Dickens deftly sketches eye-service, and two-facedness of
character, via subtle shifts in the narrative point of view, particularly in
the depiction of physical gestures.
By leaving the interpretation to the reader, he skewers his character
with a very thin blade.
Thus, in Martin Chuzzlewit, the chapter where we make
the acquaintance of Mr. Pecksniff, surrounded by his adoring daughters, we read:
‘But what of that!’ said Mr
Pecksniff, still smiling at the fire. ‘There is disinterestedness in the world,
I hope?’
We have not yet sufficiently made the acquaintance of this
gentleman, to assess that latter apophthegm as hypocritical; but the physical detail of “still
smiling at the fire”, is very telling. It is small, but every particle counts. Someone gazing,
into a fire, is alone with his
thoughts; someone smiling, at a fire, has conjured up an imaginary
(and admiring) companion.
The “still” adds a further twist to the image, almost too subtle to assess. Roughly, it gives us a glimpse into his
habit and character, no mere passing mood; his complacency, and inaptitude to
change.
This surmise on our part is ratified a page later:
… Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and
more, and looking at the fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it.
Here it is clear, that he is simply quite pleased with
himself. Or rather, not
simply; for there is a layer of
pathos here, that will become clearer as the novel goes on. His doting daughters are without wit, he
cannot share a joke with them. And his only other constant companions
are the young prentices he condescends to.
~
Let us compare another case of a character communing with an
inanimate object (though not quite
inanimate, perhaps; both mirrors
and fires have their own liveliness).
In William Dean Howells’ A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), the
Boston-based (and Boston-centered) protagonist, whose career has never
flourished, has just received an exciting job-offer, but which would require
moving to New York. That
prospect dismays his wife (among other things, “I shouldn’t know how to shop”),
who initially nixes the idea. But
then:
“I can’t help feeling,” she grieved
into the mirror, “that it’s I who keep you from accepting that offer.”
This is less subtle, less artful than Dickens, since it
tells you, omnisciently, exactly what she is feeling. She is not simply staring
or frowning into the mirror, nor
looking at it with a sad expression (which is what the author would need to
have said, were he to attempt the Dickensian indirection), but, explicitly,
“grieving”. Nonetheless, it
is a vigorous phrase, much better than (say) “gazing into the mirror with an
expression of grief”. It is, so to
say, transitive; we see her projecting her words (and with them, her thoughts) towards the
mirror.
Now, if this were all we had to go on, we might picture an
actor mouthing lines, and mimicking emotions, with the mirror as audience: then we would be back in Pecksniff
territory. But all the rest of the
context makes it plain that she is a good person and a caring wife, who is
simply troubled at the prospect of so great a change (for well-brought-up
Bostonians of that era, all that was outside Boston was off the cliff of the world). And now the point -- and the pulse, and the thrust of that transitive preposition into, reveals its full force. She was not grieving at the mirror, nor before the mirror, but right… into
it. And, mirrors being what they
are, the force of her projected feeling returns on her -- only,
mirror-reversed. Some interior
soul-work is here happening; and
by the next morning she has come round, announcing at breakfast to her husband
(“silent over his fish-balls and baked beans”): “We will go to New York. I’ve decided it.”
~
But back to our fireside philosopher. His reveries are interrupted by a knock
at the door.
‘Come in!’ cried Mr Pecksniff --
not severely; only
virtuously. ‘Come in!’
This is delicious, and deftly done. A great lot of thought is packed into those few and unassuming
syllables.
For: when you are comfortably “at home” to visitors, and
somebody knocks at your door, you say “Come in.” That is what one says; it is the done thing, and scarcely requires comment. Yet here the reader is solicitously
assured that the command -- excuse us, the invitation -- was not issued “severely”.
From the unspoken presuppositions that would necessitate such assurance,
we can surmise that Mr Pecksniff is often quite “at home” issuing imperatives; and that, at times, on a peremptory tone.
Now, severely is
an external word, refering to the observable manner of utterance. An actor could speak severely, or
sweetly, without entertaining any correspondingly severe or sweet frame of
mind. Well and good. But now our author slyly slips in another
adverb, virtuously, in conjunction,
as though it too were an observational detail. Yet its ostensible externality is, so to say, endogenous: it is Mr Pecksniff imagining how he will appear to the
visitor, when speaking in that wise.
Further: whether a thing is
virtuous or not, is a matter, not of
any particular lilt of delivery, but of the speaker’s frame of mind or morals, together with an ethical judgment
(societal or transcendental) about intent. By yoking this more complex word
with the simple severely, Dickens has
afforded us a deep-drilling and twisting glimpse into the recesses of
Pecksniff’s character. That gentleman is here pleased to pose as the
prosperous man of the house -- a good host -- door open to anyone at any time -- nothing to hide
here; Come in, come in, by all
means!; ‘tis I myself who invite
thee.
Caveat: Dickens
is no minimalist; in subsequent
pages -- dozens of them -- he works variations on the theme of Pecksniff’s
duplicity, many of which would be plain to any schoolchild. What I mean to show above is that
he can, when he wishes, convey much
with small means.
[Flash update] Mister Pecksniff and Ted Cruz -- separated at birth?
~
The standard thumbnail of Mr. Pecksniff is as simply a
hypocrite (“a canting hypocrite”, is the summary of The Reader’s
Encyclopedia). Chesterton, with more insight, calls him not so much a
hypocrite as a rhetorician. We can see the
peculiar flavor of his hypocrisy, in the following passage. Upon being denounced as a “hypocrite”
by a relative, he makes no reply, but only remarks to his daughter, in this
edifying scene:
‘Charity, my dear,’ said Mr
Pecksniff, ‘when I take my chamber candlestick tonight, remind me to be more
than usually particular in praying for Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done me
an injustice.’
This was said in a very bland
voice, and aside, as being addresssed to his daughter’s private ear.
Having laid the groundwork for the character of Pecksniff,
in passages like those quoted above (and if the reader’s mind closes at that
moment, he is left with a serviceable shorthand “canting hypocrite”), Dickens
then gives us glimpses like this:
‘Who is with him now,’ ruminated Mr
Pecksniff, warming his back (as he had warmed his hands) as it it were a
widow’s back or an orphan’s back, or an enemy's back, or a back that any less
excellent man would have suffered
to be cold.
What is Dickens up to with this? It expresses a thought, of some sort; but it seems to be the sort of thought
one meets in dreams, and which are difficult to explain, even to oneself, as
one awakes and the day wears on.
Dickens is telling a story -- that’s his job, after all --
but there are other things in his head as he explores along, which he isn’t
necessarily sharing with us.
(Starkest example of that: the
Analytical Chemist in
Our
Mutual Friend.
--- Flash
update!
A manuscript
recently unearthed reveals more about that setting:
~
The understanding gained from these early passages,
fine-tunes our interpretation of later ones.
Thus, consider a sentence,
He meekly signed to
her to lead the way.
(Nice dignified pentameter, that.)
The natural interpretation of that is, of course, that his
physical signaling was undemonstrative, and that his internal state of
mind was meek. We might further suspect or surmise,
that the fellow is given to meekness.
These assumptions fit well with the adverb’s modificand: namely, being led.
But now consider the actual passage, shortly after the one
quoted immediately before:
With that, he took off his
great-coat, and having run his
fingers through his hair, thrust one hand gently in the bosom of his waistcoat,
and meekly signed to her to lead the way.
Ah-ha! By now,
we are old hands at this.
(1) The reference to “great-coat”, unobtrusive in itself, is
by no means accidental.
(2) “having run his fingers through
his hair”
This is a bit of dreamy autoerotic
narcissism, which will be familiar to those of my antiquated generation from
the 1950’s hit song, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend me Your Comb” (concerning a very
self-involved and vain young male), or even that classic ad,
Bryl - Cream! a little dab’ll do ya!
Use
-- more -- only if you dare.
But
watch -- out -- the gals’ll all pursue yaaaaaaa…..
They
love to run their fingers through your hair.
(3) That bit about gently placing his hand in the “bosom”
of his waistcoat, is a continuation of the idea in the passage about
so-carefully warming his back.
The fact is, Pecksniff is always onstage to himself, playing out a private drama for his own self-reassurance. This is not the same thing as hypocrisy
(Chesterton’s point), nor even of rhetoric, since both of those are directed
outwards, to fool one’s fellows:
whereas Pecksniff’s histrionics are intended (or at least, fated) principally
to fool himself -- nay, to create
himself in the image he desires.
That currently key notion of “narcissism” certainly applies, but is not, perhaps, the
whole story; at least, there exist
simpler, garden-variety narcissisms, that do no require such sedulous
cultivation (Flibbertigibbets at the Mall).
 |
|
No mere feuilletoniste
|
Characteristic of Dickens is his use of gestures to
delineate character. At its
simplest, as with the urchin boy in Hard Times with little depth to
him but fixed in memory by his
habit of knuckling his forehead, it functions simply like the motif that
introduces this or that character in opera: it shows us, not character
necessarily, but a character. More tellingly, it can reveal character, and not just label it.
Here is an example rather more layered than usual. Pecksniff is attempting to toady up to
a wealthy old invalid, hoping for a bequest, but that curmudgeon admits none
into his confidence but a certain girl who attends on him. The elderly gentleman fixes Pecksniff
with a penetrating gaze:
“The young girl whom you just now
saw -- what! your eye lightens
when I talk of her! You hate her
already, do you?”
“Upon my word, sir!” said Mr
Pecksniff, laying his hand upon his breast, and dropping his eyelids.
For the moment, let us focus only on the gesture, and not on
the details of what provoked it, apart from the fact that his disinterestedness
had been called into question.
Even at that level, there are two layers, which by now we
are in a position to parse.
Overtly, the eyelid-dropping is of a piece with the breast-touching, as pantomiming
his pretense of innocent humility.
At a layer beneath that, it is a fluttery, feminine gesture, consonant
with Pecksniff’s peculiarly unmanly style of self-pleasing.
In context, there is yet a third. The wealthy gentleman, with uncanny insight, has seen
the greed and hatred suddenly flash in Pecksniff’s eyes upon hearing mention of
the girl who stands between him and his hoped-for fortune. Oddly, the eye is described as “lightening”;
the only similar image I can evoke, is that of the eyes of the demon children
in the movie “Village of the Damned”. And at this quite literal (if almost supernatural)
level, his lowering his eyelids is not connotative
of anything, but is a purely practical matter of lowering the blinds to shield
his evil inner truth from the inspection of his inquisitor.
~
It is interesting to observe other authors exploiting this
unconsciously semiotic nature of gesture.
Now, Agatha Christie
is not a patch on any part of Dickens; but give credit where credit is due. Here we see a Dickensian (even
a Pecksniffian) touch, parodying a rich worldly couple:
“What is money, after all?”
murmured Mrs Widburn.
“Ah!” said Mr. Widburn
thoughtfully, and rattled some coins absentmindedly in his trouser pocket.
“Charles,” said Mrs Widburn
reproachfully.
“Sorry,” said Mr. Widburn, and
stopped.
-- Agatha Christie, Thirteen at
Dinner [a.k.a. Lord Edgware Dies], 1933
In this matter of “fiddling”: cf. Pecksniff fiddling with his spectacles; ctr. Chuzzlewit
père fiddling with the ash of his
burnt will (a memento mori twice over).
[Update: For a more concentrated essay-on-progress on the subject of two other characters in Martin Chuzzlewit, try this:
Semantics, local and global. ]
