Done-zo! I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about this book, but I am actually pretty sad that it's over. I would really love to watch a reality show about these characters. In typical Dickens fashion, the good guys win and get married and rich, the bad guys lose and move away or die, and all the loose ends are neatly tied up in the last 30 pages. The afterword by J. Hillis Miller says that this book is about "money, money, money, and what money can make of life," and it's definitely true that the central conflict for almost all of the characters involves money - how to get it, how to keep it, how to marry it, how to show it off. The obvious, and in my opinion a little overly pedantic, moral of the story is that the happiest characters are those who realize the value in things other than money, which characters of course end up being rewarded for their virtue with lots of money...But I think that's pretty true in life; it's the Goldilocks principle. Too much or too little is not good, we're always the most comfortable with what is "just right." The poor characters are generally uneducated and are unwelcome in most parts of society; but almost all of the rich characters are vapid and ridiculous. So I say be grateful if you're in that happy medium that doesn't live in fear of the poorhouse, but it is also not forced to endure dinner parties with the Podsnaps and Lady Tippins.
The people who don't care about money in this book do have some beautiful relationships, which I think is a nice change from always thinking about Victorian-age British people being so oppressed. The two young couples who end up married at the end are actually outwardly affectionate and make each other laugh and they have real conversations about their feelings and their lives, not just small talk about the weather or other appropriate topics. Bella and her father have a very close relationship as well, and he shows her unconditional love and acceptance like a good parent, but I wonder what Freud would say about them because she pets him and kisses him and calls him her child a lot, which is weird.
And on a final note, whenever I read Dickens, I think about the people who had to read these stories in pieces as they were published as serials. I need more instant gratification that that. According to Wikipedia, it was originally published in 19 monthly installments. Can you imagine starting a book and not being able to finish it for over a year and a half! And it was being published as Dickens wrote it - he apparently was short or late or something on one of the installments because he was in some horrible train accident, but that's another story - so imagine how difficult that was as an author. Apparently he tried to say about five months ahead of the publication schedule, but what if he had changed his mind about something? This was his last completed novel, so I guess by that time he was just that good.
So that's it for our mutual friend. If you read this blog, odds are good that you are nerdy enough to appreciate Dickens, so seriously, people, go read some Chuck D and get ready to laugh your head off.
Up next: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.
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