"Contrast" is the word that best describes the 17th annual Dickens Universe conference, held at UC Santa Cruz during the first week of August 1997. 250 conference-goers from as far away as China and South Africa spent the week contrasting Dickens with Jane Austen and Austen with her several 20th-century interpreters. Also examined throughout the week, which presented striking contrasts in weather, were various and fascinating contrasting notions of heroes and heroines. Through an extraordinarily warm first few days and a damp, drizzly close to the week of August 3-10, we heard lectures, attended workshops, drank tea, danced to Regency and Victorian music, watched movies, and were entertained by a magician. Featured texts for the conference were David Copperfield and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
The week opened with a keynote talk, entitled "The Hero of my Life," by Dr. David Parker, Curator of the Dickens House Museum in London. The paper, which deftly contrasted the novel's title character with romantic hero Steerforth, was delivered by Universe Associate Director John Glavin of Georgetown University. Dr. Parker, unfortunately, could not participate in this year's conference (the first year he has missed in some time) because of his mother's illness. Early-morning workshops this year were led by Professor Glavin and by Professors Philip Collins of the University of Leicester, Elizabeth Gitter and Jack Hall of the City University of New York, and Joss Marsh of Stanford University.
The morning lecture series opened on Monday with a lecture entitled "Austen and the Narratives of Chance" by Professor Maaja Stewart of Tulane University, who discussed the fact that women (embodied of course by Jane Austen) experienced the 19th century differently from men. On Tuesday morning, Professor Jacqueline Jaffe of New York University gave an equally fascinating talk on "Exposure and Evaluation: Theories of Punishment and Control in David Copperfield and Pride and Prejudice." This in-depth comparison and contrast of the two novels proposed the interesting (and controversial) hypothesis that, as Jaffe said, in David Copperfield "everyone gets away with everything;" in other words, punishment in this novel just does not work.
Afternoon lectures sponsored by the Friends of the Dickens Project included "Fact and Fiction in David Copperfield" by Philip Collins; "Dickens in China" by the husband-and-wife team of Ling and Yang Zhang, who are among the principal modern translators of Dickens into Chinese; "Charles Dickens and a View of Victorian Childhood" by Susan Healey and Tony Pointon of the University of Portsmouth; and "Fagin Refashioned: Twentieth Century Appropriations of Oliver Twist in Film and Musical Media" by Elizabeth Boje of the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Other lectures included "Going Unsteadily from the One to the Other: Split Mothers in David Copperfield," by Professor Ruth Ginsburg of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; "Prejudice in Jane Austen, Emma Tennan, Charles Dickens-and Us," by Professor Gerhard Joseph of the City University of New York; "Boxing Jane Austen," by Professor Helena Michie of Rice University; and "A Tale in Two Media: Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities" by Professor Kamilla Elliott of UC Berkeley.
On Thursday evening, the keynote lecture for the weekend conference, "Reversions," was "Royal Poses: Elizabeth, Di, and Fergie do Victoria" by Professor Adrienne Munich of the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The evening before, a "Victorian Panel," made up of Jack Hall of CUNY, James Kincaid of USC, Angie Mason of the BBC, and moderator Joss Marsh of Stanford, gave their varied views on "Depicting the Victorians," and on Tuesday evening, costumed participants were led in 19th-century dancing by Angela Elsey of Santa Cruz.
A high-school teachers' workshop was conducted throughout the week by Julie Minnis of Santa Cruz High School. Several of the lectures focused on the weekend topic of translating the 19th century to the 20th, particularly in film. To accompany these discussions, the following films were shown after the evening lectures: A&E's brilliant rendering of Pride and Prejudice (in parts, throughout the week); the 1935 MGM David Copperfield; and the 1940 Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. On Friday evening, participants were treated to a book auction, the proceeds of which benefited the Friends of the Dickens Project, courtesy of donor Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books; a performance of the Mr. Bumble/Widow Corney courtship scene from Oliver Twist by actress Miriam Margolyes; and a fascinating magic show by East coast performer Robert Olson, who has perfected techniques used by 19th-century magicians, with no 20th-century embellishments.
In conjunction with this year's Dickens Universe Program, an adjunct weekend conference on "Twentieth-century Appropriations of Nineteenth-century Culture" was also held. This conference included a rich program of lectures on the various ways in which "reversions" to Victorian texts and issues can be defined and explored. Lectures ranged from Kelly Hagar's (Harvard) discussion of the resurfacing in contemporary adolescent literature of the Brontës' novels, to Hilary Schor's (USC) lecture on A.S. Byatt and the way in which literature itself constitutes "real property" for the author, to John Jordan's (UCSC) illuminating overview of his present research on revisions of Dickens by postcolonial authors, to James Buzard's (MIT) discussion of cultural studies and the argument that the popular "repudiations of the Victorians may [in fact] lead to a Victorian reversion." Although too numerous to be discussed in detail, all of the weekend lectures provided us with new ways of reading the Victorians, but more particularly, new ways to read how we read the Victorians!
-- Monica Bosson and Beth Penney