"A Certain Shadow": Personified Abstractions and the Form of Household Words

This article describes certain generic features of Household Words as evidence of an emergent epistemology of character, a way of knowing everything as divided and irreducible to systematic or numerical description. Dickens tentatively named this form of knowledge "a certain Shadow," but i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Victorian periodicals review 2009-12, Vol.42 (4), p.392-415
Main Author: FARINA, JONATHAN V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authors
British & Irish literature
Collectanea
Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
English literature
Forster, John (1812-1876)
Letters
Literary characters
Literary criticism
Narrators
Novels
Periodicals
Subjectivity
Umbrellas
Victorian period
Victorians
Writers
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Summary:This article describes certain generic features of Household Words as evidence of an emergent epistemology of character, a way of knowing everything as divided and irreducible to systematic or numerical description. Dickens tentatively named this form of knowledge "a certain Shadow," but it should be called "character" because it is ascribed to the same generic tropes and associations that writers used to articulate psychologically complex fictional characters and the to describe the effects that such characters ought to have on readers. I analyze how Household Words personifies otherwise inanimate institutions and objects to fit this paradigm of character.
ISSN:0709-4698
1712-526X
1712-526X
DOI:10.1353/vpr.0.0093