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The society operated on by Rodolphe in the guise of a miraculous healer remains the same society as at the beginning of the book. If it were otherwise the reader would lose his bearings, and the purely fictitious solution would lack verisimilitude. Or at any rate, the reader would feel he could not participate in it.
17 In all events, none of these reforms provides for a new autonomy to be placed in the hands of the 'people', whether considered as 'laboring classes' or as 'dangerous classes'. Faced with the honesty of Morel, Sue exclaims: "Is it not uplifting and consoling to think that it is not force or terrorization, but sound moral sense which alone restrains this formidable human ocean, whose overflow might drown the whole of society, making light of its laws and its power, as the sea in its rage scorns dikes and ramparts!" Thus reform is to be used to strengthen and encourage the common sense and foresight of the working masses. This is to be achieved by an act of enlightened intelligence on the part of the rich, who recognize their role as depositaries of wealth to be used for the common good, "by the salutary example of capital associated with hard work . . . an honest, intelligent and just pooling of resources which would ensure the well-being of the artisan without danger to the fortune of the rich man . . . and which, by creating bonds of affection between these two classes, would permanently safeguard the peace of the State." |
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Peace, in the commercial novel, takes the form of reassurance by reiteration of what the reader expects, and, when expressed in ideological terms, it assumes the aspect of a reform which changes something so that everything will remain the same, that is, the system of order that grows out of the constant repetition of the same things and out of the stability of acknowledged values. Ideology and rhetoric here fuse perfectly. |
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This is borne out by a particular technical feature of Sue's novel, a narrative device that is obvious to the reader and that we cannot do better than describe as the mechanism "Oh Lord, how thirsty I am!" The reference is to an old joke about a man in a railway carriage who was irritating his traveling companions by incessantly repeating "Oh Lord, how thirsty I am!" Driven crazy by this refrain, at the first stop the other travelers rushed to the windows to get the poor creature drinks of all kinds. When the train set off again, there was a moment's silence and then the wretched man began again, repeating endlessly ''Lord, how thirsty I was!" A typical scene in Sue's novel occurs when unfortunate characters (the Morels, La Louve in prison, or Fleur-de-Marie on at least two or three occasions) weep and wail for pages and pages describing the most painful and distressing situations. When the reader's tension has reached its limit, Rodolphe arrives, or someone in his place, and sets things right for everyone. Immediately the doleful story starts up again, while for page after page the same actors, retelling their woes to each other or to new arrivals, |
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