Interpreting the Prevalence of Gold in The Pickwick Papers

The writing of Charles Dickens is rife with rich, symbolic imagery that often manifests itself repeatedly over the course of a given work to produce multiple strata of meaning with their own internal coherence. The rhetoric he employs in his first major work,

The Pickwick Papers, though serialized like many of his other works, is no exception. By establishing recurrent themes, a picaresque tone, and by populating the work with a cast of emotive and convincingly-crafted characters, Dickens lends the novel's successive serial issues cohesion. Considering these considerable efforts to frame the work's nineteen issues holistically as one tale, it is important to note the language and imagery that Dickens utilizes with any frequency; an understanding of the themes and patterns this recurrent language establishes will further our grasp of the themes of the text as a whole.

One image that persistently crops up not only in The Pickwick Papers, but the majority of Dickens' novels, is that of gold. A reference to the Hyper-concordance of Victorian Literature website divulges twenty-nine separate instances of the word "gold." The word presents itself in a variety of forms, ranging from its monetary manifestation, to a reference to gold-beating (crafting sheets of gold into gold leaf), to pencil-cases, and manifold references to personal accessories like toothpicks, cane heads, snuff boxes, and watches.

Dickens, born into a family of modest means, struggled for much of his young life to elevate his socioeconomic status. Consequently, much of Dickens' own upbringing and familial life was characterized by the lack of money, its resultant humiliation, and the sense of vindication and success that comes from rising above one's means. A product of his environment, Dickens was an author with a distinct class consciousness that is palpable in all of his works. Contemporaneous to The Pickwick Papers, in fact, Dickens was writing and publishing the serialized episodes of Oliver Twist, a story steeped in issues of class and social standing.

Unsurprisingly then, in every instance, a reference to gold implies, at its most fundamental stratum of meaning, an air of wealth and success. By choosing to describe a given item as gold, Dickens imbues it (and its owner) with a certain grandeur. For instance, in chapter 11, in which Pickwick is presented with gold spectacles, the goldness of the spectacles infuses them with a special significance: The Pickwick club, in reaction to Blotton's assertion that Pickwick's stone was not nearly as ancient as Pickwick believed it to be, "as might have been expected from so enlightened an Institution, received this statement with the contempt it deserved, expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton from the society, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence and approbation" (158).

Here, the gold spectacles act as a token of the club's esteem for Pickwick. Their faith in and admiration of him is so complete that they eschew the obvious logic of Blotton's argument, going so far as to banish him from the club, despite the fact that Blotton has made the effort to empirically verify his findings before announcing them. Instead of heeding what ultimately proves to be the true version of the stone's origin, the club (and the seventeen other societies involved) accept Pickwick's ill-conceived theory without question, based solely on the public conception of him as a venerable and successful individual.

Dickens does much to cultivate this image of Pickwick as a revered and well-to-do man, ranging from the obvious awe and admiration with which the other members of the club treat him, to more subtle cues developed by the language Dickens employs. It becomes evident, for instance, from early in the work that Pickwick is a member of society of some status and means, as evidenced by Dickens' first description of his appearance: "The eloquent Pickwick, with one hand gracefully concealed behind his coat tails, and the other waving in air, to assist his glowing declamation" (17).

This excerpt is part of the first of many exhaustively descriptive passages Dickens uses to form for the reader an image of the character in question. Through physical description, he is able to form in the mind's eye the appearance, bearing, and even aspects of a character's personality. For example, from this passage, we can glean that Pickwick is someone of eloquence and grace, well-dressed, and with a commanding presence. His "elevated position" on a chair and his orator's pose indicate that he is someone of great esteem, both from within himself and from his peers. Indeed, he is described as "surrounded by the men who had volunteered to share the perils of his travels, and who were destined to participate in the glories of his discoveries" (17).

It is interesting to note, however, that according to Dickens' initial description (and our first glimpse of Pickwick), the source of Pickwick's veneration comes not from his internal attributes, but rather from his external affect. Dickens describes the protagonist as wearing "tights and gaiters, which, had they clothed an ordinary man, might have passed without observation, but which, when Pickwick clothed them - if we may use the expression - inspired involuntary awe and respect" (17). Though it can be inferred that from the description that Pickwick is revered by his peers, we are not immediately afforded a sense of what aspects of his character merit that admiration; instead, his clothes serve as a proxy for his more internal admirable qualities.

In the world of Dickens' literature, surfaces are of paramount importance. The outward appearance of his characters is almost always symbolic of their inner selves: the jocund Tupman is good-naturedly plump and exudes an air of jollity and excess congruent with his personality, for example. A major and recurring aspect of Dickens' characters is the state of their attire, most notably their defining accessories, such as jewelry, hats, canes and, most notably, pocket watches. In Dickens' time, before the era of wristwatches or cell phones, pocket watches would have been a central part of life - at least for those who could afford them.

As such, pocket watches make frequent appearances in Dickens' work; a reference to the Hyper-Concordance website turns up fifty-one references to the word "watch," in The Pickwick Papers alone, the majority of them referring to the timepiece. A large number of these instances are accompanied by some description of the watch; frequently, the material of the watch is supplied, and it is often a precious metal such as gold or silver. As in essentially every instance of the word "gold," the descriptor serves to establish the watch's owner as an individual of means and class. The first two instances of the word "gold" in The Pickwick Papers refer explicitly to watches, specifically, to a "gold watch-chain," seemingly a favorite image of Dickens that appears in many of his novels. The pocket watch seems to imbue its bearer with a measure of authority and clout, or substantiality. Nowhere is this truer than when he goes the extra mile, so to speak, to characterize the watch as gold, and dependant from a chain.

Dickens uses the image of a gold pocket watch to aid his characterization of the character, Tupman, with his characteristic jollity and excess: "Time and feeding had expanded that once romantic form; the black silk waistcoat had become more and more developed; inch by inch had the gold watch-chain beneath it disappeared from within the range of Tupman's vision" (17). Here, Dickens integrates the gold watch and watch-chain into his description of Tupman, and it serves to imbue his girth with an aura of respectability and refinement fitting of a Pickwickian.

A second noteworthy example of the gold watch paradigm in The Pickwick Papers is found in the tale Sam Weller relates about the fat man with "a wery handsome gold watch-chain hanging out, about a foot and a quarter, and a gold watch in his fob pocket as was worth--I'm afraid to say how much, but as much as a watch can be--a large, heavy, round manafacter, as stout for a watch, as he was for a man, and with a big face in proportion" (378). Here, as Sam asserts, the watch serves to directly expand upon the character of its owner; it reflects with its size its owner's physical trait of rotundity, and his more internal traits of excess and carelessness in leaving the watch chain dangling so far outside his pocket.

The above passage is merely one of many in the work (and indeed, all of his works) in which Dickens projects aspects of his characters' personalities through the medium of their appearance, and a more exhaustive investigation utilizing the Hyper-Concordance website would undoubtedly yield reams of evidence for Dickens' emphasis on gold as a key implement in contriving his characters. By examining the patterns that appear in the surfaces Dickens constructs, and the inherent meaning in those patterns, one can better understand not only Dickens' literary vision, but also his view of society and class.

Sources:

Dickens, Charles. The Pickwick Papers. New York:

Penguin Books, 2003.