Previous
Paradox
Definition of Parody
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually for comic effect. Parodies can take many forms, including fiction... read full definition
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually for comic effect. Parodies can... read full definition
A parody is a work that mimics the style of another work, artist, or genre in an exaggerated way, usually... read full definition
Chapter 28
Explanation and Analysis—The Lady Flabella:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 28, Kate and Mrs. Wititterly indulge in a novel entitled The Lady Flabella—intended by Dickens as a clear parody of the fashionable "silver fork" novels of the Victorian Era. Such novels were commonplace in middle- and upper-class English society during the mid-19th century. Dickens scrutinizes these novels in the paragraph below, deriding them for being "unexciting":
It was four in the afternoon – that is, the vulgar afternoon of the sun and the clock – and Mrs Wititterly reclined, according to custom, on the drawing-room sofa, while Kate read aloud a new novel in three volumes, entitled ‘The Lady Flabella,’ which Alphonse the doubtful had procured from the library that very morning. And it was a production admirably suited to a lady labouring under Mrs Wititterly’s complaint, seeing that there was not a line in it, from beginning to end, which could, by the most remote contingency, awaken the smallest excitement in any person breathing.
It was fairly common for so-called "women's literature"—including "silver fork" novels and the sentimental fiction of the early 1800s—to receive criticism and derision from men and women alike. "Women's literature" garnered a (misogynistic) reputation for being flighty, silly, and/or overly fanciful or "emotional." In parodying these novels, Dickens unfortunately perpetuates that misogynistic stereotype.
