MovieChat Forums > The Invisible Woman (2014) Discussion > BOARDING UP MRS. DICKENS' WINDOW?

BOARDING UP MRS. DICKENS' WINDOW?

posted 10 years ago by lsieg
8 replies | jump to latest

What was the purpose of that scene? Are we to believe that Dickens' actually ordered the carpenter to do that and that Mrs. Dickens sat passively watching? That scene and Dickens' ordering her to return the birthday gift to Ellen Ternan really make Dickens look like a sadist.
Do you think these are fictional incidents since the writer Dickens was a man of such sympathy for the poor and downtrodden and used his gifts to make the public aware of the misery of London's poor? How does this fit the portrait of such a husband who would humiliate his wife in these ways?

[–] marudd50 10 years ago

The real Dickens was exceedingly cruel to his wife. I don't know about boarding up her window, but he made her life a misery. He was a very emotionally childish man. He went to visit a woman he had had an enormous crush on when he was young and was cruel to her after he realized she had become old and fat. He also made a fool of himself over his wife's young sister early in their marriage. When she died unexpectedly one night after they had returned from the theatre, he was inconsolable. His wife's other sister lived with him for years and kept house for him after he left his wife. He was one of the best writers in the English language, but he was an idiot and a cad when it came to women.
I have a photo of my lying on the chaise lounge he was lying on when he died. It is a prize possession because I love his books despite his lack of character.
Interestingly, Shakespeare also treated his wife horribly. He left her in Stratford when he went to London to make his fortune (soon after one of their three children, the only boy, died), and he rarely went back. In his will, he left her only his "second-best bed." No one is sure what he meant by that.

[–] jim-burke-819-361581 8 years ago

That's really something to have a photo of yourself lying on the Chaise lounge that Dickens died on. I know it was in Gad's Hill at the time he died and not in his birthplace where it is now. Is it known what room he died in? He sat down to eat and then collapsed on the floor. The chaise lounge was brought in and he was placed on it and died the next day. As he was going to eat I wondered was it the kitchen he died in.

I never read of Dickens blocking up his wife's window but I did read that he had a wooden partition put between them in the bedroom.

[–] marudd50 8 years ago

Thanks for those details. I didn't know them. I'll try to find the photo and post it, although the people who run his birthplace may come after me! I am usually respectful in such places, but I could not resist that!

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 10 years ago

What was the purpose of that scene?

The end of their relationship.

I give my respect to those who have earned it; to everyone else, I'm civil.

[–] VaneWimsey 9 years ago

The boarding up of the doorway (not window) really happened.

Dickens ordering his wife to take the bracelet to Nelly really happened, too.

And yes, those are probably two of the three worst things Dickens ever did in his life (the third being to take custody of the children away from Catherine).

[–] fanaticita 8 years ago

I wondered about that too. So she didn't have a way out of the room????? Dickens sounds like a pathetic, cruel human being.

[–] shellieeyre 8 years ago

She could of course leave the room; he had their bedroom partitioned so that he didn't have to share a room with her. He behaved abominably toward her.

I'm the clever one; you're the potato one.

[–] jim-burke-819-361581 8 years ago

Terrible terrible stuff. The awful things that people do when anger and passion are high. Cruel. It was terrible the way she didn't have the kids except one with her. It's cruel for anybody to not have custody for their kids. Sadly there are many men in this position too. I'm not sure what the ratio is for men and women.