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Pathos
Definition of Personification
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Public-House Come Alive:
The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, the novel’s “dropsical” public-house, is not the only subject that takes a life of its own in Our Mutual Friend. The public-house—which “impends” over the water—gets personified through its terror like that of a “faint-hearted diver.” Its structure does, too. Book 1, Chapter 6 personifies the building down to its very frame:
The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, partitions, floors and doors, of the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, seemed in its old age fraught with confused memories of its youth. In many places it had become gnarled and riven, according to the manner of old trees; knots started out of it; and here and there it seemed to twist itself into some likeness of boughs. In this state of second childhood, it had an air of being in its own way garrulous about its early life. Not without reason was it often asserted by the regular frequenters of the Porters, that when the light shone full upon the grain of certain panels, and particularly upon an old corner cupboard of walnut-wood in the bar, you might trace little forests there, and tiny trees like the parent tree, in full umbrageous leaf.
The wood—which "garrulously" enters its “second childhood”—acquires human-like features under Dickens’s narration. The public-house’s frame recounts its childhood through its knotty grain, capable of remembering the past and sharing it with the regular frequenters. In this moment as elsewhere, the novel invests the inanimate with agency and character. Through personification, the novel finds life where it might be least expected.
The wood in the public-house is just one of many instances in which the characters’ inner states reflect upon the objects of their surroundings. In some of Dickens’s other novels, houses stare back at city passersby and the church bells mirror a miser’s holiday grumpiness. In a story that is about grappling with difficult pasts, the wood with its “confused memories of its youth” neatly captures the struggle of its characters. Charley tries banishing his childhood from memory; John Harmon takes on multiple alter-egos in his hopes of reviving it. The late Mr. Harmon’s legacy looms large in the novel, even after his death. The wood of the public-house suggest that, like the little forests patterned in its grain, the past can never truly be evaded.
Book 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Silver Platters:
In Book 1, Chapter 11, Dickens’s personification adds a touch of whimsy to a character and his possessions who are not whimsical. Humor has no place in Mr. Podsnap’s self-respecting household, and yet the novel manages to slip in mischievous fantasy as the family celebrates Georgiana’s 18th birthday:
A corpulent straddling epergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt-cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel they ate.
Pompousness, this scene suggests, holds for possessions as with owners. Dickens personifies the trinkets in the Podsnap household to reflect the characteristics of their owners. Like Mr. Podsnap’s size, the epergne is “corpulent” and the salt-cellars “pot-bellied.” And like Mr. Podsnap’s insufferable pompousness, the wine-coolers parade their sentiments to the guests. The cutlery “widened the mouths of the company,” as though making literal sense of “shoving down one’s throat.” Personification makes characters inseparable from their belongings.
In a scene vaguely reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast’s talking candles and clocks, Dickens’s dining instruments toy with an unsympathetic character. With spirits of their own, the salt-cellars point out the facetiousness of a character so seemingly devoid of it. Mr. Podsnap is ponderous and moralizing; his human-like silver spoons are not. The novel’s personification also challenges the Victorian movement towards realism. Amid a growing emphasis on “real life” and the ordinary, Dickens’s imaginative impulse resists the everyday.
Related Themes:
Book 3, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Animate London:
Our Mutual Friend engages its surroundings every bit as much as its characters. Dickens’s restless imagination personifies buildings, wood planks, and the Thames. In Book 3, Chapter 1, he even applies this to an entire city:
It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither [...] From any point of the high ridge of land northward, it might have been discerned that the loftiest buildings made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea[.]
Dickens’s “animate London” dismantles the boundaries between objects and humans. The novel’s flight of fantasy remakes the city as an active participant within the narrative. London here smothers under its own “foggy sea,” “blinking, wheezing, and choking” amid vaporous soot. Our Mutual Friend personifies the city’s individual elements, too. London’s buildings struggle to peek through the foggy sea and its gas lamps sputter while the sun itself seems to have left.
London’s haziness previews Fledgeby’s shady dealings. But its personification also sets the chapter’s mood. The city’s life-like character adds to the lurking sense of mystery. The novel’s personification recasts its places as beings capable of surveillance. Public-houses feel emotions and observe the people around them. With its “smarting eyes” and “irritated lungs,” London seems as life-like as its human inhabitants.
Paragraphs later, Dickens writes about the “eyes of this history” that follow Riah westward through London, and even his own work literally springs to life. In de-familiarizing the everyday world, Dickens introduces the reader to the unknown and, ultimately, the uncertain.
Related Themes:
