The Devil is in the Details

Charles Dickens obviously has a penchant for giving (unnecessary) details. When I first read this novel back in eighth grade, I couldn’t finish it. How I managed to go through half of it I still can’t figure out. For Dickens, it’s the great details that matter in getting the point across. The abject poverty and disparity of France is a recurring theme in the novel. The extent of it is explained by minute details.

“Monseigneur in Town” details the lavish lifestyle of French aristocracy. Dickens uses the imagery of Monseigneur “rather rapidly swallowing France” to not just establish his greed but demonstrate the prevailing disparity. Monseigneur doesn’t just like his chocolate he likes to eat others’ shares as well.

However, it seems he is dependent on others, the very people whose share of pie he likes to steal, for this lifestyle. “It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration…” to help him with a task as simply as eating chocolate. Even something as important as the upbringing of children was a task left entirely to the servants and mothers were assumed no responsibility “except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world”.

On the other hand, his indifference toward them is somewhat strange. Lack of concern for the poor is understandable (“it must all go his way” and “the world was made for his pleasure”). But the fact that he “had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was to let everything go on its own way” suggests a lack of conscious effort to hold on to his existing position [with the exception of his sister’s marriage to a Farmer-General for money].

            Needless to say, the lack of concern is not a result of oblivion but a class based segregation (“the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed”). However, it is not a result of lack of morals or simply evil but rather what he believes to be his right (“if I knew which rascal threw at the carriage… he should be crushed under the wheels”). While he may consider them “mere rats [that have] come out of their holes” he compensates the child’s father with a gold coin, the monetary equivalent of the child's life.