Page 49 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes • In his essay Dream Children: A Reverie Lamb talks of personal sorrows and joys. He
gives expressions to his unfulfilled longings and desires. He readily enters into the
world of fantasy and pops up stories in front of his dream children. He relates his
childhood days, of Mrs. Field, his grandmother and John Lamb, his brother. He describes
how fun he had at the great house and orchard in Norfolk. Of his relations he gives
us full and living pictures–his brother John is James Elia of My Relations, but here is
John L-, so handsome and spirited youth, and a ‘king’. John was brave, handsome and
won admiration from everybody Charles’ grandmother Mrs. Field is the other living
picture. She was a good natured and religious–minded lady of respectable personality.
Narrator’s sweet heart Alice Winterton is the other shadowed reality. The Dream Children,
Alice and John are mere bubbles of fancy. Thus Lamb’s nostalgic memory transports
us back to those good old days of great grandmother Field. But even in those romantic
nostalgia the hard realities of life does not miss our eyes. Death, separation and suffering
inject us deep-rooted pathos in our heart. Whereas Mrs. Field died of cancer, John
Lamb died in early age. Ann Simmons has been a tale of unrequited love story of
Charles Lamb. Notably the children are millions of ages distant of oblivion and Charles
is not a married man but a bachelor having a reverie.
• In his actual life Lamb courted Ann Simmons but could not marry her, he wanted to
have children but could not have any. Thus he strikes a very pathetic note towards the
end of his essay when he puts the following word into the months of his imaginary
children, “we are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all … We are nothing,
less than nothing, dreams. We are only what might have been”. Alice is here no other
that Ann Simmons the girl Lamb wanted to marry, but failed to marry her. In fact, the
subtitle of the essay–‘A Reverie’ which literally means a daydream or a fantasy–prepares
us for the pathos of the return to reality although the essay begins on a deceptively
realistic note.
• Although Dream Children begins on a merry note, the dark side of life soon forces
itself upon Lamb’s attention and the comic attitude gives way to melancholy at the end
of the essay. Throughout the essay Lamb presents his children in such a way that we
never guess that they are merely figments of his imagination – their movements, their
reactions, their expressions are all realistic. It is only at the end of the essay that we
realize that the entire episode with his children is a daydream. We are awakening by
a painful realization of the facts.
• Lamb’s humour was no surface play, but the flower plucked from the nettle of peril
and awe. In fact, Lamb’s humour and pathos take different shapes in different essays.
Sometimes it is due to his own unfulfilled desires, sometimes it is due to the ill-
fortunes of his relatives and friends and on some other occasions it is due to his
frustration in love etc. If his Poor Relations begin humorously of a male and female
poor relation, he later gives us a few pathetic examples of poor relations that had to
suffer on account of poverty. Again in his The Praise of Chimney Sweepers Lamb
sways between humour and pathos while describing the chimney sweepers. Similarly
the essay Dream Children is a beautiful projection of Lamb’s feelings and desire to
have a wife and children of his own. It is humorous that in his dream he is married
and has two children of his own while he had a disheartening frustration in love. Thus
Lamb has painted both the lights and shades of life in full circle. His is the criticism
of life in pathos and humours.
1. Charles Lamb entitled the essay “Dream Children” because he never married and
naturally never became the father of any children. The children he speaks of in the
essay were actually the creations of his imagination or fancy.

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