The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Hello friends,

In this installment we begin the morning after his visit to Miss Havisham and find Pip is breakfasting with Jaggers. He mentions his fears about Orlick and Jaggers says he will fire Orlick, which alarms Pip:

“I’ll go round presently, and pay our friend off.” Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be difficult to deal with. “Oh no he won’t,” said my guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect confidence; “I should like to see him argue the question with me.”

Now if Pip didn't intend to have Orlick fired why did he mention it at all? What did he think Jaggers would do? And is his motive - the way I see it anyway - to display how very important he is becoming - or is it to keep Orlick away from Estella?

Pip is so terrified at the idea of running into Pumblechook that he decides to walk in the country to escape the town, or at least Pumblechook's area and meet up with the coach along the road somewhere. He tells us this much to my confusion:

"By then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook’s premises, I got round into the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative security."

This sounds to me like he went a couple of miles into the country then came back to the same place he was in the first place, or at least somewhere in the town. And our hero, Pip that is, then continues walking through the town:

"It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops and went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to face,—on which occasions I don’t know whether they or I made the worse pretence; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy."

I suppose he isn't thinking of Joe or doesn't care that his strolling through the town for all to see and worship him will get back to Joe. Joe will find out that Pip made a visit to the town but not to him. There is nothing Pip could do to make reparation for that, no matter how many oysters he sends.

At least Trabb's boy isn't falling to the ground when Pip goes by, ok, he is but not with the same thoughts as the rest seem to have,

"Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, “Hold me! I’m so frightened!” feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust."

The boy follows him through town mocking him and soon many of the towns people are following along. The boy keeps it up until the coach finally picks Pip and once back in London he sends Joe the present of the oysters I already mentioned. He also writes Trabb a letter saying he won't be coming back to his store when he employs a man with such a poor assistant. Now back with Herbert he tells him that he is in love with Estella, something which Herbert says he already knows:

“Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.”


Herbert tries to talk Pip out of pursuing Estella, telling him to think of her upbringing by Miss Havisham, but Pip says he cannot let go even though he knows Herbert is right . Herbert now shares with Pip about his fiancée, Clara, he tells Pip their engagement is for now a secret, he has no money and his mother would never approve of her family, her father having once being a purser and now an invalid. I found it odd that Herbert has never even met Clara's father but can hear him; "he makes tremendous rows,—roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.". Some day, he tells Pip, he will come upon his "Capital" and marry her. To cheer themselves up they go out to see Wopsle perform in a play.

In Chapter 31 Pip and Herbert have arrived at the theater where they find - boots :-) - among other things. Pip tells us of several "curious incidents" that occur during the performance:

...."we found the king and queen of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls and forehead had been more probable."

"The noble boy in the ancestral boots was inconsistent, representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and even—on his being detected in holy orders, and declining to perform the funeral service—to the general indignation taking the form of nuts."

When this tragedy is over Pip tells Herbert they should leave quickly or perhaps "they would meet him". Did Pip want to avoid meeting Wopsle because he was afraid it would upset him knowing that Pip, or any other of his friends, should see him in such an awful play? Or did he want to avoid him because his "great expectations" have made it impossible for him to be seen with such a poor actor, or any actor at all I suppose? Whatever his meaning, they do see Wopsle and instead of being ashamed at the performance seems quite pleased with it and speaking to Pip, "almost, if not quite, with patronage." They take Mr. Wopsle along to dinner with them. The chapter ends with:

"Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it."

Orlick has proven himself to be violent and dangerous, and I assume that Pip believes he's responsible for the attack on his sister. Based on that, of course he'd be disturbed to have Orlick in such close proximity to another family Pip cares about. I think he was venting a bit, hoping for a more creative or subtle solution from Jaggers - not wanting immediate termination that would have so obviously been the result of Pip's complaints, making Pip and his loved ones even more of a target of Orlick's wrath.

But I believe that the power he wielded in the Orlick matter was fresh on Pip's mind when he was accosted by Trabb's boy, and he didn't hesitate to use it against the lad.

I find nothing more tedious in literature than the story-within-a-story, and Dickens is no exception. My mind tends to shut down whenever characters tell stories or put on plays about which more than the most cursory details are given. The author obviously thinks these details are important and have some bearing on the main plot, but I just can't bring myself to do anything but skim those passages (or chapters, in the case of Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. The same goes for Wopsle's play. As soon as Pip walked into the theater, I lost interest. I think it's one of the reasons I continue to choose books other than Nicholas Nickleby - knowing there's a theater troupe in the story and that I'll be subjected to plays with their own plots and characters that I'll have to keep straight in my head.

Now you have me trying to remember what Dickens novel it is where a group of people travelling together end up in an inn telling each other stories, these stories having nothing whatever to do with the plot, they are just there to fill Dicken's installment for that month.

Ah, yes. Boots again. Twice. Once as mentioned directly in the play Wopsle is in and once, by inference, as we learn that Clara's father is rather heavy-footed and "pegs the floor with some frightful instrument." I'm sure there will be more boots to follow.

However, I'm moving up a person's torso to the shoulder and looking at another item of clothing. This time it is the great scene of mockery that Trabb's boy performs which is directly pointed at Pip. Indeed, if Shakespeare wrote about the "seven ages of man" then Dickens in this chapter has written about the three stages of Pip's arrogance.

First, we read that Trabb's boy approaches Pip "lashing himself with an empty (my italics) blue bag. This empty bag represents Pip as he once was, a person with no expectations. As Pip passes Trabb's boy he hears his "teeth loudly chatter[ing]" which reminds the reader of Pip's encounter with the escaped criminal in the graveyard. Trabb's boy appears a second time but this time Pip notices that the "blue bag was slung over Trabb's shoulder [with] honest industry ... in his eyes." Here, we have the second stage of Pip as Trabb's boy portrays Pip as he commences his journey to become a gentleman. There is a final encounter between Pip and Trabb's boy. In this instance, Pip comments on Trabb's boy that "[h]e wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement. (my italics) The actions and words of Trabb's boy mirror Pip's own manner, but Pip, trapped within his own self-consuming importance, cannot understand the situation clearly.

From empty bag through the bag slung over the shoulder like an itinerant sailor to the mocking of the great-coat, Pip's life passes before him. That Trabb's boy mocks sounding like a gentleman further re-inforces the scene.

A great scene of how another article of clothing helps deepen our insight and appreciation of the novel.

There isn't much to say about Wopsle's acting ability except it is "massive and concrete." And now an admission. I have loved that phrase for decades and have, on a couple of occasions, actually said it in situations where, quite frankly, I didn't really know what to say, or, perhaps more accurately, realized perfectly well that what I wanted I could never say. Believe it or not, each time I have used the phrase the other person took it as a compliment. Strange. I guess they did not read Dickens.

Wopsle's play-acting is a further re-inforcement of Pip's situation. Pip, like Wopsle, is eager to be what he is not, but has yet to realize they will never be anything but actors performing a part.

Kim wrote: "Now you have me trying to remember what Dickens novel it is where a group of people travelling together end up in an inn telling each other stories, these stories having nothing whatever to do with..."

It sounds familiar, Kim -- I'm thinking it must have been Pickwick. It seems to me that one of the stories told was a Christmas story. But yes -- exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about!

Peter wrote: "From empty bag through the bag slung over the shoulder like an itinerant sailor to the mocking of the great-coat, Pip's life passes before him."

I'm impressed, Peter. I don't remember that bag even registering in my consciousness as I read that passage, but even if it had, I'm sure I wouldn't have interpreted it as you did. I'm strictly in the "sometimes a banana is just a banana" camp, which is why I enjoy these discussions so much.

Mary Lou wrote: "Peter wrote: "From empty bag through the bag slung over the shoulder like an itinerant sailor to the mocking of the great-coat, Pip's life passes before him."

I'm impressed, Peter. I don't remembe..."

Thanks Mary Lou

At times though I step right on the banana peel and down I go in a grand flop.

"Hold me! I'm so frightened!"

Chapter 30

John McLenan

1861

Dickens's Great Expectations,

Harper's Weekly 5 (6 April 1861)

Text Illustrated:

"Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, “Hold me! I’m so frightened!” feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not advanced another two hundred yards when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb’s boy approaching. He was coming round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb’s with cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded."

Commentary:

One has the distinct feeling that Trabb's boy is a touchstone for Pip, a signifier of what Pip might have become had he never left the village. In this illustration for the nineteenth instalment, the dry-goods chandler's shop-assistant, Trabb's boy, to the left, mocks Pip for his gentlemanly pretensions when the two meet in the village highstreet, outside the post-office. Wearing his "blue bag" as if it were a great-coat, Trabb's boy does a brilliant burlesque of Pip, playing to the audience of shoppers on the high street. His criticism of Pip's snobbish is both pointed and public. He struts in the text, but seems electrified in the illustration as he mocks Pip's snobbishness by drawling in an affected London accent, "Don't know yah!"

The satire is not lost on Pip, who had complacently admired an appropriate 'cheerful briskness' in the gait of Trabb's boy and the light of 'honest industry' beaming in his eyes as he walked determinedly to his place of employment. Gentlemen, by contrast, were exhorted not to be seen in a 'hurry': a man of sense, Thomas Tegg [1848] noted in his comments on manners, 'may be in haste, but he is never in a hurry . . . .' [Paroissien,]

McLenan realizes the situation in an interesting manner, juxtaposing the pair of obvious rustics just emerging from the old, half-timbered house converted into the new post office with the elegantly dressed young London gentleman in the foreground. McLenan has deliberately made the background buildings look appropriate to the setting of the high street in a country village, and complements this unsophisticated backdrop with crudely drawn figures, including that of the postmaster (right) and Trabb's shop-assistant, shag-haired and roughly bearded, but certainly a "boy" no longer.

Drawling to his attendants, "Don't know yah, don't know yah!"

Chapter 30

F. A. Fraser

c. 1877

Dickens's Great Expectations, Household Edition

Text Illustrated:

"I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, “Don’t know yah!” Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy, when passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, “Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, ‘pon my soul don’t know yah!” The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country."

Trabb's boy

Chapter 30

Sol Eytinge Jr.

Commentary:

The final illustration in Dickens's Great Expectations in the single volume A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in the Ticknor & Fields (Boston, 1867) Diamond Edition.

In this final illustration (an individual, full-page, comic character study) for the second novel in the compact American publication, Trabb's stock-boy and apprentice in the haberdasher's trade strikes a ridiculous pose to demonstrate to Pip how pretentious and absurd he, a former apprentice to the local blacksmith, appears to the other young males of his native village now that he has donned the clothes and affected the hauteur of an London "gentleman."

In trying to determine why Eytinge decided to devote the last of his opportunities to illustrate the novel to a relatively minor character, one could consider the limited number of alternatives that presented themselves in this relatively short Dickens novel: (view spoiler)[the irascible Bill Barley, the colourless Herbert Pocket and Clara Barely, and the shadowy "Napoleon of Crime," Compeyson. (hide spoiler)] None of these options offered Eytinge much to work with, despite their importance to the mechanisms of Dickens's plot. No, Trabb's Boy was the logical choice, not the least because, as an apprentice from Pip's village, he offers a sharp contrast to the boy with great expectations. But Eytinge's plate does not dwell upon this thematic parallel; rather, it realises a brilliant moment of character comedy when in chapter 30 Pip, briefly returning to his native ground, is mortified by the street theatre of his quondam rival apprentice, whom Pip earlier describes as "the most audacious boy in all the country-side" (ch. 19). Strolling down the High Street, feeling supremely self-confident in his London clothes, Pip is brought up short by Trabb's boy:

.....Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, "Hold me! I'm so frightened!" feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.......

Trabb's apprentice-haberdasher and shop-boy is both a foil to the upwardly mobile protagonist, mocking his pretentiousness when Pip returns to the village to flaunt his good fortune, and (view spoiler)["a deus-ex-machina when in chapter 53 he leads Herbert to the lime-kiln on the marshes and effects Pip's rescue from the monstrous Orlick. (hide spoiler)] Eytinge's posing of Trabb's boy in this eighth illustration points strongly to the same textual moment which F. A. Fraser would later realise for the sixth volume of the Household Edition: "Don't know yah!", which depicts a much younger apprentice lampooning Pip (rapidly departing on the other side if the High Street) for the general amusement of his mirthful admirers, the other apprentice-boys of the village".

............"With a shock he became aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded"..........

In Fraser's illustration, Pip, a rigid pillar in top hat and great coat, is passing on the other side, oblivious (apparently) to the apprentice's antics, which are nonetheless feeble in theatrical effect to those of the figure whom Eytinge gives us: arm akimbo, shirt-collar pulled up, and hair standing straight on end, a travesty of the prim-and-proper Londoner, exactly as in this passage:

......."I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, "Don't know yah!" Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, "Don't know yah, don't know yah, 'pon my soul don't know yah!" The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country."......

Thus, Eytinge effectively transforms the uncomfortable first-person narrative, replete with ironic character comedy, into a dramatic moment, enabling the reader as audience to see what Pip sees without the concomitant sense of chagrin at having been exposed so publicly as a snob. Lacking the parodic dimension of language as a resource, Eytinge goes over the top in creating a moment of great physical humour which nonetheless scores a thematic point against the self-conscious protagonist-narrator. Trabb's boy, unlike Wopsle, is a ham actor fully in control of his comic effects, and his motivation — satirical correction — is one which the sensitive reader can thoroughly endorse, so that we have an odd moment in the narrative when we as readers identify with the central character's antagonist rather than with the protagonist-narrator himself.

In this respect, John McLenan's illustration of the same general textual moment, "Hold me! I'm so frightened!" is quite misleading and incorrect in that Trabb's boy in the Harper's Weekly episode for 6 April 1861 is a monster of Orlick proportions, a terrifying apparition (albeit, with the blue bag which Dickens mentions several times) that a mature, fashionably-accoutered Pip confronts confidently, and without the least trepidation, in the High Street, presumably in front of the Blue Boar Inn, where Jaggers first saw Pip and initiated the boy's coming into great expectations. In McLenan's plate, Pip is a normative figure with whom readers can identify, not the butt of the joke, as in the text.

The Flaying of Hamlet

"With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim."

F. W. Pailthorpe

1900

Chapter 31

"With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim."

Dickens's Great Expectations, Garnett edition

Text Illustrated:

“A few steps, please.” When we were in a side alley, he turned and asked, “How did you think he looked?—I dressed him.”

I don’t know what he had looked like, except a funeral; with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in some extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice.

“When he come to the grave,” said our conductor, “he showed his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that when he see the ghost in the queen’s apartment, he might have made more of his stockings.”

I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to look at him over one another’s shoulders, by keeping the packing-case door, or lid, wide open.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Wopsle, “I am proud to see you. I hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness to know you in former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which has ever been acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables.

“Skin the stockings off Mr. Waldengarver,” said the owner of that property, “or you’ll bust ‘em. Bust ‘em, and you’ll bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave ‘em to me.”

With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim; who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall anyhow."

"Mr. Wopsle as Hamlet"

Chapter 31

Harry Furniss

1910

Dickens's Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Library Edition, ch. 31

Text Illustrated:

"Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As for example; on the question whether ‘twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said “Toss up for it;” and quite a Debating Society arose. When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of “Hear, hear!” When he appeared with his stocking disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the recorders,—very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door,—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said, “And don’t you do it, neither; you’re a deal worse than him!” And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions.

But his greatest trials were in the churchyard, which had the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, “Look out! Here’s the undertaker a coming, to see how you’re a getting on with your work!” I believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the comment, “Wai-ter!” The arrival of the body for interment (in an empty black box with the lid tumbling open), was the signal for a general joy, which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles upward."

"Pip enters Wopsle's Dressing Room"

Chapter 31

Harry Furniss

1910

"The Jew went down upon his knees, and began to flay his victim." [A highly condensed form of the text in Chapter 31.]

Dickens's Great Expectations, Library Edition

Kim wrote: "Trabb's boy

Chapter 30

Sol Eytinge Jr.

Commentary:

The final illustration in Dickens's Great Expectations in the single volume A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in the Ticknor & Field..."

Kim. Wonder Woman of the illustrations. Thank you.

Three cheers for the Eytinge illustration. You can feel the humour and the sarcasm of the character in the manner, the pose, and the facial expression of Trabb's boy. Glad to see that the cape/sack he is wearing is fluttering in the breeze. It is a sad, head-shaking laugh a reader has when we realize that Trabb's boy is doing a parody of Pip and Pip doesn't get it. Almost like Pip is in the shop, looking at himself in the mirror, and admiring how he looks. What he projects to see is a gentleman. In reality Pip is looking at what Trabb's boy is like on the street. Pip, the Emperor, does have clothes, but his attitude and manner make him naked to the world.

McLenan's drawing falls flat for me. Trabb's boy is distorted and looks as though he's wearing an ape mask or something. I'm with Peter - Eytinge's drawing hits the mark.

Kim wrote: ""Mr. Wopsle as Hamlet"

Chapter 31

Harry Furniss

1910

Dickens's Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Library Edition, ch. 31

Text Illustrated:

"Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents ..."

Well, as a Harry Furniss fan, it will not be a surprise to anyone that I like his illustration of Mr Wopsle.

How can anyone not like the look of utter confusion, exhaustion, and bewilderment on Wopsle's face? Furniss has captured the extravagant dress of Wopsle which is inappropriate for the part he is playing, but that is exactly the point.

When Pip goes to see the play it is the second time in two chapters that Dickens has signaled to the reader how unsuited and inappropriate Pip is to attempt to play the role of the gentleman. First, we had Trabb's boy offering some Street Gorilla Theatre parody of Pip. Now, we have Pip in a playhouse seeing one of the great plays of the English theatre being shredded by Wopsle. If Pip were to look at the play from a more candid perspective he would realize that he too is playing a part he is unsuited to assume. Indeed, when Pip tells Wopsle that the acting was "massive and concrete" Pip is correct. Sadly, the meaning of those words is reflective of Pip's own lack of insight to his own expectations.

I'd like to start my comments in this thread with

TRHEE BIG CHEERS FOR TRABB'S BOY!!!

He is absolutely brilliant, undaunted and we would need more of his anarchic and clear-minded ilk around. The full scope of his impersonation of Pip became clear to me through Peter's comment, but I have always liked him - and that's why I prefer Eytinge's rendition of his Pip impromptu because of the swagger in his posture and in his very looks. McLenan's idea of Trabb's boy is more in the line of Lee Marvin, and not that I have anything to say against Lee Marvin, but I just don't imagine Trabb's boy as some kind of juvenile Liberty Valance.

It is a shame, though, that Pip should write a letter to Mr. Trabb, insinuating that unless he part with his boy, Pip will part with his services. Pip has quickly learned how you can use money in order to browbeat people. He is getting less and less likeable to me, and while he might have been right in warning Jaggers against Orlick - as some of you pointed out, there are very good reasons -, his apparent fear of being connected with this warning did not endear him any further to me.

A point I really found interesting about Pip is in the following passage, which is taken from the conversation between him and Herbert:

"'I am ashamed to say it,' I returned, 'and yet it’s no worse to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a blacksmith’s boy but yesterday; I am—what shall I say I am—to-day?'

'Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase,' returned Herbert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine—'a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him."

We see that Pip is at a loss when it comes to defining himself. He is thinking in terms of social station, and while it was easy for him to see himself as a blacksmith's boy (although, after meeting Estella, it was not so very pleasant to see himself in that light), it is very difficult for him to see himself as a fully-fledged gentleman already because his expectations have not fulfilled themselves completely as yet. So, he doesn't know what he is ...

Herbert, on the other hand, has no problem defining Pip, and when we look at his words, we know why he has no problems: Because he looks at the person themselves, and for him, Pip is a good fellow. The rather nuanced description Herbert gives of him also shows that for all his optimism, Herbert is not a simpleton - he sees quite clearly the contradictions in Pip's nature, and his own generosity induces him to interpret them in a kindly, and not - as I'd do it - in a bitter way.

Pip can count himself lucky to have found a friend like Herbert.

Mary Lou wrote: "Kim wrote: "Now you have me trying to remember what Dickens novel it is where a group of people travelling together end up in an inn telling each other stories, these stories having nothing whateve..."

I think you and Kim are thinking, not of Pickwick (although there are a lot of short stories interwoven with the novel) but rather of Nicholas Nickleby. At the beginning, Nicholas is travelling by coach, and there is some sort of breakdown, which makes the passengers repair to a hotel where they while away their time by telling stories, such as the Sisters of York, and the Baron of Groggzwig.

I must confess that I actually like it very much when the plot of a novel is interrupted for the sake of a little vignette that does not add anything of substance to the main purpose of the plot. I also like a story within a story within a story within a story, cock-and-bull-stories and digressions - that's why I particularly like Tristram Shandy and why I adore Joseph Conrad as a narrator because there is no-one able to beat him when it comes to putting stories into stories that are interwoven within a framework story.

I particularly enjoy Dickens when he is giving us a theatrical digression, as he does here or also in Hard Times for you notice how much of his heart is in these pieces, or when he introduces the Crummles and Miss Snevelicci (or whatever her name is) and the other actors. - For that matter, I also love the play in the play in, let's say, Hamlet.

I don't know why, but I think the less straightforward a story is, the more I am interested. That doesn't work for me with Balzac or Flaubert, though :-)

Tristram wrote: "...Pip can count himself lucky to have found a friend like Herbert. "

The more obvious reason I find it hard to dislike Pip completely is that his adult narrative, looking back, seems filled with remorse and shame. He seems to be hating himself enough for the both of us. But perhaps the other, less conscious, reason is that he is liked by Biddy, Joe, Herbert, and Wemmick. The argument might be made that Joe is blinded by love. But despite what I'm sure was Biddy's clear-eyed assessment, she never wrote Pip off. And Herbert may wear rose-colored glasses, but the passage you quote, as well as others, show he's no pushover. Nor is Wemmick. If they be for Pip, who can be against him?

Tristram wrote: "I think you and Kim are thinking, not of Pickwick (although there are a lot of short stories interwoven with the novel) but rather of Nicholas Nickleby. "

I'm definitely not thinking of Nicholas Nickleby, as that's one of the few I haven't read yet! But now I'm kind of dreading it, so thanks for that. ;-)

From "Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens by G. K. Chesterton

"Great Expectations, which was written in the afternoon of Dickens's life and fame, has a quality of serene irony and even sadness, which puts it quite alone among his other works. At no time could Dickens possibly be called cynical, he had too much vitality; but relatively to the other books this book is cynical; but it has the soft and gentle cynicism of old age, not the hard cynicism of youth. To be a young cynic is to be a young brute; but Dickens, who had been so perfectly romantic and sentimental in his youth, could afford to admit this touch of doubt into the mixed experience of his middle age......

.....The best way of stating the change which this book marks in Dickens can be put in one phrase. In this book for the first time the hero disappears......

.....But Great Expectations may be called, like Vanity Fair, a novel without a hero. Almost all Thackeray's novels except Esmond are novels without a hero, but only one of Dickens's novels can be so described. I do not mean that it is a novel without a jeune premier, a young man to make love; Pickwick is that and Oliver Twist, and, perhaps, The Old Curiosity Shop. I mean that it is a novel without a hero in the same far deeper and more deadly sense in which Pendennis is also a novel without a hero. I mean that it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic......

It is necessary to make this first point clear: that in Great Expectations Dickens was really trying to be a quiet, a detached, and even a cynical observer of human life. Dickens was trying to be Thackeray. And the final and startling triumph of Dickens is this: that even to this moderate and modern story, he gives an incomparable energy which is not moderate and which is not modern. He is trying to be reasonable; but in spite of himself he is inspired. He is trying to be detailed, but in spite of himself he is gigantic. Compared to the rest of Dickens this is Thackeray; but compared to the whole of Thackeray we can only say in supreme praise of it that it is Dickens.

Take, for example, the one question of snobbishness. Dickens has achieved admirably the description of the doubts and vanities of the wretched Pip as he walks down the street in his new gentlemanly clothes, the clothes of which he is so proud and so ashamed. Nothing could be so exquisitely human, nothing especially could be so exquisitely masculine as that combination of self-love and self-assertion and even insolence with a naked and helpless sensibility to the slightest breath of ridicule. Pip thinks himself better than every one else, and yet anybody can snub him; that is the everlasting male, and perhaps the everlasting gentleman. Dickens has described perfectly this quivering and defenseless dignity. Dickens has described perfectly how ill-armed it is against the coarse humor of real humanity—the real humanity which Dickens loved, but which idealists and philanthropists do not love, the humanity of cabmen and costermongers and men singing in a third-class carriage; the humanity of Trabb's boy......

The thing about any figure of Dickens, about Sam Weller or Dick Swiveller, or Micawber, or Bagstock, or Trabb's boy,—the thing about each one of these persons is that he cannot be exhausted. A Dickens character hits you first on the nose and then in the waistcoat, and then in the eye and then in the waistcoat again, with the blinding rapidity of some battering engine. The scene in which Trabb's boy continually overtakes Pip in order to reel and stagger as at a first encounter is a thing quite within the real competence of such a character; it might have been suggested by Thackeray, or George Eliot, or any realist. But the point with Dickens is that there is a rush in the boy's rushings; the writer and the reader rush with him. They start with him, they stare with him, they stagger with him, they share an inexpressible vitality in the air which emanates from this violent and capering satirist. Trabb's boy is among other things a boy; he has a physical rapture in hurling himself like a boomerang and in bouncing to the sky like a ball. It is just exactly in describing this quality that Dickens is Dickens and that no one else comes near him."

If you want to read the entire thing - I did the cut out the spoilers thing, go to the link below - I think it's called a link. Anyway, if you read it read it at your own risk, I don't think there are a lot of spoilers but probably a few. There is no way I can fit it all on here though. Here you go:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301...

Mary Lou wrote: "Tristram wrote: "I think you and Kim are thinking, not of Pickwick (although there are a lot of short stories interwoven with the novel) but rather of Nicholas Nickleby. "

I'm definitely not think..."

There are other reasons to dread Nicholas Nickleby apart from the inserted short stories, which only appear at the beginning of the book. The most obvious reason to dread that book a little is the stilted and histrionic hero himself, who - unfortunately - will accompany us through the whole novel ;-)

Mary Lou wrote: "Tristram wrote: "...Pip can count himself lucky to have found a friend like Herbert. "

The more obvious reason I find it hard to dislike Pip completely is that his adult narrative, looking back, s..."

You are right: If even Joe finds it in himself not to be angry with Pip, why should I resent him ... it's just that I don't like Pip's way of getting Trabb's boy into trouble.

Gissing's study is becoming more and more interesting to me although I must confess that likening Great Expectations to Thackeray seems, in my eyes, to detract from the novel's merits.

I don't really know why Gissing calls GE a novel without a hero (alluding to Vanity Fair) because it is written from the first person perspective, and who, if not Pip, is the centre of the story? I don't even think that Pip's experience, the story of his life, can be regarded as typical of society in the way that maybe Becky Sharp's or Pendennis's stories can - because being chosen as the object of great expectations, rising from being a blacksmith's boy to a gentleman, falling in love with a cold-hearted (and then not quit cold-hearted) woman ... all these are not everyday experiences of that day and age.

Tristram wrote:
There are other reasons to dread Nicholas Nickleby apart from the inserted short stories, which only appear at the beginning of the book. The most obvious reason to dread that book a little is the stilted and histrionic hero himself, who - unfortunately - will accompany us through the whole novel ;-)"

No, not again! It was just all brought back to me in one little post! My early days in Pickwick, which was the very end of Oliver, I read each and every chapter of NN with certain people that who became grumpier and grumpier the longer we went. Poor Nick, our hero, Nick who saved the day, who saved just about anything that needed saving one way or another, was being picked on day after day, poor, poor Nick. We were obviously supposed to adore him as much as his sister - oh, I almost forgot, I was told that his sister was a "flat" character at that time too - grumpy, grumpy people. Ah, the beginning of my knowing the two grumpiest people you can find is fresh in my mind again. I wonder how two such people can be some of my very best friends. Obviously there is something wrong with me.

Oh, I purposely didn't mention any names, I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings by pointing them out.

Ah, Kim, I remember those wonderful, wonderful days, too. How we vindicated Ralph Nickleby, pointing out that what he did he did with a view to improving his wayward nephew and his gullible and egocentric sister-in-law. There also was some talk of what flat characters Nick and his sister are, and how could there have been none, they being so obviously flat?

In short, I am really looking forward to revisiting that novel in our new club!

Grump number 1 just heard from.

Here are just a few samples of what I had to deal with during those days so long ago:


"Nicholas himself is not a well developed person. I don't have a good picture of him or what he is like, which is unusual for my experience of Dickens. He is to much of a flitter. He starts out with no real intention to do anything."

"He thinks he can be a sailor, which is absurd. He thinks he can be an actor and playwright, which is equally absurd. I suppose as things go on he'll spend some time as a horse trainer, a stained glass window designer, or who knows what."

"I completely share your dissatisfaction with Nicholas, who seems to be rather feckless and spoilt a young man."

"I quite like your job suggestions for Nicholas and would want to add two ideas of my own: Nicholas could become a lions' dentist or the governor of an island.'

"One idea that strikes me as odd is that Dickens, a resourceful young man who certainly knew his onions and his way about life, should come up with such a feckless hero as Nicholas - a young man who has no practical sense whatsoever.

Now you see what I had to deal with. Poor, poor Nick understood only by me. :-) As for who said what I'm not telling. :-)

Kim wrote: "Here are just a few samples of what I had to deal with during those days so long ago..."

Interesting. Having not read it, the descriptions of Nicholas given here remind me very much of Richard Carstone in Bleak House. I hope his ending was happier.

Kim wrote: "Grump number 1 just heard from."

Whatwherewhowhen?

Mary Lou wrote: "Kim wrote: "Here are just a few samples of what I had to deal with during those days so long ago..."

Interesting. Having not read it, the descriptions of Nicholas given here remind me very much of..."

Richard Carstone was not half as bad as Nick because after all, he was comparatively seldom mentioned whereas Nick was the hero of the book and we saw him stilting through the pages nearly everywhere.

Tristram wrote: "Richard Carstone was not half as bad as Nick"

Be careful, you might give away one of the two people I was talking about.

How can I give him away when I am so much with him?

Kim wrote: "Pip is so terrified at the idea of running into Pumblechook that he decides to walk in the country to escape the town, or at least Pumblechook's area "

I loved that. And I'm glad he did; I'm glad not to have had to endure another visit with Pumblechook too.

Kim wrote: "And our hero, Pip that is..."

Right now, I would rather refer to him as our protagonist, not hero. The way he treated Joe and Biddy, he's no hero to me.

Peter wrote: "There isn't much to say about Wopsle's acting ability except it is "massive and concrete." "

At least he didn't saw the air. Another delightful phrase.

Tristram wrote: There are other reasons to dread Nicholas Nickleby apart from the inserted short stories, ."

It's a strong contender for my least favorite Dickens novel. And it's a definite winner for my least favorite TV adaptation of a Dickens novel -- the Royal Shakespeare Company's nine-hour adaptation of NN on an almost bare stage with perpetually dark lighting and gloom everywhere. They may be great at Shakespeare, but at Dickens they're awful.

Everyman wrote: "Tristram wrote: There are other reasons to dread Nicholas Nickleby apart from the inserted short stories, ."

It's a strong contender for my least favorite Dickens novel. And it's a definite winner..."

Ah, I knew neither of you would be able to hold in your grumpiness for very long. As for your Royal Shakespeare's adaptation of NN it sounds...............interesting.

And NN is still my second favorite Dickens book.

Kim wrote: "Ah, I knew neither of you would be able to hold in your grumpiness for very long. As for your Royal Shakespeare's adaptation of NN it sounds...............interesting."

If you want to PM me your address I'll be glad to ship it out to you, on condition that you promise to watch the entire four disks all the way through.

OK, it's coming.

Everyman wrote: "Tristram wrote: There are other reasons to dread Nicholas Nickleby apart from the inserted short stories, ."

It's a strong contender for my least favorite Dickens novel. And it's a definite winner..."

Sounds like something I could make my students watch ;-)

Everyman wrote: "It's a strong contender for my least favorite Dickens novel."

My least favourite Dickens novel is definitely, and by far, The Old Curiosity Shop: A slipshod plot, a sanctimonious heroine, a lachrymose and egoistic grandfather, a larger-than-life villain that has no real motive for his actions, other characters that simply fall out of the plot or simply appear from out of nowhere ... it must have been difficult for Dickens to write so poor a novel.

Tristram wrote: "Everyman wrote: "It's a strong contender for my least favorite Dickens novel."

My least favourite Dickens novel is definitely, and by far, The Old Curiosity Shop: A slipshod plot, a sanctimonious ..."

Grump. George Gissing in Charles Dickens: A Critical Study says:

"For the rest, The Old Curiosity Shop is greatly superior from this point of view to the previous novels. The story has more of symmetry; it moves more regularly to its close, and that close is much more satisfying; it remains in one's mind as a whole, with no part that one feels obtrusive or incongruous or wearily feeble. In writing the last portion, Dickens was so engrossed by his theme that he worked at unusual hours, prolonging the day's labour into the night -- never, of course, a habit with a man of his social instincts. The book gained thereby its unity of effect. It is a story in the true sense, and one of the most delightful in our language.

There is a great chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop (chap. xxxix), where Kit and Barbara, with their respective mothers, with little Jacob, too, and the Baby, go to spend the evening at Astley's. It would have seemed impossible to get so much kindly fun out of a group of the London poor. Dickens does it by dint of his profound, his overflowing sympathy with them. He glows with delight when they are delighted; he understands precisely what they enjoy, and why; it does his very soul good to hear Kit's guffaws and the screaming laugh of little Jacob. Where else in literature is there such infinite good-feeling expressed with such wondrous whimsicality? After the circus, Kit takes all his companions to have an oyster supper (by the way, in those days, as Sam Weller assures us, poverty and oysters always went together). And not one of them enjoyed the meal more than he who gaily described it. How the London poor should love Dickens! But -- with his books always obtainable -- they can scarce be said to read him at all."

I have put that study by Gissing on my reading list, and the extract you give here makes me all the more eager to start reading it - because there is so much worthy of contradiction in this extract.

Maybe a discussion of The Old Curiosity Shop as a whole had rather not be held in a thread that is entitled "GE, Chapters 30-31", and I might open a thread on "TOCS, the novel as a whole" if we want to pursue that topic right now - but let me say this:

a) I would not see any unity of effect in TOCS since the novel is picaresque in structure, there is even a shift of narrative perspective (due to how Dickens came to writing it in connection with Master Humphrey's Clock), and the conflicts are very contrived. And just take Kit as an example of how little unity there is in the novel: The character starts out as a dunce, little short of being retarded, but later he seems to be some kind of youthful hero even.

b) In saying that TOCS is greatly superior to any preceding novel, Gissing isn't saying much because there were only four novels, weren't there? Still, I think that OT has much more unity, and PP is undoubtedly superior.

Maybe, to be continued in another thread?

It's fine with me, I have Gissing to back me up this time. :-)

Kim wrote: "It's fine with me, I have Gissing to back me up this time. :-)"

Talk about bring a popgun to an AK-47 fight!

:-)