278
PARTISAN REVIEW
in the modern school of realism where naturalness of dialogue and
"truth" of psychological reaction are the touchstone, and often the
only merit.
With the authority of a teller of folk tales, for whom natural–
ness has no purpose, Dickens simply assures his readers: This is what
happened. And for the most part we are pleased to believe him, no
matter how arbitrary the sequence of events may seem. The disap–
pointing moments in his novels are just those moments when his per–
suasive genius fails, and disbelief returns us,
in
spite of ourselves,
to the outer world. Such lapses are often quite grave, at least at
first
view.
It
is not easy, for example, to believe that the noble old Jew,
Riah, could accept his long bondage to an ugly master and an ugly
occupation because of gratitude. Nor is it easy to believe that Florence
Dombey, in
Dombey and Son,
could have gone on loving her father
so faithfully in the face of his harsh treatment. And yet these feeble
motivations are essential to much of the action in these novels. Why
did Dickens risk weakening his project? On reflection, it will appear
that in both cases he has permitted a conception of moral goodness,
of moral right, to prevail over human probability.
Riah's gratitude to the monstrous Fascination Fledgeby is seen
as a sacred and unalterable obligation, a noble trait in a noble (if
far-fetched) character. It is Gratitude itself. Again,
in
the case of
poor Florence Dombey, a good child
ought
to love her parent, and love
him she does in spite of all opposition.
But these rare lapses into disbelief, easy as they are to explain
away on various grounds, do little damage to our acceptance of
Dickens' world. The writer's art confers on his creations an intensity
of existence that makes their fantastic proportions seem the true pro–
portions, and, as we read, we believe-just as we do not doubt the
distorted forms of Greek sculpture or of Picasso's
baigneuses,
which
if
translated into flesh would send us screaming
in
flight.
Why do these monsters of purity and evil, these ridiculous ec–
centrics and grotesques, hold our attention? What field of experience
does Dickens draw on to make us feel their truth? Do they not live
under our own skins, waiting to
be
given the externalized form of
myth and art? Dickens has gone underground to that region where
the mists of unnameable anxieties and the smoke of infantile terrors
prevail. There, at the edge of the sea of sleep, he has built his Lon-
