta
DombeY1 he constantly speaks of Dombey's superiority in so-J
ciety and business. He eve~ uses Dombey as a ~ole model of
sorts: he is "always somewhat formaI, in his dres~~ in imi-
tation of the great man whom he served • , n . . . Even.this has
its' limits ·he sfopped short of the extent of Mr Dombey's
stiffness· (Ch. xxii, p. 457).\
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t . . \ Another:May in which ca~~er trféS to fill the rolft'of son
to Dombey is by JnSinuating,J1Jmself into the Dombey, farnily. ~~ ~
This happens gradually. Carker first ma~es tbe transition
f rom ernployee to f r iend. When he introduc~s Carker to Cleo-\ '
patra and says: ni Let- me gratify my friEmd Carker: 1 Mr Dornbey ~
unconsc io-uS-ly emphas ised the word f r iend, as say ing 1 no
really; l do al'low hirn to take credit for that distinction • .-
• 1" <Ch. &xvii, p. 461>. _ By this t,ime, Carker has elsewhere .. insinuated himself into family rnatters by payin9 forcëd visits
\
upon Florence at the Skettles at Fulh~m~ Later, apparently
because Dorobey wills it, but also because Carker does too,
Carker gets deeply involved in the relationship between Dombey / \
and Edi th. In the chapter tttled "Domestic Relations; Dornbey 1
rnakes it clear, in speakingto Edith,_ that Carker has jumped
over the ambiguous line between Dombey and Son the firm,' and 1
Dombey and son the family, while still retaining a perverse :J .
business nature:
1 \ l hope, Mr s Dornbey . • . l may not find i t necess-ary ever to entrust Mr Carker ~ith any message of objection or remonstrance to you; but as it would be derogatory to my position and reputation to be frequently ho}àing trivial disputes with a lady upon whom"I have conferred the highest- distinction that it is in rny power to bestow, l shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if l see occasion. <Ch. -xl, p. 653)
Dombey does not realize the extent to which he brings Carker
into his family; wh en he does ask for Carker's services i~
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tqis matter, Dombey referB to him as "my confidential agent" , ,
(Ch. xlii, p. 683), and couches his request in a haze of
busine~slike diction and syntax.. As far as Dombey can tell;
h~ is using Carker aè a rnere tool or weapon against Ed~th.
This is another aspect' of Dombey's blindnessl he cannot see
the line between Son and son, firm and home. To him, the firm
is iamily, anè family is just another departmen~ of ~he firme
To Dombey, Carker's role as manager of Edith is as natural as , '
- his rnanagemIfent r~l~ in the office,o' for to him, Edith is, in_
(,
1& a sense, an Employee. Dickens writes of Dombey:
~
It flattered him to picture to himself, this proud and stately woman doing the honours of his h~use, and chilling his guests after his own rnanner. Th~ dignity of Dombey and Son would be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands. (Ch. xxx, p. 509)
",
, Carker'e and Edith's defections take Dombey completely by
suprise; it is, by both, a flight from the firm as weIl as a
fligbt 't'rom himself. The most suprising fli$J~t of the two, ~o
him, is car~er' s. Wh'ere Edi~h proves herself from the start
!ln errant member of -family and firm, Carker. .proves hirns~lf to 1
be not only an indispensable member of the firm, but also a , ~ /
seemingly i~eal family memberl' one leads to the other. By the
same reason, Flore,nce# whose position in terms of the firm is
negligible, i6 not only cast off by Dômbey, but f'orgotten~ At \
Paul's funeral, 1 l,
.. \ The statuary gives him [Dornbey] back the
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paper, and points' out, with his pocket rule, the' words, "beloved and only child."
, nIt should be 'son,' I think( Sir?" (Ch • . xViii, p. '312)
89
In his home, ,as in his firm, Dombey understands effectiveness,
and not love. ~ ~,
'Carkêr seems' to sha're Dombey' s hl indness in this respect,
aince l'îis disdàin of the lovE!' of his own family matches \
Dombey' s, but-wha't is :i.nvo1untary an'd ing'rained to Dombey is . , . chosen by Carker. Carker is perfectly aware of the power (and
"to him'- ~e threatl of Florence' s ,and Paul' s goodnes's, and is - 1.
rt "
careful,tO guard 'Dorobey against them; -He thought how j'ealous
. he had beèn of the boy, how jea}<>us he, had been of the girl,
how ari;fully he: ha~. kJept intrude'r-s-.~t a ,distance, a~d drawn a
circle arounâ his dupe that non~t1f: himself should cross
• ~ ,'\ " (Ch. Iv, p. 866). Carker is ve,y capable of ,seeing • IC 1 l. ...
people' s warm natures. For example" his,-stares can pierce
direc~ly throl-ug~ Edith' s prï'"de and quickly' comprehend her love' "'-J 7
for Florence. Few charactets in Dombey and Son are more awa~e
of the existence of goodness than Carker. . In ~the same way,
, few in The Did Curiosity Sho;e are as aware of goodness as .. . Qu!1p. But wqile' Quilp desi res ,to consume goodness, and to
turn white into black, éar~er tends to minimiie the power and "
attraction of' goodness in the face of personal se1fishness
and gain. While he is aware of his brother 1 s truly humble arid
loving nature, he ignores it when he sees his chance to parlay \
o'
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his .brother' s disgrac::e into his own gain. John Car,ker puts i t
best: ft l have been '. • .~ a useful foil to you.. You h~ve trod":'
den on me free:Ly in your clirnbing up" (Ch. xiii, p. 248). The ,
irony of John ~arker~\ the eIder brother, bein~ termed "Carker
the Junior" shows the: 'extent, to .. ~..which· Carker (and, less con-
. sciously,' Dombey) rninimizes great emotional treasure.e in 'order
to attain° the slightest financial or promotional gain. ~I'!I-C
Another way thdt Ca~ker gains, in the business world is by~ .-
(l, using the blindnesses 'Of others. Obviously, Do~b~y i p the mdh \ ,
mos,t- vic,timized in this way: , "
Mr. Marfin even says of ~arker
that Dombèy is "the man he managed" (Ch. lii~, p~ .841). :While , ,
Dombey sees the ~hideously artificial Mrs. Skewton as "perfect-\ ".Ji ta
~
ly genteel" (Ch. xxi, p. 364), and nis equaJ.Iy narrow sister,
Mrs. Chick, sees her 'as "a DlOSt genteel and elegant creature~ o , ~
CCl1. xxix, p,' 494), Carker sees ,the woman }n aIl her falsi ty"
and yet, in his visit to Lea~ington, he draws out and;flatters
her by agr,eing to aIl her foolish and blind-ideas, and to one
.' espe/cial.ly --~ her staternent: "We are dreadfullYoreal, Mr
Carkex ••• ' are we "not?", (Ch. xlWii, p.463). Thus pampered,
Cleo~atra'is completely taken by Carker's facade, and sees him ,
as: "That very 'sensible person! n (Ch. xxxviii; p'.1 606). Carker
~s able ta ~anipùlat~ Joe Bagatock similarly; Dickens presents ~ /
Bagstock as "having secured ~n attentive listener, and ~ - .
amiler who had not his match in. all'the world ,-- lin, short, a l '
de':'v.ilish 'intelligent and agreeabJ.e feIlow,' as he often " 0
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91
1 afterwards dèclared " (Ch. xxvi, '" ' p. 455). "'Carker uses
, both these people to reinforce his position in respect to ,
~ Dombey. To superficial people, Car~er presents a seerningly "'c, equal and-pleasant superficiality. In the words of Steven
Marcus, "Carker asserts hirnself ~ in .secret, and responds
to others like a charneleon."8 ly to th9se who have -
~ rnor~. loving ~ virtuous nat is se en at any
time as the manipulating da he truly ia. -1)
Florence, fôr exarnple, loathing of the
apparently ki."nd Carker":
\ Florence had no temembrance of having ever seen him, but she started b'ack involuntarily wh en he carne near he~, and drew back •
(j
"My horse is perfectly quiet, l assure you," said the 'gentleman. .
It was not that, but1sornething in the man hirnse~f -- Florence could not say what
• made her ,recoil as if she had been stung. xxiv, p. 427)
/ 'P
gentle-- that (Ch,.
? This passage recalls the relationship betwe~Quilp and~Nell
--~a sup~a-rational repulsion of polarities. The 'contiasts in
Dornbey and Son are n?t nearly as extrerne as 'they are in The
01d Curiosity Shop"however; in Dombey and Son, ev en the . ,
virtuoul characters' -- Florence, Paul, Walter, to an extent
Edith, fnd the rest (those who are opposed to Carker in spirit ,b
if not' always in act~) __ 0 are themselves ~lind to much of
what Carker is and represents. Just as he minimizes the
"Stùdy of a L9vin9 Beart" (Ch. xxiv, p. 417) that they aIl
/
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indulge in Cand which florence turns into a science), so ,they 4
,
are obliV;ious to) ~r ig.norant of) t,he forces of economic and so-I
cial change that Carker is a part of. Indeed, the virtuous \ ' ..
")
characters are usually somehow abov~ those forces in rnuqh the j
same ~aylthat Pickwick ls. Toots, aIl heart and no mind,
seemingly needs no mind, for business a~ least; Qe hasoa
mysterio~ ~ut apparently
proprieto~of an obsolete
generous incorne. Sol Gills, ~he
and unprof i table busïness ,\ rnig~t \
weIl bemoan his ignorance of the modern world:
1
,
As l said just now, the world has gone past me. l don't blame it, but l no longer understand it. Tradesrnen are not the same as they used to be, ap-prentices are not the same, business is not the \ same, business, commodities are not the, same. Seven-· eighths of my stoc'k is old-fashioned. l am an oldfashioned man in an old-fashioned' shop, in a street L that is not the same as l remember it. l have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise i t makes. confuses me." <Ch.', iv, p. 94)
Yet Gills appears, despite his eonfusion, to do quite niee~y
in his backward world. While it is true that Gills 'does not
prosper until the end, he is never actually seen as po~r, he o
never really seerns to need the business. Captain Cuttle is
similarly blessed. Florence, though lacking in other ways, is
at least ne~er o"!anting for any mate.ri~l good. Sinee these 1
\ char~cters are above the need for great economic and social
change, they ignore the positive aspects of progress: an \
increased standard of living, jobs for the poor Cand others), ~
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greater productivity, and better transport. ~The· train image /
in the novel clearly shows this progress. Both th~ power and
the promise'of the train is sho~n in the following passage: , '
As to the neighbourhood which had hesitated to aoknowledge the railroad in' its straggling days, that had;9rown wise and penitent,-as any Christian might
"in such a case" and now boa-sted of its powerful andprosperous re~ati~n. • •• There was even railway time ob~erved in clocks, aS if the sun itself had given in. Among the ~anquished was thè master chimney-sweeper, whilom incredulous at Staggs's gardens, who now liveq in a stuccoed bouse three stories high, and gave himself out, with golden flourishes upon a varnished board, as contractor for the cleans~ng of railway chimneys by machinery. (Ch. xv, pp. 289-90)
~ . ' Most of the v1rtuous characte~s of the novel are never seen
near the often-mentioned railroads; most seek refuge agafnst
the world iriste~d in the "old-fashioned, n almost fcüry-tale \ \
~ike calm of the Wooden Midshipman.
For tRis reason, tbe Toodle family is a very interest~ng
group. Not as economi~ally fortunate as the Midshipman-group, . \
Toodle must work for a liying, and fittingly finds a job with
the railroad, and hence ties himself into the economic world, \
of Dombey and·çarker. .
A. O. J. Cockshut even goes sa far as .
to say: "The link between Toodle and Dombey is the link be
tween capital and labour. n9 Toodle, however, is either ignor-'
ant of) or somehow ~bove)the heartlessness of the system; his
priority of love over economics ia made quite clear when he
speaks with Dom~ey:
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"You have a son, l
" alive!" . " ,
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belieVe?J~~aid Mr Dombey. Four hims and a her. <'~ll
\ ," _,e'"
94
\ "FOUrjOn"e~ Sir.
"Why, it' s as much the~" said ~r Dombey.
p "1 .t:ouldn 1 t hardly world less, Sit."
as you can afford to keep
affor~but one thing in the
',-- "What is that?"; "To lose lem, Sir." (Ch. ii, ~ p. 69)
Even this family, most closely associated,with Carker's world,
never ceases f!ghting against its worst aspects -- impersonal
ity, coldness,~nd har.dness. Toodle, like Wemmick~in,Great . ,/ '''.............'
,Expectations~ separat-es- his life into two wo'rIds. Unlike Wem-
~ick, he subordinates one tq the ·other. He i~ the antithesis
of Do~beYJ he sees the marketplace as a means rat"her (han an
end. Instead, his end is the warmth of a loving family.
Through POlly, Paul briefly thrives on that warmth.
Separated from the harsher demands of reality, the other
virtuous characters do not have to fight such a concrete /
• ba~tle against the coldnes. and cruelty of p~ogress. Their
battles are more abstract; they a're battles of the heart. Paul
becomes the!r idol and their martyr. It 18 Pau,l who best
vocalizes their cause wh en he ask~ ~Papa! What's money?" (Ch.
viii, p. 152) and receives no suitable' answer. John Romano
paul's transcendent wisdom, of whfch so mu ch is made in the novel, is in fact ignorance -- the ignorance of Socrates. It is the wisdom, in other words! of not haY!~8 answers, of abounding in quest10ns • • • •
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95
Althou~h he only truly finds thern with his death, Paul is
His fasci-
\" nation with the voices in the 'wave§' shows his yearning for a . .
tirnelessness -- not the stagnant maintenance of a time'which
is what Dombey desires, but rather the tirneless truths, and
t~ove, that lies behindr
and ahead of th~ one' cold age that
carke\ is so much a part of. Surrounde~by those who have
forgotten or tried to replace those tiuths, Paul cannot
t.hrive, and, like Nell, fades %tto a better world. PalU' S , ,
worshippers, on 'the other hand, are not as delicate as pe is,'
. ana they must do their best .to find those truths and that love
in the world itself. In this they large~y succeed, but are
sornewhat constrained ,by the demands of a society,which brings ,
,them in touch with Carkér and his tYP,e. They do not truly .'
thrive until both Carker and the firm'of Dombe~ and Son are
dead.
Carker, is, at least, aware of the power o~the love which ,'\.
';; nurtures this group, but is al: the same time hardened to that ~ ,
love, and love viewed dispassionately is insignificant. He
knows its power enough to ibuse it (as, for-example, when he r~
abuses Captain Cuttle' s good intentions to spy on Walter, ~or
uses Florence's goodness a~ a weapon against Edith) ,\but
chooses not to, or 'is somehow stopped from, enjoying it
himself. Carker is ,given a choice between two moralities, '"' '
a choice \hat Dombey, with his ridiculously blinkered
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perception, cannot make: ~ choice between an "pld-fashioned~
mor~lity an~,a ~?werful new one. " ~he ~irst ~s Paul's morality: "old-fashioned," platonic
in Ideals and Christian in its emphasis~on love. I~ is ,a
morality. which is a,t the same time obvious and vague. It i8 . obvious in ·~ts existenc~, when seen in the, good nature of a
'\
Florence or a Cuttle or,a Toodle, and obvious in its absence r ' • '~
"in aQDomb~y o'~ a Car~·er. It is, h~wever, vague in,!'ii:} laws
" 1
and defir:li tion. ,FloreQce' fails~ in her st~dy of f loving
heart, but still finds that heart. It ,is a morflity, which,
most of aIl, w~rships go'odness, and which is /fen~, rather than
unde~stood. )
The second-moraLity, the one that Carker cho~es, is a, ~ ~ .
machine morality or business et~~c, one ·that twis\s 'the GOrden
Rule ;nto 'something like "do unto others so that y~will }have '\ . .. "- -----~./
a profitible return come unto you." It is a morality which
sees aIl hfmans às cog's, important for what they produce '" .
rather th~n what they are, which takes into,account the ~ine
teenth-century philosophies of Bentham and Malthu~ in aIl
their coldness, ,and which prefigures social darwinisme It is
a motality'which makes a god of money and of ~elf, a prophet
of Adam Smith, and a.faith of growth and progresse Finally,
it is a mor"~llity which must sw7ep away any sign of true love
or trùe feéling for others ïn order to be,vali~.
The two moralities are nearly as divergent as the forces
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of good and evil 'are in The Old Curiosity Shop, and a battle, \
with two camps, is fought in both novels. The struggle 'in \ , .
Domber and Son i~ usually less obvious, however; Dombey and .
, Son is by far the more realistic novel of the two, and much of -. , '
the realism depends on shading most of the characters with at
least some grey. It is exactly when Dickens does not do this
that he goes against the general direction of the novel, a
novel which, "more than any of his'major works, shows how
quickly and surely Dickens could sense the mood of his time, , 11
ana incorporate,new sensations in imaginative literature."
Certainly, Toots is out of place 'in the world of thïs novel, -
in a way tha~ comparable grotesques in earlier novéls (includ-, .
jng Jingle and Dick Swiveller) are note An eve{l greater
absurdity in Dombey and Son is Captain CuttIe, who, though' he
looks'like a salt y sea-dog, is a moral virgin. This is'seen J
when he is compared to Florence: ".in simple innocence of the
world's ways and the world's perplexities and dangers, they
were nearl~ on ~ level" {Ch. ~lix, p. 776?, Paul, too, is an
unreal . character; he is on a level wi th Nell Ill" 'his perfec- :,
tian. His death r quite early in the novel, i6 a,sign of the'
greater realisrn of Dornbey and Son over The Old Curiosity Shop;
in Dombey~nd ~on, Dickens is more interested in the society
that kills the innocent than in the innocen~ himself.
It i6 tbose characters who are on the border betwe€j the
two moralities and who are given a cboice t'bat are usually
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98
more realiptically presented. The Toodles have ,been already
given as an example of this. Edit~ is another; her spirit is .~ ,
in constant torment as she is caught in 'a woild which ehcour-
ages marriage for ~oney. Walter Gay is an interesting study
in this respect. Dickens origina11y had a different intention
for him; a letter to John 'Forster states that Dickens is con-, sidering showing Walter
gradUal~y and natural1y tr-ailing away, from th~t love ofradventure and boyish light-heartedness, into negligence/ idleness,'dissipation, dishonesty, and ruine To show, in short, that common, everyday, miserable declension of which we know sa much in our ordinary life, to exhibit something of the philosophy of it, in great temptations and an easy nature; 12d to show how the good turns 'into bad, by degrees.
To put it anoth~r way, Dickens thought of having one character
_make th~ transition from "old~fashioned" morality to "business
morality." Dickens chose instead to lift Walter out: of, this '
, type of "every-day" reality, and no such study was made in
Dombey and 'Son Calthough one very much like,it W8S attempted
with Richard Car stone in B1eak Bouse). Because -of this,
Wal ter ,\loses much of his potential energy as a character, and .
he becomes l.ittle more than a plot-device.
It is the predominantly immoral, or business-moral char
acters, who are MOst softened by th'ls gr,eyfng. Major Bagstock
is 'saved from melodramatic vill,ainy by his-stupidi ty an':' his
humor; "he ls used more than he uses. ~leopatra~ another joke,
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is g~ven .enough humanity to at least be pitied. Dombey,.~ppar
ently foreyer frozen into this new ethic~ is at tbe end of the
novel given a chance to embrace the ~old-fashioned" morality,
and Dickens tries, irr his preface, to rnake it clear that this - ,
asp~ct of Dombey was a part of him aIl the tirne: "Mr Dombey
undergoes no violent change, either in this book, or in real
life. A sense of bis injustice is within bim, aIl along. The
more he repres~es it, the more unjust he necessarily is"
(Preface, p. 43). Dombey is never a black villain, but rather
a blinded veryrnan, who is potentially good or evil, black or \ '
white, and cornes across, on the whole, as consistently
grey. ,
Carker "gieyed,no too, but done sa pervelsely. He too
bas a heart, hich, however warped or bitter, eventually cornes
ta domi.nate usually rigid and controlled business mind. "
This change place wh en Carker begins to grow more
absorbed ~ith t e familial side of Dombey and Son. Late in \
the novel, and n his own way, he can truly be sa id to have -
fallen in love ith Edith.
The effect of that powerful feeling ,disrupts Carker's
office concentration -- where he at,one tîme deals with his o
business matters with the concentration and efficiency of a
card-pl~yer, his emoti~n later leads him to distra~ion and
deep medi tatio'n. He even lOSEfs consciousness of at least
one aspect of his power to manipul'te:
" ~ " ~ 1
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, He was v~ry thoughtfu1 as he went along, and very thoughtful there~ and very tboughtful in the carria~e on his way back to,the place wbeIe MI Dombey
'had been left. It was only wben sitting by that gentleman's coucb that, ~e was quite bimself again, and conscious Qf bis teeth. (Ch. xlii, p. 692)
Carker's pursuit of bis twisted love causes bim to lose sight , 1
of the power of the markrtPlace, and tbis is wbat finally
leads to bis undoing. ~h carry tbe analogyaof the cards a bit
further, Carker throws in bis hand too soon, or, as Edith puts
it to him: "You \i9ht bave cajoled, and fawned, and p1c:tyed
your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. You
purchase yOUI voluptuous retirement dear!" (Cb.,liv, p. 859).
Dickens makes it clear that Carker flees for sorne sort of
love oth~r than l~e of money; in chapter fifty-three, Mr.
Mor,fin o~tatés that èarker bas embezzled no money at aIl. .
. Despi te bis lengthy medi tations, 1 Carker' s actions are fool ish
and futile; his passions blind him for once to both Dombey's
vengeful pride and Edith's haugh~y disdain. Indeed, when ~
Carker flees, he flees from any sort of alliance or conoec-
tion, emotional or economic. He turns away from both'moral-
ities, and is destroyed.
The melodramatic ,meeting between Carker and Edith was the
product of a sudden decision by Dickens, and went against
Dickens's original design. In a letter to Forster, Dickens
writes: J
Note from Jeffrey this mOIning, who won' t be1ieve'
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(positively refuses) that Edith is Carkèr's mistresSe What do you think of a kind of inverted ,Maid' s Tragedy, and a tr~mendous scene of her undeceiving Carker, and giving him to know that she never rneant that?l)
There is, however, sorne similarity between this change, and .. the one that Forster boasts that he prornpted.Dickens to for
Nell: in each case, someone pointed out the inevitable. The
reaSon Edith's change seemed impossible to Jeffe!y lies not
in Jeffer'" s sensibili.ties but in the logi·c of the narrativ~.
Edith' s flight, and her presence in Dijon, seemed contrived.
and silly, but her hate of Carker rings true. Unfortunately,
wl]i1e. the scene at Dijon ïs potentially one of the most power- .
fuI in tha book, and.potentially one of the rnost revealing
about Carker, it is largely a failure: "one of the worst· in - ' 14
Dickens," in the opinion of Edmund Wj.lson. Arlene Jackson
gives a credible reason for this:
The rnelodramatic touches in the scene seern to be us'ed as a kind of cloak for the sexual meaning: the demand and refusaI are such potentially charged events that Dickens, for reasons of audience reaction orA of persOllai reticence,' could not bear to present more openly. In such case's'. Dickens' s technique is in danger of hiding aIl too weIl, bu~ the
. rneaning heIe ia discemible, especially when viewed in relation. to D9rnbey's earlier reference to Edith's "duty. "1,
1
If Carker ia a "fIat" character, this is not because he lacks
a strong se~uality. In fact, Carker is, like Quilp, ône of , the most sexual of Dickens's creations. Although far from
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explici~, the scene at Dijon at one point clearly shows Car
ker' s powerful sexuali ty: "He would have sold his soul to root
. her-, "in her beauty, to' the floor, and make her arms drop at ,
her sides, and have her at <his.mercy". <Ch. liv, p. 860). <}
Carker's sexuality is closely tied into both his rise and
fall. Early in. the novel, "a"nd before the events of the novel • 1
"
'take place, _his sexuality i5 an asset, subordinated to, but
" not wholly s~blimated into, his business energy. He seduces
Alice Marwood, but she is not sent to jail for fornicationfr
prosti tutiop, but rather (or embezzlement; she is a bUS~&S tooi as weli as a sexual one. Both Ca;ker's business ener~y
and his perqonal cruelty betray a sadistic streak: he is an 1
excellent example for Fred Kaplan's staternent: \ .
Many of Dickens!s rnost dynamic cnaracters seem to desire nothing as rnuch as the dominance of otqers or the gratification of their 'own needs. To subjugate others to their wish is inseparable from ~hei16sexualit'y: indeed, often J.t i9 their sexual-lty. )
\
g \ Unlike Dombey', who appears to sublimate aIl his sexual energy
into his mercantile prid~i Carke~ combines both pride and ! /
G\esire into his selfishness, and the two seem\ to work weIl
together for most of the novel. It is only when Carker·gives
c'ompletely in. to hOis sexual desire at the eXPiense of his care-, \
fully developed role as mana~er that he falls!. What remai?B , .
to him is chaos. Losing' sight of .his business"'morality, and
never tru1y foilowing the heart-morality, rre loses any sense
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.' of' direction ~nd any control, and he ~s'finally k~11ed by the
• symbol of the new society that he ha.s helped to build. -'This , .' \. . d t lrony lS no aCC1 en :' ..
'"
The law of talion operates very·extensively in Dickens 1 s ficti'on ,. • • the- distinctive feature of the lex'talionis is not~its harshness but 'ius rigjd insistence on exact retaliation. Thé sharpness of tbe ironie effect derives from this exactness in r1etribution since no reversaI could be more complete than when a character brings upon himself the very fate (or elements in that fate) which hé had
. either tried to avo,ia~ sought to bring upon others. The manner 0 ' unishment sharply recalls' precise features of the offence. 17 .
\ ." No death could be ~ore ~oeticallY.just for Carker th an de~th
, ' ,
by the very power that he is such a 'great di~ciple of. " 1
Even when ~ne train is presented in its best aspects
as a reformer, as'a source of employment, or as the cause of a
better, standard' of living -- it is seen as a roonster of sorne
soit. The new, prosperous neighborhood that replaces the
decrepit Staggs's Gardens Is centered-about a "monster train n
(Ch. xv, p. 289? 'Dombey betraya the slightest hint of warmth \ . when Edith plays the harp for him "and perha~s he ~eard among l-
the soundi,n9 strings some,distant music of his own, that tamed \
the monster'of the Iron road, and made it less inexorable" . (Ch. xxi,-p. 371). On Dombey' s jour'ney .to . ,
t~tln becomes an image~of tQe greatest mons
( The very speed at which the train w~s·whirl ,j' (~: al~ng, mocked the swift course' of the Ydoung ~ -' / that had been·, borne away so steadil:!( an so
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104
{nexorably to its foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way -- its own -defiant of aIl paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures of aIl classes, ages, ~nd degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death. (Ch. xx, p ... 354)
In such passages, ra'ils are as important images a~ the trains
that run upon them, an~ for good reason; the power or the
train, when harnessed, is almost without exception beneficial,
if still frightening. The s~me power, separated from the " control of the "iron road," wh en abused or uncpecked, i5
dangerous. Carker has a similar nature; when his energies,
however heartless and frightening, are devoted to the firm, ,
the firm thrives, financially. It is only when Carker turns
away from the firm, and turns from mercantile selfisnness to
em~tioQal selfishness, that he dies. In the end, it is Carker
J.. who derails, not-the train.
During'Carker's flight, the powerful energy that he once
devoted to wotk He now turns upon himself:
c
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••• the springing of ,his mine upon himself, seemed to havë rent and shivered aIl his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had sl'owly poisoned, as he thought, until she had ~unk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeèeived in his deceit, and with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid. CCh. Iv, p. 863)
Once his own energy b~om~s his enemy, Carker isplost; the
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105
mental f~grnentation he experienees on his,jouiney baek to
England is the psychological equivalent of his later physical \
obliteration by the train. ,St~ Mareus writes: ",-. " 4
This journey is described in ten stunning pages -as far as l know/ nothing quite like it ever appeared before'~n the history of the\novel. Carker's consciousness is registered in its immediacy; the very syntax and rhythms of the prose becorne a part of it. 18
This prefigur~ng of stream-of-consciousness allows the reader \
ta see cl~arly Carker' ~ destr.uctive, inverted power.' In the
same way that nature, for Dombey, is Qnly made to further the -
~ortunes of Dombeyand Son~p aIl nature, for Carker.on his
flight, only exists to~orce ~pon him the realization of his
. own destruction:
again the nameless shock [of deathJ cornes speedin9 up, ~nd as it passes, the bells ring in his ears Wwhither?" The wheels roar in his ears ·whither?" AlI the noise 'and rattle sh~pes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows dance upon the horses' heads like imps. eCh. lV/ p. 865)
1 Carker loses aIl ability to think clearly, aIl ability to
sleep~ and aIl his capacity for enjoyment. He is a walking /
corpse before he me~ts the frain, to wh±ch he,is "irresistibly
attracted -- or he thought sa" (Ch. Iv, p. 872). He sperids
his last hours simply sitting and watching the incredible
force of passing trains, and from 'his, vantage point, he sees
that fo~ce in aIl its 'hor~or~
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A trembling of the ground, and quick vibration in his' earSi a distant shriek; a dull light advancing, quickly changed to red eyes, anp a fierce fire, dropping glowing coalsi an irresistable bearing on of a great roaring and dilating maSSi .~ high wind t
and a rattle -- another come' and gone, and he holding to a gatë, as if to save himself! (Ch. Iv, p. 872)
For once, his own power and the power of theotrain are at
loggerheads. In a contest between the two, there is no ques-.
tion which is the greater; Carker only derives his power from
the forces of progress in the world about him. Wh~n he flees
from that world, he is rende~ed insignificant, and destroyed. \ '
In~an important departure from Thé Old Curiosity Shop,
the death of the villain in Dornbey and Son does not destroy '"
most or even much ofOthe evil in the society present~d in the
novel. Carker is not a grotesque, as Jipgle and Quilp are, .' .
but rather a type, for which many counterparts ,(i~ aims and in
methods) could be found in the real world. The firm of
Dombey and Son is not a curiositYi one can assume that
it more closely approacoes the norm,than ~he e~ception as \
a description of â typical Mid-Victo~ian business; For ,
better or for worse, the progress and the power of the train -
age does not come to an end with the isolated abuse, of power.
,Even the viriuous-char~cters, ln their paradise of the Wooden , ,
Midshipman, finally are passengers on the train to a mod~rn
agei Sol Gills becomes a (~~ceSSful speculator ~f the market,
and Walter becomes, to a larg'e extent, the Son in a new,
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107
revitalized Dombey and Son.' ~AIso, a new Paul is born --,one
who combines the heart-nature of ~he original'Paul with (it \
seems) the mercantile hope of becoming the director of the
second'Dambey and Son.
,Dorobey and Son, then, ends on an optirnistic note, but it
does not, like Pickwick papers, ignore the monsters of soci-
ety, for the rnon~ters of the new train age are unavoidable;
Not ce~#ed about one man! they cannat be slain1' no matter 1.
how happy thls novel may be at its end, that end can not be
fully understood without the consciousness of the heartless ,',
anod inhuman forces that were uprooting 'and changing Mid-Vic~
torian society:
Night and day tlie conque ring engines rumbled at their distant work, or, advancing smoQthly to their journey's end, and gliding like tame dragons into the alloted corn~s grooved out to the inch for their reception, stood bubbling and trembling there, making the walls quake, as if they were dilating with-the secret knowledge of great powers yet unsuspected in them, and strong purposes not yet achieved. <Ch. xv, p. 290)
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Notes
1 John Francis, A Bistort of the Englis'h Railway: Its
Social Relations & Revelations 1820-1845 C185l; rpt. by \
Reprints of Economie ClassicsJ New York: Au9~stus' M. Kelly,
1968), l, ~77-89.
2 Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, ed. Peter Fairclough,'
intro. by Raymond Williams (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), \ \
Ch: xxii, p. 372. JAll further ref~rences to this work àppear
in the texte
3 Frye, "Dickens and the Comedy o~ ~umors," p; 54.
4 Jack Lindsay, Charles Dickens: A Bi6graphical and
Critical Study (New York: Philosophical Librar~, 1950), p.
283 •
5 Kaplan, pp. 136-7, 183-4, 197-201. 6 \,
Goldberg, p. 55.
7 A. E. Dyson, The Inimitable Dickens: A Reading of the
Novels (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 100-~pl. ,
8 Marcus, Dickens: From ~ickwick to Dombey, p. 349.
9 A. o. J. cockshut, The Imagination 'of Charles Dickens
(New York: New York University Press, 1962), p. 98.
10 John Romano, Dickens and Rea1ity (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1978), p. 160. 11'
Humphry Bouse, p. 137. \
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109
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12 1 ~ Dickens, "To John/Forster," 25-26 July 1846, Lette~s,
~
IV (1977), 593. ,
13 Forster, ,p."484 •
14, Wilson, p. 67.
15 Arlene M. Jack~oil,. "Reward, Punishment, and the Con-q
clusion of 'Dombe~ and Son," Di.ckens Studies Annual, 7 (197S),
" p. 124.
) 16 Kapl'an, p. Ill.
17 Sucksrnith, pp. 247-S. ' l'
18 \ 'Marcus, Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombe,ïr pp. 333-4.
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Conèlusion
Thi~thesis could weIl have been called "Monsters in
Dickens's Early Novels," for it is just as concerned with
the monsters in the three books l have studied as it, is with
the "villains. The terms are ,not inte'rchangeable, however 1
if there is one point which l hope l have made with this
thesis, it is tha\: Dickens' s early villains do not ne_cessar ily
constitute the only or ev en the greatest evils in their \
novels. It is a misconception to be~ieve that Dickens's
novels can be uncategorically divided into two grQups!- "light"
(or early) novels which are generally optimistic and in which
990d 'triump~s wholeheartedly over evil, and "dark" (or late)
novels which explore social evils, and which are largely pes-
simistic. Certainly, there is a tre~d of increasing pe6simism
" when Dickens's novels are viewed chronologicallY1 a comparison_
" between Nicholas Nickleby and Great E~pectations or Pickwi~k 1
Papers and Our Mutual Friend makes that obvious. /But to
con tend that such a division i8 un,~edlY so 16 to make 1
the assumption t'hat one group is oitly concerned with
conquerable, individual evils and t~he~ is concerned with
unconquerable social evils, or, to put it another way, that in'
Dickens's early novel.s, individuals were monsters, and in bis
l~t~r novels, society was the 9re~t monster. Such'an
assumption is false • Dickens may have been increa~ingly
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preoccupied with evil society as he grew older, but in his
early works he also was concerned wi~h the question of the
evil individu~l and evil society and with the differences
and affinities between the two. 1
III
Even though Pickwick-Papers is ~is first novel, Dickens
takes a suprisingly mature look at this'question in ~t.
Jingle ls the false monster of the book1 Plckwick makes it
his only occupation, f,or a time, to hunt Jingle down and "
1
expose him. But pickwick's conception of Jingle as a monster \
changes dra~tically by the end of the"",nô'lel. It is only when
Jingle is a victim does aqy real monster emerge to seriously
disturb Pickwick's society. Jingle's disruption of his'
socie,ty lis brief· and minor. - He might outrage the Pickwick-
\ ians, but this is largely a productof their own naivete.
His antics cause only laughter f9r the reader -- not the
nervous laugqter that 9u11p usually engenders, but out and
out and undisturbed- laughter. The on~y injury ttat Jinglé
does--toPicKwick is that he makes him blush~ ,
The Fleet, on the other band" ls terribly destructive;
it kills bodies and spirits. It attacks Pickwick, Mrs.
Bardell, and Jingle allke; it,is heartless and irrational.
T~e whole Fleet episode goes against the ~enera~ly giddy \
tonè of the novel. Inside the claustrophobie prison, the
at~ospbere is not unlike the atmospheres of Bleak Bouse or
Little Dorri~. In the Fleet, pain, want, and death all existe
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Jicngle 1 S evil ls not at aIl comparable to the Fleet 1 s,
but is, rather a struggle against that greater evil,'or a
struggle against opain, ';ant, and death., Of the three novels (
that l study, the villain and ~he monster in Pickwick PaEers
are furthest apart, and most opposed. Jingle i8 Pickwick's
ally in Pickwick~s opposition to the monster of the Fleet, \
and to the society that could foster the Fleet.
Any distinctions between individual and social evils made
in Pickwick Papersg..re forgotten in The 01d Curiosity Shop. -. ,
Quilp is a study in personal cruelty, a completely individual
evil. Moreover; Quilp largely embodies'the evil presented by \
the Fleet in Pickwick PaEers: an atmospherfc or spcial, rather
than individual, evil. His evil is a pervasive forcei its
influence can pe felt even though h~ is not physically
present. Even though he spends most of his time in the vital
heart of Eng~and, his evil travels out as if in wave~, to
disturb the dreams of his symbolic foil, Nell, wherever she
travels. Quilp is ~ithout.question ~he monster of The 01d ,
Curiosity Shop, the being to which aIl evil is-attracted and
from which àll good is repelled. Dickens holds back no ugli
ness or cruelty in his portrait of Quilp, and the brilliance
of that portrayal is itself a problem: as a true representa
tion of evil, or a refiection of ev!l society, Quilp is a
dismal failure. The Old Curiosity Shop cannot be se en as
anyth!ng other than a fairy-tale. Quilp cannot sustain a
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113 /
role as a social evil as weIl as the Fleet can, nor can hi p
character describe, the discr.epency between' individual- and
social evil. In Pickwick Papers the two collide; the strength
of one and the weakness of the other ~s"shown. Su ch a col
lision does not happen in The Dld Curiosity Shop; it cannot.
Quilp~s allegorical energy trav~ls in one direction. He is
too ~vil to be a man, but fs tao indi vidual to bOa any sort of
social evil~ Quilp must be enjoyed for himself as th~ riovel
must be: it is too far removed from society to question it.
The.re is. no such problem 'in ,Dombey and Son. In that
novelAthere is bot~ a'villain and a separate monster, as in
Pickwick Papers. Unlike Pickwick Paperà, however, those evils
are for the most part similarly directed -- towards growth and
progresse The obvious monster of Dombey and Son is tQe train.
The energy of the train is ambiguous; it is a symbol of , f
necessary, but also of heartless, progresse The true monster
of Dombey and Son, howev~r, is the society which sires the
railroads and fosters the mercantile pr ide _ and_ the commonplace . cruelty of the novel. Its influence is greater than the
Fleet' Si; the Edens of the later novel are less obvious an-d'
more transitory. The Eden 'of D~ngley Dell-never touches the
reality of the Fleet; the world of the Wooden Midshipman
cannot escap~ the influence of t~e dreary world about it.
In that world, the villain is a servant rather than a nebel,
and fights for a cold, heartless world rather than against "
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Dickens later, ftoark ft novels are darker than Dickens's
ea~lier ones because their ~aikness is largely unrelieved; if
it is not always Present, it is alrnost always lurking around
the corner. The earlier novels may be ftlight,ft but ehls light
is largely by contrast. There is not an uncornpromising split
between the two groups; both conta in elements of the'oth~.
In many ways, Pickwick Papers is a study for Little Dorrit •
is a Jingle; as Dickens concentrates more a~d more on social 1
eyil, individual evil becomes less and less separate .and ~ \ .
alive. Without such a target on which to projec~ the evils \
of the world, evil becomes an anonymous, heartless, unconquer-,
able inev~tability; Dickens's later novels are rnuch more
novels of despair. Thus, paradoxically, because Jingle and
~uilp, and to a lesser extent Catker, exist in the worlds of
their novels, and can~be confronted, and either converted or
'destroyed, then those worlds are worlds capable of posi~ive . ,
change, hope, and unqualified, unrestrained happiness.
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Bibliography
,
/
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Allen, wal tEir. "The Cornedy of Dickens." ,. In Dickens 1970. ~
Ed. Machael Slater, pp. 3-27.
Andrews, Malcolm, introd. The Old Cur-iosity Shop. By. Charles\
Dickens. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, pp. 11-31.
/uden, W. H. "Dingley Dell and The Fleet." In his The Dyer's
. Band and Other Essays. New York: Random House, 1962,r~p. 407-428. \
Blount, Trevor. Charles Dickens: the Early Novels. Lo~don:
Th~ British Council, 1968. <-
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