Milner’s 1970 essay attempts to refute the charge that Dickens’ work is ‘theatrical art’ and not concerned with the hidden drama of moral choice. He shows how Dombey’s inner conflict is dramatically articulated at important points in his life and implies that the successful presentation of Dombey’s inner tension overrides the conventionalised character of Florence and Edith’s melodramatic portrayal.
The essay is a direct response to Henry James’ argument that Dickens ‘was incapable of effectively treating the inner life’. James argued that Dickens was unable to see and unable to present what was ‘beneath the surface of things’ and that he added nothing to our understanding of the human character. James’ argument is that Dickens’ art was not ‘serious art’ because he did not dramatise moral choice in the inner life of an individual’s consciousness. Milner accepts that Dickens did not concern himself with ‘intellectual inquiry, self-analysis, and debate’ and that there is a lack of insight to what Mr Dombey is thinking – we don’t see Dombey doing any reflecting, nor does Dickens analyse Dombey’s state of mind. Instead, Milner argues, Dickens exposes Dombey’s personality by ‘providing dramatic intensity and vividness of focus’ at ‘nodal’ points in the action i.e. it is the things that Dombey says and does that reveal his inner self and its motivations. We are not given a linear sense of a development of Dombey’s character: Dickens himself said that Dombey does not undergo ‘violent change… A sense of injustice is within him, all along’; rather we are presented with a series of dramatic elucidations and it is the cumulative effect of this which gives us the insight into Dombey’s inner life. Milner looks at certain instances where Dickens is successful in characterising Dombey without having to reveal his ‘inner life’.
In the opening chapter of the novel we are given minimal descriptive information about Dombey and it is his actions that suggest the kind of person he is. Milner quotes the sentence about Dombey with his ‘heavy gold watch-chain’ and shows how it has a metonymic quality where it focuses our attention on Dombey’s euphoric pride. Milner shows that even though little has been authorially said about him, his personality has still been exposed. This, he argues, is how Dickens is not just responsible for ‘theatrical art’: Dickens is not a ringmaster standing in between the audience and the character; rather Dombey is at centre-stage from the very beginning. It is his actions and words that show us the man.
Chapter 18 is a key chapter where we see Dickens’ skill in using scene to ‘suggest inner qualities’. At the funeral, we do not get any indication of Dombey’s thoughts but the inscription on the grave: ‘beloved and only child’ gives away so much in the sense of pathos about his obsessive pride in his son and his heir. There is also significance when Florence goes to visit her father on the night when she has been told he is to leave the next morning and his door is slightly open. On her previous nightly visits, ‘the door was ever closed and he shut up within’. This leads to Florence being afraid of the ‘something’ in her father’s face and significantly Dickens does not offer any analysis and interpretation. This indicates that Dombey himself is not aware of his new darker feelings towards his daughter and shows his conflicting impulses and genuine suffering. Milner argues that this chapter is shows the ‘hand not of any ‘theatrical’ manipulator of externalised characters but that of the born dramatist who matches control of stage and scene with searching insight into basic human motivations’.
Dickens uses the dramatic mode to show Dombey’s inner workings: in chapter 47 when he strikes Florence after Edith’s elopement, his suddenly unleashed violence dramatically reveal his ‘interlocked sexual frustration, jealousy, and rage’. But as Milner points out Dickens does not just rely on the dramatic mode. In Chapter 40, he points out the natural shift from the authorial stance to free indirect speech has the ‘advantages of dramatic immediacy and authentic expression of Dombey’s tortured rationalizing’. The same chapter also allows us to see how important narration is in the presentation of character: the passage he uses as an example shows how the atmospheric and suggestive power of the narration presents the conflict between husband and wife. The visual detail Dickens uses complements the narrative and brings the issue into sharper focus. Finally, Dickens’ denouement concentrates on the inner life of Dombey’s self-conflict and its resolution, rather than the social framework. Milner concludes that Dickens vividly catches the ‘felt life’ of the human journey that breaks Dombey’s pride ‘not as theatrical manipulation but as the objective revelation of great art’.
I found this to be quite an interesting approach to Dombey and Son, especially as when I read it, I noticed the lack of ‘depth’ in Dombey, so to speak. Until I read this essay, I was inclined to side with Henry James’ conclusion that the lack of insight into Dombey’s interiority was a negative thing. However, after reading Milner’s essay it is easy to see how through the use of rhetoric and its metonymic quality, scenes which suggest phases of character and motivation, dramatising without analysis, free indirect style, narration with visual detail and a focus on the individual in the closing scenes create the insight into Dombey we crave. I think Dickens does provide some interior insight when he uses free indirect speech as Dombey’s thoughts slip into the narration. I agree with the assertion that a character is better presented through their actions, what they do and say defines them. This seems to be true in real life – our subconscious actions tend to reflect our true personalities and feelings: ‘Character is shown in action; the mode is kinetic’.
2. Sarah Anstee ‘The Dickens Drama: Mr. Dombey’: A Response
The principle argument for Milner‘s essay is that the character of Mr Dombey is successfully created through Dickens’s use of scene and action, as opposed to the creation of a character that relies on our insight into their ’inner life’. Milner, therefore, describes Dombey as a ‘test case for Dickens’s art’. As persuasive as Milner’s argument is, one cannot help but question his thesis that a successful character can be built on their scenes and actions alone. For a reader to fully engage with and understand a character, especially one like Mr. Dombey, surely an insight into their inner life is crucial?
Milner starts then by quoting both Henry James and G. H. Lewes, who argue that ’Dickens was incapable of effectively treating the inner life’ and that ’ Dickens sees and feels, but the logic of feeling seems the only logic he can manage. Thought is strangely absent from his works’. Like Milner, one can agree that ’thought’ is a tricky word and that it is not completely void in Dickens’s characters, but, there still remains the tension of: ’How will Dombey’s character develop if the reader is given no insight into these thoughts?’.
Milner argues that ‘Character is shown in action’ and that Dickens is only truly concerned with Dombey’s motivation and the different elements that dominate it. Milner contends that:
Dickens’s primary mode is to show us Dombey […] at a series of nodal points in the action.He then develops this by asserting:
Character, and inner growth, is evoked and suggested by the discontinuous, selective “picturing” of high points of experience. There is not the linear sense of character development depending on the knowledge and insights derived from continuous authorial or other mediation. Rather an intermittent series of dramatic illuminations imply and suggest instead of interpreting and defining.With the lack of any authorial input into Dombey’s inner life, one is again faced with the predicament of how to successfully create a character that a reader can fully understand and connect with. Milner does come up with a convincing method by focusing on the nodal points throughout the novel that allow Dombey’s character to grow. However, one of the only reserves with this method is that one could argue that it makes Dombey’s character seem like a playing piece in a board game. Dickens is moving this particular character (Dombey) along to different nodal points throughout the novel, but just because a character is moving does that necessarily mean they are growing and developing? Dickens needs to get Dombey to the final ‘square’ on the board, the reconciliation of his relationship with Florence, and Milner’s method of characterisation through nodal points sees him arrive there, but again, the successfulness is questionable. One is not arguing that every thought and emotion Dombey feels needs to be accounted for, but a deeper insight into his inner life, that goes beyond his actions, could have made his character more successful (meaning in this case, the ability of the reader to be able to understand, identify and sympathise with).
Another small point to think about in Milner’s essay is his constant reference to the ’suggestiveness’ of Dombey’s character. Should we question Milner’s analysis of Dombey as a successful character, whose characteristics are only ever suggested at and never clearly shown to the reader? Or, should we take on board Milner’s argument and acknowledge that a lot can be gained about Dombey through mere suggestions? Milner cites the passage in the novel where Florence is outside her father’s door, where ‘the door was ever closed, and he shut up within’. Here, this particular scene is very suggestive of Dombey’s character and images of immurement are constantly recurring throughout the novel. But, does this scene tell us anything new about Dombey that allows the reader to see a growth or development in his character? It seems that Dickens is hiding something from the reader that suggestiveness cannot tell. Like Florence, is not arguable that they are both longing for a sense of Dombey’s inner life?
Milner’s argument can be seen from many different perspectives depending on what a reader expects from an author. Some readers, such as Milner, are content with the fact that Dickens does not give us an insight or a sense of Dombey’s inner life and that a lot of his character is dependant on suggestiveness and a close attention to scene and action. For example, when Milner argues that the watch has a metonymic quality and is thereby standing in for the character of Mr. Dombey himself. Suggestiveness, however, can never be for certain, cannot something also suggest something else? On the other hand, other readers may find that a closer and deeper sense of Dombey’s inner life would have made his secretive and reclusive character more understandable. As such, I contend that after reading Dombey and Son, the reader resorts to empathising with Florence and cannot help feeling just like her, in that they were always left standing on the other side of a locked door, longing to be let in.
Apologies to Sophia for spelling her name wrong: fixed now.
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