286
PARTISAN REVIEW
to suit Mrs. Boffin, is carpeted and fashionably furnished, while
the other half reflects Mr. Boffin's taste in its resemblance to a tap–
room, even to sand and sawdust on the floor.
This unifying sub-theme has been considered in disproportionate
detail partly because it is such a curious device in itself, partly because
it illumines a little-known aspect of creative writing, and partly be–
cause it is the kind of thing that generally goes unnoticed in Dickens'
highly artful art.
These then, to summarize, are some of the ways by which
Dickens persuades readers to stay in his underground world and to
believe, as long as they remain there, that this world is all-inclusive
and subject to its own unique law: for the source of emotional
vitality he draws on the deepest mythology of mankind, the per–
sonages of the myth being presented with a lavishness of minute
and general characteristics that rivals the invention of life itself and
prevents them from becoming the hollow shapes of folklore, although
they embody or demonstrate through their actions the capital letter
categories of sin and virtue or the lesser list of foibles and merits;
these personages, since they are all lighted by the same searching but
subterranean sun, are all evoked on the same level of "caricature"
(to borrow a word from the upper world) and thus obey the prime
law of their creator's art, which is unity; they obey this law still
further in their interrelations, which are as imposed and ordered in
pattern as the musical forms of the late eighteenth century-or as
the arbitrary sequence of folk tale; unity is again established by the
author's choice of a single animating theme for each novel, a theme
gravely applicable to the common e..xperience of Western man, and
wonderfully reflected and varied in the people and events of the
book; the basic theme is usually illustrated by some form of abuse,
which Dickens attacks fiercely; lesser themes, more abstract, more
"artful," almost
textural,
further the integration of each novel-as
the themes of drowning, water-and-dust, and doubleness give co–
herence to
Our Mutual Friend,
so that wherever the loaf is sliced
the same pattern of ingredients is revealed.
If
Dickens could read these foregoing sentences, would he be
amazed that so much is ascribed to him that he had never intended,
and so much that he
had
intended is ignored? An idle question per-
