Dream Children essay analysis । Dream Children summary
Dream Children: A Reverie
Charles Lamb
Dream Children summary:
The children of James Elia, John and Alice, asked him to tell them about his grandmother and their great grandmother, Mrs. Field, who used to live in a great mansion in Norfolk. The house belonged to a rich nobleman who lived in another new house. Grandmother Field was the keeper of the house, and she looked after the house with great care as though it was her own. The tragic incident of the two children and their cruel uncle had taken place in the house. The children had come to know the story from the ballad of ‘The Children in the Wood’. The story was carved in wood upon the chimney piece. But a foolish rich person later pulled down the wooden chimney and put a chimney of marble. The new chimney piece had no story on it. Alice was very unhappy that the rich man had pulled down the chimney piece with the story. She looked upbraiding, and her anger was like her mother’s.
When the house came to decay later, after the death of Mrs. Field, the nobleman carried away the ornaments of the house and used them in his new house. The ornaments of the old house looked very awkward in the new house, just like the beautiful tombs of Westminster Abbey would look awkward if placed in someone’s drawing room. Things looked beautiful only if they are in harmony with the surroundings. John enjoyed the comparison and smiled as if he also felt it would be very awkward indeed. Grandmother Field was a very good lady. She was also very religious, for she was well acquainted with ‘The Book of Psalms’ in ‘The Old Testament’ and a great portion of ‘The New Testament’ of ‘The Bible’. Alice here spread her hands as if she was not interested in the praise of a quality of the grandmother that she herself did not have. Children find it difficult to learn lessons by heart.
Grandmother Field did not fear the spirits of the two infants which haunted the house at night. So she slept alone. But Elia used to sleep with his maid as he was not so religious. John tried to look courageous, but his eyes expanded in fear. When the grandmother died, many people in the neighbourhood, including the gentry or the aristocrats, attended her funeral. She was also a good dancer when she was young. Here, Alice moved her feet unconsciously as she too was interested in dancing. Grandmother Field was tall and upright, but later she was bowed down by a disease called cancer. She was good to her grandchildren. Elia in childhood used to spend his holiday there. He used to gaze upon the bust of the twelve Caesars or roam about in the mansion or in the garden. In the garden, there were fruits like nectarines, peaches, oranges, and others. Elia never plucked them but rather enjoyed looking at them. Here John deposited a bunch of grapes upon the plate again. He was showing that he too was not tempted by fruits.
· His farce, “Mr. H”, was performed at Drury Lane in 1807.
· Fortuitously, Lamb’s first publication was in 1796.
· His collected essays, under the title “Essays of Elia”, were published in 1823.
Critical Analysis:
This essay is about a dream. In this essay, all characters are real except the children Alice and John. From the title, we can guess that it’s a dream and reverie, i.e., a daydream. Alice and John are children of James Elia (Charles Lamb). They ask their father, James Elia, to tell them about their grandmother. Grandmother’s name is Field, who has been acquainted with us by Lamb as a perfect woman with great qualities. Incidents are real from the life of Lamb. There is a story related to the house where grandmother Mrs. Field was a keeper. It was about the murder of children by their cruel uncle. Alice and John came to know this story through a carved writing on a tree, which was later brought down by a rich man. After the death of the grandmother, the house owner took away her belongings and placed them in his new house where they looked awkward. When grandmother was alive, she used to sleep alone, but Elia was afraid of the souls of infants murdered by their uncle, as it was thought that the house was haunted by the spirits of those children. Elia had a brother John, full of enthusiasm and zeal, who was loved by everyone, especially by their grandmother; on the other hand, Elia’s childhood was full of isolation, and he remained stagnant throughout his life. His mind was working fast, but bodily or physically he was totally off and lazy. He was lame and helped by John in every possible way, who used to carry him on his back. Unfortunately, John also became lame, but Elia never helped him, and after his death, he realized missing him. At the end of the essay, Alice and John are crying after hearing all this. Elia is looking at his wife, whose name is also Alia, in Alice’s face. The children start to become faint and say to Elia or Lamb that they are not his real children and Alice is not his wife and their mother. Lamb wakes up and finds himself in an armchair and James Elia has vanished. The whole story is based on the life of Lamb. He was never able to get married and died childless. He is also regretting and remembering moments like, about his brother, about his grandmother, his childhood, etc. So, the whole of the essay is full of melancholy and the sad tone of Lamb’s life. (One should better study Lamb’s short biography to understand his essays).
A Stylistic Analysis of Lamb’s Dream Children:
Charles Lamb was a famous English prose writer and the best representative of the new form of English literature early in the nineteenth century. He did not adhere to the old rules and classic models but made the informal essay a pliable vehicle for expressing the writer’s own personality, thus bringing into English literature the personal or familiar essay. The style of Lamb is gentle, old-fashioned, and irresistibly attractive, for which I can think of no better illustration than “Dream Children: A Reverie”. From the stylistic analysis of this essay, we can find Lamb’s characteristic way of expression. “Dream Children” records the pathetic joys in the author’s unfortunate domestic life. We can see in this essay, primarily, a supreme expression of the increasing loneliness of his life. He constructed all that preliminary tableau of paternal pleasure to bring home to us in the most poignant way his feeling of the solitude of his existence, his sense of all that he had missed and lost in the world. The key to the essay is one of profound sadness. But he makes his sadness beautiful; or, rather, he shows the beauty that resides in sadness. There are remarkable writing techniques to achieve such an effect.
On Humour and Pathos as Used by Charles Lamb:
“Some things are of that nature as to make One’s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache,” wrote Bunyan. The nature of things mostly appeared to Charles Lamb in this way. Lamb did not frolic out of lightness of heart, but to escape from gloom that might otherwise crush. He laughed to save himself from weeping. In fact, Lamb’s personal life was full of disappointments and frustrations. But instead of complaining, he looked at the tragedies of life, its miseries, and worries as a humorist. Thus, his essays become an admixture of humour and pathos. Examples of his keen sense of humour and pathetic touches are scattered in all of his essays. Let’s focus our discussion on “Dream Children: A Reverie”.
Characters:
The young couple in the ancient Dutch farming village (in New England) who are the major living characters in “Dream Children” are the McNairs. The outward placidity that the pleasant and personable Mrs. McNair displays in her daily goings about among the villagers gives the impression that nothing bad or disturbing has taken place in her life. Yet the reckless manner in which she rides her stallion through the fields causes wonderment among some of the locals, such as Mrs. DePuy and her husband, who own the old Patroon farm near the McNairs’ land.
Dream Children- Themes:
Expressed as a directive, a major theme of this story is “Measure a person by his or her sense of loss.” The young wife whose infant was stillborn is utterly transformed by the tragedy, going off on a new life course which is largely regulated by her ongoing need to penetrate by whatever means the unbreachable time-space wall of human existence and, in defiance of all logic, reason, and conventional wisdom, to be reunited with her lost baby son. Her husband, clearly not needing replacement therapy comparable with hers, reconstructs his life in the most convenient and thoughtful fashion. Godwin’s “Dream Children” examines themes of marriage, self-definition, and loss.
- Taking into account its subject matter and Godwin’s handling of the narrative structure, were you particularly affected emotionally by “Dream Children”? If so, explain.
- Was the ending of the story, with its rhetorical question about Mrs. McNair’s happiness, effective in “wrapping up” the story of her life? Comment either way, or both ways.
- What, in your opinion, is the purpose of all the italicized passages throughout the story? Who is saying or thinking those things?