Select ONE or TWO brief passages (2 or 3 pages each at most) from Dickens's fiction - Analyse the use of dialogue OR the presentation of the narrative voice.

The passionate tone brings into the dialogue an interruption from Cousin Feenix with his ‘slipshod speech’, which introduces a contending (masculine) voice. His monopolisation of a substantial portion of the conversation reflects Lakoff’s argument that ‘in general, the one who has the floor…has the most power…’. His presence, for the benefit of his own masculine pride, demonstrates the lack of privacy that these female characters have in the world. His reference to ‘my friend Dombey’, and ‘my friend Gay’ establishes an almost symbolic masculine network around the two ‘lovely and accomplished’ women. This exhausted anaphora serves to bring the network closer in, for both females are regarded as ‘domestic relations’, without names - without identities. He almost acts as a surveillance figure inspecting the dialogue, and as he stands ‘ambling at the door’ there is a suggestion that he is anxious about the ‘little stratagem’ he has helped orchestrate and control.

Certainly his mass of irrelevant words that stifle the two women exemplifies his ignorance of the female voice rather than establishing himself as an authority., Women are ‘the most unintelligible thing within a man’s experience’, suggesting that they are operating in ‘two spheres’ Even the dark, almost gothic room, in which Edith has been ‘locked away’, could be considered, in Freudian terms, as the recesses of a suppressed female mind. This is the only place where female dialogue has the space to express itself. There is no mention of her being able to interact with anyone other than Feenix, particularly after he ‘took the liberty of seeking her in France’ His interruption is an attempt to dictate, in a potentially ‘wayward’ conversation, ‘to set right, whatever she has done wrong’. Whilst Walter stands outside, one can imagine keeping watch, what is conveyed is their lack of ability to penetrate the female psyche. Such an attempt by Feenix is torture to Edith. She is painfully conscious of his invasion and dramatically raises her hand ‘as if she begged him to say no more’. The gesture is powerful because it is disallowed in the dialogue, and demonstrates her continuing struggle against the defining role of men.                  

However she is also involved in a power struggle with the missionary, Florence, whose anxiety is also motivated by a desire to convert Edith. ‘If you would have me ask [Dombey’s] pardon, I will do it’ she pleads. Rather than responding with her hand, Edith has an equally powerful tactic – silence, ‘she answered not a word’. Ingham wrote that ‘the power that guards the secret and inner self of these passionate women is the one traditionally associated with female merit: the ability to keep silent’. Behind this absence of words there is a sense that Edith is battling. Yet, one wonders if the struggle is to protect herself or to protect Florence from the darker side of the world she represents? ‘If he is a changed man…’ is quickly converted by Edith to ‘being a changed man’. Her reservations are still there but they are softened by Florence’s faith. Her diction is cautious, illustrated poignantly in the ‘sealed letter’. The spoken word is unsafe, yet the reader never hears ‘the truth…written in it’. What happens to this letter only Florence knows. This seems almost sinister, but she is not as unconscious of the world as she first would seem. She too is responsible for halting dialogue. We hear not a whisper from her as soon as Feenix enters the room. Is this an action of a subversive woman or one who simply knows her place? Her patience is placed in stark contrast with Edith’s intolerance. Silence becomes her ‘guard’ also, or even a ‘merit’ that contributes to her survival.

When alone with Edith, however her sentence structure suggests an insistent female. She puts into use the rule of negation, where there is an ‘expression of qualities in terms of their opposites [that disguises] ‘demand’ in the language of sacrifice…and ‘power’ or ‘influence’ in the language of love’. When attempting to induce Edith into accepting her redemption she can appear manipulative. With her ‘free heart’ she ostensibly offers Edith ‘free’ forgiveness for the stain on her family name. To request forgiveness from her father, however is not without a price - Edith’s dignity and integrity. She maybe unaware of her demands, her innocent hesitation that ‘you do not – you do not speak of Papa’ only illustrating her failure to understand Edith’s position. In fact Edith is the only character that is true to herself here, she knows that she is ‘guilty of a blind and passionate resentment’, and she admits that, after part-fulfilling Florence’s desires that they ‘were strange words in my own ears and foreign to the sound of my own voice’. Her spoken word is not given away lightly, afterall it is the only part of herself that she can control.

Florence’s voice, alternatively has been absorbed into the ‘natural order’. Defining herself in domestic terms, she is a valued part of society - a mother and a wife. The two roles that ‘all Dickens’s positively valued women belong and his disvalued women are excluded’. She is willing to protect these achievements at any cost. At points she appears threatened by Edith’s reappearance, saying that herself and Dombey ‘are never asunder now; we never shall be, any more’. Straight away she dives into what her greatest fear is – loosing her dad. ‘I am very dear to him, and he is very dear to me’ she states. The symmetrical syntactical arrangement shows a equality between herself and Dombey that she does not want to rock, thus she is isolating Edith from the bond. The sense of closure in both phrases suggests the unlikelihood of Edith being restored to the role of wife.  

From the power-struggles between Edith and Florence to those between Edith and Cousin Feenix, the silences the emotionally charged diction the dialogue demonstrates how the world views gender. The women have taken very different paths of survival. Calwelti stated that in every melodrama ‘someone must win, and the story must be resolved’. Here the dialogue is resolved with the metaphoric death of Edith. Leaving her ‘in the grave…never again’ to see her, she is unjustly buried alive, her voice sealed in a letter. She has suffered martyrdom and becomes simply a ‘shadow of a dream’. The intense dialogue has been laid to rest and the ‘natural order’ re-established. Afterall, as Butler stated ‘as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, gender [when portrayed through dialogue] is a performance with clearly punitive consequences’. It is a role one has to learn how to play correctly.                    

Word Count: 1481

Bibliography

Set Text

Dickens, C. [1974] 1999. Dombey and Son, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Criticism

Abrams, M.H. [1981] 1999. A Glossary of Literary Terms, USA: Harcourt Brace College Publishers

Bargainnier, Earl F. 1975. ‘Melodrama as Formula’, Journal of Popular Culture, 9 Part 3, 726 – 73.

Brooks, P. [1976] 1995. The Melodramatic Imagination, London: Yale University Press

Goodwin, G. 2001. ‘Dickens and Eliot in Dialogue’, Dickens Quarterly, 18 No. 1

Ingham, P. 1992. Dickens, Women and Language, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf Press

Raina, B. 1986. Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth, London: The University of Wisconsin Press

Lakoff, R. 2001. ‘Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives’, Dickens’s Quarterly, 18, No. I. 

Yelin, L. 1979. ‘Strategies for Survival: Florence and Edith in Dombey and Son’, Victorian Studies, 22, 297-319 

Waters, C. 1997. Dickens and the Politics of Family, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Stewart, Garrett, Dickens and Language

‘Dickens’s Villains, Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture’ (PR4592.V54JS)