Satire in the Victorian novel

by Frances Theresa Russell

Situation or action is of course merely the dramatization of character, and not to be distinguished from it except as actual expression is distinguished from the capacity for it. Individuals speak for themselves instead of being spoken for, although they often convey more than they mean to, and much that they would not. Since this form of art has its own medium in the drama, it is there that we look for the most perfect and concentrated expression, and expect to find it in the novel only in the latter’s dramatic moments, which may be few and far between. But as the dénouement of the drama usually turns on some phase of poetic justice, either in its tragic or its comic aspect, so also does this dramatic element in fiction. Satire in situation is therefore concerned with the comedy of poetic justice, and is successful in so far as that sense is appealed to and satisfied.

In their respective stories, Pecksniff, Becky Sharp, and Sir Willoughby Patterne are the people of most importance, if not the heroes; and in each case the climax of the career is a ludicrous anticlimax, with circumstances appropriate in every instance to the character.

The unveiling of Pecksniff is a public and demonstrative affair, in accordance with the public and demonstrative nature of his previous life, and also, one may add, with the Dickensian theory of the fitness of humorous retribution. In spite of the crude melodrama of the scene, there is fundamental truth in the most important item in it, the behavior of the one toward whom all eyes are turned in hostile contempt. He needed no loyal, anxious mother to beg him to “be ’umble,” for his humility was not as the Heeps’. It was a superior article, self-possessed and patronizing, not servile and ingratiating, and it was therefore impregnable. Uriah might be discomfited when his mask was publicly torn away, but the Pecksniffian duplicity was no mere flimsy detachable mask. It was the very skin of his face; indeed, it was more than skin deep; it was the stuff of his soul. He could therefore be imperturbable, though felled to the floor, a dignified martyr, grieved but gracious under calumny, unquelled by those who had assembled to do him dishonor.

This impressiveness serves Pecksniff, as her wit serves Becky, to mitigate the absurdity which threatens him. It is not in this heightened moment that his comicality is apparent; it is in the retrospective picture we get of him through the revelation of Martin Chuzzlewit, whereby he is seen not only as the biter bit, but as the calf, the bland, assured, shrewd yet unsuspecting calf, that, being given plenty of rope, promptly hanged himself.

In the downfall of Becky there is less of the comic and more of the tragic, though Thackeray does not choose to invest her with enough dignity for tragedy. She is less absurd than Pecksniff or Sir Willoughby for several reasons. She is more human and has the claim of normal humanity on our sympathy; she is the product of circumstances, clearly shown to be largely responsible for her failure both in aspiration and achievement, whereas theirs is gratuitous and without excuse; and she is herself too much of a jester to be patronized by the ridicule of others. She too can keep up appearances to the last, not by reinforcing her hypocrisy but by being able to dispense with it, when it no longer serves, and to mock at it along with everything else. The only real joke she is the victim of comes comparatively early, when she discovers she might become Lady Crawley were she not already daughter-in-law of the coveted and forfeited title.

This theme of a vaulting ambition o’erleaping itself is a favorite with Thackeray, and he did some good apprentice work on it in The Fatal Boots, and Yellowplush Memoirs. In the former the unwelcome wedding present comes as a delightful bit of comic nemesis. But the outcome of the latter, with an accomplished swindler outwitted by his own father, and a helpless woman ruthlessly sacrificed, savors too much of tragedy to be amusing.

Sir Willoughby is only an egoist, not a hypocrite nor a sycophant; and being a gentleman can suffer naught but a gentlemanly humiliation. Such a one is not to be knocked down and taunted in the presence of his little world; he is merely made a subject of gossip and speculation: nor is he to be reduced to sordid material scheming; his intrigues are all on the spiritual plane. A destiny that seemed kind but proved cruel created him the central sun to his own solar system. His only sin was the desire to maintain that position by exerting a strong but legitimate centripetal force upon his satellites: if any centrifugal force should become stronger, they must simply drop off into space. His mate he conceived of as the fairest star of all, gladly answering an imperious summons to disregard even the laws of gravitation, to surrender even the personality of a satellite, to rush headlong to a union that secured enlargement of the sun by the quenching and absorption of the star. And for this, his only punishment was the refusal, incredible, presumptuous, on the part of a succession of chosen stars to surrender, to rush, to be absorbed. His utmost penalty was the decree that he must be content with the indifferent attendance of a weary moon whose own light had grown cold and who avowed an allegiance at the most, dutiful, quite disillusioned, and granted because of a pressure that amounted to compulsion.

Externally his situation is prosperous and respectable. He remains an aristocrat of wealth and station, “the humour of whom,” as his own author says,[141] “scarcely dimples the surface and is distinguishable but by very penetrative, very wicked imps, whose fits of roaring below at some generally imperceptible stroke of his quality, have first made the mild literary angels aware of something comic in him,” and whose figure therefore never becomes palpably absurd. Only by the “detective vision” of the imps is he seen poised on the pinnacle of absurdity, while the Pecksniffs and Becky Sharps of the world cluster around its base.

The poetic justice of this comedy in narrative is perfect because the pit the victim falls into is one of his own digging and the digging is of his own volition (popularly speaking, without reference to the metaphysics of determinism). From the first moment of Sir Willoughby’s philandering with Lætitia Dale to the last unlucky turning of the key in young Crossjay’s room, all was spontaneous, a long list of self-indulgences that turned into self-avengers. It was not essential that he should play upon the sentimental romanticism of his adoring feminine neighbor; nor that he should protest so emphatically to Clara that he never could by any possibility bring himself to marry Lætitia; nor that he should himself provide a witness to his overcoming of that boasted impossibility,—and make the sacrifice for nothing after all,—when the absence of a witness would have saved the day for him. But having done all these things he had to pay the price, though it rendered him bankrupt in vanity, and for him that was bankruptcy indeed.

Yet for all that he is food for mirth, one must yield to a lurking sympathy for the unhappy Patterne. A wound is a wound and may cause exquisite pain, even if inflicted only on self-love. A Pecksniff and a Becky are invulnerable; he is protected from pelting rain by his own oiliness, she by her inimitable faculty for borrowing umbrellas. Lætitia was indeed finally secured as Sir Willoughby’s umbrella, but not before he had been alarmingly threatened if not actually soaked.