The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London, by Judith Flanders

My obsession with Victorian London and Dickens rears its head again, this time in the form of Judith Flanders book The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London. It is a fascinating and well written account of nineteenth century London. The book is dense, and at times academic enough that it is probably only for those who have a genuine interest. I did think the link to Dickens was rather tenuous, I doubt that she referred to him any more than she did other well-known Victorians. She does shed light on moments in his novels that I had ill-understood as I read them, so perhaps here her connection is on safer ground.

A full sense of the city’s life – both good and bad – are depicted here. The scope of what Flanders covers, as well as the detail, is impressive. Ranging from how streets were paved, and how this changed over the course of the era, to entertainment and eating houses, and even what produce would be available from street sellers at particular times of day. She vividly describes the chaos of trying to move around busy London streets, the mud, the crowds - traffic jams today have nothing on these. Of course no account would be complete without discussing the sewers, cholera, and The Great Stink, when parliament smelt so bad the rich could no longer ignore the (oh, the unsanitary!) conditions many lived in, and finally cleaned up London. A particularly gruelling chapter deals with the failure to properly dispose of the dead. Dickens memorably describes the pitiful burial of Nemo in Bleak House; I had little appreciation of how literally we should take his description of bones breaking through the soil in the graveyards. Not for the faint of heart! Also appalling was the account of life in the slums. This was such a concern to the upper classes that slum quarters were often destroyed, without provision of new housing, forcing more and more of the poor to cram into the slums that did remain.

Crime and punishment is unsurprisingly an interesting section; women in Victorian London are almost synonymous with prostitution, but Flanders makes a good case for how inaccurate this is. Figures for vast amounts of prostitutes are well known, yet the sources for these are, frankly, laughable. One problem is what we would term a prostitute has changed, Flanders quotes a paper writing about dancers who prostitute themselves ‘either for money, or more frequently for their own gratification’. Nowadays we would only class the former as prostitution! Estimates of numbers were reached by extrapolating from the number of births to unwed mothers, assuming that every mother would become a prostitute and work for five years, so 42 000 births annually meant 210 000 prostitutes at any given time. The man who came up with this estimate is known to have been aware that police estimates were just under 10 000 women. Nor was prostitution the bleak road to ruin we often assume, as many woman were known to have saved up enough money to go into respectable trade, and even make good marriages.

Flanders opens each section with well-known events from London’s history. The most fascinating of these was the Tooley Street fire in 1861, in which an enormous fire burned in the warehouses down by the Thames. It was so big that it was three weeks before it was declared fully contained. The warehouses contained cotton, sugar, tea, spices such as cayenne and pepper, saltpetre, sulphur and oil. Not only did the winds blow this noxious combination about in huge smoke clouds, but the burning oil leaked onto the Thames, setting even the river on fire. Despite this huge crowds packed the streets, pubs stayed open all night for spectators and some even hired boats to take them out onto the Thames. It is hard to see a modern crowd glorying in a sulphurous smoke! I suppose we would still watch, but from the comfort of our living rooms.

Flanders is a research fellow at the University of Buckingham, and clearly knows her subject area well. More to the point she is articulate - this book is clear and concise. It is well-indexed too. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the colour-plates; here Flanders is badly let down by the book’s editors. Frequently Flanders points out details that can be seen in the plates, such as details of clothing, and in not a single case that I found was the correct plate number given. On all occasions I managed to work out which plate Flanders was referring to, but this situation shouldn’t have arisen.

For anyone with an interest in the subject I cannot recommend this book enough. It is a fantastic reference book that is both well written and researched. Hopefully editorial quibbles will be dealt with in future print runs. It challenged many of my preconceptions of life in Victorian London. It is striking, but perhaps not surprising how little we have changed; technology is different, but we still judge women on reproductive choices, judge the poor as ‘deserving’ or not, and seek out spectacle in catastrophe. An interesting and illuminating read.

Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens

I think I have already mentioned on this blog that I have a little tradition of reading a Dickens novel for Christmas, which started when I read my first (Bleak House) over the holidays some years ago. This year I reread one of my favourites, Little Dorrit, which is also one of Dickens’s lesser known novels. It is one of his later novels, and is one of the heftier tomes. In it Dickens tells a deeply personal story, and produces some of his best satire. He set the novel in the late 1820s and centred the story around the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison. Dickens own father was imprisoned here, a part of his childhood he was deeply ashamed of. Although the Marshalsea was closed by the time Dickens was writing, he still wished to address the injustice of locking up debtors at the whim of their creditors regardless of the size of their debt.

The titular character Amy, or Little, Dorrit, lives with her father in London’s Marshalsea Prison, where he has languished for decades. Once a rich man of property, he ruined his family, and his children have been brought up in prison; the youngest, Amy, was even born there. Elsewhere we meet the Clennam family: Arthur Clennam has recently returned to London from China where he and his late father were working for the family firm. His stern mother represents the firm in London, though she is housebound, never leaving her wheelchair. She is aided by the creepy Mr Flintwinch, her servant and eventual business partner. Arthur Clennam has been led to believe by his father that the family fortune may have been built upon someone else’s misfortune. When he comes home to find Amy Dorrit employed as a seamstress by his mother he suspects a connection. But he is not the only person on the trail - the villainous Rigaud is infiltrating their society, and blackmail is on the agenda.

As you can see, Little Dorrit is another example of a labyrinthine Dickens plot. It is also an excellent example of how Dickens at his best used plot to explore various ideas. Along with social inequalities and injustices, Dickens is particularly concerned with prisons: the Marshalsea, a jail cell in Europe, Mrs Clennam imprisoned in her wasted body, her chair and her house, but also those prisons that are entirely the constructs of our minds. Even if the walls are removed, Mr Dorrit can never be free of the effects of years of incarceration. Even the highest forms of society, Dickens shows, can be a form of prison - trapping its inhabitants in expectations.

I have already mentioned on my blog Dickens’s penchant for writing his heroines as dutiful, perfect housekeeping, self-sacrificing annoying little things. Little Dorrit is the epitome of these traits, devoting herself to her father way beyond the call of duty. For some reason I find her less annoying. I think partly because he also gives her a bit more substance than some of the other examples (like Little Nell, ugh). Once or twice she is able to make a selfish decision, i.e. the decision that is best for her, not her father. She is also so taken for granted by her family that I genuinely feel for her.

One of Dickens‘s cruellest, but also funniest characters is Flora, Arthur’s childhood sweetheart. They were deliberately separated by their families, and then by the twenty years or so Arthur has been in Asia. Flora is now a widow, and not quite the woman Arthur remembers

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had became a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much.

As Arthur recoils from Flora, she is more than willing to throw herself at the man she once loved. It is cringe-worthy, and made worse by Dickens giving her just enough of genuine good meaning, especially in her behaviour towards Little Dorrit, to take the edge off caricature. Her character is beautifully conjured in her long ungrammatical speeches - a breathless gallop of thoughts, sorely lacking in punctuation.

Ask me not…if I love him still or if he loves me or what is to be or when, when we are surrounded by watchful eyes and it may be that we are destined to pine asunder it may be never more to be reunited not a word not a breath not a look to betray is all must be secret as the tomb wonder not therefore that even if I should seem comparatively cold to Arthur or Arthur should seem comparatively cold to me we have fatal reasons it is enough if we understand them hush!

The cruelty in this fabulous creation of Dickens's is that she wasn’t entirely a fabrication. As soon she appeared in print a Mary Winter (who had once been Mary Beadnell, Dickens’s first love from whom he was separated by family), recognised herself. It was not the first time she had inspired Dickens; she also appears in the youthful guise of Dora in David Copperfield. She had recently been reunited with Dickens and he obviously found her something of a disappointment. Dickens may be have been a great writer, but he could be savage to those who failed to live up to his expectations.

It may be 150 years since Little Dorrit first appeared in print, but much of it seems startlingly relevant today. After all, this Victorian London revolves around bureaucracy and money. The rich get richer, while those without are condemned to desperate lives, scrabbling to make ends meet. Dickens depicts what must be the first Ponzi scheme to appear in print, run by Mr Merdle. Merdle is the man of the moment, sought after by the fawning society glitterati, even as he desperately paddles to stay afloat, in a prison of his own making. The entirety of London is swept up in this ruthless pursuit of money. Mr Merdle’s bank is a sure bet, right up until the moment it collapses, revealing its customers have nothing more than castles in the air. In this post GFC world it seems we have not learned much; Greed rules eternal.

And what of the end? Oh yes, everything gets wrapped up nicely and neatly, with unexpected twists, coincidences, and a fair bit of schmaltz. If you like your conclusions neat, Dickens will give you that, but you have to put realism aside. The plot is only the bone, and around it Dickens gives us plenty of meat: memorable characters, metaphor and social critique. I have long been a fan of Dickens; despite his flaws, he deserves his reputation as one of the great novelists.

Jane Austen

I’ve already written about Jane Austen in last year's review of Persuasion, but I couldn’t resist penning a little something to celebrate 200 years since the publication of Pride and Prejudice. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, young woman to feel that Jane Austen’s novels have a special place in my heart. Like many my first Austen was Pride and Prejudice; in fact my introduction to her began with the much loved BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. There are few authors who loom so large in our collective imaginations, and the impact she has had on literature is huge, but perhaps underrated.

Pride & Prejudice is one of the most loved novels of all time. It has the whole package: romance, humour, and excellent prose, but mostly we love it for the characters. In her leads, Austen created one of the best couples in literary history. Elizabeth is lively and likable, Darcy takes some warming too, but we love him by the end. Early on Elizabeth is tempted by the roguish Wickham. The ridiculous Mr Collins is tempered by the pragmatic Charlotte Lucas, who serves as a reminder of what society expected for young women, by marrying without affection. It was Austen’s second published novel, after Sense & Sensibility, and was an immediate success. It took a long time to make it to publication - the earliest version was written in 1796, sixteen years earlier. I suspect we have benefited from this delay, as Austen finessed the story into the novel we know and love today.

I’ve read only a very little of eighteenth & early-nineteenth century prose; the reality is very little is worth reading. Poetry was where a lot of the quality writing was. A popular novel form was the gothic novel. Unlike the later gothic novels, such as Dracula, which created atmosphere and horror, these were by and large very shlocky books. They are full of young maidens, evil men, ghosts, and candles guttering out at the worst moment. To a jaded modern audience they are hilarious. Of course there are exceptions, but it is easy to forget that Jane Austen was writing realism before it became the norm. Furthermore, to do so as a female writer was extraordinary. Unlike the Brontes, who (much later) hid behind male pseudonyms to be published, it was always known her books were written by a female, although anonymously.

Unlike the popular gothic authors, Austen wrote many admirable female characters. I am not alone in finding some hard to love, Fanny Price from Mansfield Park being the obvious choice. Even in writing those she ridiculed Austen brought female concerns into a public sphere. Their interests are still recognisable: discussing fashion, giggling over boys, worrying about how to make ends meet. Others deal with the pressing concerns of female lower gentry, such as how to lead an autonomous life when you are dependent on men. Miss Bingley and Elizabeth Bennet, or Emma and Jane Fairfax, are prime examples of how women are their own worst enemies - judging spitefully to make themselves look better, or in competition over men. She wrote a diverse range of characters, far from the simple romantic heroines her novels are associated with.

Part of this perception is due to the way her image was shaped by her family after her death. Although they were initially successful, her novels were out of print for sometime, and only popular amongst the intellectual crowd. They had a resurgence in the late Victorian era; especially after her nephew wrote a biography. In doing so he cultivated a ‘Jane Austen’ who was a fitting figure for Victorian values. The Regency period of her lifetime was very different, and Austen was a much more knowing woman than she is often credited for. It is easy for us to forget how people lived without modern hospitals; although unmarried, it would have been normal for her to care for ill members of the family, including women in childbirth (although I don’t know for a fact Austen herself did this). Victorians were notoriously prudish, but Austen must have been less so than her nephew would have liked people to think. She may have written the meek Fanny Price, but she also wrote Mary Crawford, who even makes a pun about sodomy.

The truth is very little is known about the real Jane Austen. Her sister Cassandra destroyed most of her letters after her death, and others were destroyed by her extended family. She speaks to us through her novels. In them she portrays a diverse picture of the society she lived in. Sure there are lots of things she ignored: she does not write of people outside of her class, and slavery is barely mentioned (although I have heard it argued that abolition was so widely accepted by the time she was published that it may have seemed a non-issue). She holds up a mirror to the society of her time - what it reveals is not always pretty. This is tempered by the genuine feeling at the heart of the novels. Her heroines tell us much about what hopes and dreams women held in the Regency period, and presumably what Austen herself had hoped for.

There are only two authenticated pictures of Jane Austen, both drawn by Cassandra. The first sketch is seen in nearly every edition of her books. It was not considered by her family to be a very good likeness. The second is a woman, dressed in blue, sitting outside. She faces away from us. It leaves us to imagine what she is looking at, or thinking. I rather like this image of her.

Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev

Anyone who takes a look at my bookshelf can tell you I like a nineteenth century novel. While it is the Victorians who really have my heart I do branch out occasionally. Ivan Turgenev is one of the lesser known Russian authors - outside of Russia that is. During his lifetime he rivalled Tolstoy for popularity, and his signature work is Fathers and Sons. Having enjoyed his novella First Love, I rather expected more from this novel. It is an interesting insight into the divides in mid-nineteenth century Russian society, but in his attempt to create characters that are emblematic of both the nihilistic and the westernised schools of thought, I felt they began to lack actual character. I suspect this problem is exacerbated by the stifling censorship Russian artists found themselves under; this is especially clear at the end of the novel.

As you can probably guess from the title, the book tells the story of two generations of Russians: Nikolai Kirsanov - a wealthy landlord, his son Arkady Kirsanov, and Arkady’s friend Yevgeny Bazarov. Bazarov is a nihilist and has recruited the impressionable Arkady to his cause. At the beginning of the story they have returned to the Kirsanov lands from St Petersburg, and find their philosophy brings them into conflict with Arkady’s father, and uncle Pavel. They both belong to the older generation of Liberals who admire Western values. We also meet in the novel characters who represent traditional Russian views, particularly Bazarov’s parents. These conflicts are tacked onto a mish-mash of lovers, broken hearts, marriages, and even a duel.

At the time of its publication the novel inspired much debate. The conflicting opinions over Russia’s future is apparently historically accurate. The young generation insisted that it did not recognise itself in Turgenev’s depiction. Likewise, the older generation did not like its depiction, although both thought the other well described. It is something of a relief that the generational bashing we see in bollocks newspaper articles (Gen Y is narcissistic, the baby boomers are greedy) is nothing new. At times though I wondered if the real answer is that neither is very well depicted.

It isn’t bad. I’m not saying ‘it is a terrible novel, what have the Russians been thinking for 150 years!’ I just found it uncompelling. This is partly because Turgenev relies too much on telling us things, rather than making them be. Bazarov’s mother is an excellent example of this. For most of the book she bursts into tears every time she thinks of her son, and professes herself almost to frightened to talk to him. Turgenev devotes a few paragraphs to describing this woman, her superstitions, how she doesn’t read books or write many letters, her phobias of mice, frogs, sparrows etc etc. Then suddenly asserts that she is ‘in her own way not at all stupid’. Really? Because you kind of convinced me she was an incredibly stupid woman.

The main problem with this novel, though, is the end. To give a nice neat ending Turgenev resorts to killing off a character. It is done in a particularly ridiculous way. This ending enabled him to get the book published without incurring wrath from the censors. Anything other than an acceptance of the status quo in Russia would have been risky and Turgenev had reason to be wary, having been exiled to his country estates once before. One does wonder what he would have written if he could have. It certainly reads like a missed opportunity.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen is one of the most loved, but also misunderstood, novelists. Her wonderful romances, more widely known to many now through television, have earned her a reputation as a girl meets rich guy, girl marries rich guy writer. This ignores the fact that many of her ideas were quite revolutionary for the time. For those who are interested I highly recommend Claire Tomalin’s biography of Austen; it is a fascinating account of Austen’s family and society, and the difficulties she faced as a female writer. It changed how I viewed her novels; it made me love them that little bit more, especially this, the most revolutionary of all her novels - Persuasion.

Eight years before the beginning of this novel Anne Eliot, middle daughter to a baronet, was persuaded to break off an engagement to young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, largely because her family believed him to be beneath her in social standing. It would also have been an imprudent engagement as he did not have the income to support a wife, and no guarantee of ever doing so. He has now returned to the neighbourhood a Captain in the Royal Navy, and rich. Charming and charismatic, he is seen as quite the catch and the local girls all determine to fall in love with him. Anne is now 27, past the prime age for marrying(!). Overlooked and unappreciated by her own family she deeply regrets her refusal. Due to the social conventions of the time, it is impossible for her to communicate this to Captain Wentworth. She can only watch, and hope.

Of course, there is the inevitable happy ending. But in a way, this is what makes the novel so remarkable. Anne is the daughter of a Baronet (a hereditary knighthood, the closest thing to being noble other than being noble). She marries a man who is not even a member of the gentry. While he is rich, he is a self-made man, having earned his fortune and title through his career in the navy. Austen is so often criticised for being stuck in the class system of her day, but to me this heralds the massive social changes of the 19th century - the beginning of the decline of the aristocracy in the face of ambition. Of course Austen had no way of knowing what was to come, but her reflection of society is quite cutting edge.

In a world where to be mistress of a house was the greatest degree of autonomy most women could achieve, the desire of Austen’s heroines to marry for love, not necessity, is a bold choice. Marriage was generally arranged by parents, and in the absence of a large dowry, being very beautiful was the surest way to marry well. Her heroines do not settle for a mediocre marriage; they aim for the best in life and take the gamble. While it works out for them all, Austen understood well the difficulties in being a spinster. She, her sister, and widowed mother were eventually dependent on their brothers to arrange even basic things for them. Is it so bad that in her novels she is living the dream? Persuasion is the ultimate example - Anne is aging, and her father has squandered his money to the extent her dowry is in doubt. Nonetheless she gets a second chance. Her loyalty and good character are enough to bring about her marriage to the man she loves. Austen, in her early forties, ill and near death, writes a happy ending that she and her sister never got. Every time I read Persuasion I find it beautifully poignant.

One of Austen’s greatest qualities as a writer is her wit. She lays bare the hypocrisy of her society, where merit is too often based on wealth, not quality of character. She can be scathing, yet is also very funny. Persuasion is perhaps less humorous when compared to the sparkling Emma, for example, but it finds a gentle sense of humour in Anne’s family - the hypochondriac Mary, or her snobbish father who is so vain as to have filled the house with mirrors, which was an expensive habit for the time. While it lacks the humour of her more grotesque characters, what this novel does have is a lot of heart. Austen was a ferociously intelligent woman, at a time when female intelligence wasn’t appreciated. Persuasion was written at a time when she had received some recognition for her novels, and a small income had given her some independence. It is a more mature, well rounded work - perhaps some of that anger had abated.

Classic novels seem to be a love or loathe thing, those who loathe them finding them wordy or difficult to relate to. While the style of writing is indeed different, the craft behind it is impeccable. Society has changed in the two hundred years since Jane Austen sat at her little table and wrote this novel, but people haven’t. Pompous Sir Elliots, manipulative Mrs Clays, and faithful Annes, still exist. It isn’t a story about marrying a rich man; it is a story about marrying someone who loves and values you. Austen has inspired women with this dream for centuries; no wonder we love her so much.