DICKENS'S CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS: A MARGINAL VIEW

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1 DICKENS'S CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS: A MARGINAL VIEW

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3 Dickens's Class Consciousness: A Marginal View Pam Morris M MACMILLAN

4 Pam Morris 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reprodudion, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Ad 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised ad in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition 1991 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Morris, Pam Dickens's class consciousness: a marginal view. 1. Fidion in English. Dickens, Charles, Critical studies I. Title 823'.8 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

5 To Colin, Vicky, Adam

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7 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Note on Editions Introduction: From Margin to Centre Part I: Strategies of Survival 1 The Early Novels: Laughter 2 Martin Chuzzlewit: Anger Part II: Mechanisms of Submission 3 David Copperfield: Alienated Writer 4 Bleak House: Alienated Readers Part III: Containment of Discontent 5 Great Expectations: A Bought Self 6 Our Mutual Friend: The Taught Self Afterword Bibliography Index ix xi

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9 Preface and Acknowledgements In the well-known Preface to the popular edition of Nicholas Nickleby (1848), Dickens wrote of himself as a 'not very robust child, sitting in bye-places near Rochester Castle, with a head full of PARTRIDGE, STRAP, TOM PIPES, and SANCHO PANZA'. That insistent picking out of the servants and leaving unmentioned their masters always seems to me significant. Perhaps this is because, when I discovered Dickens for the first time, as an adult, it was his lesser characters rather than his heroes and heroines who obsessed me; figures like Sam Weller, Sairey Gamp, Jenny Wren and even Uriah Heep, filled me with an excitement I found hard to explain. This was not in any sense a response to comic eccentricity; as I examined it, I carne to feel that I shared with them a knowledge, a way of seeing the world. There was, within Dickens's texts, a consciousness with which I identified and which I recognized even though I had never fully articulated it. It is a way of seeing which belongs to the experience of marginalization - of both class and sex. My use of theory has been to provide a conceptual framework as a means of making this personal response rigorous and shareable. Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of the novel as an inherently dialogic form, always engaged in a polemical relation with dominant voices of its era, offers a means of historicizing texts dynamically, era zing that mechanistic gap between fiction on the one hand and its 'background' on the other. This idea of dialogic interaction also helped me conceptualize my sense of Dickens's novels as dangerous places, inscribed with urgency and passion, his very words saturated with contentiousness. In addition, Bakhtin's argument that novelistic language constructs 'speech images' - linguistic materializations of ideological points of view - coincides with my own sense of the characters mentioned above. Moreover, the concept of 'speech image' allows for formal discussion of character without inference of inner motivation or thought as if they were real individuals. I have centred this study upon a series of characters who, in the phrase Dickens used to describe his younger self, are all represented as 'young Cains'. They are all, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped in early life by city streets. ix

10 x Preface and Acknowledgements My aim has been to analyze the relationship of each of these characters to her or his own discourse to discover how far their language offers possibilities and resources for self-making, or to what extent it has become the means of a repressive class interpellation. To explain this constitution of individuals as class subjects I have utilized the work of Lacan and Althusser. However, I have not felt bound by the inherent pessimism of their theories, and throughout my reading of the novels I have attempted to develop a positive as well as a negative hermeneutic. Finally, I should stress that my title is not intended to exclude the unconscious, far from it. But neither have I assumed that Dickens carried the knowledge he makes concrete in literary forms wholly locked away from consciousness. We all carry around stores of unarticulated personal experience which we may only recognize as knowledge when we meet it materialized on the page as we read or write. In this work I have been helped and encouraged by many people. Particular thanks are due to my PhD supervisor at Edinburgh University, Dr Peter Keating; and to Professor K. J. Fielding who has continued to offer most generous support and advice. Like all scholars in Edinburgh I am grateful to the National Library of Scotland which provided such a civilized and efficient place for research. An earlier and lasting debt is to the students and teachers of the Open University; as for so many of its students, it has quite literally changed my life. Throughout the writing of this book my friends and colleagues among Open University tutors, especially Liz Allen, Stewart Harnblyn and Jeremy Tambling, have been an unfailing source of fresh ideas, theoretical expertize, critical rigour, fellowship, and solidarity. To the sisterly support of Jeanette King, also of the Open University, who patiently read and offered helpful and imaginative comments on all my drafts, and to my husband who did likewise, I owe more than I can ever say. Naturally, I am responsible for remaining errors and deficiencies. P.M. July 1989

11 Note on Editions References to David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, Martin Chuzzlewit, Oliver Twist and Pickwick Papers are to the Clarendon edition (1966-); all other references to Dickens's works are to the New Oxford Illustrated Dickens ( ). Page references are given thus (362). The following editions were used for Dickens's letters, speeches and journalism and are cited subsequently in abbreviate~ form: The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. by Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson, Pilgrim edition (Oxford, 1965-); The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. by K. J. Fielding (Oxford, 1960); Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces, New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (1958). Christian Observer was not published by volume number; monthly editions were bound at the end of each year under the appropriate date and with pages numbered consecutively throughout. References are made therefore by means of the year and page. Methodist Magazine has the full title: The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (1828-) being a continuation of the Arminian or Methodist Magazine first published by John Wesley. Volume numbering is confusing since there are two: one according to the series and one from the beginning of publication. Since page numbering is consecutive yearly from January through to December, I have identified references by year and page only to avoid cluttering the text. Westminster Review and Edinburgh Review are cited as usual by volume and year.