Jul 13, 2013
Chapter 8—Covering a Multitude of Sins
Yes! These are the moments that make me marvel at Dickens--how aware he is of what everything he's surrounded by means and implies. I swear it's like he could see all of past and future history and cherry-picked images like this to speak to us regardless of when. (I learned the Virginia Reel in elementary school and had the same feeling!)
One of the throw-away images that struck me is when Mr Jarndyce says "... must go down the middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of..." I think of a country dance as a sort of line dance where everyone has their set steps and they know the set steps of their partners, and they go down the line until they reach the end, then go back to the top and it begins again, with no progress.