Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T22:56:28.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SUSPENSEFUL SPECULATION AND THE PLEASURE OF WAITING IN LITTLE DORRIT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

Jacob Jewusiak
Jacob Jewusiak*
Affiliation:
Valdosta State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Suspend it all,” writes Charles Dickens in the ninth number plan for his novel Little Dorrit (“Working Notes” 207). Referring to the thirtieth chapter, in which Blandois – formerly Rigaud – arrives on the doorstep of Mrs. Clennam's house, this phrase aptly describes how much the chapter moves the plot forward. Mysteries are gestured toward, but the stakes of the mystery are left blank. Rigaud shows surprise upon seeing Flintwinch, but such surprise is inexplicable until we learn at the end of the novel that Rigaud has met Flintwinch's twin brother abroad. We learn more about the mysterious watch that the dying Mr. Clennam bequeathed to his wife, but not much more than the meaning of the letters “D.N.F.” inscribed within it: “Do not forget.” Dickens suspends so much from the reader that it is hard to feel suspense about anything, a fact that is amplified by Rigaud's insistence on “Secrets!” that can be read as a meta-commentary on the chapter itself: “I say there are secrets in all families,” he tells Flintwinch, adding that the house is “so mysterious” (381–82; bk.1, ch. 30).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 279 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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

Bagehot, Walter. “Charles Dickens.” Charles Dickens: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Collins, Philip. London: Routledge, 1971.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694–1994. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. “Hudson's Statue.” Latter-Day Pamphlets. Vol. 20. New York: Scribner, 1901: 254–92.Google Scholar
Delaney, Paul. Literature, Money, and the Market: From Trollope to Amis. New York: Palgrave, 2002.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Dickens' Working Notes for His Novels. Ed. Stone, Harry. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. Ed. Wall, Stephen and Small, Helen. New York: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
Evans, David Morier. The Commercial Crisis 1847–1848. London: Letts, Son, and Steer, 1848.Google Scholar
Evans, David Morier. The History of the Commercial Crisis, 1857–1858, and the Stock Exchange Panic of 1859. London: Groombridge, 1859.Google Scholar
Evans, David Morier. Speculative Notes and Notes on Speculation, Ideal and Real. London: Groombridge, 1864.Google Scholar
Finn, Margot. The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. Ley, J. W. T.. New York: Doubleday, 1928.Google Scholar
Garrett, Peter. The Victorian Multiplot Novel: Studies in Dialogical Form. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Gissing, George. Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1912.Google Scholar
Hall, John Parsons. “Speculation; a Tale of a Bank.” Bentley's Miscellany 21 (1847): 166–75.Google Scholar
Hamley, E. B. “Remonstrance with Dickens.” Blackwood's Magazine 81 (April 1857): 490–503.Google Scholar
Henry, Nancy. “‘Ladies do it?’: Victorian Women Investors in Fact and Fiction.” Victorian Literature and Finance. Ed. O'Gorman, Francis. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007: 111–31.Google Scholar
Henry, Nancy. “‘Rushing into Eternity’: Suicide and Finance in Victorian Fiction.” Ed. Henry, Nancy and Schmitt, Cannon. 161–81.Google Scholar
Henry, Nancy, and Schmitt, Cannon, eds. Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2009.Google Scholar
Herbert, Christopher. “Filthy Lucre: Victorian Ideas about Money.” Victorian Studies 44.2 (Winter 2002): 185–213.Google Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Itzkowitz, David C. “Fair Enterprise or Extravagant Speculation: Investment, Speculation, and Gambling in Victorian England.” Ed. Henry, Nancy and Cannon. 98–119.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Audrey. The Affective Live of the Average Man: The Victorian Novel and the Stock-Market Graph. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Audrey. Vanishing Points: Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience. Berkeley: California UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Culture and Finance Capital.” The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998. London: Verso, 1998: 136–61.Google Scholar
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Kornbluh, Anna. Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form. New York: Fordham UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Levine, Caroline. The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt. Charlottesville: Virginia UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Lowe, Robert. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. 3rd ser. Cxl. 117 (1 Feb. 1856).Google Scholar
Mackay, Charles. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Vol. 1. London: National Illustrated Library, 1852.Google Scholar
McCulloch, J. R.Considerations on Partnerships with Limited Liability. London: Longman, 1856.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of his Novels. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. “Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of Investment.” Ed. Henry, Nancy and Schmitt, Cannon. 39–57.Google Scholar
Reed, John. “A Friend to Mammon: Speculation in Victorian Literature.” Victorian Studies 27. 2 Winter 1983): 179–202.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Brian. Little Dorrit's Shadows: Character and Contradiction in Dickens. Columbia: Missouri UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Russell, Norman. The Novelist and Mammon: Literary Responses to the World of Commerce in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Schor, Hilary. Dickens and the Daughter of the House. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Schweizer, Harold. On Waiting. London: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Shaw, George Bernard. Shaw on Dickens. New York: F. Ungar, 1985.Google Scholar
Shrimpton, Nicholas. “‘Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side’: Money in Victorian Literature.” Victorian Literature and Finance. Ed. O'Gorman, Francis. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 17–38.Google Scholar
Stäheli, Urs. Spectacular Speculation: Thrills, the Economy, and Popular Discourse. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2013.Google Scholar
Stern, Rebecca. Home Economics: Domestic Fraud in Victorian England. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Taylor, James. Creating Capitalism: Joint Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800-1870. Suffolk: Boydell, 2006.Google Scholar
Vernon, John. Money and Fiction: Literary Realism in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.Google Scholar