[lit-ideas] Chesterton on Dickens (and a mention of housekeeping)
- From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 08:46:33 -0500
A few paragraphs in...
But I have mentioned Dora in this connection only because she
illustrates the same fact which Micawber illustrates; the fact that
there is at the end of this book too much tendency to bless people and
get rid of them. Micawber is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns him
to exile. Dora is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns her to death.
But it is the whole business of Dickens in the world to express the fact
that such people are the spice and interest of life. It is the whole
point of Dickens that there is nobody more worth living with than a
strong, splendid, entertaining, immortal nuisance. Micawber interrupts
practical life; but what is practical life that it should venture to
interrupt Micawber? Dora confuses the housekeeping; but we are not angry
with Dora because she confuses the housekeeping. We are angry with the
housekeeping because it confuses Dora. I repeat, and it cannot be too
much repeated that the whole lesson of Dickens is here. It is better to
know Micawber than not to know the minor worries that arise out of
knowing Micawber. It is better to have a bad debt and a good friend. In
the same way it is better to marry a human and healthy personality which
happens to attract you than to marry a mere housewife; for a mere
housewife is a mere housekeeper. All this was what Dickens stood for;
that the very people who are most irritating in small business
circumstances are often the people who are most delightful in long
stretches of experience of life. It is just the man who is maddening
when he is ordering a cutlet or arranging an appointment who is probably
the man in whose company it is worth while to journey steadily towards
the grave. Distribute the dignified people and the capable people and
the highly business-like people among all the situations which their
ambition or their innate corruption may demand; but keep close to your
heart, keep deep in your inner councils the absurd people. Let the
clever people pretend to govern you, let the unimpeachable people
pretend to advise you, but let the fools alone influence you; let the
laughable people whose faults you see and understand be the only people
who are really inside your life, who really come near you or accompany
you on your lonely march towards the last impossibility. That is the
whole meaning of Dickens; that we should keep the absurd people for our
friends.
http://www.dickens-literature.com/Appreciations_and_Criticisms_by_G.K_Chesterton/12.html
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