The Language Prism.
There is another side of language to the empirical principles outlines in the previous two essays. There is always also that deep problem about the kind and nature of meaning. Meaning is such a weird idea. The idea that something has a fixed application, or apparent apriori propriety to is use, is to the empirical, whose world always beautifully bound up in becoming otherwise the weirdest of thoughts. Moreover the idea that this application somehow ties into a deep reality, a deep ‘thingness’ in the world, is at once strange but also very sad. Here one thinks yet again of Little Dorrit mediating on the nature of Pisa, in a letter to Clennam. To quote in full.
She says “Old as these cities are this is hardly s curious, to my reflections, as that they should have been in their places all through those days when I did not even know of the existence of more than two or three of them, and when I scarcely knew of anything outside our old walls. There is something melancholy in it, and I don’t know why. When we went to see the famous leaning tower of Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings near it looked so old, and the earth and sky looked so young, and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could not at first I could not at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought ‘Oh, how many times when the shadow of the wall was falling on our room, and when we heard that weary tread of feet was going up and down the yard- oh how many times was this place as quiet and lovely as it is today.’
It is possible best to start here in the middle of this a paragraph, in the old and young. The world is young to th empirical little Dorrit. The sky and earth always young, The sunlight, always reborn. What is old is Pisa, is manmade. It is the permance of the building, its obvious history, of a world before little Dorrit. This before is itself not a simple ‘oh this was history’. It is rather the case that what occupies Little Dorrit’s mind is not history itself (which she feels, as any good empiricist must, was simply full of people and things like her), but rather the existence of what she now sees n its solemnity and beauty, while she was (and was in her poverty and knew it no. Pisia was always there, always heartlessly looking beautiful in the sun. irrespective of the humans which are caught up by its shadow. It shadow might then appear soft and gentle. It might appear to be nothing more than a beautiful experince, and yet within just this shadow pain lies. This softness is callous. It has the callousness of a meaning pregiven. Meaning who supports it is not reality (the new sky and earth), but rather the showy gloss of society whose meaning as Mrs Merdle says is so very had to explain to the young). Hence the sadness Amy felt, the intimacy she is invited into, the intimacy of the shadow, is also a another level no intimacy at all.
The combination of old and new, of permenant man made artefact and gossamer sensations of light and warmth, is a mockery of the reality which Little dorrit fees matter so much more (and which always crowds out her mind). That is the thought that is of Lodon, which all it greyness and all its priviation, did not set up walls as something beautiful, something demanding veneration. On the contrary the prison in london, was Little Dorrit thinks honest. It claimed o be no more than it was. A prison from which she could issue out on endlessly little adventures and schemes. The walls, of language contained her father, and yet, in containing a world (here family), allowed her the freedom to move beyond that world. The permenancy therefore in this case has a real purpose and value. But this is not the case in Pisa. There the structure, the wall has been torn aside from all useful function.
It has been veritably pitched into history itself. It is become a scrap of history, and being historical. A being historical, a being a part of society, of being always there that everyone else must then accord to and with. The heartlessness of the gentle shadow.
Here in a perfect crystal (or moving or velvet of a shadow), is the power of meaning upon experience. Meaning’s mystery does not lie upon what was there (although it implicated it), so much as in demanding that subsequent experience as and when it happens accords the mystery of a man made construction (the baroque interface of language), as if that language head heartless been their throughout the history of the experience itself. The soveriegnty of experience is then not dethroned, or even strictly caught, so much as converted into the politics of the shadow. That is to the politics of representing something utterly indifferent to it, which it must think
The Shadow moreover is of cause configured between the natural empirical realities of sky and earth, and the hard reality of the man made construction (which is always there, always old). It takes the newness of one and blends it with the apparent permenance of the other (here of course one needs to remember that this is Pisa, with its leaning tower). Meaning with its reference to an ultimately man made other becomes then given as a trick of the light, and a trick of sadness. A feeing that there is a permanence out here, and one inscribed in something, is some experience, and yet that inscription is inseperable from regret, and only giveble within societies ‘Prism’.
The contrast is then again of course with the two kids of shadow; The shadow in the wall of the Marshalsea that opened on to the threading feet; and a Shadow that testified to a shifting world beyond itself. and the shadow of Pisa, the shadow which grabbed attention all to itself. A contrast which runs right to the deep heart of language itself. the contrast between the flexible language of Bapiste, with its shifting gauze and threads of meaning, and the language of Italy itself (which Little Dorrit finds so hard to learn). Language as means to intimacy and friendship, or language as it demands one accede to its history, to the sense that it is, and is to be thought. To its demands that it is what has meaning (and can cite all the power of Mrs. General, the women, who with her prunes and prisms fights against the empirical nature of language itself). Meaning imposes a degree of correct use on empricism (which it can only experience as sadness).
Moreover meaning in making this move demands that language is learnt. Little Dorrit finds learning Italian and French a hard task (while her siblings excel in it). To learn such language is to put herself under the power of Mrs General, a relationship she of course does not find easy. More problematically, this relation demands she confronts exactly that which troubles her most about society: that old empirical problem of value. That is, of just trusting to the words (and letting them stand out as something which ought to have a meaning, something whose meaning is to be given).
Mrs General, the instructor on empty language, is a women who always pitches herself on te moral highground, in which she has a certain series of received opinion (which are like groove or rails) aroud which ;other peoples opinions; can be run. Difficutly is then dismissed (it is looked in a cupboard and denied). Her face likewise lacks any marked feature (such as winkles or lines or colu) as she lacks the mind to support any individuation. Moreover she was a women form who nothing unsurprised could happen.. No accident A maxim which she codified by wisjing to make language turn turrn upon the experession of the fact (and those that were flattering) as much as any meaning. To say runes and prism, were good for the face.
Mrs General, that teacher of Italian (and French) is therefore clearly very much the opposite pole to that of Bapiste. Language it has ceased to be about expression. It has ceased to be convivial, and peppered with rich and warm encounters and feelings and intimacies. On the contrary it has become the stuff of snow, or a face without a line and a mind without anything other that empty received opinion. A place were groves of lanaguage or opinion (like the cod excercises in a language book) run round and round in circles.
The negative Bpaiste constantly orbits Europe (much as he did). But only orbits it to make division between Langauges and peoples (French and Italian). She never experiences anything, and certainly never developes of Bapiste does here exepreicnes into a single language of expression. Mrs Genral in effect answers the implicit problem of the example of the shadow. What eality is, might be configures in the man made as it is reflected within the empirical (shadow of a toppling tower), but that does not tell you what is made (and how). That is how that reality itself (which one can only know in reflection0 is made. mrs General gives the answer. Language is given in purest (and emptiest form) in the marshalling of opinions and the coordination of empty words. Language is given in the lack of experience, which itself claims to be all experience. A Language available on request to a wider society (which takes in up, and I coordinated by it). A language indeed which always at all times reflects the needs of that great amorphous thing called society. And yet, language is of course utterly different from the social itself. mrs General is not then simply a part of high society her position is more perilous. She is a functionary, a women who needs to be paid (in spite of the fact that she refuses to mention the terms). A women whose gift moreover lies in begin able to make any price she sets (or rather sets only in implication) seem like a bargain.
Language is therefore not simply within society. It is rather that which society on the one hand values, as inside itself, and yet knows in that being inside, in spite of all the pretense to the contrary, is not quite the same. Or better it at once sits on the inside, it is welcomed into every exchangeof asociety (and ceases to work the minute that status is challenged). And yet in these exchanges, it sit without opinions of its own beyond the abstraction of the broadest terms the broadest received thoughts ( for word carry the most vapid of opinions in themselves, but they carry them none the less). To these vapid words is then also the science of decorum, which from its position on the inside to traces. A tracing which is not in the form of pure writing (for nothing is written on mrs General’s face: No truth is there). But rather it is in endless pahrses (prune prism) which coordinate one behaviour, and make it suitable to the ways of wider society, make it fit to the world of empty communication.
The Tower, which shadow falls on the square, is therefore built by two element on the one hand the creation in language of opinions which run like grooves: opinions, which are words, preclude thoughts. That require a series of thoughts in the naming to follow a certain ser of tracks. These tracks are then correct in a grammar or propriety, as mrs genral issues orders coordinating the sense in which the little empty opinions of which she is the lord are tirelessly deployed. Language is therefore a meaning o given in empty opinion (which is repetition feels so present), and a coordination of that opinion in the interest of something else, that is of society. Mrs General’s status is society is likewise at once at the heart of it, and yet also in the creation of these two elements its judge. The person who secretly abstracts its to features (empty meanings, coordinated in the interests of itself alone), and foists them on everyone else.
To be a general of language, like being a general of an army, is to be in an odd position. At once apparently a part of that of which one is caught up in, and yet fundamentally different from it; in that one as general, endlessly abstractly reckons up and counts units (be they soildiers or or words) whose value one hinks one knows – andfrom whichvalues to devised schemes for intlinking, weaving webs tocatch society within.
Mrs General of course then adds an extra dimension to this scheme. She is also a hypocrite. She is of course of herself grasping, and mercenary (but ht is merely one of societies received opinions). More importantly she is also wishing to deploy her empty strategies to capture that man of pure society ‘Mr Dorrit’. That Mr Dorrit falls for these emptiest of schemes is more rooted in his desperate need to be ‘in with society (and the vacuum that lies at is hearts base) than it does say anything in particular about mrs Genral allure. More critically mr Dorrit is prevented from proposing by his own death. Death (and merdle) thereby stands between the schemes of Mrs General, the strategies she endlessly coordinates, and this real empirical reality . Lanaguse is never simply real (which of course why it des not value Amy at all0. It coordinates, is rotinezes, but it does no live. Hence then Amy’s deep problem in learning Italians and French. She cannot learn them as empty prisms (or prunes) in whose gauze meaning is simply caught. On the contrary she can only learn the language fro inside as it were, once she knows the people. She can only learn the language as it involves empirical exerience, that is as she has empiricial exerience of it herself.
Here then are two deep principles for rational language’s relations with the empirical. Such a language creates meanng as an external, (yet man made) shadow, which lies upon experience, forcing it to register an interest which be defintiion cares for that experience not at all. Experience in such a prism is made to turn on the problem of meaning (a heresy to Little Dorrit) and not the other way around. This man made edifice is however itself a product of some other, by definition empty, an emptying process. It is then the machination of Mrs General, the endlessly interlinking, from decorum or received opinions and thoughts. Each though almost empty in itself (or rather thread bare), and utterly incapable of deep surprise or even any difficulty (as meaning denies its lack). And yet when taken together these irrelevant. Opinions and threadbare thoughts, make a prison, or army, which marches of in the course of meaning, and demands the world accord to its whims or meanings: an accord the world accedes to, on the single condition that the coordinator’s status remains problematic and external to the system it coordinates (or only within it as a general is within their army).
But then what of the content of those words. That is what makes them so very different from the lived experience in which Amy excels. Here in the letters two further principles are developed. Firstly, and obviously a word is in itself (beyond the threadbare thought) empty, and utterly vacuous. And yet in the vacuity phony emotions also lie. Or better an affect 9as Hume knew well0 can in words be endlessly eches and twisted in the mind it can become as if a love (albeit a fa anf flaccid one). On the other words, empirically, it is needless to say cut many ways at once. The same conversation carries always a surplus of meaning, always other things it might have meat. In tem of Hume therefore perhaps on might say, it is the peculiar power of words to invert (in part – and in the name of meaning) the viviacious d the intense. Expereince, that is words become as if intense. Each meaning has others in a way synomous to passions (hic always contain others). While at the same time a feeling becomes fixed in itself, and yet then as it is fixed it lingers curiously within the mind. Making the mind come back to it again and again is some dogged manner (and across a number of stagy dramas: or even staged drama.
Both these principles are clearly developed within the course of Little Dorrit.
To tackle the problem of a little passions being taken p and made, through words to go such a very long way, first. The obvious example of this happening in Little Dorrit is Mr Merdle’s step son, called appropriately Mr Sparkler (for he does anything other than Sparkler). A man who lakes wit or looksor any redeem feature other than his step fathers great wealth. A man who then and the strength of that wealth gets himself ‘involved’ with a number of unsuitable women (as of whom he thinks of as remarkable), and which included Fanny ) little Dorrt’s sster) in her poverty. Perhaps what made the beautiful and proud fanny different was that she refused his hand in he name of her own gentlility (and thereby proved herself not, in this respect at least grasping).
This move made in the name of society itself kept the chink of Fanny alive within the flaccidity of Sparkler’s mind. And yet that chink itself was to be hidden. That is, as Fanny notes it is very important o society that S no one admit that her and Spakler had know each other before a(and therefore that fanny was poor). I became therefore an act of faith that Sparkler would pretend to be stricken by her for the first time one seeing her in Italiay. Moreover this ‘opinion’ or viewpoint is foistered on Sparkler b the professed (and aspired to0 vafalsenss of boh Fanny and Sparkler’s mother mrs Merdle. These two rival belles of society (whose in their quarrelling blight Sparkler’s life), agree in this one thing. That the origin of their ‘involve remain a secret’. What hence the conditions upon which the love is set up meet the conditions discussed about. On the one hand the love related to a hidden ‘meaning’ (or better is a thing of shadows) therefore. it is seen in actions(action which therefore surprise Little Dorrit, who finds herself quite at sea in the face of this society wedding). On the other this shadow is necessititates by the acion of society, which has blended in its own manner the facet of attraction 9which happened elsewhere)with the received opinions of prism and prune, and done so in such a way that Sparkler is placed upon the track of courtship immediately and at once and without any true experience initiating his ‘love’. He calims therefoe that Fanny has no ‘nensense’ abou there. A claim that lasts into here walth, when she clearly has a very great deal of nonesne.
Langauge therefore refounds a truth as a shaodow to be caught, in an allusion to a world which cannot be, an yet hose meaning has been abstracted adequately by the rues of rules (and its many great rigours). Sparkler them adds into this equation a dogged quest of his own. This quest is then made in the name of the single feeling he has frozen within himself. A process with seral aspects of its own.
Firstly Sparkler beyond his unuttered (and embraced) affection really has no conversational power, He runs out of words therefore rather quickly (in spite of the having elusive thoughts he cannot pin down). He is a man therefore frozen within a particular word (or serious of words), unable to escape it, and the passion it prolongs.
Secondly he I haunted by his mother but also by his friendship with Gowan. Both of whom reflect his own process. His mother is therefore described as having the at of making something appear some in account, and yet in that very smallness actually enhancing its value. She rules at counterpoint therefore to her son. For him the smallest of feelings is writ large across his mind. For her that very smallness (and the consequences which follow from it) are enhanceble to a very great degree. Or better she makes everyone else accord to that enhancement, which is for her external (an externality conveyed in the snowiness of her bosom). Sparkler therefore runs within his own mind that which is external in the mind in behaviour of his mother.
His other provoker/bete noir is given within Gowan. Gown, n the name of being is friend delights in drawing him out into saying arrant nonsense and folly. Gowan thereby reveles in the folly of Sparkler, humilating Fanny and amusing soceity. Once again therefore a model is made of the principle of sparkling. To sparkle is to make a little light go such a very long way. A process which while internal for itself, immediately impacts upon an external world, where in the interest of self aggranidisment, or comedy.
Thirdly Sparkler is a clear case for the circumlocution office. On the one hand here he is clearly an interloper. He lacks the apparent first role of circumlocuation: the ability to misuse language (I this he is external to the process, and only bought into it at the insistence of Mr Merdle). However he ends up, after the death of Merdle being a one of its true acolytes. In a sense here of course he finds his spiritual home. There is nothing about him, that is a sense is not circumlocuted. That is in spite `(or because) of his best endeavours, his words do not have the meaning or value he wants then to. They are always taken up by others. He is therefore the natural cog to the circumlocuation wheel as others take up and misuse his words words. Hence perhaps his nick name being ‘man mountain’ is strangely applicable. Like Gulliver he is taken a strong fool, whose power can be used, and used in spite of his abilities.
Thirdly and arising from the previous principles there is a real forlornness is sparlker’s courtship Fanny, who mind is of course active is at once humiliated by this stupidity as he she is flattered by his attentions (and the chance it gives her to wage war on her old enemy Mrs Merdle. She leads then Sparkler a merry dance that anyone else would not accept. Persecuting him at time while at others flattering him, in her indecision. To rivet an idea within a passion, is therefore to be stretched across a bewildering complexity of feelings and thoughts: Or better in a sense one looses control of ones life, which becomes a series of stage managed events, each illustrative in their own way of their passion, and each utterly irresovable. It is not a coincidence that the logic of the rich life, sees sparkler and Fanny other at elaborately staged plays/ operas, or those other classic performances the formal ‘state’ or even family dinner. Sparkler reality therefore resolves into a series oftableus, in which th word that sums him up is played out, and then played again, without any hope of resolution or resolve.
What eventually resolves the situation is appropriately enough Mrs General. Once Fanny becomes aware that Mrs genral is likely to catch their father would have been the indeed the case had Mr Dorrit live), the she becomes determined to esacpe, nd marriage to Sparkler is the obivous answer. Hence to tumble into a thought, upon which a passion is necessarily asserted, is only resolvable from outside, and by the unattendend action of the empty form of language itself, which hooks up consequences such that they demand a resolution is some form or manner.
In these cases a pure form no doubt of the effect of freezing passion within a word is exhibited. The key to this effect perhaps, lies in its comedy. To be frozen within a world, to be caught within the pun of a determining passions, is to be taken onto a mind which is so very funny to everyone else. It is therefore to be absorbed by an all consuming problem or passion and to be done so irrespective of the consequences. A mind so configured is dragged across tawdry events in which what is repeated is neither purely the same or different. Or better, the passion that freezes itself into the word might essentially be one and the same, and yet that simulitude only really given in conjuring the passion anew in each case the question the mind asks is that old paranoid question – given I am in love or hate or anxiety (for I know the stat is me at the moement0, how will that love resolve itself. what exactly is it that I am anxious about at the moment. A question which in the name of love consumes Sparkler. The only answer to this series of stale old drama is that that old drama queen language itself intervenes in some scheme of its own, making connections which had felt so right and proper (or at least what must be done) suddenly improper and to be moved beyond. .
But language has another clear empirical aspects. Words meaning (once one understands that word are indeed that which has meaning), is clearly a highly nuanced affair. It is not enough to simply say that the meaning of the words are carried in the context. Of course they are, and yet that context is itself given in empirical experience, and as it is so given, will, as it then consorts the meaning of words (whose point of departure is what cannot be simply said what is beyond experience itself), Words therefore as they invoke meaning at once create a context in the shadow of the empirical for that meaning, but also in this invocation, allow othe rmeanigns also to exist, and exist ven as they are spoken. Moreover this shifting of words is of course the very experience of speaking itself.
Conversations therefore almost necessarily exist on many registers (and with varying degrees of complexity or depth). The same words may or may not mean different things (and might to different people). The punning involved here being all the more complex because although the meaning it invokes is more or less constant (sentences always have two meaning) exactly what and how those meanings then manifest themselves is anything but fixed,> I is rather that strangest of productions, an empirical concern (and therefore made in a particular conversation and between the understanding to two individuals), and yet what that understanding itself is, is not of itself a facet of experience itself (as it can never be fully or formally stated).
My, who is ‘infamously’ (with here sister at least) quite unable to understand the politics of society, is a past master at the complexities of tone and register here. She forms then an immediately understanding with Mrs Gown (nee Meagles) Arthurs old flame. An understanding which is augmented in the exchange of a note which allows the unfortunate Minne Gown to communicate the shere complexity of her feelings for Arthur, and the regret she ensures she herself never feels fro marrying the wrong man (that is Gowan). As well, as encompassing a mutual loathing (which one again need not be state) for Blandios (who has palled up with the odious Gowan). Conversation becomes therefore always about what is never simply sayable - but is made to utterly resolve around what is not quite to be said or could never be said (and yet must be still understood, and understood across many registers), and other creative possilbity.
In becoming at this point as if intensive, the words thesmvles asl of course take on the guize of a parallel world , a world tha init itself live or every really experienced. The Jump between the meaning of words, the lateral moves, are then not quite the jump between empirical experience. Experience of course always says what is there, and never what cannot be said (its power lies then in finding endless news ways to saying things), Experience, as it is confused with meaning at least, works in a profoundly serial manner. Words of course in contrast take to themselves temvles quality of errupting in parallel, and across numerous sliding meanings (some of which it will then develop).
The effect of this last move is at once to denude reality even as it is words somehow enshrined it. That is, once he meaning is carried in the words. The world Little Dorrit is forced to, when capture by society is a strangely restrained on. She sit in Rome with the egregious Gown (the artists of the double meaning), watching him ‘paint’ the odious Blandios, while talking and being with “minnie’ (or Pet). That is, reality is restricted, cut of, to a very bad painting of a vain man (or identity itself). Here it is worth noting that although the painting itself is indeed awful, the figure Blandios represents, the assassin, is of course not utterly inaccurate in itself. The . The ‘meaning’ and its shadow in pant, might be trite, and yet in that meannig something real, something of the plot is hidden. All the more so as in the course of these painting Blandios and Gowan’s faithful Dog lion fall out, leading to Blandios supposed (by Pet ad little Dorrit) assassination of the dog itself. in this case therefore reality might be reduced to a mere picture (and a bad one at that), and yet that picture as it is composed by the artists of word play, and double meaning Gowan (who character will be analysised elsewhere), it still productive ad creative. The assassin’s character is still revealed, even if the assassination is only now carried out upon Dogs, and morals.
However it is not the case that this relationship has to be quite as ‘productive’. The worldwhose meaning is demanded in worsa is fundamentally a social phenomena: What do you Mean? Is therefore a question society asks.- and does ot exect or desire) a complex answer to. Indeed it is worth ery quickly noting here that society (when pulled asunder from circumlocuatino at least) revealed the depth of the serial. Society operates therefore in through a calendar of events, one impacting upon the other. Te double meanings it has – the side patterns are all carried in the artifice of word (mrs Gowan says many things in there encounter with Mr Meagles, and yet ensures only on thing is talked of0. to paint according to society is therefore to paint the dignity and honour of the position. This is then how Mr Dorrit himself values art. To be painted is a ting one does. To be painted by the son of a gentlewomen is a thing one prefers. It matter not that the painting is lousy. That is not how it is judged. The meaning lies not in the paucity of the impression (in this case it is divorce from any additional parrallel connections). The meaning lies in the rich extra series of dimensions that this painting impels one into and through. the world is reduced to a flicker of meaning, onto which the grand society of words, and their double meaning grafts itself.
However it goes without saying that without the initially ‘scrap’ of dazed and confused meaning, without the paints or the marriage, or the smile, or social occasion the parallel world of words would not itself coalesce . And yet even here the relatinoship is complex. On the one hand it is clear that ’meaning’ itself is reduced to occasion, and encounters, which are are meaningless in themsvles, but redultwith meaning elsewhere. On the other hand, the meaning itself can only be so split of from the rich world of experience, if its own creative energy (as experience ) is crystalized into something else – namely money. Money stalks society as the truth it cannot allow or say, and yet without which it would not be. That is one cannot simply strip out the meaning of the world, without housing aspects of the splitting off, of the ‘experience’ beyond meaning, is a form, which while it mirrors society (it runs in parallel) is not of it (Mr Merdle is not really a part of the world he lives in, Mr Meagle is firml y not ). Expereinc breeds other world beyond its meaning . Mr Merdle has therefore a mysterious compliant. A compliant which would appear to imply a meaning, and yet it is a meaning which can never be simply found within (soceity) which demands a world of meaning. It is then only given in Merdle;s death (when it is discovered that he was more a conman and less a banker.
A little Dorrit, caught within the domain of society (which feels so unreal to her),catches up word use in a paradox. Words always say other things their apparent meanings. The cut all ways at once, and across all conflicting and contrasting layers and levels. And yet all these level and layers and levels are themselves only thinkable within the context of a ‘meaning’ (that is experience stripped of its most creative element), The advantage of course in the stripping out involved within this procedure is that the ‘meant’ is, as torn from its native viviacity, reduced to the most empty form of an idea (and least of itself vivid). Once this move is meaning, the same set of words will be freed up to conjure up their own series of meanings, each with their appropriate images, andand each image of itself will be of the same strength. That is their will be no preference on the diamin of meaning at least, for the images conjured.
It is this last move which is of course so complex. The native vivacity of the experience itself is occluded (or better it is siphoned off ) into the world of money. The context of meaning (that is which meanings crowd it not the mind at any one time), then becomes the provenance of the elaborate rituals – and careful construction (which is perhaps why society is so hard to explain to the young).the word might mean anything, and it is only the dark arts of ritual, and circumlocution, that hold their meanings down: that screw them into social conversation. Society there at once strips out the vivid experiences as it sets itself self up meaning as its chimera (or totemt). Once imagination is neutralized (or held down) society is free to play with the double meanings of words (and create for itself a domain of many meanings).
This last process in effect sets up the world of parallel meanings as itself merely yet another experiential dimension, for society to master. Custom therefore dictates which words where acceptable and which were not. It arranges nice little strings of things to say (and things that cannot be said :Prunes and Prisms), within the domain of multiple possible things said it itself has opened up. The process therefore of restricting the world, in order to create the domain which says far more that the meanings it claims to say, loops back on itself, treating the very domain of words as itself an experience to be given a meaning: this is the magic and the mystery of Curcumlocution.
Little Dorrit herself is however immune to this processes. Or better she knows that these is caught up in its consequences (and unable to do anything by live those consequences), and yet that she unable to escape their prison. The difference of poverty and wealth for hr in a sense comes down to what this imprsionment means. . In the case of poverty, the prison is the world of circumlocuation itself. That is, the world which directly hoops all words back and strips them of meaning. In a sense she is therefore freed up from meaning . She is free to wander and to experience as and when she will On the other hand in wealth a far more difficult path needs to be trodden, as each word is meant to have a meaning (even if that meaning ultimately is only prism or prunes). She is caught up therefore in mid process. Suspended, or transacted, each act and each word given at the point its meaning is being re-given elsewhere (it is of course the case that Gowan is the master of the this world of slippage, and the extra dimensions to meanings which it establishes). In its oscillations.
Words outstrip the worlds they require- that is they always say more (and patronize the world in he saying). And yet this, for Little Dorrit only intensifies another problem, if words really are so very of kilter with experience, then she wills set here self that old empirical problem of finding a new principle capable of intermeshing the two dimension together (and thereby allowing reasons back into her world, which is locked into words.
Here perhaps four different strategies come to the fore: The Identical; the tense; the lie, and the .emotion. the aim then of each other these principles is not mitigate the world of words with experience (or better to create a feed back between the two) That is their aim is to re-throw the split off demanded in society, which otherwise pollaxes Little Dorrit, rendering her a mere satellite to here all conquoring sister,. It is these principles I will examine in detail in the next essay.
Amy finds words pose a real problem form here. To be lost in them is to lost within society, and quite unable to pull herself together. Here problem here is rather a deep one. Words demand a worlds of meaning to attend upon them, an Amy left to herself knows (or cares) little about meaning. She therefore lacks a knowledge about what such words are for (and constantly is distressed or confused by their antics, or sadden by their revelation). And yet within this domain, she invents here own world of extra meanings, meaning which allow always more to be said (rather than as society ,might have it less). This additional world in itself cuts to the core of society (which can overmaster it immediately, and yet has its pretension, like Fanny Dorrit’s) revealed in it.).This domain, which Little Dorrit inhabts quite naturally, allows here then to develope her own empirical language,or rather some principles within language, to which the next essay turns.