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• W1579073575 abstract "Vereen Bell has suggested that in Little Dorrit Dickens holds a mirror to those whom he considered responsible [for social inequalities of England]--apparently with hope that if they could see nothing else they could at least see themselves,(1) and that Mrs. General typifies social indifference of middle class: Her attitudes are hers, and at same time, Dickens implies, they are England's--vague, unoriginal, evasive (p. 179). Evasion is a key issue here, for William Dorrit has employed governess to shape his daughters, or rather to reshape them by censoring their history. To that extent Mrs. General inverts figure of Pygmalion (as recharacterized in Shaw's play of social transference). She is a scupltress who turns women into lifeless simulacra. One of her methods is to empty their minds. Just as in classical mythology those who drank waters of Lethe forfeited their human identity, so Mrs. General decreates her charges by enjoining inhuman forgetfulness--Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her(2)--and she bowdlerizes experience in a way reminiscent of Mrs. Clennam, who herself locks up evidence of impropriety (Arthur)--there was old dark closet, ... in which he had many times been sole contents, in days of punishment (p. 33): Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in world; but Mrs. General's way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind--to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, properest. (P. 450) The paradox here derives from application of creative verb form to act of nullification: formation issues in shapeless detachment. There is something decorously demonic in this--she is, after all, a Ghoule in gloves (p. 612), and, like Goethe's Mephistopheles, a Geist, der stets verneint/Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, / ist weft, das es zugrunde geht(3) --in Bayard Taylor's version, the Spirit that Denies! / And justly so: for all things, from Void / Called forth deserve to be destroyed.(4) In Our Mutual Friend, too, we will remember that Dickens gives Mr. Podsnap similar powers of decreation, for his arm flourishes recall those of Deus Artifex on Sistine Chapel ceiling. And if, as Michael Squires suggests, later fiction demonstrates how `self-command' translates into escape from experience,(5) then Podsnappish self-advance translates into denial of experience altogether: Mr. Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of this right arm in often clearing world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him. Mr. Podsnap's world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, Not English ! when, PRESTO! with a flourish of arm, and a flush of face, they were swept away.(6) For Podsnaps of Victorian England, not to be English in fullest (yet most limiting) sense of word often meant to be French, and not for nothing does Dickens (who envied artistic freedom of his novelist counterparts across Channel) choose a Frenchman as victim for Podsnap's patronage at his dinner party. The yellow covers of a French novel were, in eyes of middle class, a virtual inventory of Mrs. General's cupboards of oblivion, and purified, half sentient beings she (and Podsnap) fashioned from living girls, measure of universal experience: A certain institution in Mr. …" @default.
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• W1579073575 date "1999-09-22" @default.
• W1579073575 modified "2023-09-23" @default.
• W1579073575 title "Middle-Class Erasures: The Decreations of Mrs. General and Mr. Podsnap" @default.
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