Re: Lucie Mannette
Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:35:36 +0900
Dear Michelene,
On a first reading of my novel you can perhaps detect the ambiguity of the
Victorian ideal image of hearth and home, where a dutiful wife is devotedly
submissive to her husband. In _A Tale of Two Cities_, however, I was not
able to avoid describing Lucie Manette (not Mannette!) as the angel in the
house. Yes! It is the ideal image of a young lady for the Victorian
patriarchy. Between you and me, I adore such a beautiful lady as gives
spiritual support to her man behind the scenes. It is a great pity that I
overlooked the disqualification of my wife in the category when we got
married.
I wrote _A Tale of Two Cities_ during the time Coventry Patmore was
publishing _The Angel in the House_ (1854-62), a tetralogy of poems
celebrating the holiness of marriage. I flatter myself, though, that he
learnt a lot from my works.
To my great relief, few critics have discussed why Lucie faints thrice in
the novel. These occasions are important in suggesting weakness in her as
a woman. As you can imagine, I look (you must not suspect I look down in
my private life) on the angel in the house as a paradoxical mixture of
physical weakness and mental strength. Certainly this statement comes very
close to the case that a Michael Slater makes in his book _Dickens and
Women_. I hear that he puts it well: "The 'mildness' or gentle, passive
sweetness that Dickens and his age regarded as an ideal quality in a young
lady needs to be joined with the more active virtue of 'gameness', or
courageous readiness to affront dangers and difficulties, if the literary
presentation of such characters is to hold the reader's interest" (253).
You might think that Lucie is indeed too good to be true to nature. As an
adult woman she perhaps lacks reality or dimension of the kind which is
found in Little Dorrit's burning, though silent, love for Arthur Clennam.
However, Lucie's reality is verified by silence, not by speech. Silence
connects 'mildness' with 'gameness'. During fifteen months of her
husband's imprisonment Lucie is "truest to [her duties] in the season of
trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be" (III, 5). This is
mental strength inherent in silent "actions - not in words" (III, 9).
The image of the gentle and courageous woman, though, is an excessive
idealisation of what the male sex have expected of the female in the
tradition. Needless to say, it has much to do with the image of the Virgin
Mary, which was the inverse of the rigid patriarchy of the Catholic Church.
To expect both gentleness and courageousness of a woman is a self-centred
inconsistency, though the Virgin Mary is held to incorporate both virginity
and maternity. Yet I have to own that the image of the angel in the house
haunts my mind as a sublation of such inconsistencies throughout my works.
I'm sorry, but I have to go now. A new novel is on my mind. Would you
like to browse a list of possible titles? I prefer "Lolita" among them,
but I don't know. It has worked well as yet. . . .
Cheers,
Charles Dickens