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Uni International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8410361 Belcher, Diane Dewhurst SERVANTS AND THEIR MASTERS IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1984 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1984 by Belcher, Diane Dewhurst All Rights Reserved PLEASE NOTE: In hi! cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark -/ . 1. Glossy photographs or pages_______ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. Photographs with dark background _ 4. Illustrations are poor copy_______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy_ 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page_______ 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pag es______ 8. Print exceeds margin requirements______ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine_______ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print_______ 11. Page(s)_____________ lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s)_____________ seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages num bered_____________ . Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages_______ 15. Other___________________________________________________________________________ University Microfilms International SERVANTS AND THEIR MASTERS IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Diane Dewhurst Belcher, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1984 Reading Committee: Approved By Richard D. Altick Robert Jones Advisor Arnold Shapiro Department of English © Copyright by Diane Dewhurst Belcher 1984 VITA January 9, 1951............ Born - Baltimore, Maryland 1973 ...................... B.A., The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 1974-1980.................. Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1975 ...................... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1980-1982.................. Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1982-1983. .............. Foreign Expert, English Section, The Branch College of the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute, Beij ing, China 1983-198 4 .................. Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Professor Richard D. Altick Eighteenth-Century British Literature. Professor John Sena Renaissance Literature. Professor Robert Jones Medieval Literature. Professor Alan Brown ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA ................................................... ii LIST OF FIGURES......................................... iv INTRODUCTION ........................................... 1 Chapter I. DICKENS AND SERVANTS REAL AND FICTIONAL........ 6 II. THE SERVANT-GUIDES.............................. 29 III. THE DOWNTRODDEN................................ 54 IV. THE PROBLEM SERVANTS. '...................... 108 V. THE SERVANT-CRIMINALS.......................... 154 VI. CONCLUSION....................................... 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 186 ill LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. The Marchioness...................................... 69 2. Susan Ni p p e r ......................................... 74 3. G u s t e r ............................................... 81 4. A f f e r y ............................................... 90 5. Frontispiece and titlepage ofThe Greatest Plague of Life; or The Adventures of a Lady in Search of fi Good Servant......................... 109 6. Menservants............................................. 141 7. Charlotte............................................... 160 8. Jeremiah Flintwinch..................................... 174 iv INTRODUCTION Dickens was not the first English novelist to give prominence to servants in his works, but no other writer has ever peopled his/her fiction with as many servants as Dickens has. During the nineteenth century servants did become the largest occupational group in England.* But the fact that Dickens allotted so much more space in his fictional worlds to domestics than did other Victorian writers is yet further evidence of what Raymond Williams calls "the primary fact about Dickens"— "that he was a social novelist and a committed 2 novelist." Dickens' fictional servants have not been ignored by . his commentators. Seldom does a discussion of The Pickwick Papers, for example, fail to mention Pickwick's valet, Sam Weller, or a critical reading of Martin Chuzzlewit neglect Mark Tapley. Yet few Dickens critics have looked beyond individual servants in their respective novels at the broader subject of Dickens' fictionalization of the domestic servant class. One of the rare exceptions is N. N. Feltes, whose essay "'The Greatest Plague of Life': Dickens, Masters and Servants" explicates the historical context in which all of 3 Dickens' servant portrayals belong. My concern, however, is more with Dickens' servants as characters and his characters as servants— with the roles that servants most often play in the narratives and how Dickens as artist exploits servantly functions, i.e., how his DICKENS' FICTIONAL SERVANTS* The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) Bleak House (1852-53) Job Trotter Charley Sam Weller Guster Hortense Oliver Twist (1837) Mrs. Rouncewell Charlotte Hard Times (1854) Mrs. Bedwln Mrs. Sparsit Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39) Little Dorrit (1855-57) Peg Sliderskew John Baptist Cavalletto The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) Merdle's Chief Butler Affery Flintwinch The Marchioness Jeremiah Flintwinch Tom Scott Tattycoram Miss Wade Barnaby Rudge (1841) A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Miggs Rudge, the elder Miss Pross Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) Great Expectations (1860-61) Mark Tapley Pip's Avenger Flopson Dombey and Son (1846-48) Millers Susan Nipper Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) Polly Toodle Rob Toodle Veneering's Analytical Chemist David Copperfield (1849-50) Littimer Clara Peggotty *This is not an exhaustive list of Dickens' servants. It includes only those whom I refer to in this dissertation. 2 characters as servants are suited for the action and interaction in which he involves them. Dickens' servant characterizations deserve attention because of their sheer numbers (see my selective list); they reward attention because of what they tell us about the shaping forces behind Dickens' artistry, as well as of the artistry itself. Perhaps more than any other class of characters in Dickens, servants, to put it simply, brought into conflict their creator's intense desire to please his audience and his commitment to improving them. As representatives of that segment of the lower classes who propped up the social standing and maintained (for small remuneration) the comfort of the higher classes, the servant characters certainly exemplify the "poor, oppressed and unfortunate," those to whose cause Dickens 4 was devoted. Yet his own life style and social position, like that of most of his readers, depended to a certain extent on the continued inferior status of'this sizable portion of the population.** All of Dickens' servant characterizations reveal the tension in his relationship with his mainly servant-keeping readers (as one of them, yet their critic) and hence show us the ways in which he resolved it or failed to do so. Steven Marcus notes: "By multiplying a particular character or