Girl in a Blue Dress (Book Review)
Five years ago, in a post on biopics and the way they depict relationships , I wrote: I pity the inevitable Charles Dickens biopic or tv series. (There isn't one already, right?) It won't have that Wildean out, and besides, Dickens' marriage ended so appallingly that The Genius excuse won't wash unless they leave out that part of his life altogether. (Poor Kate D. did everything expected of the spouse of a genius - believed in him, produced children by the dozen, and then got left for a young actress. Which didn't fit with either Dickens' image of himself or what his Victorian readers expected him to be, so he declared he left Kate because she had been a bad mother to their children, and forbade said children to visit her.) While I'm not aware that a Dickens biopic or tv series has been made, there's a novel, Girl in a blue dress by Gaynor Arnold, which is based on Dickens' marriage, and tells it from the banished Catherine's pov. However, the author chose to fictionalize the characters: our heroine is not Catherine "Kate" Dickens but Dorothea "Dodo" Gibbons, the great Victorian novelist (tm) is Alfred Gibbons. When I started the novel, I wondered why because the identities are very clear, and there didn't seem to be a reason for the name switch beyond it offering the author the chance for some marvellous Dickens pastiches - the novel excerpts Dodo quotes from now and then - and a chance to reduce the numbers of the ensemble she has to deal with (for example, Dodo's oldest daughter Kitty is married to a never do well named Augustus Norris, who briefly was friends with Alfred Gibbons, and thus unites both brothers Collins in his person - Wilkie Collins, Dickens' friend, and his impractical brother Charles whom Katey Dickens was first married to). Later on I concluded making the main character a fictional Dorothea instead of a real Catherine whose life is unfixable by a novelist allowed Arnold the emotional arc she lets Dodo take through the novel, which starts after Alfred's death as Dodo looks back on her life with him.
Aside from one criticism I have to make, I think the result is a splendid novel. Though also a rage-inducing one precisely because it captures the age, the gender ideas, and the emotional entrapments so well. The psychological mechanism of Dodo, whenever she attempts to question her husband, getting convinced that she is the one to be at fault and of course Alfred the genius is blameless, no matter how outrageous his behaviour, manages to get across fantastically well. (Incidentally, Arnold also adresses the paradox of Dickens the author being able to write, early in David Copperfield, the sequence of David's mother being systematically destroyed emotionally by her second husband, Mr. Murdstone, and Dickens the man treating his wife the way he did, by giving Alfred Gibbons a passage that parallels the Murdstone marriage, and letting Dodo address this. Alfred, of course, is incapable of admitting parallels or any resemblances between his villains and himself.) Gibbons has Dickens' manic energy, his issues with his parents due to the workhouse/debtor's prison part of his childhood, peculiar obsession with his sisters-in-law (the reaction to the death of the first one is where I thought "why bother with the fictionalization, because this is basically quoted from accounts"), philantropy coupled with absolute ruthlessness when someone falls out of favour with him - it's a portrait that draws on a largesse of material available. But we don't know nearly as much about Catherine, and so Dodo is mostly the author's creation, and it's to Arnold's credit that she comes across as vividly. Mind you, this also leadsme to my one criticism. Throughout the novel, Dodo regains, in tiny steps, some sense of self worth, she confronts her other sister (who has sided with her dead husband) and the young actress who triggered but was, the novel makes a good case of, not the underlying cause of Alfred's devastating abandonment, and reestablishes contact with her children. (In addition to Kitty, who had taken her side before. The fictional Kitty's love/hate relationship towards her father is a good rendition of Kate Perugini's extremely mixed feelings for her father.) But the act Arnold chooses as the conclusion of this arc seems to me a step back, and while I can recognize the nod to A Christmas Carol, it really doesn't fit here.
Favourite scenes: Dodo's encounter with Alfred's parents comes immediately in mind. Not least because Arnold has to pull off several layers here. Dickens fictionalized his parents several times, most famously as Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in David Copperfield (these are also his kindest portraits of them; if you compare the Micawber passages to the still rage-filled indictments of his parents in his autobiographical fragments, it's especially remarkable, but then, he could control the Micawbers, they were his characters). And the passage has to stand on its own for readers who have never read a word Dickens wrote, needs to get across some crucial background information, more than the person who tells the story, Dodo, is aware of at the time these encounter happens. And the whole Dover sequence in Girl in a blue dress actually pulls this off - it's vivid, conveys very much in a short space, and if you are familiar with David Copperfield you are reminded of the Micawbers but not in a way that sounds like a pale imitation.
As a contrast, a scene which owes nothing to Dickens whatsoever and hasn't to compete with him, Dodo's encounter with the Queen, with Victoria alternating between pomposity and the attempt to have an actual conversation, reaching out to another widow, and Dodo saying more than she intended to, which proves to be the turning corner for her; btw, the start, with Dodo being told how to approach the queen correctly by a factotum, is basically identical with Tony Blair being told the same thing at the start of The Queen, which made me smile.
Lastly: last week I stumbled across a discussion of Middlemarch, with some comments bringing up David Copperfield, mentioning how frustrated they had been about David marrying the childish Dora when the "right one", sensible Agnes, was there all along, and how relieved when David and Agnes did get together at the end. It reminded me of the way fiction does manipulate its audience, inevitably so. In David Copperfield (note the reversed initials of the title), we're meant to see that David's marriage to his "child-wife" Dora is a mistake. But Dora conveniently dies young, and gives her deathbed blessing on a David/Agnes union to boot, after Agnes has already taken over the household managing completely. Does anyone wish Dora would have remained alive instead? Not that I know of. But you know what? Girl in a blue dress in many ways is the story of what happened to Dora.
Aside from one criticism I have to make, I think the result is a splendid novel. Though also a rage-inducing one precisely because it captures the age, the gender ideas, and the emotional entrapments so well. The psychological mechanism of Dodo, whenever she attempts to question her husband, getting convinced that she is the one to be at fault and of course Alfred the genius is blameless, no matter how outrageous his behaviour, manages to get across fantastically well. (Incidentally, Arnold also adresses the paradox of Dickens the author being able to write, early in David Copperfield, the sequence of David's mother being systematically destroyed emotionally by her second husband, Mr. Murdstone, and Dickens the man treating his wife the way he did, by giving Alfred Gibbons a passage that parallels the Murdstone marriage, and letting Dodo address this. Alfred, of course, is incapable of admitting parallels or any resemblances between his villains and himself.) Gibbons has Dickens' manic energy, his issues with his parents due to the workhouse/debtor's prison part of his childhood, peculiar obsession with his sisters-in-law (the reaction to the death of the first one is where I thought "why bother with the fictionalization, because this is basically quoted from accounts"), philantropy coupled with absolute ruthlessness when someone falls out of favour with him - it's a portrait that draws on a largesse of material available. But we don't know nearly as much about Catherine, and so Dodo is mostly the author's creation, and it's to Arnold's credit that she comes across as vividly. Mind you, this also leadsme to my one criticism. Throughout the novel, Dodo regains, in tiny steps, some sense of self worth, she confronts her other sister (who has sided with her dead husband) and the young actress who triggered but was, the novel makes a good case of, not the underlying cause of Alfred's devastating abandonment, and reestablishes contact with her children. (In addition to Kitty, who had taken her side before. The fictional Kitty's love/hate relationship towards her father is a good rendition of Kate Perugini's extremely mixed feelings for her father.) But the act Arnold chooses as the conclusion of this arc seems to me a step back, and while I can recognize the nod to A Christmas Carol, it really doesn't fit here.
Favourite scenes: Dodo's encounter with Alfred's parents comes immediately in mind. Not least because Arnold has to pull off several layers here. Dickens fictionalized his parents several times, most famously as Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in David Copperfield (these are also his kindest portraits of them; if you compare the Micawber passages to the still rage-filled indictments of his parents in his autobiographical fragments, it's especially remarkable, but then, he could control the Micawbers, they were his characters). And the passage has to stand on its own for readers who have never read a word Dickens wrote, needs to get across some crucial background information, more than the person who tells the story, Dodo, is aware of at the time these encounter happens. And the whole Dover sequence in Girl in a blue dress actually pulls this off - it's vivid, conveys very much in a short space, and if you are familiar with David Copperfield you are reminded of the Micawbers but not in a way that sounds like a pale imitation.
As a contrast, a scene which owes nothing to Dickens whatsoever and hasn't to compete with him, Dodo's encounter with the Queen, with Victoria alternating between pomposity and the attempt to have an actual conversation, reaching out to another widow, and Dodo saying more than she intended to, which proves to be the turning corner for her; btw, the start, with Dodo being told how to approach the queen correctly by a factotum, is basically identical with Tony Blair being told the same thing at the start of The Queen, which made me smile.
Lastly: last week I stumbled across a discussion of Middlemarch, with some comments bringing up David Copperfield, mentioning how frustrated they had been about David marrying the childish Dora when the "right one", sensible Agnes, was there all along, and how relieved when David and Agnes did get together at the end. It reminded me of the way fiction does manipulate its audience, inevitably so. In David Copperfield (note the reversed initials of the title), we're meant to see that David's marriage to his "child-wife" Dora is a mistake. But Dora conveniently dies young, and gives her deathbed blessing on a David/Agnes union to boot, after Agnes has already taken over the household managing completely. Does anyone wish Dora would have remained alive instead? Not that I know of. But you know what? Girl in a blue dress in many ways is the story of what happened to Dora.