The Last of Little Dorrit

And finally, finally I finished. Ironic that because Chubs co-opted my iPad to play Plants and Zombies, I was forced to borrow Jackie's leather-bound first edition to finish the book. This was in somewhat better condition than Martin Chuzzlewit and I read it straight through.

I realise I have been unfair to the book. OK, some parts were dreary and Little Dorrit was so good that she got on my nerves sometimes. I could better understand Fanny or Miss Wade or even Tattycoram.

But she got the object of her life which was to serve the man that she loved, raise him on a pedestal, take care of him, sacrifice herself for him. I guess it was a happy ending of sorts.

And the mysteries as they unravelled....after all that build-up, I couldn't feel the actual explanation was something of a let down. And it was not even very clear, when it came to the codicil that Mrs Clennam was supposed to have suppressed. The explanation as to why she didn't burn it and have done with it was poor, insufficient. She justified everything through the hard lens of her assumed religion (death and damnation forever). She could have come up with a suitable justification for burning the paper and thus, not thrusting herself into all this...

As for her suddenly having the energy to get up on her two useless legs and make her way to Marshalsea, I mean, that was utterly ridiculous. But I guess the ridiculousness was not the point, but the force of feeling that impelled it. It's like a Shakesperian play; you're not supposed to logically explain it - it is a play of emotions, the drama of what people are capable of and the stories they tell themselves about it.

Pet disappointed me but I guess her parents were somewhat to blame there - they had spoilt her to such a degree that her insistence of marrying that entirely unsuitable Henry Gowan (one of two characters in the book that didn't get his proper comeuppance, the other being Flintwich) and then suffering through it, cut off from her parents (except in terms of money which he unashamedly took) without a murmur because she loved him too much to credit his faults - it seems that Dickens's conception of a woman who loves is a woman who overlooks and continues to overlook the faults of her beloved. And in his narratives, that is seen as a virtue rather than the crass stupidity it is.

I think that women may go into these relationships blind, but their eyes are gradually opened and when they come to value the idiot they married at his true worth, they either leave him (preferable) or turn against him and make both their lives a living hell. I don't think they continue to meekly love him and excuse his faults.

But after Little Dorrit and after Nell, it would seem that Dickens takes this particular brand of stupidity as something to be proud of, write home about. It took me so long to get through this because it kept jarring on me.

The Patriarch who should have been a greater villain or affected me more, didn't affect me at all. The scenes that included him seemed to be lacking in life and colour.

Flintwich and Blandois were too unpleasant and made me want to kill each. So Blandois is crushed to death and Flintwich escapes (is that fair?).

My favourite character, the one who always made me laugh (yes, right through to the pathetic, affecting finale) was Mr F's Aunt. I don't think Flora was quite so successful a creation (when it comes to women who ramble and lose their point in the rambling, I prefer Mrs Nickleby) I was always giggling and chortling out loud whenever she had a scene. She was an absurdity thrown in at the right and wrong places to defuse the tension and I loved her. She was a truly Dickensian creation. As were all of them, but maybe, the others, so serious, so caricatured...were not so.

At least I learned where "prunes and prisms" come from. Mrs General. And Jo, from Little Women, who ranted against prunes and prisms...well, now I know what she was talking about.

The thing about reading Dickens is that you start to see references to him throughout other people's fiction and life stories. Now I am reading Emily Dickinson's biography and there are plenty of Dickensian references. Whether it's to Micawber or Sam Weller (I'm so glad I started with David Copperfield and finally know who Micawber is).

I'm watching Bleak House now, which my friend Zarinah sent me as a Christmas present. It's a very good production, although I think more could have been made of the closeness between Ada and Esther and I don't think it did justice to the character of John Jarndyce. Here it suggests that he was sexually attracted to Esther, rather than regarding her as a benevolent patron. Maybe the benevolent patron bit wouldn't have translated into a 21st century production. And Esther speaks sharply to him, which she would, on no account, have done.

I write this from JB. It's three days after Christmas. The house has emptied out today. And Arnold is sleeping in the hall, because I'm here. And because I've had a cup of coffee (so as not to waste it), I'm wide awake and will be watching some more Bleak House.

One thing I notice is that because of the sheer number of characters in the book, the miniseries has difficulty in introducing/developing them all, except for the main characters. And those too, some of them not to well-developed.

Thinking about it, maybe Ada Clare was not well-developed in the book either. She was pretty, she had an affectionate heart, she was loyal. And that was it. Richard and Esther were much more well-drawn.

My next book will be A Tale of Two Cities. I feel that after such a book as Little Dorrit, I need to reward myself with one of his best.

Stalling

I haven't anything to update, really. I haven't picked up Little Dorrit since I laid it down and wrote that last post. It doesn't call to me like Bleak House did or even Martin Chuzzlewit or Nicholas Nickleby or Our Mutual Friend.

No, it lies a cold dead thing in my iPad...I haven't been able to get past the meeting of the two villains.

There is something to be said for CS Lewis's Perelandra where he described the evil as tedious more than anything else. Going through the new machinations of a truly horrendous mind is boring.

I guess that's why they invented people like Hannibal Lechter to up the ante and to make people keep watching. And they have to keep upping the ante, putting creativity and imagination into new and wonderful ways for people to be cruel and base and simply disgusting.

That's why I like children's (though not Young Adult books, especially Robert Cormier). Your villain (though bad) can't be too evil. You can have Jardis. But not Lechter. (Although we do now that Voldermort tortured and killed...it's just that the last three books are YA and most of his torture is offstage).

So instead of reading Little Dorrit, I read Cheryl's Strayed's Wild, Cameron Gunn's Ben & Me and have now started on Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club. In England I bought a whole lot of literary biographies and autobiographies (Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Eudora Welty, Lytton Strachey, Emily Dickinson, Vladimir Nabokov), Vasari's Life of Artists (Part 1) and Dorothy Wordsworth's journals.

Yesterday I was at Kinokuniya buying people a whole lot of books for Christmas.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with Dickens. But I thought I would record it nonetheless, as this seems to be the only blog I update.

I haven't renewed my car insurance or road tax and yesterday I got stopped by police during a roadblock. In fact, Marking yesterday seems to have been an ill-advised project all around. I was too tired, I lost my phone and now, I don't know how I'm going to pay for my car insurance. I wonder if they will let me put it on the card.

On the bright side most of the deadlines have been meet and there is nothing urgent I have to deliver for the rest of the year.

Maggot has just walked in stretched himself out in my room. Which I was sort of in the middle of cleaning.

Today, I decided to hell with other obligations, I'd stay in and do the chores that had gone begging for the past few weeks.

And then I could wrap and label presents, write out cards for my colleagues and then, and then... by the end of next week, I'm done.

But I'm not looking forward to Christmas this year. No Dickensian good cheer in this part of the woods.