The Anatomy of Charles Dickens: a Study of Bodily Vulnerability in His Novels”

THE ANATOMY OF CHARLES DICKENS: A STUDY OF BODILY VULNERABILITY IN HIS NOVELS By ADRIENNE ELIZABETH GAVIN B.A., University of Auckland, 1986 L.L.B. (Hons.), University of Auckland, 1986 M.A. (Hons.), University of Auckland, 1988 M.Phil., University of Cambridge, 1993 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1994 ©Adrienne Elizabeth Gavin, 1994 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. (Signature) Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date 2O’’ t1oni I’1% DE-6 (2188) U THESIS ABSTRACT “The Anatomy of Charles Dickens: A Study of Bodily Vulnerability in his Novels” by Adrienne E. Gavin This thesis examines the pervasive presence of the vulnerability of the human body in Charles Dickens’s writing. It demonstrates, through a collection and discussion of bodily references drawn from the range of Dickens’s novels, that the the body’s vulnerability is, in conjunction with the use of humour and the literalizing of metaphorical references to the body, a crucial and fundamental element of both Dickens’s distinctive style and of his enduring literary popularity. Chapter one provides evidence for the contention that a sense of physical vulnerability was particularly intense in the Victorian era and that Dickens shared this awareness as his social and humanitarian interests and activities illustrate. The following chapter focuses on Dickens’s more private concerns with the body, particularly upon his personal physical fears and experiences, the public attention given to his body as a result of fame, his continual denial of his own physical frailties, and the interplay between his body and his writing all of which provided impetus to his literature. Chapters three, four, and five examine consecutively the ways in which physical vulnerability—to damage, disease, and death, but most importantly to dismemberment— function in the novels. They do so on three broad levels: Character, Conversation, and Expression which depict in ascending order increasing bodily insecurity in Dickens’s texts. The Character level concerns the bodily forms and fates of Dickens’s characters. We see here that the more a player’s body is described the more vulnerable it will become, thus good-hearted heroes are virtually “bodiless” and suffer little physical pain while evil characters are described in great anatomical detail and come to bodily harm. Dickens metes out “bodily justice” on this level in that he ensures that characters who have transgressed m the rules of good conduct in his fictional world are physically punished for their misdeeds and that bodily punishment is in direct proportion to the “crime” committed. On the Conversational level Dickens depicts extreme physical horrors by expressing these things humorously, by putting descriptions of them in mouths variously and interestingly accented, and, most significantly, by playing on the dual literal and metaphorical meanings of bodily references. Most of this anatomical dialogue is anecdotal and therefore unverifiable, hypothetical and therefore unlikely to happen, or professional, i.e., spoken by “bodily experts” such as doctors or undertakers, and therefore irrefutable. Here exaggeration and extremes attract readers who are simultaneously fascinated and repelled by what characters say of the body. Dickens’s methods of Expression reflect physical reality—all bodies are vulnerable to sudden damage just as Dickens can dismember a body suddenly either with the stroke of a pen or by delaying its complete description. We see that on this level the body is at it most vulnerable and is damaged by methods of expression rather than by narrative. Dickens here plays most intensively with the literalization of metaphor, linguistically insisting that if a head appears around a doorway we can no longer assume that a body will follow. The novels are filled with dictionally decapitated heads and severed limbs, but through the use of humour and by reanimating these members Dickens ensures that his style elicits not simply a reaction of horror in his readers but elicits a response to the grotesque—a strong instinctual attraction to his work which is rooted in the body, not in the intellect. This dissertation concludes that the body’s vulnerability is not only a continual presence in Dickens’s novels but is an under-examined yet fundamental element in what makes his writing style distinctive and what makes his work continually popular. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: VULNERABILITY AND THE VICTORIAN BODY 11 CHAPTER TWO: VULNERABILITY AND CHARLES DICKENS’S BODY 87 CHAPTER THREE: CHARACTERIZING THE BODY 157 CHAPTER FOUR: SPEAKING OF THE BODY 239 CHAPTER FIVE: THE DICTION OF DISMEMBERMENT 299 CONCLUSION 322 BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 V LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AN American Notes AYR All the Year Round BH Bleak House BR BarnabyRudge DC David Copperfield DS Dombey and Son ED The Mystery of Edwin Drood GE Great Expectations HT Hard Times HW Household Words LD Little Dorrit Lett.N The Nonesuch Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens Lett.P The Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens MC Martin Chuzzlewit NN Nicholas Nickleby The Old Curiosity Shop OMF Our Mutual Friend OT Oliver Twist P1 Pictures from Italy PP The Pickwick Papers RP Reprinted Pieces SB Sketches by Boz TiC A Tale of Two Cities UT The Uncommercial Traveller References to Dickens’s novels are to The Clarendon Dickens where editions have been published. Quotations from novels not yet available in the series are from The World’s Classics edition (NN, TTC), the Penguin edition (BR, OCS, OMF), and the Norton Critical Edition (BH, HI). Because of the varied accessibility of editions, chapter numbers have been indicated as well as page numbers. References to Dickens’s letters are from the Pilgrim Edition where available (vols. 1- 7 covering the years 1820-1855); the Nonesuch edition is used for letters not yet published in the Pilgrim Edition. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to gratefully acknowledge the support and assistance I have received during the writing of this dissertation from the following people and institutions. I would like to thank my thesis committee Professor I. B. Nadel, Professor J. L. Wisenthal, and Professor J. Winter for invaluable comment and suggestion as to how this dissertation might be written and improved. My supervisor, Professor Nadel, in particular, has helped me from the earliest stages of this thesis by assisting me in finding a feasible approach to my topic and by accommodating the difficulties of revising this dissertation from long distance during my absence from Canada. I am grateful to the University of British Columbia for awarding me a Graduate Fellowship during 1989-90. The inter-library loan section of the library of the University of British Columbia were most helpful in handling the numerous requests for books made during the initial stages of this project. I thank Mark Eade for proofreading on extremely short notice, for long-distance administration, and for providing encouragement and suggestion during the writing of the first draft of this thesis. I thank Jeff Miller for kindly allowing me to use his computer to make my final corrections and revisions. I thank J. Dewayne Crawford for patience, proofreading on demand, selflessly lending me his computer and continual support in even the most trying of circumstances. I thank my parents, John and Irene Gavin, for constant faith, support, and encouragement throughout the years and countries that have seen this dissertation being written, and thank Raewyn, Claire, and Scott Gavin for the same. 1 IITRODUCTION Of all the objects in the world, the human body has a peculiar status: it is not only possessed by the person who has it, it also possesses and constitutes him.... Our body is not, in short, something we have, it is a large part of what we actually are: it is by and through our bodies that we recognise our existence in the world, and it is only by being able to move in and act upon the world that we can distinguish it from ourselves.... Each of us ... has two images of the bodily self: one which is immediately felt as the source of sensation and the spring of action, and one which we see and sometimes touch (Jonathan Miller, The Body in Question 14). The human body was central to Dickens’s life and to his art. In life he shared many of the anatomical fears and concerns of his contemporaries. In art his use of the body’s variabilities and vulnerabilities is unique. No other element in Dickens’s writing is as distinctive as the way in which he treats the body, and nothing more signals a work as Dickensian than the constancy with which he keeps anatomy before us. The body Dickens uses in his work is, preeminently, a vulnerable one; it appears deformed, damaged, dismembered and yet, despite such horrors, it is an essential element of his humour. It is in the continual conjunction of comedy, the literalization of metaphor, and the vulnerability of the human physical form that one of Dickens’s greatest literary achievements lies; this achievement is not only the power and singularity of his writing style but his ability to connect viscerally, immediately, and fundamentally to his readers.

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