Hi Claire, do the fathers (or mothers) express remorse about forcing their daughters into these arrangements? Or was marriage considered so much on economic terms that they saw nothing wrong with pushing such undesirable husbands on their daughters?
Good question! The answer is mostly no. Mr. Bray feels remorse and pity ... but of the kind a person feels when about to inflict pain, even though that is not going to change anything. Kind of like that feeling that one must have when about to throw a lobster into a pot of boiling water. Mr. Dorrit feels remorse, but he turns it selfishly back into a maudlin, dramatic emphasis on his own degradation and how pitiable HE is. Mrs. Skewton doesn't see the problem at all. Her comment is “We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good establishment, ... And now you have got it.”
Victorian authors mostly drew a fine line between a typical marriage, where the economic aspects were critically (and reasonably) important, and a mercenary bargain, which they criticized.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnnogowski/p/did-dickens-recognize-his-breakthrough?r=7pf7u&utm_medium=ios
Hi Claire, do the fathers (or mothers) express remorse about forcing their daughters into these arrangements? Or was marriage considered so much on economic terms that they saw nothing wrong with pushing such undesirable husbands on their daughters?
Good question! The answer is mostly no. Mr. Bray feels remorse and pity ... but of the kind a person feels when about to inflict pain, even though that is not going to change anything. Kind of like that feeling that one must have when about to throw a lobster into a pot of boiling water. Mr. Dorrit feels remorse, but he turns it selfishly back into a maudlin, dramatic emphasis on his own degradation and how pitiable HE is. Mrs. Skewton doesn't see the problem at all. Her comment is “We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good establishment, ... And now you have got it.”
Victorian authors mostly drew a fine line between a typical marriage, where the economic aspects were critically (and reasonably) important, and a mercenary bargain, which they criticized.