essay on dickin's journey to niagra
Dickens felt transported by the sublimity of Niagara Falls when he visited it on his 1842 journey to the United States and Canada. In a letter to Forster (26 April 1842), he said of Horseshoe Falls (the Canadian side of Niagara) that "It would be hard for a man to stand nearer God than he does there" (Letters 3: 210). Dickens proceeds to effuse over the beauty and majesty of the falls in a passage that forms the chief part of his description of his experience in American Notes, although the letter actually offers the superior account: There was a bright rainbow at my feet; and from that I looked up to --great Heaven! To what a fall of bright green water! The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the act of falling; and, from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is never laid, and has been haunting this place with the same dread solemnity--perhaps from the creation of the world (Letters 3: 210-11).
In this essay, I analyze Dickens's reaction to Niagara Falls in the context of other British travel narratives from the previous decade, and examine how Niagara speaks to Dickens of life after death (as he describes it above, the falls die and then rise again in ghostly mist). His profound experience at Niagara Falls shaped his treatment of climactic, transcendent moments in subsequent novels; in particular, from this point on Dickens repeatedly uses water imagery (especially seas, swamps and rivers) as symbols of death, rebirth, transformation and of being disturbed with "the joy of elevated thoughts," to use Wordsworth's phrase in "Tintern Abbey." But Dickens's reaction was more than just a typical Romantic experience, similar to those of other nineteenth-century British travelers; it was in part shaped by his overall disappointment in America and his relief to be on English ground again.
Niagara Falls fulfills several definitions of the sublime. Philosophers since Longinus have used the term "sublime"
In this essay, I analyze Dickens's reaction to Niagara Falls in the context of other British travel narratives from the previous decade, and examine how Niagara speaks to Dickens of life after death (as he describes it above, the falls die and then rise again in ghostly mist). His profound experience at Niagara Falls shaped his treatment of climactic, transcendent moments in subsequent novels; in particular, from this point on Dickens repeatedly uses water imagery (especially seas, swamps and rivers) as symbols of death, rebirth, transformation and of being disturbed with "the joy of elevated thoughts," to use Wordsworth's phrase in "Tintern Abbey." But Dickens's reaction was more than just a typical Romantic experience, similar to those of other nineteenth-century British travelers; it was in part shaped by his overall disappointment in America and his relief to be on English ground again.
Niagara Falls fulfills several definitions of the sublime. Philosophers since Longinus have used the term "sublime"
Cited: Barr, Alan P. "Mourning Becomes David: Loss and the Victorian Restoration of Young Copperfield." Dickens Quarterly 24 (June 2007): 63-77. Berard, Jane Dickens, Charles. The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens. Vols. 3, 12. Ed. Madeline House, et al. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974-2002. Gerard, Alexander Marryat, Captain Frederck. Diary in America. Ed. by Jules Zanger. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1960. Martineau, Harriet Metz, Nancy Aycock. The Companion to Martin Chuzzlewit. Robertsbridge: Helm Information, 2001. Page, Norman Poole, Adrian. Ed. and Intro. Our Mutual Friend. NY: Penguin, 1997. Slater, Michael Trollope, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. London: Routledge, 1927. NATALIE MCKNIGHT