Dorothy 'Dodo' Gibson is not invited to the funeral of her husband-of-twenty-years Alfie. She sits by in her meager quarters, having no visitors and only living only just barely above a penniless existence for the past decade. It is clear that all is not well in her life, and there is even a whiff of an old scandal buried in the opening pages. Her children too seem to have kept away from her, obviously through the exhortations of her forceful husband. But through a few reminiscent moments that she allows herself now and then, for she has only her memories to keep her company, we can see the emotional pain she has been living with while dealing with this abandonment.
It is clear that in the beginning she believed that the two of them were deeply in love with each other. Alfie is smitten by the sight of her rosy freshness in a blue dress in their first meeting; a point which he rakes up years later by acrimoniously pointing out that she had tried to seduce him into a union. Their courtship is done clandestinely and she is heady with this feeling she has for Alfie, a colorful character who visits her house and looks up to her father as a mentor. Her father realizes that his feather-headed daughter has fallen for Alfie and warns her against his unstable nature. But Fate has other plans. They are eventually united in holy matrimony. It is now her fertility that becomes a sore issue with Alfie, who continually lives in horror of falling into poverty and too big a family would only be a forerunner to this occurence. As the years go by, she becomes preoccupied by her brood of children, drugged by laudenum to preserve some sanity, wearied down by exhaustion as she is. Being a man of extremes, and easily susceptible to the Public Image, Alfie grows ashamed of his wife and begins to hint to her that they are mismatched in this union. Dodo is a rather simple girl at heart, who does not like to be taxed with too much intellectual stimulation, although she is in a perpetual state of admiration of her clever husband. But the burden of childbearing eventually takes up her entire strength, until she cannot afford to provide Alfie with the attentions he craves. He looks to other people for amusement and stimulation, making much of Alice (Dodo's sister), devastated by her sudden death. Things take a terrible turn when she loses two children and has a nervous breakdown. Sent away to recover her health, changes take place in the household with her unmarried sister Sissy so completely in charge of everything that upon her return, she feels like an intruder in the Gibson household. She attempts to bring things back to normal but the chasm has widen too far.
Dodo comes across as a rather weak person, at least in today's context. She is still in love with her husband, despite all the wrongs she feels he has done to her. She tends to whine over her predicaments through the book, playing a victim, but perhaps she is justified to some extent. It is hard however to understand the manner in which she still clings to his memory, reading and re-reading his books in the dingy old apartment he has abandoned her to. She is unable to really become a separate person herself and she remains right through the end as an indistinct shadow basking in the glory her husband had enjoyed. It seems that only his death can galvanize her to action, leaving the house for the first time in a decade to see first the Queen who has invited her over for a royal chat and then Alfie's alleged mistress, the petite actress Miss Ricketts, who has been provided more lavishly for in the author's will than Dodo, the mother of his children.
Ms Arnold has woven the events rather skillfully. She deserves credit for that. The details of the scandal of the Gibson household is kept just out of arm's length. Each time we think we will be told just what had happened to bring Dodo to her pitiable circumstance, we are gently but firmly made to wait until the right time comes for the revelation. Ms Arnold manages the two timelines rather seamlessly -- the present widowhood of Dodo where she seeks to find answers and attempt some resolution, and the past hard life she has had to endure in the Gibson household, coping with multiple childbearing experiences while making an effort to keep up with Alfie's social life. We can see Dodo struggle hard to live Alfie's life but signally fail as eventually the weak state of her physical and mental health catches up with her. Alfie finds comfort elsewhere, which she instinctively knows bodes ill for their relationship, but her obsession with finding out who exactly is giving him the emotional connection that she cannot give him finally hastens the end of their marriage. It becomes clear eventually through the voices of other people that Alfie was indeed in the wrong, though like most arrogant and successful men he believed he could never harm anyone and the fault, if any, falls squarely in the lap of other people. Thus, in the final stages of the altercation with his wife, he tries to redeem himself by publicly declaring his wife to be mentally unstable and the cause of much unhappiness in the Gibson household, while he was the long-suffering husband who needed a new lease on life ... without her.
Ms Arnold has painted a very compelling picture of her protagonist. Dodo, after being shut away for a decade, finally gets her comeuppance upon the death of her cruel husband. On meeting with his mistress, she realizes that the other woman has suffered a prison herself because of the scandal; the knowledge leaves her free to build a new life. Her children, cowed by Alfie's threats, had never visited her during her retirement to the small apartment where she was dumped, but on his death, they make a point to come over and explain their side of the issue. The reconciliation is beyond her wildest dreams. The ending is the icing on the cake, when she finally discovers herself and gains the confidence to tread a new path she would never have thought possible.
The novel makes a very smooth read from beginning to end, leaving no loose ends. The only issue I have is with the transparent way the author has based the entire story on Dickens' life. Everything is like a caricature of him. I felt like I was reading about him, but that it was not quite him. It gave a rather false tone to the book. She has imitated Dickens' style very well, right from his flamboyant speeches to the colorful characters and rich wordings, and also given him sufficient arrogance coupled with his fears of poverty, but again it all seemed just that -- an imitation. It was the same feeling I felt when I read the novel, American Wife, some time ago. It just felt like Ms Arnold traced over the actual historic figure to give body to her novel and then colored it up, taking liberties here and there to get around any issues that came in the way of the writing. It somehow diluted the enjoyment I would have felt otherwise.
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