Note 10 to Chapter 3 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
Bergson says, "We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing" (p. 97). He does, however, point out that this imitation of the inanimate must not be self-conscious (p. 71). We can laugh here, then, only if we can overlook Bumble's motives for self-dramatization and the reaction of Mrs. Corney. Certainly such elaborate evasion of the implications contained in the situation is difficult, and it is the virtue of Dickens's art that he makes us start laughing and then recalls that laughter abruptly, making us look closely at the uncomfortable truth we were trying to avoid.
Last modified: 1 May 2001