An Accomplished writer

[Pompey Bum]

Perhaps, but they didn't live in a shabby cottage with a dead garden featuring a pedestal without a statue. The message seems clear enough: Oppressed women! Your would-be liberators will only lead you to deeper misery. Return to security. Return to love.

I'm not defending Miss Wade, by the way, or putting down Amy Dorrit (or Dickens, who obviously knew nothing of the sensitivities of our times). My question is genuine. It comes from my curiosity about what will follow post-modernism. In Dickens' time, women like Miss Wade were usually seen the way Dickens presents the character: as dangerous firebrands with an air of perversion about them. But women like Amy Dorrit, if any even existed, were the ideal. Today most women are encouraged from girlhood to show the ironical/cynical skepticism of a Miss Wade and to eschew the earnestness of an Amy Dorrit as a kind of folly.

I genuinely wonder what comes next, that's all. I suspect, as I wrote on another thread, that today's second graders are going to insist on dramatic moral changes (as Dickens & Co brought moral changes to the world they had inherited from Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne). My question is what comes next? I suspect that irony is about to be largely replaced by earnestness. So will characters like Amy Dorrit become the new role models--even for feminists? Or will writers find other models?

As far as Christians using "graphic language" goes, it's "Let your aye be aye and your nay be nay," isn't it? And that was probably so that first century Jews didn't swear by the gods of their occupiers ("Yes, by Jupiter!"--that sort of thing). That doesn't mean the Philistines weren't a bunch of f---ing sh--s at times.

[Jackson Richardson]

Gosh that raises so much.

Carmilla, I'm so glad you finished and enjoyed Little Dorrit. And I'm glad you've given me and Pompey a chance to talk and think about it.

I do recommend A Christmas Carol at this season.

I'll come back about Pet Meagles and irony later.

[Pompey Bum]

I second that recommendation.

I look forward to talking with you about this later, Jonathan.

[Carmilla]

Congratulations!^

Thanks.

(Feminists don't like to admit it, but lots of woman find arrogant men, like Henry Gowan, sexy.

I agree!

[Carmilla]

Jonathan:

Thank you for your kind words. I'll see if I can read 'A Christmas Carol.'

Pompey and Jonathan:

I find all your posts extremely interesting. So, I'm looking forward to new ones.

[Pompey Bum]

I love Jonathan's comments, too, but where mine are concerned, you are too kind. Enjoy A Christmas Carol, and let us know more of your own opinions.

[Jackson Richardson]

Gosh, I keep putting off posting here. I'll try to be back in a few days. (I noticed a contrast between Amy - whose father takes her for granted - and Pet - whose father idolises her to the point of not allowing her to be person in her own right. Tattycoram senses this, and only returns to the Meagles when Pet is gone, so she can now be the favoured daughter of the house, and not a kept sidekick to Pet.)

[Ugoki]

Oh, Miss Wade. She's one of the most vile Dickens character in my opinion. Unlike Quilp whose evilness is deliciously over the top, Miss Wade is relatively normal if not for the fact that she spits on the face on kindness while playing the poor oppressed victim. She's someone who will dismiss even the angelic kindness of Esther, Amy, and Nell as "condescension", and that is something I cannot stomach. The worst thing about it is that she isn't really satirized much like other Dickens villain. She even gets her own biased narrative chapter (which, hilariously, some folks actually buy)

I think she's a good character to have since it shows that Dickens may love to take potshots on condescending rich people, but perhaps sometimes it's the poor orphan who's at fault for being such an "unhappy temper", imagining snobbery and oppression where there is none.

If she were a feminist, she would be the perfect example of the negative view of feminists; a bunch of whiny self-righteous folks who love to play the victim.

[Jackson Richardson]

Welcome and thanks for responding to a thread I was on a year ago.

There's something a bit pathetic about Miss Wade. Like Mrs Clenam and Miss Havisham she tries to gain power over others by making herself miserable. But she doesn't have their money, so there's a limit to what she can do. All she does is seduce Tattycoram, who does have some good reason to feel patronized by the Meagles, whoever kindly intentioned.

I have some sympathy with Miss Wade as she is the nearest to a lesbian I know in Victorian literature and unfortunately embodies the negative stereotypes.

[Ugoki]

Okay, where did this lesbian thing come from? I certainly didn't see anything on the text that went to that direction.

[Jackson Richardson]

There wouldn't be anything unambiguous in the text in the C19. She's single, has no interest in men and a a big interest in Tattycoram.

[Ugoki]

Oh come on, that sounds like you just have your shipping goggles on.

[Jackson Richardson]

We can agree she’s a nasty bit of work. You made me wonder what she’s doing in the book, because as far as I remember she is tangential to the main plot.

Then I thought she’s another example of the prison taint, in her case the self-imposed prison of her suspicion.

[Disha]

Hey, it seems like you have read Great Expectations. Have u read Tom Jones?

[Carmilla]

Gosh that raises so much.

Carmilla, I'm so glad you finished and enjoyed Little Dorrit. And I'm glad you've given me and Pompey a chance to talk and think about it.

I do recommend A Christmas Carol at this season.

I'll come back about Pet Meagles and irony later.

Jackson Richardson:
I have finally bought a copy of A Christmas Carol, and I intend to read it next festive season as you recommended.