LANGUAGE ON THE LOOSE 39Pecksniff ’s investment in denying that his view of the world is “offensive
and defensive” also raises a question of motive. Unlike his fellow imposter
Montague Tigg, he does not have to scrounge for shillings; unlike Mrs. Gamp
he is not a working-class woman who recommends her imaginary respect-
ability through an imaginary friend. Except for the architect’s fees and his
scramble for old Martin Chuzzlewit’s money, Pecksniff ’s verbal machinations
are gratuitous, rather like Bounderby’s in Hard Times. Why is it necessary for
Bounderby to declare repeatedly that he was born in a ditch and kept in an
eggbox? He could be an equally rich and nasty employer without that myth of
origin. Such portraits attest to Dickens’s interest in the very fine line between
the old vice, hypocrisy, and what we might now call narcissistic strategies of
self-defense—strategies intimately known to Dickens, that emerged from his
creative mind in the form of self-parodic exaggeration. Pecksniff parodies
the language of sentiment and Bounderby attempts to literalize the story of
the self-made man; both roles are familiar parts of Dickens’s repertoire. More
important, he knows that his characters need their offensive and defensive
delusions in order to exist. Though their stories are exposed, they are inca-
pable of change; once punctured, their balloons of hot air just fill up again.
Talking Fathers
Dickens invented plenty of other figures who solicit power through exag-
gerated linguistic parody: for example, the hilarious romantic sentimentality
of Mr. Mantalini in Nicholas Nickleby keeps his wife on the string despite his
caddish behavior, while the absurdly unctuous religiosity of Mr. Chadband
in Bleak House paralyzes everyone who is forced to listen. The more exco-
riating line of talkers can be traced from Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield
through Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, and finally to Mr. Dorrit in Little
Dorrit. These major studies are especially personal for Dickens because they
raise questions of knowledge and self-knowledge that arise from the blurring
of lines between himself and John Dickens. In revealing the fraudulence of
the parental rhetoric, the son exposes the father, but he is able to do so only
because he inherits precisely the gift for language he wants to expose. With
the entrance of Mr. Micawber, long recognized as a partial portrait of John
Dickens, the link between rhetorical excess and the extortion of money from
others also comes into focus as a prominent aspect of the talker’s power to
control his audience.
Micawber himself is guilty of nothing more than getting his friends’ sig-
natures on Bills of Exchange (promises to pay) that he then sells to bill dis-