LANGUAGE ON THE LOOSE 41humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate.. .”: so begins a letter
which envisions destruction and death as the only solution to an unpaid
hotel bill (DC 17). Having the water shut off because of another unpaid
bill is “the momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a
recent collision with the Minion of Power” (DC 28). A new baby, looked
on with favor on one page, soon becomes “one more helpless victim; whose
miserable appearance may be looked for—in round numbers—at the expi-
ration of a period not exceeding six lunar months from the present date”
(DC 28). When he is genuinely upset by the machinations of Uriah Heep,
Micawber entreats his friends to leave him “to walk the earth as a vagabond.
The worms will settle my business in double-quick time” (DC 49). Nothing
cheers Micawber more than indulging in the direst formulations of distress;
humiliation disappears in the power of the exaggerated word.
The guarantee of Micawber’s essential decency is the moment when his
smooth command of syntax breaks down. After much mysterious ranting to
his friends, he finally blurts out his knowledge of his employer Uriah Heep’s
lies, cheats, and forgeries. The phrases come in little unconnected bursts,
punctuated by the explosive syllable of Heep’s name: “ ‘I’ll put my hand in no
man’s hand,’ said Mr Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing, to that degree
that he was like a man fighting with cold water, ‘until I have—blown to frag-
ments—the—a—detestable—serpent—HEEP! I’ll partake of no one’s hospi-
tality, until I have—a—moved Mount Vesuvius—to eruption—on—a—the
abandoned rascal—HEEP!’ ”(DC 49). The moment signals that Micawber is
on the side of the angels—that is, he has become a secret investigator who
will unmask the villain in public when he next comes onstage. It is a measure
of the book’s generosity that Micawber is allowed to be the unmasker rather
than the unmasked, and that his momentarily disrupted syntax is caused by
long-repressed feelings of outraged honesty. No sooner has this occurred than
a letter arrives, with syntactical powers fully restored. Once again, Micawber
is headed directly for the grave.
In a novel packed with different forms of autobiographical writing, the
alternation between Micawber’s speech making and his letter writing dis-
plays his self-representation in a constant process of oscillation between its
two extremes, as if speech and writing were engaged in separate kinds of
rhetorical appeal and did not know each other. The comedic disconnect
seems to “know” about Dickens’s own methods of relying in one moment
on language he parodies in another. Interestingly, the narrative relation to
Micawber falters just when Micawber’s speech and writing come together, in
his triumphant performance of the letter denouncing Uriah Heep. Suddenly
the narrative positions itself at a distance; David comments, “Mr Micawber’s