Review:Girl in a Blue Dress

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Gaynor Arnold was born and brought up in Cardiff. She read English at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where she acted in many plays, notably at the Edinburgh Festival and in a tour of the US. She has two grown-up children and works for Birmingham's Adoption and Fostering Service.

POSTED: 08 FEBRUARY 2009

Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress

(Allen & Unwin; 442pp paperback; $23.95)

Reading stories such Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (and recently Louis Nowra's Ice) makes me wonder — are all 'Great Men' horrors at home?

The girl in the blue dress is Dorothea Millar, naive, romantic, and unworldly daughter of a wealthy Victorian era arts patron. Dorothea — or Dodo — is smitten by Alfred Gibson, the self proclaimed 'One and Only' writer, director and actor. The story tracks their troubled marriage through Dodo's eyes — the early bliss, the failing years and the years of estrangement.

Alfred Gibson's character — and the story — is based on the real one and only, the great writer Charles Dickens.

From the outset, the domestic scene is unusual. Alfred prowls the streets and back alleys of London, sometimes out all night, observing and collecting characters that people his episodic stories and plays, and that bring him fame and fortune. Alfred is mesmerizing (quite literally when he studies the new phenomenon of hypnotism) and magical, and he enthralls everyone around him. He is theatrical, capricious, mercurial, and egocentrically addicted to his work and his popular reputation.

While he is alive, his charismatic personality dominates and controls his family, his friends and his public to the extent that they succumb to his wishes regardless of their own will, judgement or desire.

However, Alfred dies, and the truths about his obsessions and eccentricities are revealed by his children, his lover, and a secretly discovered set of biographical notes.

Interestingly, even when aware of his failings and conscious of the irreparable damage that has been done to her, Dorothea's love for Alfred remains intact. Her adjustment to a fuller knowledge of Alfred does nothing to damage her fundamental feelings about the Great Man, and considering the general universal regard for the real Dickens, that seems fair enough.

At the close of the story, Dorothea's future promises much, just as the heroine of a good historical fiction should. She has regained much of her position as wife and mother, and has a creative opportunity not commonly available to women of the age.

It is an emotionally satisfying conclusion to a charming read.

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