Wow busy Sunday morning - everyone stopped in - I have my Hazelnut coffee in hand - after the awful experience at Christmas when I sent home all my clothes, Christmas gifts and bags of my favorite coffee that arrived on my front porch the day before I returned home and when I got home they were all gone including a package by UPS of an Amazon delivery. Seems shown on TV was a national expose of this goings on in other spots in the nation, folks decided according to the police the very next day to add Austin to the list and my large packages spelled goodies.
Well my daughter
just sent me a box with 7 yes, seven bags of coffee - and bless his heart my youngest grandboy sent me a couple of the wonderful soaps similar to those he had given me a clutch of 8 for Christmas. And so it is a big deal for me to say I have a cup of Hazelnut coffee in hand -
I howled laughing outloud the entire 4th chapter - I know - how could I be so heartless - but that is it - to me it was a huge parody - I did not see the story being about the individual trials and tribulations although I did chaff and wonder why was Mr. Jellyby was sitting in the corner not helping as if he had nothing to do with the creation of this passel of kids.
The scene reminded me of these illustrations you often see of everything jumbly crammed into every nook and corner usually, of a hutch but even apartment buildings with folks and cats and plants poking out of every window and kids playing hopscotch on the sidewalk and an old man or lady feeding birds on the stairs, and strung washlines full of underwear -
You just have to laugh at - a, Dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle, kettle on his dressing-table, curtain to the window was fastened up with a fork, even choosing Africa to me was the height of humor - Started in the mid 18th century therefore, part of Victorian culture is the expression still used today, " From here to Timbuktu" an African village which conjures up images of remote, isolated and distant parts of this earth. You have to wonder if Mrs. Jellyby would have preferred to escape to Africa - with the far off look in her eyes - she is disconnected from her surroundings - she and Mr. Jellyby could make the kids but neither of them could get their head wrapped around nurturing them.
And so, aside from all the social judgment of where and how a women should be spending her time or the self-appointed experiences of the children that remind you more of
The Lord of the Flies or the
Old Women in a Shoe I think the real nut of this chapter is in one of the hot topics of the time
Existentialism -
Mind over Matter.
I think in this chapter Dickens is spoofing the
Mind over Matter argument. The spoof is the makeup of the chapter which falls into the typical exaggerated joke - Exaggeration jokes work by first evoking a fairly common, day-to-day image, and then exaggerating one or more aspects of that image to such an extent that the picture in the minds of the audience become ridiculous. To develop a spoof or exaggerated joke, you pick a noun, a person, place or thing and focus on one attribute, exaggerating the attribute associating the person, place or thing with the one exaggerated attribute.
Mrs. Jellyby appears to be more of the mind than the matter of her reality. Idealists were voicing that all things come from the mind where as, materialists, see the dead universe came alive and that matter grew till there was conscious minds. Materialists think matter as primary and mind as secondary.
Here is a nice link with an easy to understand explanation
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/06/16/what-comes-first-mind-or-matter/