Abstract
The paper analyzes the way selected Dickens’s female characters attempt to cross the physical and metaphorical borders laid down by Victorian society in England, focusing on Nancy from Oliver Twist and Martha’s, the heroine’s from David Copperfield, relationship with and attitudes towards this physical and figurative geography and how it shapes the crucial moments in their lives. Exploring the relationship of these two characters to the many boundaries they encountered, crossed, and could not cross it will become clear that their encounters at these boundaries are shaped by the society’s demands and expectations, and their ability or inability to conform to these demands.
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Notes
- 1.
An interesting critical look at the rivers of America presented in literature can be found in a selection of essays called Rivers and the American experience, edited by Jerzy Durczak, Lublin: Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej 2000. Among the most informative are Jiŕí Flajšar’s Epiphanic Transformation of the Self in American River Poems from Whitman to Hugo (pp. 59–70), Schöpp’s (2000), and Zapędowska’s (2000).
- 2.
The author uses other interesting and apt metaphorical phrases, for example that of the river as “liquid history because within itself it dissolves and caries all epochs and generations. They ebb and flow like water”; “A Museum of Englishness”; or “a perpetual remembrance of the past”, “timeless river”.
- 3.
By 1800 London was the greatest city in Western Europe and possibly the world, with almost a million inhabitants. By the 1850s it was joined by Paris and New York. By 1900 London had a population of 4.5 million. For more information about this period from a contemporary of Dickens see Henry Mayhew’s famous London labor and the London poor (Mayhew 2010).
- 4.
On page 551 Collins quotes different writers’ fascination with the London of Dickens, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. In J. K. Huysmans’ famous novel A rebours (1884) its hero Des Esseintes talks about how well Dickens’s works evoked the feelings of the English life.
- 5.
This fascination was passed over to Dickens’s son, Charles Dickens. In 1887 he published Dictionary of the Thames in order to “give practical information to oarsmen, anglers, yachtsmen, and other directly interested in the river; to serve as a guide to the numerous strangers who annually visit the principal places on its banks” (Dickens 2007, p. 3). The book is an interesting portrait of the Thames at the end of the 19th century, with a number of detailed descriptions of towns, inns, boats renting etc.
- 6.
Coasters were transport ships that enabled the larger and faster supply of coal from the north than had been previously possible.
- 7.
This is the title of a popular painting by George Frederic Watts’s (ca. 1848–1850)
- 8.
Mariana Valverde’s interest focused on the way prostitutes were perceived by society. She describes the way clothes signified women in the 19th century, the way their fashion and the then social life were connected; also, among others, she talks about Esther, a prostitute from Elisabeth Gaskell’s popular novel Mary Barton.
- 9.
Greater condemnation was reserved for the women forced into prostitution than for the men who engaged their services.
- 10.
Urania was the muse of astronomy, which is why nowadays lots of astronomical observatories are named after her. The name had associations with Aphrodite Urania the goddess of heavenly love, as opposed to Aphrodite, the goddess of physical love. The word “cottage” in the House’s name aroused a pleasant and domestic atmosphere, unlike other casual names of the London institutions. The main intention for the Urania Cottage was to provide women with “kind treatment” so that they could become good wives and mothers when they emigrate to other British-owned lands, like Australia (Slater 2009, p. 269).
- 11.
Commenting on that passage J. H. Miller claims that this is the imaginary death of Nancy, even though she actually is beaten to death by Sikes (Miller 1970, p. 41).
- 12.
Two scenes illustrate this point well: Nancy goes to the London Bridge at night and alone, which she found scary and terrifying, but she was not afraid of giving Sikes a medicine to put him to sleep when she secretly runs to Rose.
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Budrewicz-Beratan, A. (2013). Near the Riverbank: Women, Danger and Place in Dickens. In: Fabiszak, J., Urbaniak-Rybicka, E., Wolski, B. (eds) Crossroads in Literature and Culture. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21994-8_6
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