Riddling the Family Firm: The Sexual Economy in Dombey and Son
1984; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2872805
ISSN1080-6547
Autores Tópico(s)Literature Analysis and Criticism
ResumoTo man such as Wilkie Collins who had inhabited both the official and the unconfessed sides of Victorian culture, the connection between what the waves were always saying and Dickens' nighttime wanderings might have seemed less than evident. The city of Paris, which Dickens once described as a wicked and detestable place, though wonderfully attractive, offered the prowler more vice with less hypocrisy than the city of London.2 The author, heart heavy with the infanticide of little Paul, nursing guilt like unto that of King Laius, seeks out the dimly lit recesses where the libidinous inspiration for Alice Marwood lies. Whether he goes to confirm the respectability of his repressions it would be prurient to question: what matters is that in his memory what the waves were always saying was intimately associated with the nighttime streets. If from the text of Dombey and Son we deduce that the waves were always talking about death-and this is by no means certain, since if the waves symbolize death then they may speak about something quite beyond mortal comprehension-we may assume that death is the neighbor of prostituted sexuality in Dickens' mind. If we then add that the novel begins with Mrs. Dombey's death in childbirth, narrates the history of boy who dies before puberty, takes up second Mrs. Dombey whose marriage is linked to prostitution (chap. 30, 418) and whose planned destiny is that she should be seduced by Carker and die repenting in little Floy's arms, we may strike out prostitution and say tout court that sexuality and death are bedfellows. The only way to have sex and survive is, in effect, to have it as Walter and Floy do, innocently and incestuously, as brother and sister. 3
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