Metonymics in Little Dorit Metonymy

Metonymics in "Little Dorit"

Metonymy is a literary term that is used to describe a concept that is not called by its own name, but rather by something symbolically associated with it that has a deeper, metaphorical meaning. For example, the words "white coat" could be utilized to infer a doctor or medical professional or the city "Washington" could refer to a governmental decision, as in "Washington's policy of…." Metonymy works in literary prose by the association between two concepts -- metaphor by the similarity. Typically, use of metonymy presupposes that the speaker or author wishes to transfer the archetypal qualities of one item into the other, all without a large explanation of those qualities. For example, the American stock system is referred to by location, "Wall Street, "monarchs "the crown," yet neither is specifically "like" the other (Barcelona, 2003).

In larger literary contexts, we see metonymy as more of a rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to symbols or things contiguous to it. There are a number of famous examples of this, in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, for example, quite early in the story we have Oliver facing the wrath of "the man in the white waistcoat." "The man in the white waistcoat" declares" "That boy will be hung…"( 11). The gentleman in the white waistcoat asserts himself again, "I never was more convinced of anything in my life" (12). Even further, the narrator again brings the reader the illusion, "As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white-waist coated gentleman was right or not" (37). It is interesting that this man is not named, but yet has so much covert power simply by his mode of dress. The audience does not need to have a long diatribe about this character, but alludes to the fact that he is: wealthy, arrogant, opinionated, a man of means and power, boisterous, negative, and judgmental towards children. Thus, the power of the metonymic technique explained much to the reader without over explaining the prose.

Dickens and 'Little Dorrit' -- Charles Dickens was likely the most popular author of the Victorian era, certainly one who produced some of the most beloved, or at least iconic, characters (Oliver Twist, Pip, Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, etc.). Most of his novels dealt with recurring social issues derived from Dickens' view of the English hierarchical system of the time. Most, too, appeared in serialized form -- a typical way of disseminating popular fiction at the time. Also, unlike many other authors of the time who wrote the entire novel, turned it over for publication, then let the editors break it into chapters, Dickens often waited to gauge public reaction to a part prior to completing the next part. This technique had several outcomes: he was able to use the cultural tide of the day to establish what he might do with characterization in the next installment; he was able to provide a particular rhythm for each specific part of the novel, and he was able to punctuate his novels, much like the serial television shows of today, with "cliffhanger" moments that kept the audience rapt and interested, anxiously ready to purchase the next installment (Swift, 2007).

Little Dorrit was one of these serialized novels, originally published between 1855 and 1857. Its theme focuses on the institutions of debtors' prisons, in which people who owed money were imprisoned, unable to work, until their debt is paid; a highly ironic scenario since how can one pay one's debt without being able to work. In addition, class themes of the separation of the government from society, a lack of human safety net, and the treatment and safety of workers pervade Little Dorrit.

Also, like many of his works, Little Dorrit did allow for social climbing. Indeed the innocence of the characters in their sloth (Part 1: Poverty) in contrast to part II (Riches). The novel is broken into 19 monthly installments, each comprising about 32 pages and featuring illusions by Phiz.

In brief, Amy Dorrit, better known as Little Dorrit, was born in debtor's prison. Although her mother is dead, she and her brother and sister continue to live in the prison with their bankrupt father. As she ages, she is permitted to leave the prison to find work, which she does as a seamstress. One of her clients, Mrs. Clennam, a dour old woman, but with a kind and empathetic son, Arthur. Arthur is taken with Amy, and tries to help the family, eventually discovering through another circumstance that Mr. Dorrit was the only surviving heir to a large, unclaimed fortune. Finally, Mr. Dorrit is released, and the family moves to the Continent, starting over and pretending that they were never part of the underbelly of British prisons.

Wealth changes most of the Dorrit family except Amy, who ironically goes back to the debtor's prison to comfort the person who had helped her, Arthur, now bankrupt and in prison himself. In an attempt to assuage guilt, Mrs. Clennam rises from her bed, travels to the prison, makes the confession that Arthur is not her son, and that for many years she had been saving money for he and Amy. Restitution is paid, Arthur is released, and he and Amy are finally married.

The book is rather complex, containing two divergent story lines in which some of the characters overlap, some are the same, and some simply interact with others within the plot line. There are numerous sub-plots as well: imprisonment, blackmail, romance, and social decay. Dickens apparently wanted to call the novel, "Nobody's Fault," a commentary on everyone simply giving up and allowing things to just happen -- only to have the crotchety old woman finally save the day towards the end. After all, in capitalism it is indeed the individual who is responsible for their debts -- but somewhat ironic that the British answer seemed to be imprisonment and then a complete inability to pay.

Thematically, though, the book seems to be a series of metaphoric prisons. Certainly we have the tangible Debtor's prison, a horrible, dirty, wretched place that strips whatever humanity is left within one's soul. However, there are number of other "prisons" that rise out of the novel, some as metonyms, some simply analogies. The Circumlocution Office, for instance, a mysterious branch of government where nothing gets done, but everyone must visit for proper permits for almost everything. The idea of being engaged in the necessity of social climbing is another prison -- the people in the middle class are just as much a prisoner of their class as those trying desperately to escape, or as those who simply have no choice. Blackmail and fraud are also prisons, as is bankruptcy -- cavernous and no win scenarios in which certain people in society enter and spiral downward, never to return (Lund, 1982).

Metonyms in Little Dorrit -- From the very opening lines of Little Dorrit, the reader is presented with a hierarchy of meaning and distinction within what we shall come to know is a fixed moral frame -- Victorian England may have been an expansionary and vital economic power, but it was also one in which only the rising upper crust were considered important. "There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbor, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the purse sea would not pass, but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed" (1). We then meet the three institutions of society: family, religion, and the State that will be known through various metonyms throughout the book: houses, churches, prisons. The rather fascinating thing about these images that permeate throughout is that they give us an overall "feeling" -- without a screenplay we are swept into the Victorian perception of time, place, and events.

For Dickens, the idea of synergism, of the sum of the parts totaling something far greater than the individual items, however, uses metonymy to generate meaning from the myriad of details, so that the reader is able to grow to love and respect certain individuals, while despising and hating others, other products, services, and far more than a linked chain of events. When we remember that for many, these installment fictions were some of the only entertainment they had, we understanding a bit more the function they played within the structure of Society (large S, Dickens use of the term). Colors, lines of demarcation, hierarchical chains of events, all work because there is Dickens, the strict moralist, chooses to see the world in gray, but also knows that most see it more in right/wrong, black/white, good/bad, rich/poor -- and all that implies symbolically. Metonyms fuel this, also causing considerable commentary on the undertexts and intertexts -- shades of meaning and doubt, pining for freedom, yet seeking that very thing which keeps freedom at bay (Hartley, 2005).

Taken to a micro level, the way individuals use these structures, whether adequately or inappropriately seems to define their nature. One cannot build the right sort of house -- the houses are not really adequate, "Blinds, shutter, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the star. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow." The stare here is the metonymic device -- we assume it is stranger, the outside vs. The inside, but for some reason, it is also the authority involved, and one that is able to ensure adequacy. In a similar vein, the "churches were freest from it," but they offer only an homage' to safety, and use their power to shut people out from the light that "made the eyes ache" and had been inhumanly oppressive. The prison, though, is "so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive star blinked at it and left it to such refuse of reflected light as could find." The stare is back, this time obtrusive, which points towards a greater degree of active nature.

Dickens also uses body parts such as hands, head, eyes, ears, etc., which are favorite sources of synecdoche in his works. For example:

Hands: Used to express the idea of work, certainly, but also of the impact that the external has on the process of living. In Victorian society, a woman's hands were to be small, delicate, impeccable; and one could tell a gentleman from the look of their fingernails and grooming. "Can you guess," said Little Dorritt, folding her small hands tight in one another…" (246). Contrast with the use of "hands" as a metaphor for responsibility and design, "Mr. Casby should put his rents in his hands, and never know him in his true light….. If a gentleman…. Took his rents into his own hands…. Things would be very different" (401).

Lips: Not only the expression of physical or emotional intimacy, but in some cases the ability to gauge the healthful nature of the character, or a combination between the coquette and the maid. "She appeared from the motion of her lips to repeat the words herself…." (64). She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath" (282). Her lips were a little parted, as if her heart beat faster than usual" (134). "… her grey hair was not more immovable… than were her firm lips" (69). "Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and crossed her arms…" (282).

Head -- the head is the symbol for the mind, the soul, but for Dickens the inner nature of the character -- one might have a bumpy head, a wicked head, etc., but it is almost always in relation to the manner in which that character is juxtaposed with another -- usually opposite -- emotion. "So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in the head, Patriarch was the word for him" (208). "… round his wicked head… only his wicked head shown…" (190). Note the combination of hair and head to engender this character as scurrilous: "Wire black hair striking out from his head in prongs, like forks…. He had dirty hands and dirty broken nails…. He was in perspiration and snorted and sniffed and puffed…" (212). "It's not put into his head to be buried… it's put into his head to be useful…" (272).

Eyes -- it is interesting to note that Dickens, and many other Victorian writers, used the eyes as the truth to the soul -- the very nature of the person. However, in Little Dorrit, we are fooled a bit by this. Typically, for Dickens, blue eyes connote innocence, depth of soul, and in a man, some of the nature of being a boy. Christopher Casby, has blue eyes; "There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm blue eye, the same placid air…" (207). In truth, Casby is a ruthless landlord who conceals his penchant for cruelly under the guise of innocence -- and uses this in power over others despite his benevolent exterior (Hori, 21).

The England of Little Dorrit is a droll, dirty, and shabby place -- words like "stale," "dingy," and "grimy" are often used as a descriptor. When Arthur returns to London, for example, he finds the city, "gloomy, close and stale," (31), its rain has "foul, stale smells," and the exterior of his mother's house is, like Frederick, "dirt worn… decayed…. Dingy"( 91). The contrast between the elegant and dingy, too, comes out with the sense of smell, "To the sense of smell the [Barnacle] house was like a sort of bottle filled with a strong distillation of mews… (308-9)." This idea of an obsession with commerce is "used to trope not archetypal themes of greed and corruption, but a specific dissatisfaction with contemporary ways of thinking about social life" (Freegood, 000, 6)

Dirt, smell, squalor -- all take on object names and symbols of the area. Similarly, dirt has an opposite in Little Dorrit. We know that dirt can be cleaned off -- it can be washed, and can be rendered impermanent. However, dirt's opposition -- the glitter of false wealth and the cleanliness of false innocence and part and parcel of the Victorian sense of propriety -- which in the truer sense is the notion of hypocrisy. Many of the characters have little choice about their shabbiness or "parlour" (131), but there is a combination of metonyms with Mrs. Merdle appearing as "the Bosom," on which Merdle lays out the visible evidence of his wealth, the idea that it might be appropriate for external bragging, but in fact, is fleeting and quite unimportant in the long-term.

Too, there is balance between practical Victorian nature and the unseemly idea of economics. Combine the symbolism here with that above and the circle is almost complete -- we see a complexity in the external environment of Little Dorrit that will continue to follow us through the tale. Mrs. Merdle offhandedly remarks to Mrs. Gowan that primitive societies keep cows and sheep but Victorian England "banker's accounts." Not only are cows and sheep part of the natural, down to earth, honest part of life, but their care is easier -- do a and b and get c. Banker's account, however, form the basics of tragedy throughout the book: bankruptcy is the reason so many are assigned to the prison -- the lack of an account; "money is never used in commerce, except to pay balances and debts," and yet the complexities that surround the system of even being able to pay one's debt are mired in countless lines of bureaucracy; some so deep that even those who work for the government are reluctant to get involved with this hydra of evil. Dickens is ever the social reformer, and in Little Dorrit, he uses descriptive language and symbolism to prove that child labor is wrong, and that "all suffer from the pangs of poverty and all have to face untold trials and tribulations of life" (Sharma, 2002, 74).

And yet what controls the very nature and action of the plot but commerce? The encounters between Amy and Mrs. Clennam that finally result in happiness first start out as almost servitude. That the Dorrit's become first freed from their literal prison and thrust on to another is completely economics; that Arthur loses all, and is then found again is based on the chances of investment, of the nature and fleetingness of external factors well out of individual control, yet the responsibilities are almost school "marmish" -- if you stray from the rules, this is how you shall be punished.

It is also important to understand why Dickens was writing about this boom and bust issue and was so focused on the inhumanity of debtor's prison. The entire focus of the Victorian empire was to trade -- import and export, use the colonies to prosper, allow Britain her expected might over all she surveyed. Between this and the massive increase in railways there was a need for more financing, more complex fiscal transactions, and thus more banks. In fact, between 1852 and 1957 "the deposits in a set of five London banks grew from £17.7 million to over £40 and the typical amount of bills of exchange were in circulation increased to 200 million from just 66 million" (Houston, 2005, 71). This "boom" occurred all over England, and the importing of goods flourished, so did stock speculation which mean that some won heavily and others became destitute -- and resentful at the same time. In addition, we must remember that England backed the Confederate States in the War Between the States since much of her cotton and raw materials came from there. Of course, Britain did not want the northern factories to outpace their own industrialization, which also increased the speculation and likelihood of making a poor fiscal decision.

Dickens describes the economic victories as "happy strokes of calculation and combination," or "Gigantic combinations of skill and capital" (285, 448). and, technically, he "almost always couples the two terms, implying that each presupposes the other (Novak, 2008, 174, inclusive).

In the physical sense, too, Dickens establishes the idea of breast meaning a woman's essential self -- a symbolic structure that implied more than just a physical location, and certainly not the idea of sexual proclivity. Amy's "innocent breast," "a fountain of love and fidelity that never ran dry or waned," is an essential part of her character. It is not her physical breast that is important, but rather her heart -- her soul, her very being and empathy, which comes to epitomize her character (274). In contrast to Amy, the size of Mrs. Merdle's breasts shows how insensitive she is -- "room enough to be unfeeling in" (287). Dickens was also not above using the comic possibilities of synecdoche and the breast when he explains that Mrs. Merdle's "first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the bosom had entered into competition with the snows of North America, and had come off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none in point of coldness" (246).