Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (75 page)

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Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

BOOK: Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century
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Page 208
and laying her little, thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder. "I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;because you've been a poor, abused child! I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;it's only a little while I shall be with you." The round keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner. (Chapter 25)
It hardly needs saying, by now, that this is a conventional scene. Eva is an angel; both children have "little" hands; the adjectives are predictable, and the paired monosyllables ("round keen eyes," "large bright drops") are like a ritual of pathos, as is the tautology of paired monosyllabic verbs, "wept and sobbed." Contemporaries loved it; we mock or are embarrassed. Contemporaries saw Eva's references to her impending death as redemptive, we, if feeling unkind, can see them as emotional blackmail.
For one last time I shall use Jane Tompkins as a foil. Here is her commentary on this passage:
The rhetoric and imagery of this passageits little white hand, its ray from heaven, bending angel and plentiful tearssuggest a literary version of the kind of polychrome religious picture that hangs on Sunday-school walls. Words like "kitsch," "camp," and "corny" come to mind. But what is being dramatized here bears no relation to these designations. By giving Topsy her love, Eva initiates a process of redemption whose power, transmitted from heart to heart, can change the entire world.
59
The distinction this commentary fails to make is crucial. It could be argued either that Stowe's passage is not kitsch or camp or corny or that kitsch, camp, and corny are categories that modern criticism uses to keep the political power of
Uncle Tom's Cabin
at bay. In the first case, it would be necessary to make the distinction by pointing to elements in the writing that are not kitsch (which I take to mean, here, achieving sentimental effects through cliché) but that produce a more complex, ironic, or exploratory effect. There is one such detail, but Tompkins does not mention it. By the second argument, literary criteria have been openly replaced by political
 
Page 209
criteria, and the artistic case against the passage has been conceded but dismissed as unimportant; and in that case, the defense would apply not only
to Uncle Tom's Cabin
but to all sentimental writing, whether in sensational novels, pamphlets, or sermons. A great deal is then being rehabilitated, and we have certainly lost our filter.
Next to this episode I place, first,
Dombey and Son
:
"And who is this? Is this my old nurse?" said the child, regarding with a radiant smile, a figure coming in. Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those tears at sight of him, and called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her own poor blighted child. No other woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken up his wasted hand, and put it to her lips and breast, as one who had some right to fondle it. No other woman would have so forgotten everybody there but him and Floy, and been so full of tenderness and pity. "Floy! this is a kind, good face!" said Paul. "I am glad to see it again. Don't go away, old nurse! Stay here." (Chapter 16)
The moral positives are exuded by the dying child in Stowe, and are conveyed to him in Dickens: whereas Eva is the source of uplift, Paul is thee occasion for it. We can therefore say that
Dombey and Son
is, here, more pathetic than
Uncle Tom's Cabin
: Paul's helplessness makes him the object of love and the cause of grief, whereas Eva is already an angel. That is a difference in conception, but in execution Dickens is even more predictable thann Stowe, for he lacks the degree of life injected into the passage by Topsy, who is of course more interesting before she is subjected to Eva's virtue than after; her discontent does at least provide the one touch of liveliness in the passage, the (true) claim that the virtuous Ophelia would "sooner have a toad touch her." Is this the best touch because it is verbally interesting (a toad, even just as a simile, is a welcome visitor among the so predictable adjectives), or for political reasons, because it is a trace of our knowledge that for all Eva's goodness there are still white folks, even well-meaning ones, who find a black child repulsive. Paul has not even a toad to liven him up: the wise child who answered back to Mrs. Pipchin, or who wanted to know "What's money?" has by now disappeared completely. What made Jeffrey and Macready weep, we now see, was the utter predictability of it all.
As a confirmation of this, I will quote the enthusiastic tribute of one John Hollingshead, written in 1857, listing some of the much loved "creations of Dickens's fancy"all of whom turn out to be dying children:
 
Page 210
Even now I love to picture him far from the din of the critical Babel, surrounded by those delicate and beautiful creations of his fancy, that ideal family, the children of his pen. There, in the twilight of his study, do I see him sitting with his arm round Nell, the favourite child. Her face seems worn and sad, but when she looks up in his eyes, it then becomes suffused with heavenly light. At his feet rest poor little Dombey and his sister, hand in hand, and nestling to the father who has called them into birth. Poor Joe is there, the fungus of the streets, crouching like a dog beside the fire, grateful for food and warmth and shelter. I hear the clumping of a little crutch upon the stairs, and in hops Tiny Tim, the crippled child.
60
This totally conventional tribute may seem, at first, without any interest for us; yet it is remarkable for one thing, so obvious that it might easily escape our notice. Nell's face "seems worn and sad, but when it looks up in his eyes, it then becomes suffused with heavenly light." Offered this sentence without explanation, we would surely assume it came from the novel; it could be slipped into one of Dickens's own chapters without difficulty. Hollingshead, a man of, we presume, no particular literary talent, can go on writing
The Old Curiosity Shop
or rather, it would be truer to say, Dickens won his success by writing in a style that his admirers can go on writing. The only difference between Hollingshead's paragraph and the novels is that the privations and sufferings of the children are here turned to cosy happiness: Paul and Florence have not got hard-hearted Mr. Dombey for a father, but soft-hearted Mr. Dickens. The coziness was of course implicit in the original hardness: Paul and Florence and Nell suffer so that the reader can comfort them, and the language for doing so is offered him by the book.
Dostoyevsky has far more than a verbal toad to offer us.
Kolya hurriedly pulled out of his satchel the little bronze cannon. He hurried, because he was happy himself. Kolya held the cannon in his hand so that all could see and admire it. Ilyusha raised himself, and, with his right arm still round the dog, he gazed enchanted at the toy. The sensation was even greater when Kolya announced that he had gunpowder too, and that it could be fired off at once "if it won't alarm the ladies." Mamma immediately asked to look at the toy closer, and her request was granted. A magnificent explosion followed. Mamma was startled, but at once laughed with delight.
"Oh, give it to me! No, give me the cannon!" mamma began, begging like a little child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it. Kolya

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