Note 9 to Chapter 6 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.
Mark's need for purification is not so immediately apparent as is Martin's, but is just as intense. He must expel his masochistic tendency to "hope for the worst" (VII) and his eternal desire for moral rewards, or "credit". In his selfishness he rejects comfort and the entire range of positive comic values we an encouraged to accept, When he returns to England after his initiation at Eden, he delights in parodying his old desire to see others miserable and finally repudiates his initial position entirely by opening a pub, "The Jolly Tapley". "Jolly" has by this time, for Mark and for us, lost all its suggestions of sarcasm and perversion.
Last modified: 3 May 2001