tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post758309716677244925..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: I care about Little Dorrit - many light shapes did the strong iron weave itself intoAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-48999282283634519962012-01-11T11:45:27.014-06:002012-01-11T11:45:27.014-06:00Ian - that's right, the "times" of D...Ian - that's right, the "times" of Dickensnovels are all over the place. A few are current with publication, but many are set ten or twenty years in the past, like <i>Little Dorrit</i> (set at the same time as the 20-year-older <i>Pickwick Papers</i>), and some, like <i>Bleak House</i> have a blended setting, a fantasy history.<br /><br />I don't know why I keep sticking in those silly endings. No, I do know - because it amuses me to think of Little Dorrit as a superhero name.<br /><br />ombhurbhuva - I quoted some of what you wrote in today's post. The mix of the character's self-created symbolic world and the one Dickens creates, like you describe, how they mix with each other, is probably the most complex and artful thing Dickens does. <br /><br />The BBC version sounds true <a href="http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2009/04/little-dorrit-v.html" rel="nofollow">up to a point</a>.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-23060464078588416552012-01-11T05:56:42.295-06:002012-01-11T05:56:42.295-06:00Amy Dorrit is more interesting than other Dickens ...Amy Dorrit is more interesting than other Dickens heroines because of her lapses in serenity and her opposition to the fatuity of the rest of the Dorrit clan. She is to some degree institutionalised as well so there is dark as well as light. A lot of the characters in the novel are prisoners being locked into the past or some fantasy. Even light is locked out - "the morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall".(Chap.9)<br /><br />The recent BBC serialisation is very good once you've read the book. It stays true to it.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-46971507559198672922012-01-11T03:31:42.484-06:002012-01-11T03:31:42.484-06:00I am reading Little Dorrit for the third time at t...I am reading Little Dorrit for the third time at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. Actually, I am listening to it this time: Anton Lesser's superb reading- all 35 hours or so. So it's kind of superimposed on a rather colourless background of grey Moscow (the city where I live) winter. <br />One thing I hadn't appreciated before is that it's a 'historical' novel. I'd vaguely wondered why there are so few references to photography, telegraphs, railways etc in Dickens and the answer seems to be, in Little Dorrit at least, that he's writing (in the 1850s) about the 1820s- the decade of his childhood. The same seems to be true for Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. There are vague references to engineering and Daniel Doyce's great invention, but other than that the only reference to mid 19th century technology is the repeated comparison of Mr Pancks to a steam-powered tug boat. <br /><br />I'm intrigued by your description of the end of the novel- it sounds as if it has slipped in from some parallell 19th century. I'm looking forward to the single-handed destruction of the Russian fleet- not what I remember from my previous readings of the novel.Ian Gouldenhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/seriykotik/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-61941984195121674192012-01-10T15:21:04.374-06:002012-01-10T15:21:04.374-06:00I agree, the taste for the always good character c...I agree, the taste for the always good character changed, to the extent that even devotees of St. Austen complain about Fanny Price because she is priggish. <br /><br />The artistic problem for Dickesn is not quite as I have presented here. He has always-good characters who belong in Dickens World (his plump, benevolent, rich men who clean up the problems at the end of the novel), and other goody-goods like Oliver Twist's family who are just dragged in from worse novels to fill a hole. <br /><br />Dickens, with Little Dorrit (the character), is just working on the latter problem, but the real change in tastes does in both kinds of characters.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-76667984524722926702012-01-10T14:31:17.256-06:002012-01-10T14:31:17.256-06:00One of the things I was thinking while reading Mac...One of the things I was thinking while reading Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling is that one of the great differences between c20th and earlier fiction is that there used to be wholly good characters in earlier fiction - characters who were morally admirable, who always acted correctly - but that we in the c20th real can't bear such people at all, we can't bear characters who aren't flawed and will regard any writer who persists in portraying them with contempt (most probably, they are merely genre writers).obookihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03885121629202810216noreply@blogger.com