What impression did Dickens seek to create in the following passage? Choose the right end for it. Account for your choice.
Lesson 7: CHARLES DICKENS ANALYTICAL READING
The aim of the lesson is to help you investigate imagery as a key to the writer’s vision.
1. Pronunciation, enunciation, echo-memory. Reproduce the quotations classifying them as images of: a) human beings; b) inanimate objects; c) landscapes; d) events; e) ideas, concepts. Say if the author appeals primarily to our emotions, intellect, or one of the five senses.
· She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to heaven tomorrow, she might be expected to ascend without any rapture.
· The young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon, and overturned them into cribs.
· On Sundays, the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat, and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves.
· His family is as old as the hills and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks.
2. Provide five similar itemsfrom one of Dickens’ novels at your disposal Let the others identify the type of image and the chief device.
3. Explain, in a few words, what a literary image is. See if some of the phrases below may help you. Add whatever is necessary. Make it concise!
*** to emphasize the essentials, to make us regard familiar things in a new way; to be built on an association; to appeal to our own experience, to be built gradually….
4. Dickens catches the gestures and tricks, the habits of speech, repetitions of favourite words and phrases which, taken together, make us in some degree walking caricatures of ourselves… Analyse the description below. Does Dickens succeed in portraying a unique but convincing character? What is his attitude to him? How is it conveyed stylistically?
“He furthermore took occasion to apologize for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dress, on the ground that last night he “had the sun too strong in the eyes”, by which expression he was understood to convey to his hearers that he was extremely drunk… It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect that Mr. Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion: his wiry hair, dull eyes and sallow face were strong witnesses against him. His attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest arrangement, but was in a state of disorder that strongly induced the idea that he had gone to bed in it……
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…. The silence was not of long duration, for Mr. Swiveller, after favouring us with several melodious assurances that his heart was in the Highland and that he wanted but his Arab steed as a preliminary to the achievements of great feats of valour and loyalty, removed his eyes from the ceiling and subsided into prose again. He began by remarking that soda-water, though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to lie cold on the stomach unless qualified with ginger or a small infusion of brandy, which latter article he held to be preferable in all cases, saving for one consideration of expense …. Having delivered this oration with a great many waves and flourishes of the hand, Mr. Swiveller abruptly thrust the head of the cane into his mouth, as if to prevent himself from impairing the effect of his speech by adding one other word. (The Old Curiosity Shop).
What does J.B. Priestley mean when he says that “Dickens’ vision was childlike” and “that was his strength”? Do the above-given pieces serve to illustrate the idea?
Can you identify the two passages below as Dickens’ creation? Explain in detail.
a) Miss Brass was a lady of 35 or thereabouts, of a gaunt and bony figure and a resolute bearing. In fact, she bore a striking resemblance to her brother Sampson - so exact, indeed, was the likeness between them that, had it consorted with Miss Brass’s maiden modesty and gentle womanhood to have assumed her brother’s clothes in a frolic and sat down beside him, it would have been difficult for the oldest man of the family to determine which was Sampson and which was Sally, especially as the lady carried upon her upper lip certain reddish demonstrations which, if the imagination had been assisted by her attire, might have been mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in all probability, nothing more than eyelashes in the wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were quite free from any such natural impertinence. In complexion Miss Brass was sallow, so to speak, - but this hue was agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which mantled in the extreme tip of her nose …
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b) She was a copious, handsome woman, in whom angularity of feature had been corrected by the air of success; she had a rustling dress (it was evident what she thought about taste!), abundant hair of a glossy blackness, a pair of folded arms, the expression of which seemed to say that rest, in such a career as hers, was as sweet as it was brief, and a terrible regularity of feature. I apply this adjective to her fine placid mask because she seemed to face you with a question of which the answer was pre-ordained, to ask you how a countenance could fail to be noble of which the measurements were so correct. You could contest neither the measurements nor the nobleness, and had to feel that Mrs.Farrinder imposed herself. There was a lithographic smoothness about her, and a mixture of the matron and the public character. There was something public in her eye, which was large, cold, and quiet… She talked with great slowness and distinctness, and, evidently, a high sense of responsibility; she pronounced every syllable of every word and insisted on being explicit.
What impression did Dickens seek to create in the following passage? Choose the right end for it. Account for your choice.
His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by being brought into immediate contact with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural hinge that he looked as though:
· … if he were cut, he would bleed white.
· … he had been in an underground shelter since babyhood.
· … his face had been painted with chalk. (“Hard Times”)
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