Playing play and games: Structure and meaning in the novels of Charles Dickens

Robert H Sirabian, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation uses play as a theory of cultural and literary interpretation to examine the novels of Charles Dickens. Although play has been discussed in Dickens studies in terms of language, theater, and imagination, little attention has been paid to play as an activity that characters shape according to their own needs in order to create identity. Play does not refer simply to frivolous, imaginary activities that are isolated from real life. Instead, play, reality, and culture are coextensive; a questioning of play requires a questioning of reality and culture. The dissertation initiates a theoretical discussion of the nature and characteristics of play. It then defines several types of play and games that occur in Dickens's novels. While play is often taken as a synonym for games, games are more accurately viewed as complex types of play. Johan Huizinga views play as separate from "ordinary life," emphasizing play's spontaneity, structure, and gratuitousness, but Jacques Erhmann demonstrates that "reality" is not a fixed, static background against which play can be measured. Mikhail Bakhtin describes the carnivalesque as absorbing and disrupting both the real and ideal, shaped according to a certain pattern of play. These concepts of play remove the restrictive, hierarchical opposites of work/play and reality/play. As more complex forms of play, games are, as Michael Oriard suggests, a meeting of work and play in a social context. Because play and games simplify life and offer structure and meaning, they shape the attitudes and organization of social systems, but the structure and meaning play promises may be temporary. Following the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, one may conclude that games do not always offer symmetrical structures or subjective intent. The predictability of action and the certainty of outcome is often altered or deferred in play, and players are not always at the center of play. In Our Mutual Friend, Jenny Wren mediates her identity with the reality of an urban environment through play, but in Nicholas Nickleby Sir Mulberry Hawk becomes trapped in the male world of romance games that create the illusion of power and control.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Palmer, Purdue University.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature

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