THE LITTLE DOLL'S DRESSMAKER - A Children's Story by Charles Dickens
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About this ebook
It is a frequent complaint that Dickens's ideal heroine is the angel of the house and that his "stereotypical presentations of angels, fallen sisters, and eccentric women regrettably leave today's readers in search of a viable heroine".
While several Dickens’ characters fit binary stereotypes of the disabled as pitiful and helpless, sometimes even monstrous and villainous, Jenny Wren, the dolls' dressmaker, creates a unique and constructive life with regards to her infirmities. She has successfully adaptated her life and in several respects she reverses and challenges and limits usually imposed on disabled women in Victorian fiction. To this end Jenny has built a successful business making dolls clothes for the wealthier members of society.
The little dressmaker is so strong and courageous that she physically assaults a vile businessman, Fascination Fledgeby, who has hounded Jenny's friends and ruined many other lives through his extortionate lending practices. Jenny's weapon of choice is pepper, the Victorian girl's counterpart of mace. In a complete reversal of the usual paradigm, the able-bodied man finds himself writhing helplessly, temporarily disabled, humiliated and in pain (704-06, IV, 8).
Jenny Wren anticipates today's view that the disabled and the able-bodied can work together in interdependent relationships, subverting the expectation that the disabled are inevitably dependent. While typically the disabled woman in the Victorian novel is denied a reproductive future, Jenny is an exception. Dickens was ahead of his time in providing a suitor for Jenny, and envisioning that a disabled woman can be beautiful.
With thanks to Sara D. Schotland of Georgetown University and the Disability Studies Quarterly for publishing this summary of Jenny Wren in “The Doll’s Dressmaker.”
10% of the publisher’s profit will be donated to Charities.
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KEYWORDS/TAGS: YA, Young Adult, story, Victorian, young person, young people, alone, back, bad, beautiful, bench, best, chair, Charles, child, children, children’s story, chin, city, clothes, creature, cry, crutch, dark, dead, Dickens, disabled, disability, , doll, dressmaker, fairy Godmother, Fledgeby, flowers, Jenny Wren, Lizzie, Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie, London, looking, master, miss, money, old, person, pin cushion, pleasant, poor, pretty, queer, quick, Riah, roof, sharp, shook, shop, Sloppy, small, smell, strange, tea, throw, toy, turn, Victorian, voice, Well, white, window, working, yellow, young
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens nació en Portsmouth en 1812, segundo de los ocho hijos de un funcionario de la Marina. A los doce años, encarcelado el padre por deudas, tuvo que ponerse a trabajar en una fábrica de betún. Su educación fue irregular: aprendió por su cuenta taquigrafía, trabajó en el bufete de un abogado y finalmente fue corresponsal parlamentario de The Morning Chronicle. Sus artículos, luego recogidos en Bosquejos de Boz (1836-1837), tuvieron un gran éxito y, con la aparición en esos mismos años de los Papeles póstumos del club Pickwick, Dickens se convirtió en un auténtico fenómeno editorial. Novelas como Oliver Twist (1837), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) o (1841) alcanzaron una enorme popularidad, así como algunas crónicas de viajes, como Estampas de Italia (1846; ALBA CLÁSICA núm. LVII). Con Dombey e hijo (1846-1848) inicia su época de madurez novelística, de la que son buenos ejemplos David Copperfield (1849-1850), su primera novela en primera persona, y su favorita, en la que elaboró algunos episodios autobiográficos, Casa desolada (1852-1853), La pequeña Dorrit (1855-1857), Historia de dos ciudades (1859; ALBA PRIMEROS CLÁSICOS núm. 5) y Grandes esperanzas (1860-1861; ALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR núm. I). Dickens murió en Londres en 1870.
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THE LITTLE DOLL'S DRESSMAKER - A Children's Story by Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens
The Little Doll’s Dressmaker
A Short Story By
Charles Dickens
Extracted From A Serialisation By
Vol. III - No. 116 through Vol. III – No. 119
[1882]
Resurrected by
Abela Publishing, London
[2018]
The Little Doll’s Dressmaker
Typographical arrangement of this edition
© Abela Publishing 2018
This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Abela Publishing,
London
United Kingdom
2018
ISBN-13: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X
Website
Abela Publishing
Acknowledgements
Adapted From
Charles Dickens.
By
Mrs. Zadel B. Gustafson.
Chapter I
Near the small town of Millbank, and just outside the great city of London, there is a little street called Church Street, and a little square called Smith Square, and where this street and square come together there is a row of houses, rented very cheap, and in one of them lived the little girl whose story I shall try to tell you.
She was about fourteen years old at the time I speak of, and her real name was Fanny Cleaver; but her back was so weak, one of her short legs being shorter than the other, and she was so very little—not having grown any since she was seven years old—that she had given herself the name of Jenny Wren, and by this name everyone knew her. The queer little figure, as it hopped about, and the queer but not ugly little face, with its bright gray eyes, made her seem wonderfully like the cheerful, quick, tiny brown bird whose name she had chosen.
Jenny's mother was dead, and Jenny's father was a drunkard. If you do not know what misery comes into a home, whether it is a rich or humble one, when the father has the evil habit of drink, then you can hardly understand what a great trouble little Jenny had to bear, and all alone, too, for her bright mind, her true heart, and her skillful little hands were all the friends Jenny had.
Jenny Wren – The Doll’s Dresmaker
Jessie Willcox Smith (1912)
What could such a little creature do? She printed the words Room to Let
with a stubbed pen on a piece of white card-board, and hung it in the window; and it had not hung there many hours before there came a knock at the door. The door flew open by a spring which had been touched inside. Across the narrow entry the parlor door stood open, and showed Jenny Wren sitting in a low, old-fashioned arm-chair,