[E]motion in the Nineteenth Century: A Culture of Fidgets

I see the fidget as a neglected aspect of the sense of touch, which collects a range of suggestive imaginative movements and which opens towards a rereading of Dickens's construal of character, its relation to the self, and its social world. An affective swamping of personality repeatedly overwhelms the barriers of personality. A tic, a flick, an insult, a plea, a joke, a contortion, a wink, a tickle, a prod - such fidgets lead an active life in the novels. They often reflect the friction of inter-subjectivity, but also the abrasions between character and the universe of objects. The twittering of a Miss Flite in Bleak House , Bradley Headstone's physical eruptions of rage, Mr F's Aunt's proleptic warnings and Flora Finching's galloping tale-telling in Little Dorrit , the handiwork of Uriah Heep in David Copperfield , the insuppressible hyphenated speech of Jingle in Pickwick Papers - these are radiant instances. My article looks to give the fidget its due and to initiate more scholarly conversation on the circle of issues that it generates: mind and body, subjects and objects, textual continuity and its disruptions.