The Old Curiosity Club discussion
Little Dorrit
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Little Dorrit Part One Chapters 5-8
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Jan 25, 2022 07:47AM
Oh yes, especially in the circles we are talking about here. We were very good at long distance grievance, which obviously shouldn't have been as common as it was either. And that's a big part of it. Even if it was common, it shouldn't have been, because even at it's best it was part of the Clennams being active colonizers.
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Same here, minus the jogging, of course ;-) Dickens's humour is great in descriptions like these but the underlying bitterness is tangible. The Circumlocution Office, in a way, has this over Mr. Dorrit - namely that it is good for a laugh, whereas Dorrit is simply annoying.
I agree that many couples live apart especially in the Victorian era when there was a "commonwealth" to consider and support. In my former comment I was speaking more of the separation of the children, especially small children, from their parents. But then we also have the boarding school system of that time, and perhaps of the current time. I'm not really sure if that continues.
Jantine wrote: "I also think we can acknowledge a lot of us here are very possibly privileged people who are not accustomed to this happening for the reasons you mention. We all have access to the internet, to Dickens, and to literacy to give a couple of examples."This is true, but the Clennams are also (in the financial sense) privileged people. While it was not unusual, as people have mentioned, for privileged Victorian family members to live apart due to business and travel, it was also not unusual for them to take measures to travel together--as Dickens himself did when he successfully lobbied his wife to tour America with him. So I still think the 20 year separation of Mr. and Mrs. Clennam is significant--if not all that strange.
Julie wrote: "Jantine wrote: "I also think we can acknowledge a lot of us here are very possibly privileged people who are not accustomed to this happening for the reasons you mention. We all have access to the ..."(Also there's her health. I forget now how ridiculously long she's been in that room but that would also be a bar to crossing oceans.)
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For a few seconds, just a few, I almost had a picture in my mind (almost) of you jogging. It's gone now.
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Next story, across the street from where I grew up was a husband and wife and one son. Next to us lived a husband and wife and two sons. Nothing surprising in that, what made it all interesting was that the husband across the street was having an affair with the wife next to us and every single person in town knew it. We used to be sitting on the front porch when husband #1 came home from work and wife #2 came home from work, and before long the window blinds would be going up and down. Some sort of secret code between the two of them. Well because of all this (I guess) wife #1 hated her husband. I know this because she took every single opportunity she could find to tell me. I would walk out the door and she would come running across the street to tell me how much she hates that ****** (you decide what word to use) How horrible he was, on and on. As far as I could tell for ten or more years he never said a word to her, which must be hard to do living together. They even went to the same church, but drove there in separate cars, and sat on separate sides of the church. Even after the affair ended, I'm assuming because everyone involved was getting pretty darned old by now and the blinds and curtains never moved anymore. Even then she still hated him and he still ignored her. Then finally he died. They spent 40 years married and hating each other and now he is gone and she is a free woman and can do what she wants with the rest of her life. I don't know what it was she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but hopefully she did it fast, she died a month after he did. Spending 40 years hating each other is just so sad. And that is my two marriage stories for today.
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For a few seconds, just a few, I almost had a picture in my mind (almost) of you jogging. It's gone now."
Please, Kim, send me that picture - because I cannot picture it myself :-)
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Interesting stories, Kim, and I sincerely wonder what Dickens might have made out of them. It's remarkable that the way dies one month after her husband - evidently her life lost all its sense after the person she hated so much had passed on.
Tristram wrote: "It's remarkable that the way dies one month after her husband - evidently her life lost all its sense after the person she hated so much had passed on."I had a pair of elderly cats like that. They hated each other, but when one died I discovered the other had been eating only to keep her enemy from getting the food, and without him she had no appetite and began to dwindle away.
So I got a puppy and the cat made it 3 more years.
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Julie wrote: "This is true, but the Clennams are also (in the financial sense) privileged people. ..."I think they WERE well off, and obviously still are compared to the Dorrits, but Arthur gives me the impression that that their glory days are behind them. I can't give specific examples from the text, but I've definitely gotten the overall impression that they aren't as flush as they once were. Maybe at some point that will explain Flintwich's hold over Mrs. Clennam.
