"As to the strength of his case, he had no doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with jury on substantial worldly grounds - the only grounds ever woth taking into account - it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider" (147).
Literally this passage describes a court scene, in which Mr. Stryver is the persecutor; however figuratively this shows that even though Stryver's work life and personal life are two different things, they are only one to him, making them both seem less important than most might think they should be. If perhaps he did mary Lucie, would he mix her in to the same category he puts his work and the criminals he works with? If Stryver is comparing the courtship of his "love" to an arguable case in court, there is a problem. Hence the motif of double shows itself in the writing style of zeugma - courtship and court room.
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4 comments:
Wow! I had written about this in my journal for Dickens' Writing Style as a metaphor, but I totally missed the zeugma part! It perfectly epitomizes how Stryver is trying to use logic from his career to show why he is the perfect candidate for Lucie and will surely win the case. And if he does, will she be nothing more than another successful case? But I guess that query is irrelevant, since Mr. Lorry finds out that there is no way Lucie will marry Stryver...
Good exploration of this piece of satire! I don't think I quite follow you on the "zeugma" bit, though.
It's certainly true that there is a METAPHOR at work here, between a court case and a marriage suit. But for it to be zeugma, there needs to be a specific WORD that appears in the sentence but that works in two different ways.
For example, if the passage said, "In his decision to court Miss Manette, Stryver felt certain there could be only one verdict," then the use of "court" with both its romantic and legal meanings, would constitute zeugma.
Ooh! I didn't realize that to be zeugma it had to have the word! Good to know, good to know. But the METAPHOR (:]) is very interesting, I think.
I've stumbled upon your blog while looking for zeugmas/zeugmata (the internet tells me there are two ways to pluralize the word) in A Tale of Two Cities.
If a certain WORD is needed to make it a zeugma, I think the following sentence might work:
"After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week of two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary." (p. 147 in my edition, on the same page a bit further up.)
I think that this sentence could work if the word "preliminaries" is used both in the sense of a court and as "an action or event preceding or preparing for something fuller or more important." But as I'm still trying to understand zeugmas myself, I'm not sure. Thoughts?
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