A Critique from Dickens

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I've been reading David Copperfield this month.  It's one of those books that, if all were right with the world, I would have read years ago; but all is not right with the world, and I went against the flow and chose to read Dickens' lesser known works, like Little Dorrit and Martin Chuzzlewit, first.  I'm not sure why people generally start with either Oliver Twist or Copperfield, but my being contrary and departing from the norm has given me, I think, a different perspective on Dickens.  A Christmas Carol aside, I started in on his darker, more dramatic books first; now I'm going back and reading his earlier works, and I can go about it without the notion that they are gloomy and depressing.  Compared to Bleak House, they're positively comic!

At any rate, as I am coming up on the end of David Copperfield (only a couple hundred pages left - I'm practically grazing the finish line), I've begun to think all over again about my appreciation for his writing.  And then it occurred to me to wonder, whatever would he think of my writing?  I thought about it a little while, rather tickled by the idea, and came to the conclusion that he would probably be horrified by modern day writing in general.  And I don't mean what a book snob like myself considers sloppy writing - flimsy characters and thin prose - the sort of things that are objectively bad no matter what generation you live in; I mean the more subjective Standards.

The size of a novel, and the trend nowadays toward "shorter and easier to read books" - mine are large by today's standards, but they're still dwarfed by Bleak House.  The notion of pared-down casts - Dickens would have had a good laugh over that.  Verbose description being the Devil's own child.  And as for characters...!  If he found Jane Eyre appallingly independent, Regina would have him positively thrashing in his grave.

I thought to myself, as these flitted across my mind: "Oh, I can have some fun with that."  So I decided to write up a critique of myself from Mr. Dickens' perspective, as a parody of the Victorian standards and the modern day standards both.  It is at once laughably arrogant on my part and completely self-deprecating, so you are not allowed to take it seriously on any level.

My dear J—,

The next installment is in progress, albeit slow and, at this time, a little tedious. But Bob will keep me going, and being so near the end I cannot stop now. (Though I have half a mind to kill them all and be done with the business.)

You will by this time probably have heard of that new work, released upon an unsuspecting public a fortnight ago, by the incorrigible Mrs. H. I confess it painful, to my sensibilities, at least, to observe the unbridled pleasure with which that public has already caught it up: I hear nothing, morning, noon, or night, but one or another reference to this work. It glares at me from shop windows, and with such garish looks! It is beyond my ability to comprehend its attractions, and yet only last Friday, when I went out for a walk, I saw no less than four persons with it in hand. One of them had the distinctly mouldy air of a dustman; another was, if you can believe it, Lord R. He hid it beneath his hat when he saw me coming.

I had already heard various scathing critiques of Mrs. H.’s new piece of literature, from friends and family, and I soon made my mind up that I should not touch the creature at any cost. It was only when our mutual friend T. happened to mention, in a particularly unguarded moment, that I was featured in its pages that I yielded to my baser feelings, laid down two shillings, and took away the book. It was a moment of weakness, for which I am sure you can forgive me.

Well, I have all but reached the end of the thing, after pausing several times with wounded sensibilities. Mrs. H. performs feats worthy of legend at a speed wondrous to behold; the tale stops for no man; in a mere two hundred pages, the plot is already coursing forward like an ardent tug-boat, bearing the reader in its wake. I found myself appalled at the thought that such a brief work could capture the mind of the public; that the same men and women who demanded to know if Little Nell was dead have now embraced this.  If Little Nell were not already dead, I would be tempted to kill her out of spite.

As for Mrs. H.’s characters, though I admit they are not altogether bad—I was quite gratified by a certain indefatigable female who passes through the pages early on—though I admit, as I say, that they are not bad, Mrs. H. would need a round two dozen more before the story could be called intricate. And the heroine! She is enough to make your blood run cold; Mrs. C. B.’s own rebellious orphan becomes a saint by comparison.

My own appearance, somewhere near the middle of the book, was thankfully brief. I have not yet decided whether it was intended to be favourable or not; I lean toward the latter conclusion. I seem to recall a letter from Mrs. H. some while ago, the subject of which I have now forgotten, but which was (I believe) congratulatory in tone. I can only conclude, judging by her ambiguous reference to me now, that she was not favourably impressed by Dombey. That is of little consequence to me, but I am now turning over the idea of inserting Mrs. H. in the Current Work—as a dose of retribution. I have little doubt, however, that the esteemed lady would not hesitate to return the compliment.

Yours,

C. D.

Jane Eyre vs. The Secret Garden

At first glance, two books like Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden seem to have nothing in common. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is the prototype of a Gothic romance - dark, brooding, and suspenseful - while Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden is a children's story, full of light and vivid colours. And it is true: they have almost nothing in common. The only feature they share is the setting, the haunting, beautiful wilderness of Britain, and yet it could easily be said that that very landscape is a major factor in making the two books such polar opposites.

In the black-and-grey story of Jane Eyre, many of the scenes take place in some level of darkness, either at night or on stormy days. Since the story is set in a secluded part of England where it rains a good part of every season, the wilderness enhances the Gothic feel of the novel and lends it an eerie atmosphere; the dark stone walls and passages of Thornfield Hall would not have been half as sinister without the added effect of the weather and landscape outside. Bronte emphasized in her novel the haunting allure of Britain's moorlands, which set the perfect backdrop for Jane Eyre's story.

"I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that." (Jane Eyre - Chapter 28.)

The Secret Garden, on the other hand, displays the opposite feature of the moors. While the frequent storms and rains do give the landscape a shadowy feel, they also mean that when the sun does shine, the scenery is turned into an amazingly beautiful, otherworldly place. Whereas Charlotte Bronte depicts black moors with stormy grey skies above, Frances Hodgson Burnett shows a rolling landscape of greens, yellows, purples, and whites beneath a clear blue sky. It is this sort of loveliness that characterizes her story and makes it magical, providing not only a background, but a vital part of the story as the beauty of the Yorkshire moors changes the main character altogether.

"'Look at the moor! Look at the moor!'
"The rainstorm had ended and the grey mist and clouds had been swept away in the night by the wind. The wind itself had ceased and a brilliant, deep blue sky arched high over the moorland. Never, never had Mary dreamed of a sky so blue. In India skies were hot a blazing; this was a deep cool blue which almost seemed to sparkle like the waters of some lovely bottomless lake, and here and there, high, high in the arched blueness floated small clouds of snow-white fleece. The far-reaching world of the moor itself looked softly blue instead of gloomy purple-black or awful dreary grey." (The Secret Garden - The Key of the Garden.)

While the moors are perhaps one of the most vivid examples of the powers of a landscape, there are few places that do not display this sort of change from one day to another, or from one season to the next. Deserts, for instance, are seen as flat stretches of sand, sand, sand, and more sand, but on that rare day when rain does fall, the entire landscape changes as plants burst into momentary flower. The endless terrain, rock formations, and blue skies of the Badlands of the Midwestern United States have a lonely appeal that goes beyond the dry, monotonous way they are generally seen. (Or so they say; I fail to see it, myself...) These sorts of stereotype-reversals can be interesting to see used in writing, and to use in our own; the depiction of a single landscape can alter drastically, depending merely on whether the story is a Jane Eyre or a Secret Garden.