Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:36:45.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

DICKENS'S LITTLE WOMEN; OR, CUTE AS THE DICKENS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2013

Lauren Byler
Lauren Byler*
Affiliation:
California State University Northridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Accounting for the prevalence of enmity in nineteenth-century Western culture, Peter Gay evinces some surprise at the tenacious grip of the meek upon their aggression, which appears to satisfy a basic necessity of life. Uriah Heep alone attests to the harmony between Charles Dickens's social imagination and Gay's critical assessment that the Victorians had cause to treat their self-effacing neighbors with as much caution as the bellicose. But what about the more resignedly “umble” and solemnly self-diminishing denizens of Dickens's fictional world: the good girls at the center of so many novels? Why do aggression and resentment seem less compatible with their humility than with Heep's? Because, I would suggest, they are little. Littleness is certainly an idealized quality of girls in Dickens's novels. In particular, Nell Trent and Amy Dorrit share the epithet “little” as an indication of their preciousness, physical smallness, modesty, and, most importantly, self-abnegation in service of others. As a number of critics have observed, this selflessness takes many forms, including starvation, over-work, and self-erasure. Such extremes of compassionate resolve and willful self-limitation, however, intimate the strictness of the nice girl and the difficulty of measuring up to her (as a) standard. Dickens himself set this bar – if not precisely high, at so low a level as to require painstaking self-contortion to pass under it – in an 1847 speech to the Mechanics’ Institution at Leeds where he described women as “those who are our best and dearest friends in infancy, in childhood, in manhood, and in old age, the most devoted and least selfish natures that we know on earth, who turn to us always constant and unchanged, when others turn away” (Fielding 83). This definition of the best feminine endowments recognizes no difference between girls and women, because the female half of the human population remains “constant and unchanged” in service of male needs. Although Dickens calls upon women to be the bigger person in a moral sense, for girls, growing up appears a matter of remaining little, selfless, “constant.” For good self-effacing Victorian girls like Little Nell and Little Dorrit, aggression thus is necessary because enforcing self-negation requires enormous will power, but also perhaps because aggression guards the last modicum of selfhood belonging to those for whom selflessness is socially prescribed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 219 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Andrews, Malcolm. Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Balcerzak, Scott. “Dickensian Orphan as Child Star: Freddie Bartholomew and the Commodity of Cute in MGM's David Copperfield.” Literature/Film Quarterly 33 (2005): 51–61.Google Scholar
Black, Barbara. “A Sisterhood of Rage and Beauty: Dickens’ Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade, and Madame Defarge.” Dickens Studies Annual 26 (1998): 91–106.Google Scholar
Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. Knowing Dickens. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Bowen, John. “Spirit and the Allegorical Child: Little Nell's Moral Aesthetic.” Dickens and the Children of Empire. Ed. Jacobson, Wendy S.. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 13–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Lyn Mikel, and Gilligan, Carol. Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls’ Development. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Anne. Men, Women, and Aggression. New York: Basic Books, 1993.Google Scholar
Cohen, William. “Manual Conduct in Great Expectations.” ELH 60.1 (Spring 1993): 217–59.Google Scholar
Collins, Philip, ed. Charles Dickens: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge Reprints, 1995.Google Scholar
“Cute.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
David, Deirdre. “Little Dorrit's Theater of Rage.” Contemporary Dickens. Ed. Gillooly, Eileen and David, Deirdre. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2009. 245–63.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1853. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. Christmas Books. Vol. I. Boston: DeWorlfe, circa 1900. 79–155.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. 1850. New York: Penguin, 1996.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. 1861. New York: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854. New York: Penguin, 1995.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. House, Madeline and Storey, Graham. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Storey, Graham, Tillotson, Kathleen, and Easson, Angus. Vol. 7. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Storey, Graham and Tillotson, Kathleen. Vol. 8. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. 1857. New York: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. 1841. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Speeches of Charles Dickens. Ed. Fielding, J. K.. Oxford: Clarendon, 1960.Google Scholar
Ford, George H., and Lane, Lauriat, Jr., eds. The Dickens Critics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1961.Google Scholar
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Vol. Gadshill, I. Ed. New York: Scribner's, 1899.Google Scholar
Gay, Peter. The Cultivation of Hatred. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. Vol. III. New York: Norton, 1993.Google Scholar
Harris, Daniel. Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism. New York: Basic, 2000.Google Scholar
Ingham, Patricia. “Nobody's Fault: The Scope of the Negative in Little Dorrit.” Dickens Refigured: Bodies, Desires, and Other Histories. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. 98–116.Google Scholar
Jackson, Lisa Hartsell. “Little Nell's Nightmare: Sexual Awakening and Insomnia in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop.” Dickens Studies Annual 39 (2008): 43–58.Google Scholar
Jagose, Annamarie. “Remembering Miss Wade: Little Dorrit and the Historicizing of Female Perversity.” GLQ 4.3 (1998): 423–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. 2nd ed.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, James R. “Blessings for the Worthy: Dickens's Little Dorrit and the Nature of Rants.” Dickens Studies Annual 37 (2006): 17–30.Google Scholar
Kincaid, James R.Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Kincaid, James R. “Dickens and the Construction of the Child.” Dickens and the Children of Empire. Ed. Jacobson, Wendy S.. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 29–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, James R. “Little Nell – She Dead.” Annoying the Victorians. New York: Routledge, 1995. 35–46.Google Scholar
Kreilkamp, Ivan. “‘Done to Death’: Dickens and the Author's Voice.” Voice and the Victorian Storyteller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. 89–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kucich, John. “Death Worship Among the Victorians: The Old Curiosity Shop.” PMLA 95.1 (Jan. 1980): 58–72.Google Scholar
Litvak, Joseph. “Bad Scene: Oliver Twist and the Pathology of Entertainment.” Dickens Studies Annual 26 (1998): 33–49.Google Scholar
Litvak, Joseph. Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Deidre. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998.Google Scholar
Miller, D. A.The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde.” Critical Inquiry 31 (Summer 2005): 811–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orwell, George. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell. Ed. Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian. Vol. 1. New York: Harcourt, 1968.Google Scholar
Robson, Catherine. Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schor, Hilary. Dickens and the Daughter of the House. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Simmons, Rachel. Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. New York: Harcourt, 2002.Google Scholar
Slater, Michael. Dickens and Women. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Small, Helen. “A Pulse of 124: Charles Dickens and a Pathology of the Mid-Victorian Reading Public.” The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Ed. Raven, James, Small, Helen, and Tadmor, Naomi. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 263–90.Google Scholar
Steel, Sharon. “The Cuteness Surge.” Boston Phoenix. Web. 1 Feb. 2008.Google Scholar
Trilling, Lionel. “Little Dorrit.” Ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane Jr., 279–93.Google Scholar
Van Ghent, Dorothy. “The Dickens World: A View from Todgers's.” Ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr. 213–32.Google Scholar
Walsh, Richard. “Why We Wept for Little Nell: Character and Emotional Involvement.” Narrative 5.3 (Oct. 1997): 306–21.Google Scholar
Welsh, Alexander. The City of Dickens. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welsh, Alexander. From Copyright to Copperfield: The Identity of Dickens. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Windolf, Jim. “Addicted to Cute.” Vanity Fair. Web. Dec. 2009.Google Scholar
Winter, Sarah. “Domestic Fictions: Feminine Deference and Maternal Shadow Labor in Dickens’ Little Dorrit.” Dickens Studies Annual 18 (1989): 243–54.Google Scholar
Wolf, Sherri. “The Enormous Power of No Body: Little Dorrit and the Logic of Expansion.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 42.3 (Fall 2000): 223–55.Google Scholar
Woloch, Alex. The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Yeazell, Ruth Bernard. “Do It or Dorrit.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 25.1 (Autumn 1991): 33–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar