Page 175 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes 22.5 Plotting of Disobedience

Job Trotter, although acting in accordance with his own master’s wishes, is essentially plotting
disobedience towards Pickwick. The Pickwick Papers is set prior to the time of conflict discussed by
Gaskell, but it is written in a time when this conflict is approaching an early peak. While Dickens
cannot explicitly describe his own society because it would not be in keeping with the setting of
his novel, he can comment on the 1830s by creating situations in his fiction representative of those
which exist in his life. Trotter’s employer, Mr. Jingle, is suggestive of the men who rise to power
in the merchant class of the nineteenth century. Like the capitalist merchant class he survives not
on established, ancestral authority, but on his wit and ability to scrape by. Also like that class, his
education is limited but his cunning is not. He feeds of the social accouterments of the aristocracy
while undermining it. His very name, Jingle, calls to mind the sound of money, the acquisition of
which is his primary interest and his only hold on his status. This recalls the fissure between the
merchant classes and the aristocracy, the latter of which could not afford the merchant class equal
status even when many of its members had accumulated more wealth.

Notes Pickwick’s struggle with Jingle reflects the struggle between the aristocracy and the
merchant class.

22.6 Class Struggle

The class struggle as represented by Jingle and Pickwick, which reflects the fight between the
aristocracy and merchant class for status during Britain’s transition to an urban economy, allows
for a comparison between their servants. The theme is that the integrity and sense of social place
of the servant class has been weakened by the Industrial Revolution. Sam Weller, in a novel set
before the nineteenth-century, represents the integrity of the servant unspoiled by the social
change. Job Trotter represents the reflection of that change in the merchant class servant. He is
cunning and disrespectful towards the aristocracy, demonstrated by his willingness to take advantage
of Pickwick’s good nature. Sam Weller’s rejection of Job Trotter and his adherence to Pickwick is
similar in motivation to Dixon’s ability to overcome the weakening influence of the industrial
revolution and retain loyalty to the Hales. Both servants realize that loyalty to the aristocracy
offers security. Dickens, like Gaskell, supports the view that the two approaches to life, that of the
landowning class and that of the merchant class, must undergo a process of becoming accustomed
to the new urban economy in which the master-servant relationship is redefined. Like Gaskell,
Dickens takes a standpoint which favors the aristocratic system. Jingle fails ultimately, having to
be saved from debtor’s prison by Pickwick. This suggests that unless the merchant class heeds the
cries of the aristocracy, and observes the success of its employer-employee relationships, the
revolution that many fear might actually occur. Pickwick himself finds his way into prison, but his
good character, his favor of moral integrity and charitibility, that is, his aristocratic traits, over
pursuit of money and success allow him a more comfortable experience in prison and an ability to
leave at will.
The imagery employed by Dickens in the two quotations above is similar to that offered by
Gaskell also. Dickens uses the image of tears, in the same way that Gaskell uses the storm, as a
signifier of the struggle between the old system and the new. As rain marks the cleansing process
in Gaskell’s image, false tears allow Sam Weller to identify the falsehood of Job Trotter, thus
allowing Sam to identify himself with Pickwick and the social order which provides him with a
sense of security.
Similarly, Dickens uses the image of good weather to denote life in the country, associated with
the aristocracy, and respect of the working class for the ruling class. The farm worker waves as the
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