David Copperfield: The Bildungsroman and Monstrosity

Empire as Solution

The Uses and Fears of Empire

David uses Europe as place to escape/recover self

“I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive. “ (Ch 58)

On the one hand increasing scope of world allows recovery and perspective. At same time England becomes space of “battle” and birthplace of problematic “undisciplined heart.”

“I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy friends.

    I have often remarked-I suppose everybody has-that one's going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it.” (Ch 59)

Empire haunts not only the end of the book (emigration to Australia, Mr. Peggotty’s return, talk of ‘transportation” when visiting model prisoners) but also beginning (David’s caul sold as safety for sea voyages and raffled off to a lady who objects to “meandering” around world, Aunt Betsy’s husband had initially “gone off to India with his capital” and Jack Maldon is later sent there)

' What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children's children. However vigorous the sapling,' said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, 'I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia.'

    'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'Britannia must take her chance. I am bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I have no particular wish upon the subject.'

    'Micawber,' returned Mrs. Micawber, 'there, you are wrong. You are going out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to weaken, the connexion between yourself and Albion.'

(Ch 57)

Monstrous Institutions

Notice that Australia serves to fix may of the problems that have haunted this book:

Convicts (alluded to through servant boy who steals spoons, Heep and Littimer)

Excess/fallen women (Martha, Julia Mills gets married; Emily and Mrs. Gummidge find a way to be useful)

Unsuccessful men (Micawber, Mell)

Note that Mrs. Micawber’s speech emphasizes the “parent-tree” of England and in the newspaper report, “Mrs. Micawber’s Family (well-known, it is needless to remark, in the mother country)” (Ch 58))—while “motherland” is a figure of speech, there do seem to be powerful connections between empire and mother in this final section: an emphasis on reintegrating “lost/fallen’ women (including perhaps, David’s own mother) and a nostalgia for what is lost and a question of how to recover it

Rise of the Middle Class

Return of the Mothers

• Ends with strong language of monstrosity: “pestilent” “pernicious”
• Great part of monstrosity seems to lay in “indecency” of public’s lack of knowledge and control of both physical space and bureaucratic workings of capitalism: alienation of labor
• Note also a connection to writing: concern about the production and dissemination of paper, whether managing such “stories” is true work (sinecure, yet concern about being able to serve people with it)

“that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply... That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),-while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago. (Ch 33)

“Puritanical social habits and often hypocritical evangelising defined the middle classes of the time. Their ideology was dominated by notions of sobriety, thriftiness, self-reliance and hard work. They spurned “mob” entertainments and spent their ever-increasing leisure time with the family. They disdained the idleness and excess of aristocracy, yet wanted to keep up with their betters. Public drunkenness was associated with the poor, and the fear of working classes congregating in large, malevolent groups in the new “uncontrollable cities” was ever present. “ (Stephen Collini Times London)

“They had a dreadful time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then into her head-'

    'What mounted?' I asked.

    'Her grief,' replied Traddles, with a serious look. 'Her feelings generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system in a most alarming manner. “(Ch 59)

“'Immortally safe, sir,' returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of the voice. 'I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should have been got into my present state if I hadn't come here. I wish mother had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up, and was brought here.' “ (Ch 61)

• “the principle of a gentleman”; struggle between creating new institutions and appearing not to do so
• Emphasis on wills make this, literally, a life and death matter
• Mr. Spenlow argues in favor of stasis—seemingly against workings of capitalism, but builds case for it being necessary to the way it is carried out (reinforced by rare historical insertion)

“Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment, but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don't know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.” (Ch 33)

They were entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them. How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can't imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another (every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. (Ch 59

Agnes is “mothered” in David’s burst of passion: guide, support, quietly waiting for him

Association with home/space of safety (went/stayed/returned home, “never would have wandered from you”)

Connection with death—Dora’s and, in Ch 60, Agnes’s connection to “her poor mother’s story”

“'Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!'

    Still weeping, but not sadly-joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!

    'When I loved Dora-fondly, Agnes, as you know-'

    'Yes!' she cried, earnestly. 'I am glad to know it!'

    'When I loved her-even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!'

    Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!

    'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!' “ (Ch 62)

connection back to empire?

Some Paper Modeling

If Uriah Heep= a foil for David and David is ascending to/through middle class, what does that mean about middle class ideology via Uriah? or, How is Uriah Heep not David?

Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her father rose up from the table! 'What's the matter?' said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. 'You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope? If I say I've an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any other man!'

   …

    He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.

    'Look at my torturer,' he replied. 'Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.'

    'I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,' said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise. 'Don't be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose? There's no harm done.'

'Copperfield!' said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the iron on the roof, 'I thought you'd be glad to hear before you went off, that there are no squares broke between us. I've been into his room already, and we've made it all smooth. Why, though I'm umble, I'm useful to him, you know; and he understands his interest when he isn't in liquor! What an agreeable man he is, after all, Master Copperfield!'

    I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.

    'Oh, to be sure!' said Uriah. 'When a person's umble, you know, what's an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,' with a jerk, 'you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?'

    'I suppose I have,' I replied.

    'I did that last night,' said Uriah; 'but it'll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!'

    Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it. (39)

David's Industriousness.....

Uriah's Industriousness

Narrow down to a few rich moments of comparison that allow you to go further—to start to develop how and why

Let’s say I’m interested in economic and question of “innocence”

• How do they work together?
• What does trope of “fallen” woman offer up?
• Why focused together?

Working Thesis: “Questions of fallen women in DC often revolve around capital and family structure and how the two interact, suggesting that such images both shore up middle class structures and point to their dangers” [note here that Castaway springboards us in to discussion, but is not major analysis, so not in thesis]

First chunk: economics

Castaway

Women and economic straits—martha begging, emily’s work identity, Rosa dartle

Annie as economic exchange

Second Chunk: Family

Castaway—sets up lack of familial structure

More nuanced in DC—Mr Peggotty acknowledges that Martha was w/o family, but what does that say about Emily?

Annie’s bad guidance

Third Chunk: How does this reflect on DC’s experiences?

Draw parallels between him and Annie

His own familial struggles

Household as turning “bad”

I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking. (Ch 37)

• Repetition and struggling on in face of failure become David’s key personality traits at this point
• Illegibility—not a system with clear one to one correspondence: virtue lies in working through system until it makes sense to user (rather than creating new system that makes sense from start); notice that David will use this new knowledge to attend/decipher parliamentary proceedings—extend to legal/ruling class
• Again a connection of writing and labor: here act of writing requires tremendous attention and signals virtue and success

How is Uriah's industry not like David's? Why is David' appropriate/right and Uriah's not? What does this suggest about the workings of capitalism in this novel?

“'I am not fond of professions of humility,' I returned, 'or professions of anything else.' 'There now!' said Uriah, looking flabby and lead-coloured in the moonlight. 'Didn't I know it! But how little you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness -not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. "Be umble, Uriah," says father to me, "and you'll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it's what goes down best. Be umble," says father," and you'll do!" And really it ain't done bad!'

    It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.

    'When I was quite a young boy,' said Uriah, 'I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, "Hold hard!" When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. "People like to be above you," says father, "keep yourself down." I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I've got a little power!”

Ch 39

Paragraph Model: Establishing Importance

“A Castaway’s” narrator emphasizes the economic realities that create fallen women; David Copperfield, too, frequently highlights the connection between women and economic necessities. Martha, for instance, enters the text begging Emily for money to escape to London. Emily herself only "leave[s] my dear home-my dear home-oh, my dear home!“ with the promise that “it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady” (278). The break in the text—the narrator interjects when the letter was written before offering Emily’s line about being “a lady”– accentuates the role class and money play in her decision. Emily explicitly links class to increased economic power, saying “if she was a lady she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle-don't you see?-and buy him such-and-such fine things” (188). More basically, however, Dickens links Emily with commerce and trade throughout the scenes leading up to her seduction: Martha and Emily are connected through the workplace, and Emily is most frequently portrayed at her place of work or coming or going from it. Indeed, it is Omer, her employer, who not only links Emily’s desire for class with economic clout in the quotation above, but first foreshadows Emily’s running away, suggesting that she is “unsettled” (286). The frequent emphasis on emplyment indicates how very much issues of the fallen woman revolve around economics in David Copperfield.

Paragraph Model: Close Reading

David’s descriptions of the household he and Dora run draw implicit connections between bad household management and fallen women. David blames “the contagion in us” for their management problems (345). Contagion, of course, served not only as a metaphor for the way in which fallen women might “infect” pure women (thus Mr. Peggoty can not bear to see Martha next to Emily (188)) but also as a literal fact in terms of the venereal diseases frequently spread by prostitutes; the Contagious Diseases Act of1864 was explicitly aimed at quarantining diseased prostitutes. While Dora’s literal belief that they are spreading disease causes David to abandon this metaphor, the stream of references to “contagion,” “infect[ion] and “vaccination… for this unwholesome state of ours” suggest that his choice of words is more than just a figure of speech (345). We ought to take his claim that in “present[ing] opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented” he and Dora are “positively corrupting” quite seriously and literally, particularly insofar as those they “corrupt” are servants—a primarily female class and one for which slippage between worker and sex worker was quite common. Eulalie in “A Castaway” asks “who so boldas hire me for their humblest drudgery?/not even for scullery slut; not even, I think,/for governess, although they'd get me cheap,” suggesting a fluid movement between servant jobs and prostitution, one David and Dora seem to “infect” upon their own servants (ll 275-277). Thus Dickens paints the fallen woman not only a threat to the middle class home, but as formed by bad management in the middle class home.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us. We infect everyone about us.'

    I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had not admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy, for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made my meaning plainer.

    'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and comfort, and even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out ill because we don't turn out very well ourselves.'

    'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; 'to say that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!'

    'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense! Who has made the least allusion to gold watches?'

    'You did,' returned Dora. 'You know you did. You said I hadn't turned out well, and compared me to him.'

    'To whom?' I asked.

    'To the page,' sobbed Dora. 'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell me your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn't you say, you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my goodness!'

    'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove the handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very ridiculous of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it's not true.'

    'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora. 'And now you say the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!'

    'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to be reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice-which we are not-even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so-which we don't-I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can't help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss, and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that's all. Come now. Don't be foolish!' (Ch 48)

Grotesque(r) Sexuality

Extremities of Opinionlessness

"A Castaway"

“'I don't!' she said. 'Oh dear me, don't suppose that I think anything! I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don't state any opinion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it's not so? Well! I am very glad to know it.‘” (Ch 29)

Why look at “A Castaway?”

Slightly later (1870) take on fallen woman—may offer perspective, allow us to see hidden undercurrents that are developing

Female voice—what is expressed through this take? How might this let us reflect on portrayal of women—fallen and otherwise—in DC?

Victorian Angels

Offers up a variety of reasons for prostitution:

• Imbrication of Feminine Beauty/Virtue:
• “is it not this, this beauty, my own curse at once and tool to snare men's souls -- (I know what the good say of beauty in such creatures) -- is it not this that makes me feel myself a woman still, some little pride, some little –”)
• Economic: insists in same “trade” as more common prostitutes and compares what she sells to false commodities of lawyers, preachers, etc; did not have the “commodity” of learning for governess (though points out women don’t need this learning); her education sacrificed to brother’s [Annie—” my tenderness was bought-and sold to you,” (Ch 45)]
• Family structures: loses mother, father, brother casts her aside—lost child. Argues that with excess woman problem women naturally adrift. [Emily and Martha “'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you'd had such a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.' As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose. 'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, both as she would go to the wureld's furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't-and doen't,' he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, 'there's shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us.' (Ch 47)]
• “the silly rules this silly world makes about women”:
• “kind homes, good homes, where simple children comeand ask their mother is this right or wrong,because they know she's perfect, cannot err;their father told them so, and he knows all,being so wise and good and wonderful,even enough to scold even her at timesand tell her everything she does not know.Ah the sweet nursery logic! Fool! thrice fool!do I hanker after that too? Fancy meinfallible nursery saint, live code of law!me preaching! teaching innocence to be good!a mother! [Dora as “child wife”—failure of this system)
• Enforced Innocence:
• “your girl,taught by you, lapped in a sweet ignorance,scarcely more wise of what things sin could bethan some young child a summer six months oldwhere in the north the summer makes a day,of what is darkness ... darkness that will cometo-morrow suddenly” [ “"Mama," she said crying, "I am extremely young"-which was perfectly true-"and I hardly know if I have a heart at all." "Then, my dear," I said, "you may rely upon it, it's free.” Ch 16]
• Stifling Nature of Female Experience: “No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,only the young girl's hazed and golden dreams “that veil the Future from her.” [less obvious here—might look at Rosa Dartle, perhaps even David’s own “undisciplined heart” What I missed, I still regarded-I always regarded-as something that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.”]

Homosocial Spaces of Angelhood

Entering Adult Sexuality

'From many things-trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over you.'

    There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest; but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.

    'It is very bold in me,' said Agnes, looking up again, 'who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know in what it is engendered, Trotwood,-in how true a remembrance of our having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.'

    Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.

    'I am not so unreasonable as to expect,' said Agnes, resuming her usual tone, after a little while, 'that you will, or that you can, at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me-I mean,' with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she knew why, 'as often as you think of me-to think of what I have said. Do you forgive me for all this?' (Ch 25)

Notice that the “bad angel” (a somewhat feminized term) in contrast to Agnes is not a female, but Steerforth. We’ve talked about some of the obvious homoeroticism of their relationship: recurrent motif of him asleep in bed, “Daisy,” introducing David into “dissipation,” emphasis on his body.

“As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly-a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain-and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, 'I swear you to secrecy about this!' said not a word more.

    Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son's society, and Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures-I ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature-might have been harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation” (Ch 29)

Notice here the sexualization of Rosa Dartle, which might be read as a proxy of David’s own emotions, followed by the immediate melding of Steerforth with his mother, thus making him a safer sexual proxy. These scenes might represent David’s own transition into mature heterosexuality (bookend this with his enchantment with Dora, death of Barkis (first adult love affair he witnesses), Em’ly’s “fall”). The emphasis on pain and separation suggests the loss necessary in this transition, whether it be from abandoning true sexuality or loss of innocent space of male bonding

Nostalgia for pre-heterosexual space

Man must be pleased; but him to pleaseIs woman's pleasure; down the gulfOf his condoled necessitiesShe casts her best, she flings herself.How often flings for nought, and yokesHer heart to an icicle or whim,Whose each impatient word provokesAnother, not from her, but him;While she, too gentle even to forceHis penitence by kind replies,Waits by, expecting his remorse,With pardon in her pitying eyes;And if he once, by shame oppress'd,A comfortable word confers,She leans and weeps against his breast,And seems to think the sin was hers;Or any eye to see her charms,At any time, she's still his wife,Dearly devoted to his arms;She loves with love that cannot tire;And when, ah woe, she loves alone,Through passionate duty love springs higher,As grass grows taller round a stone. (Coventry Patmore: The Angel in the House)

What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have loved him so well still-though he fascinated me no longer-I should have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known-they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed-but mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead. (Ch 32)

Young Love

 ” 'My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer, as it has always looked, since she fust know'd it. If ever she should come a wandering back, I wouldn't have the old place seem to cast her off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to 't, and to peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas'r Davy, seein' none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in, trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her weary head where it was once so gay.'

    I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.

    'Every night,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as reg'lar as the night comes, the candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should see it, it may seem to say "Come back, my child, come back!" If ever there's a knock, Ham (partic'ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your aunt's door, doen't you go nigh it. Let it be her-not you-that sees my fallen child!‘”

” (Ch 32)

“It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We loitered along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one, and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in Fairyland, certainly I was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day, strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.” (Ch 26)

“Of course I was in love with little Em'ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don't think I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.

    We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em'ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.

    As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, 'Lor! wasn't it beautiful!' Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum. “ (Ch 3)

Timeless/”futureless-ness” marks both romances and allows safe interest in females (one might argue this is also what makes Steerforth “safe”)—emphasis on motherlessness of both “loves” also suggests a way to avoid disturbing sexualization of mother and fear of replacement by another that can only be neutralized through death

Grotesque Marriages

I want to recall the rich meaning grotesque held for Victorian readers: an aberration from the norm, but also something that was symbolically rich and perhaps carried the taint of death –and from a twentieth century perspective, something that is the “expression of an alienated or estranged world”

While Dickens seemingly (and I would argue consciously) adheres to rather stifling Victorian norms of sexuality in dividing up “good” and “bad” women, his depictions of marriage are grotesque in how they seem to trap and entomb young women and tug at what would seem to be ideal

'Em'ly, my dear,' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'See here! Here's Mas'r Davy come! What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas'r Davy?'

    There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling still, upon his breast.

    'It's such a loving art,' said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair with his great hard hand, 'that it can't abear the sorrer of this. It's nat'ral in young folk, Mas'r Davy, when they're new to these here trials, and timid, like my little bird,-it's nat'ral.'

    She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a word.

    'It's getting late, my dear,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'and here's Ham come fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t'other loving art! What' Em'ly? Eh, my pretty?'

    The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he listened to her, and then said:

    'Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen't mean to ask me that! Stay with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that'll be so soon, is here fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn't think it, fur to see this little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; 'but the sea ain't more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle-a foolish little Em'ly!'

(Ch 30)

'But I DO mind,' said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his lips. 'I mind very much. I recall these things that I may be contradicted if I am wrong. Well! Then I spoke to Annie, and I told her what had happened. I said, "My dear, here's Doctor Strong has positively been and made you the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer." Did I press it in the least? No. I said, "Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is your heart free?" "Mama," she said crying, "I am extremely young"-which was perfectly true-"and I hardly know if I have a heart at all." "Then, my dear," I said, "you may rely upon it, it's free. At all events, my love," said I, "Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of mind, and must be answered. He cannot be kept in his present state of suspense." "Mama," said Annie, still crying, "would he be unhappy without me? If he would, I honour and respect him so much, that I think I will have him." So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said to Annie, "Annie, Doctor Strong will not only be your husband, but he will represent your late father: he will represent the head of our family, he will represent the wisdom and station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will be, in short, a Boon to it." I used the word at the time, and I have used it again, today. If I have any merit it is consistency.'

    The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech, with her eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her, and looking on the ground too. “

   (Ch 16)

What might this say about David’s planned marriage to Dora?

“The polarisation of public and private spheres becomes the foundation upon which the ascendant bourgeoisie constructed the family and its sexuality. The passionless reproductive wife confined to private domesticity, along with her publicly and competitively orientated husband becomes the central reference point for discussions concerning sexuality. The prostitute, homosexual and the solitary masturbator emerged as entities posing the greatest threat to heterosexual reproduction, bourgeois morality and social order.” (http://www.isis.aust.com/stephan/writings/sexuality/vict.htm)

Worth thinking about Dickens (1812-1870) as both experiencing and, in some ways, creating new understandings of how sexuality marked/shaped personality

As we’ve discussed, sexuality went “underground” in the Victorian period– things that would have been openly discussed or accepted in previous decades became private/hidden, so that by the end of the 19th century not only did middle class Victorians cover up their piano legs to prevent immodesty, but “daring” young women were writing passionate articles about a young woman’s “right to know” before marriage that sex existed and she would be expected to participate in it

Yet, as Michel Foucault has pointed out, this extreme repression really points to the ways in which sexuality became a ruling way of understanding personality and motive in the nineteenth century : “Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, there emerged a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about sex. ..... This need to take sex ‘into account’, to pronounce a discourse on sex that would not derive from morality alone but from rationality as well, was sufficiently new that at first it wondered at itself and sought apologies for its own existence. How could a discourse based on reason speak like that?” (History of Sexuality 21).

David Copperfield: The Bildungsroman and Monstrosity

Grotesque Developments: Minor Characters

Back to Mr. Dick.....

Barkis

Dickens and Minor Characters

• Similarly “orphaned,” dependent on Aunt Betsy
• Displacement of anxiety over mother’s marriage and sexuality to Mr. Dick’s sister (if you wanted to get all phallic—”Mr. Dick,” chopping off of head)
• Writerly questions– relation between “memorializing” and keeping out one’s own life
• Question of “employment”: growing emphasis on connection of work and identity (as we’ll see in the emphasis on David choosing a career and Steerforth’s wish he had had “judicious guidance” (Ch 22)
• Mary Poovey: “because literary labor exposed the problematic nature of crucial capitalist categories, writing, and specifically the representation of writing, became a contested site at which the instabilities implicit in market relations surfaced, only to be variously worked over and sometimes symbolically resolved” (105)

• Here the “problems of capitalism” are displaced onto the poor—Barkis essentially tries to hide the existence of money and his effort to get it—alienated labor
• Links it with domestic happiness and role of woman in transforming and regulating capital
• Think about David’s own dislocated relation to money a few chapters later (Aunt buys him apprenticeship, apt, he tries to see chance for making capital later) and trace regulation of his domestic affairs later in book

'Old clothes,' said Mr. Barkis.

    'Oh!' said I.

    'I wish it was Money, sir,' said Mr. Barkis.

    'I wish it was, indeed,' said I.

    'But it AIN'T,' said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could.

    I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes more gently to his wife, said:

    'She's the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear, you'll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink, will you?'

    …

    'I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,' said Mr. Barkis, 'but I'm a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for a short nap, I'll try and find it when I wake.'

   …. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty's eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures. (Ch 21)

It’s worth thinking about these characters in terms of the grotesque both because of their vitality and oddness and because we can use them to think about what “monstrous” disconnect they address– thus the following readings will suggest how characters act as foils to David, but also as indicators of larger social issues

Rosa Dartle

I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone, and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I thought of her.

    'She is very clever, is she not?' I asked.

    'Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,' said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all edge.'

    'What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!' I said.

    Steerforth's face fell, and he paused a moment.

    'Why, the fact is,' he returned, 'I did that.'

    'By an unfortunate accident!'

    'No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at her. A promising young angel I must have been!' I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.

    'She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,' said Steerforth; 'and she'll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one-though I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father's. He died one day. My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. There's the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.'

    'And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?' said I.

    'Humph!' retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. 'Some brothers are not loved over much; and some love-but help yourself, Copperfield! We'll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me-the more shame for me!' A moody smile that had overspread his features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank, winning self again.

…

found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.

    It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The painter hadn't made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I had seen it when she was passionate.

    I wondered peevishly why they couldn't put her anywhere else instead of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly, extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could not forget that she was still there looking, 'Is it really, though? I want to know'; and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was or not-without knowing what I meant. (Ch 20)

• Mirrors David in orphanhood, attraction to Steerforth
• Reminds us of “grotesque” sexualities: “some brothers are not loved over much; and some love—but” Reinforces this with highlighting his insistence on calling David Daisy
• Watching/Questioning highlights the invasiveness of writing “I found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was or wasn’t” and fear that it will “wear one away”– does writing make one a monster?
• Extreme/ exaggerated case of every woman: dependent upon relatives for security/position, body marked and readable

Miss Mowcher

Uriah Heep

'Go along, you dog, do!' cried the little creature, making a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, 'and don't be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers's last week-THERE'S a woman! How SHE wears!-and Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for her- THERE'S a man! How HE wears! and his wig too, for he's had it these ten years-and he went on at that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He's a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.'

    'What were you doing for Lady Mithers?' asked Steerforth.

    'That's tellings, my blessed infant,' she retorted, tapping her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of supernatural intelligence. 'Never YOU mind! You'd like to know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn't you? And so you shall, my darling-when I tell you….

    I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher's wink except Miss Mowcher's self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie's. Altogether I was lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of politeness. (Ch 22)

• Self reflexivity– turns the eye from self and grotesqueness to the grotesqueness of the “normal”
• A focus on nobles—commentary on defunct upper classes?
• Both in manners and job operates through an excess of feminine markers

• Again, a foil to David in fatherless condittion, “adoption” by Wickfield, upward mobility
• Takes lower class virtues (‘umbleness) to extremes; animalized as if to demonstrtae otherness of lower class
• Yet, at the same time, decidedly middle class in upward mobility, familial devotion, recognition of domestic feminine virtues in Agnes
• Brings questions of malleability to forefront—where draw the line between middle and lower class? What makes Uriah repulsive?

   'Me, Master Copperfield?' said Uriah. 'Oh, no! I'm a very umble person.'

  ...

    'I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,' said Uriah Heep, modestly; 'let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton.'

    'What is he now?' I asked.

    'He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah Heep. 'But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!'

    I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?

    'I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place where he had left off. 'Since a year after my father's death. How much have I to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in Mr. Wickfield's kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise not lay within the umble means of mother and self!'

    'Then, when your articled time is over, you'll be a regular lawyer, I suppose?' said I.

    'With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,' returned Uriah.

    'Perhaps you'll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield's business, one of these days,' I said, to make myself agreeable; 'and it will be Wickfield and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.'

 …

    'Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah. 'Your aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copperfield!'

    He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.

    'A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!' said Uriah Heep. 'She has a great admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?'

    I said, 'Yes,' boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven forgive me!

    'I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah. 'But I am sure you must have.'

    'Everybody must have,' I returned.

    'Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah Heep, 'for that remark! It is so true! Umble as I am, I know it is so true! Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield!' He writhed himself quite off his stool in the excitement of his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements for going home.

    'Mother will be expecting me,' he said, referring to a pale, inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, 'and getting uneasy; for though we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached to one another. …

Monstrosity and The Family

Murdering/Murderous Mothers

David willfully tries to reconstruct an idyllic mother-child bond free from any intrusion by the outside world, but cannot help but re-insert death and sin

• We can interpret this as a Freudian necessary separation from the mother in which desire for the mother must be “killed” for the child to enter normal sexuality…OR
• We can see this scene as repressing tremendous rage under the heavy-handed insistence of his mother’s “angel-like” purity (taken to the extreme of death)

Bad Mommies

“I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke's workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby's.” (Ch 12)

The Grotesque...

“From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.

    The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.” (Ch 9)

• Blind devotion to husband
• Fecundity (rage at new baby)
• Willingness to leave behind
• Blindness

"Good" Mommies

Other Family Dramas

Wolfgang Keyser (1958):

The grotesque is the expression of the estranged or alienated world, i.e. the familiar world is seen from a perspective which suddenly renders it strange (and, presumably, this strangeness may be either comic or terrifying, or both). The grotesque is a game with the absurd, in the sense that the grotesque artist plays, half laughingly, half horrified, with the deep absurdities of existence.

The grotesque is an attempt to control and exorcise the demonic elements in the

Philip Thomson ( world.1972):

fundamentally ambivalent thing, as a violent clash of opposites, and hence, in some of its forms at least, as an appropriate expression of the problematical nature of existence. It is no accident that the grotesque mode in art and literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by strife, radical change or disorientation.

David as Mothering Self

'He has been CALLED mad,' said my aunt. 'I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards—in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.'

'So long as that?' I said.

'And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,' pursued my aunt. 'Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine—it doesn't matter how; I needn't enter into that. If it hadn't been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That's all.'

I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.

'A proud fool!' said my aunt. 'Because his brother was a little eccentric—though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people—he didn't like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.'

Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also.

'So I stepped in,' said my aunt, 'and made him an offer. I said, "Your brother's sane—a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with me. I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum-folks) have done." After a good deal of squabbling,' said my aunt, 'I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!—But nobody knows what that man's mind is, except myself.'

My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the other.

'He had a favourite sister,' said my aunt, 'a good creature, and very kind to him. But she did what they all do—took a husband. And HE did what they all do—made her wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind of Mr. Dick (that's not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him into a fever. That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is oppressive to him even now. Did he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?'

'Yes, aunt.'

'Ah!' said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. 'That's his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn't he, if he thinks proper!' (Ch 14)

and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,-by the by, I should hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:

    'What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?'

    'Clara Peggotty,' I answered.

    'What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt here?'

    'Clara Peggotty, again?' I suggested.

    'Clara Peggotty BARKIS!' he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter that shook the chaise.

    In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she was very glad it was over.

    We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went out for a stroll with little Em'ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large quantity without any emotion.

    I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis's mind to an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I was 'a young Roeshus'-by which I think he meant prodigy. (Ch 10)

CHAPTER 9 I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

CHAPTER 10 I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR

CHAPTER 11 I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON'T LIKE IT

CHAPTER 12 LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION

CHAPTER 13 THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION

CHAPTER 14 MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME

CHAPTER 15 I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING

CHAPTER 16 I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE

“My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept-and torn besides-might have frightened the birds from my aunt's garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt. “ (Chapter 13)

MY aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman's gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands. (Ch 13)

Ruskin ():

According to the third volume of Modern Painters, the grotesque has three basic modes or branches, one of which is the fantastic, a comparatively rare form produced by the "healthful and open play of the imagination" (5.131). This delicate fairy art, which is seen "in Shakespere's Ariel and Titania, and in Scott's White Lady," is seldom achieved, says Ruskin, because the "moment we begin to contemplate sinless beauty we are apt to get serious; and moral fairy tales, and such other innocent work, are hardly ever truly, that is to say, naturally, imaginative; but for the most part laborious inductions and compositions. The moment any real vitality enters them, they are nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly gloomy, and so connect themselves with the evil enjoying branch" (5.131-32).

The second form of grotesque imagination, which served as the basis for Ruskin's conception of a high art suited to the Victorian age, is the "thoroughly noble one . . . which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible signs to set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly the whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and poetry" (5.132…. “All noble grotesques are concentrations.. and the noblest convey truths which nothing else could convey" (5.133).

The third form of grotesque imagination, one that is completely grotesque in the usual, narrower sense of the term, arises from the fact that the imagination in its mocking or playful moods ... is apt to jest, sometimes bitterly, with under-current of sternest pathos, sometimes waywardly, sometimes slightly and wickedly, with death and sin; hence an enormous mass of grotesque art, some most noble and useful, as Holbein's Dance of Death, and Albert Durer's Knight and Death, going down gradually through various conditions of less and less seriousness in an art whose only end is that of mere excitement, or amusement by terror" (5.131).

(George P Landow)

Dickens's. . . early identification of the grotesque with the amusingly bizarre in Nicholas Nickleby is conventionally comic, …. By the time of Great Expectations, however, he had expanded his notion of the grotesque as a stock property of comic convention, to a "grotesque tragic-comic conception" that, he said, inspired the novel. Significantly, Dickens applies the grotesque not to oddity of character or scene but to a conception of something inherently contradictory in the human situation, which is best brought out by the deliberate mixing of genres and types appropriate to the tragic-comic.

…. It was the formal literary means both of giving expression to a perception of the world as a place at once ordinary and extraordinary, ludicrous and sublime, and of unifying such contrarities through the conception of the tragicomic and the use of grotesque contrasts associated with it. [Michael Goldberg 190]

David displaces his rage at his abandonment so thoroughly as to make it disappear from both himself and his reader, but we can see it seeping through in his clear display of maternal faults in Mrs Micawber, his insistence on evacuating “good” mothers of any hint of sexuality, his insistence on his own role in not only caring for but birthing himself and his “killing,” over and over, of both his mother and himself, suggesting that the potential monstrosity of child anger and its wide ranging effects is at the heart of this text.

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

  …, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.

    As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to 'help' my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him. (Ch 4)

“I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the old one.” (Ch 4)

Grotesque Language

Grotesque Bodies: Encountering The Lower Class

I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's voice and manner all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard -perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me-and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother was herself. (Ch 4)

My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar ... It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them-as I did-and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones-which I did too. I … The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.

    This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. (Ch 4)

“'Here's my Am!' screamed Peggotty, 'growed out of knowledge!'

    He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy's face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.” (Ch 3)

“'Oh, what an agreeable man he is!' cried Peggotty, holding up her hands. 'Then there's the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play with-'

    Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.” (Ch 2)

“One function of ‘literature’ then, was to identify (construct) the ‘national character’ by representing (defining) what was common to all Englishmen; by the same token, ‘literature’ included those works that represented these ‘national’ traits” (Mary Poovey 110)

Dickens’s construction of a writerly bildungsroman, then, with its emphasis on grotesque bodies and language, reflects on the building of national identity and questions the task and advisability of building up a common, seemingly contradictory and threatening national self

Sexuality...Monstrous and Innocent

“When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.” (Ch 2)

“He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn't like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother's in touching me-which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.

    'Oh, Davy!' remonstrated my mother.

    'Dear boy!' said the gentleman. 'I cannot wonder at his devotion!‘” (Ch 2)

“I knew as well, when I saw my mother's head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck-I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.” (Ch 4)

I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. …

we, who had remained whispering and listening half-undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too.

    'Good night, young Copperfield,' said Steerforth. 'I'll take care of you.' 'You're very kind,' I gratefully returned. 'I am very much obliged to you.'

    'You haven't got a sister, have you?' said Steerforth, yawning.

    'No,' I answered.

    'That's a pity,' said Steerforth. 'If you had had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.'

    'Good night, sir,' I replied.

    I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the reason of my mind running on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.

(Ch 6)

Grotesque Sexuality

“At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em'ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did.” (Ch 4)

“"thoroughly noble one . . . which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible signs to set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly the whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and poetry" (5.132)

God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother's voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.

    I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.

    I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.

    I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.

(Ch 7)

According to Lacan, one must always distinguish between reality (the fantasy world we convince ourselves is the world around us) and the real (a materiality of existence beyond language and thus beyond expressibility). The development of the subject, in other words, is made possible by an endless misrecognition of the real because of our need to construct our sense of "reality" in and through language. So much are we reliant on our linguistic and social version of "reality" that the eruption of pure materiality (of the real) into our lives is radically disruptive. And yet, the real is the rock against which all of our artificial linguistic and social structures necessarily fail. It is this tension between the real and our social laws, meanings, conventions, desires, etc. that determines our psychosexual lives. Not even our unconscious escapes the effects of language, which is why Lacan argues that "the unconscious is structured like a language" (Four Fundamental 203).

Lacan's version of psychosexual development is, therefore, organized around the subject's ability to recognize, first, iconic signs and, then, eventually, language. This entrance into language follows a particular developmental model, according to Lacan, one that is quite distinct from Freud's version of the same (even though Lacan continued to argue—some would say "perversely"—that he was, in fact, a strict Freudian). Here, then, is your story, as told by Lacan, with the ages provided as very rough approximations since Lacan, like Freud, acknowledged that development varied between individuals and that stages could even exist simultaneously within a given individual:

0-6 months of age. In the earliest stage of development, you were dominated by a chaotic mix of perceptions, feelings, and needs. You did not distinguish your own self from that of your parents or even the world around you. Rather, you spent your time taking into yourself everything that you experienced as pleasurable without any acknowledgment of boundaries. This is the stage, then, when you were closest to the pure materiality of existence, or what Lacan terms "the Real." Still, even at this early stage, your body began to be fragmented into specific erogenous zones (mouth, anus, penis, vagina), aided by the fact that your mother tended to pay special attention to these body parts. This "territorialization" of the body could already be seen as a falling off, an imposition of boundaries and, thus, the neo-natal beginning of socialization (a first step away from the Real). Indeed, this fragmentation was accompanied by an identification with those things perceived as fulfilling your lack at this early stage: the mother's breast, her voice, her gaze. Since these privileged external objects could not be perfectly assimilated and could not, therefore, ultimately fulfill your lack, you already began to establish the psychic dynamic (fantasy vs. lack) that would control the rest of your life.

6-18 months of age. This stage, which Lacan terms the "mirror stage," was a central moment in your development. The "mirror stage" entails a "libidinal dynamism" (Écrits 2) caused by the young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego"). For Lacan, this act marks the primordial recognition of one's self as "I," although at a point "before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject" (Écrits 2). In other words, this recognition of the self's image precedes the entrance into language, after which the subject can understand the place of that image of the self within a larger social order, in which the subject must negotiate his or her relationship with others. Still, the mirror stage is necessary for the next stage, since to recognize yourself as "I" is like recognizing yourself as other ("yes, that person over there is me"); this act is thus fundamentally self-alienating. Indeed, for this reason your feelings towards the image were mixed, caught between hatred ("I hate that version of myself because it is so much better than me") and love ("I want to be like that image").Note This "Ideal-I" is important precisely because it represents to the subject a simplified, bounded form of the self, as opposed to the turbulent chaotic perceptions, feelings, and needs felt by the infant. This "primordial Discord" (Écrits 4) is particularly formative for the subject, that is, the discord between, on the one hand, the idealizing image in the mirror and, on the other hand, the reality of one's body between 6-18 months ("the signs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the neo-natal months" [Écrits 4]): "The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation—and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic—and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development" (Écrits 4). This misrecognition or méconnaissance (seeing an ideal-I where there is a fragmented, chaotic body) subsequently "characterizes the ego in all its structures" (Écrits 6). In particular, this creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. It establishes what Lacan terms the "imaginary order" and, through the imaginary, continues to assert its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the next stage of development.

18 months to 4 years of age. The acquisition of language during this next stage of development further separated you from a connection to the Real (from the actual materiality of things). Lacan builds on such semiotic critics as Ferdinand de Saussure to show how language is a system that makes sense only within its own internal logic of differences: the word, "father," only makes sense in terms of those other terms it is defined with or against (mother, "me," law, the social, etc.). As Kaja Silverman puts it, "the signifier 'father' has no relation whatever to the physical fact of any individual father. Instead, that signifier finds its support in a network of other signifiers, including 'phallus,' 'law,' 'adequacy,' and 'mother,' all of which are equally indifferent to the category of the real" (164). Once you entered into the differential system of language, it forever afterwards determined your perception of the world around you, so that the intrusion of the Real's materiality becomes a traumatic event, albeit one that is quite common since our version of "reality" is built over the chaos of the Real (both the materiality outside you and the chaotic impulses inside you). By acquiring language, you entered into what Lacan terms the "symbolic order"; you were reduced into an empty signifier ("I") within the field of the Other, which is to say, within a field of language and culture (which is always determined by those others that came before you). That linguistic position, according to Lacan, is particularly marked by gender differences, so that all your actions were subsequently determined by your sexual position (which, for Lacan, does not have much to do with your "real" sexual urges or even your sexual markers but by a linguistic system in which "male" and "female" can only be understood in relation to each other in a system of language).

The Oedipus complex is just as important for Lacan as it is for Freud, if not more so. The difference is that Lacan maps that complex onto the acquisition of language, which he sees as analogous. The process of moving through the Oedipus complex (of being made to recognize that we cannot sleep with or even fully "have" our mother) is our way of recognizing the need to obey social strictures and to follow a closed differential system of language in which we understand "self" in relation to "others." In this linguistic rather than biological system, the "phallus" (which must always be understood not to mean "penis") comes to stand in the place of everything the subject loses through his entrance into language (a sense of perfect and ultimate meaning or plenitude, which is, of course, impossible) and all the power associated with what Lacan terms the "symbolic father" and the "Name-of-the-Father" (laws, control, knowledge). Like the phallus' relation to the penis, the "Name-of-the-Father" is much more than any actual father; in fact, it is ultimately more analogous to those social structures that control our lives and that interdict many of our actions (law, religion, medicine, education).Note After one passes through the Oedipus complex, the position of the phallus (a position within that differential system) can be assumed by most anyone (teachers, leaders, even the mother) and, so, to repeat, is not synonymous with either the biological father or the biological penis.

Nonetheless, the anatomical differences between boys and girls do lead to a different trajectory for men and women in Lacan's system. Men achieve access to the privileges of the phallus, according to Lacan, by denying their last link to the Real of their own sexuality (their actual penis); for this reason, the castration complex continues to function as a central aspect of the boy's psychosexual development for Lacan. In accepting the dictates of the Name-of-the-Father, who is associated with the symbolic phallus, the male subject denies his sexual needs and, forever after, understands his relation to others in terms of his position within a larger system of rules, gender differences, and desire. (On Lacan's understanding of desire, see the third module.) Since women do not experience the castration complex in the same way (they do not have an actual penis that must be denied in their access to the symbolic order), Lacan argues that women are not socialized in the same way, that they remain more closely tied to what Lacan terms "jouissance," the lost plenitude of one's material bodily drives given up by the male subject in order to access the symbolic power of the phallus. Women are thus at once more lacking (never accessing the phallus as fully) and more full (having not experienced the loss of the penis as fully).Note Regardless, what defines the position of both the man and the women in this schema is above all lack, even if that lack is articulated differently for men and women.