Creative Writing and Repetition: Bolton English Tuition GCSE (Dickens and Uriah Heep) #Lockdown #Writing Tips

Dickens and Duality: Why hypocrisy is great to explore in writing!

Introduction.

Last time, we explored the use of repetition as a key to unlocking character, particularly through the perspective of a narrator who ‘knows’ the truth. We agreed that the more repetition was deployed, the more ironic and often symbolic its meaning became. And that using repetition carefully gives the reader a strong sense of the ‘heart’ of the character without too much preamble or scaffolding. I wonder too if we often repeat what we have not resolved or come to terms with, so that repetition is a form of remembrance.

We act out, often compulsively, what we have not allowed ourselves to know or remember.

This week I thought we might continue with exploring repetition and look some more at Dickens, when he utilises direct speech ‘tags’ as a means to explore the psychological states of his characters, particularly the tension (or crisis),  between the public and private self.  

In both extracts below, the characters are deemed ‘villains’ in their respective novels, as they are misleading others purposely for gain.  Yet the conflict between their inner/outer selves, between their authentic and inauthentic selves also seems profoundly modern and therefore very useful for our writing today.

And it is worth bearing in mind that if characters behave in seemingly hypocritical ways, could they also (sometimes ) believe their own propaganda? Has their duality buried their authenticity forever? Are they ‘lost’ in an existential way?

Task.

So let’s look at two extracts from Dickens and then you can use them as inspiration to create your own scene.

Extract A.  (David Copperfield, Uriah Heep)

Consider why we don’t find Heep’s humility convincing and whether this makes Uriah Heep a poor student of human nature or something else entirely?

When I was quite a young boy,” (he tells David Copperfield) “I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hard hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. ‘People like to be above you,’ says father, ‘keep yourself down.’ I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!

• Uriah Heep’s defining catchphrase parades his social ambition. His ‘umbleness’ is the strategic key to his attempt to unlock the Victorian social class system. Uriah performs humility as a carefully constructed tactic to gain power. ‘I took to it’ he says, for once telling the truth, owning his humility as a compulsion, as well as ‘I’ve got a little power,’ insinuating yet another truth, but this time veiling a covert, future threat to the power of others.  
• Significantly, we think we understand the purpose of Heep’s unctuous strategy even if, like David Copperfield, we may loathe him because we find him cloying and sycophantic.
• For Heep parades his ‘umbleness’ as a daily, ‘excessive’  habit, so much repeated that it requires no conscious or emotional input. It becomes pathological and empty of meaning, highlighting that Heep’s ingratiating sentiments are ‘dis-eased’ and therefore not to be trusted. Subsequently, Heep becomes a figure of fun as well as fulfilling the role of the villain in the narrative.   
• Thus, we decide that his masquerade of enthusiasm and benevolence can appear both comical and sinister because his performance is excessive.  But is that precisely the point – that Heep knowingly mocks his public via his excessive humility? In fact, is his ‘’umbleness’ in fact, a highly aggressive, intentional and palpably insincere weapon? Is he even ironizing himself from the beginning, taking revenge on society because ‘umbleness’ is his only available response so he carries it to excess in order to subvert it and retain his inner sense of worth?   This might deepen his character surely, and render Heep far more complex than a merely disposable caricature?
•  Remember too, that Heep obviously understands the workings of the world. He is an astute social critic and in a more appealing ‘body’, his ambition and speech might appear charismatic and even charming instead of creepily conniving?
• And if Heep’s ‘umble’ aspirations crave a succession of economic and romantic outcomes to transport him far beyond his ‘natural’ lower station in life, then how might these aspirations differentiate him from us?  What is really wrong with his dissatisfaction with his place in life? Is this so different from most of us?
• Are we not all, sometimes, just a little Heepish?!