I'm looking again through Barzun's book, FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE.
Today's index-driven idleness takes us to a discussion of the sexual mores of Victorian England (pp. 575 - 577.)
While certain strata of society sought to retain "respectability," -- those in business, politics, the professions -- other strata, specifically artists and literary folk, created Bohemia in the middle of the 19th century. "It afforded cheap living, enforced no moral code, allowed modes of dress as singular as desired, and required no sustained solvency." Though first established in the Latin Quarter in Paris -- as two operas tell us -- Bohemia spontaneously developed branches.
Yet when a man of letters becomes as prominent as Dickens, he is by definition not a Bohemian, and the Victorians' attitudes toward his personal life, his "indiscretions," were ambiguous.
In 1857, after all, Dickens was much smitten by the actress Ellen Ternan. Rumors of adultery began to circulate. Dickens was sufficiently concerned with respectability that he felt it necessary to deny this emphatically, and against advice he put out a press release and published a statement in his own paper doing so. Later, as Barzun phrases it, "the young woman did become his mistress -- without his advertising the news -- but both felt guilty ever after."
These matters, scandalous though they were, did nothing to reduce the admiration in which Dickens was held by his public. Barzun cites them -- and other incidents in high-profile sexual mores in what he calls a "motley of arrangements and outcomes," as evidence of the waning of Romanticism, and the approach of "the low spirits, a resigned acceptance of the second best, that belong to the mood of Realism."
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
15 November 2009
08 November 2009
Dickens chronology
I've been wondering. How do we fit Charles Dickens into Barzun's over-arching theory about the 19th century in European cultural history? My continued readings in and musings about Barzun's book, DARWIN, MARX, WAGNER, combined with the release of yet another Hollywood version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, have together brought me to this curiosity.
Dickens' career straddles the great divide between the romanticism of the early part of the century and the materialistic turn of the latter part. Barzun, remember, assigns great importance to the year 1859 in connection with that turn. So where do Dickens' works stand, on either side of that line.
Here are some of the most influential of his works, and their date of publication, with italics for the one of his great works that came out within the fateful year itself.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1837)
THE ADVENTURES OF OLIVER TWIST (1839)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843)
DAVID COPPERFIELD (1850)
BLEAK HOUSE (1853)
A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1861)
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (1865).
Dickens was a world-famous author long before 1859, and his habits of mind were settled before what Barzun saw as the turn toward mechanism. I expect that if I asked him, Barzun would likely include Dickens with the High Romantic movement. I'd rather not bother a 101 year old man with a question on such a point, though.
I've looked into his magnum opus, FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE (2000) for Dickens mentions. I have found only one -- a brief discussion of a couple of the female characters, in connection with the Victorian notion of an idealized wife as "the angel in the house." Nothing there seems to shed any light on Dickens himself.
Dickens' career straddles the great divide between the romanticism of the early part of the century and the materialistic turn of the latter part. Barzun, remember, assigns great importance to the year 1859 in connection with that turn. So where do Dickens' works stand, on either side of that line.
Here are some of the most influential of his works, and their date of publication, with italics for the one of his great works that came out within the fateful year itself.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1837)
THE ADVENTURES OF OLIVER TWIST (1839)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843)
DAVID COPPERFIELD (1850)
BLEAK HOUSE (1853)
A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1861)
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (1865).
Dickens was a world-famous author long before 1859, and his habits of mind were settled before what Barzun saw as the turn toward mechanism. I expect that if I asked him, Barzun would likely include Dickens with the High Romantic movement. I'd rather not bother a 101 year old man with a question on such a point, though.
I've looked into his magnum opus, FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE (2000) for Dickens mentions. I have found only one -- a brief discussion of a couple of the female characters, in connection with the Victorian notion of an idealized wife as "the angel in the house." Nothing there seems to shed any light on Dickens himself.
24 July 2009
Great Expectations
A bit of Dickens today, if I may.
In a wonderful passage in Great Expectations, a character named Herbert Pocket is filling in Pip (and of course the reader) on Miss Havisham's life. This is crucial exposition, but so as to not have it SOUND like a block of exposition, Dickens has hit upon the device of having Herbert teach Pip table manners. Herbert, accordingly, keeps interrupting his story to tell Pip that it is "not the custom in London" to do this or that.
We get the idea that Pip looks like a terrible yokel, and of course since he meekly submits to Herbert's corrections we also get a sense of the strength of his desire to make a gentleman of himself. All those elements in the scene allow the crucial material on Havisham's past to pass into our consciousness unobtrusively.
[Herbert also has just given Pip a private nickname, Handel.]
"Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them and most fearfully again. There were stronger differences between him and her, than there had been between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger. Now I come to the cruel part of the story -- merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner napkin will not go into a tumbler."
Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, "Not at all, I am sure!" and resumed.
In a wonderful passage in Great Expectations, a character named Herbert Pocket is filling in Pip (and of course the reader) on Miss Havisham's life. This is crucial exposition, but so as to not have it SOUND like a block of exposition, Dickens has hit upon the device of having Herbert teach Pip table manners. Herbert, accordingly, keeps interrupting his story to tell Pip that it is "not the custom in London" to do this or that.
We get the idea that Pip looks like a terrible yokel, and of course since he meekly submits to Herbert's corrections we also get a sense of the strength of his desire to make a gentleman of himself. All those elements in the scene allow the crucial material on Havisham's past to pass into our consciousness unobtrusively.
[Herbert also has just given Pip a private nickname, Handel.]
"Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them and most fearfully again. There were stronger differences between him and her, than there had been between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger. Now I come to the cruel part of the story -- merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner napkin will not go into a tumbler."
Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, "Not at all, I am sure!" and resumed.
16 January 2009
Blackadder as Fagin
I see from The Financial Times that a revival of the musical Oliver! is playing on stage in London these days.
Rowan Atkinson is playing the part of Fagin. This is what the reviewer, Sarah Hemming, says of Atkinson: "Eyes glinting like the jewels he stashes, he is as quick, crafty and supple as a fox. He can be both funny and darkly sinister: this is an outsider, who has had to learn how to survive." She praises his performance of the song "Reviewing the Situation" for its "delightful, sinuous wit."
Of course, some of us still associate Atkinson with the various "Blackadders" of historical comedy. The earliest, medieval Blackadder was perhaps the best of the lot -- though he was too much of a bumbler, on would have thought, to ever become a Fagin.
Still, in the successive series', Atkinson's Blackadder did become an ever more crafty character, perhaps evolving toward Faginhood generation by generation.
By the way, Hemming thinks well of the production in general, though she's unhappy with the lightheartedness of it. It misses "Dickens' wrath and the desperation he exposes."
Yes, and I recall that was the criticism most often made when Oliver! (music and lyrics by Lionel Bart) was on movie screens, too, back in 1968. The shortcomings of this incarnation of the tale are Bart's fault, then, not peculiar to the production underway on Drury Lane in 2009.
Consider yourself ... informed.
Rowan Atkinson is playing the part of Fagin. This is what the reviewer, Sarah Hemming, says of Atkinson: "Eyes glinting like the jewels he stashes, he is as quick, crafty and supple as a fox. He can be both funny and darkly sinister: this is an outsider, who has had to learn how to survive." She praises his performance of the song "Reviewing the Situation" for its "delightful, sinuous wit."
Of course, some of us still associate Atkinson with the various "Blackadders" of historical comedy. The earliest, medieval Blackadder was perhaps the best of the lot -- though he was too much of a bumbler, on would have thought, to ever become a Fagin.
Still, in the successive series', Atkinson's Blackadder did become an ever more crafty character, perhaps evolving toward Faginhood generation by generation.
By the way, Hemming thinks well of the production in general, though she's unhappy with the lightheartedness of it. It misses "Dickens' wrath and the desperation he exposes."
Yes, and I recall that was the criticism most often made when Oliver! (music and lyrics by Lionel Bart) was on movie screens, too, back in 1968. The shortcomings of this incarnation of the tale are Bart's fault, then, not peculiar to the production underway on Drury Lane in 2009.
Consider yourself ... informed.
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