GIRL IN A BLUE DRESS (Gaynor Arnold)

....A novel Inspired by the Life and Marriage of Charles Dickens.
Young Dorothea (Dodo) Millar is mesmerized by the wit and humor of the brilliant actor / writer Alfred Gibson, a protege of her father, and she contrives, with the help of a becomingly altered blue dress, to win his admiration and his heart.  During her marriage to "The One and Only", a marriage revolving almost exclusively around her increasingly successful husband's wants and needs, Dodo strives to support her husband's career.  Her own problems and desires are lost in the demands of his rising popularity as eight pregnancies deplete her strength and attractiveness.  Eventually Alfred turns Dodo out of their home, publishing a very public and humiliating (to Dorothea) message suggesting that her inadequacies as a wife and mother made it impossible for him, a loving and caring father, to continue with the marriage.

Girl in a Blue Dress is a heartbreaking novel.  It provides us with a very non-idealized view of Dickens the man and with first-hand insight into how his talent and life experience propelled him into becoming the most celebrated and revered writer of the Victorian era.  Dickens spent part of his youth in the workhouse and began working to support his family at the tender age of eight, and many of his experiences from childhood and beyond found their way into his novels.  His talent was indisputable but, if Arnold's interpretation of his life is accurate, he was a megalomaniac whose ego demanded constant stroking.  He had magic, though, and something akin to the celebrity that surrounds today's top athletes and movie stars.  Even his cruelty and his self-serving use of his wife and children did not in any way diminish the public's or Dorothea's love and admiration.

I found the first half of this 414 page book to be somewhat plodding.  Dorothea's depression and inability to cope with Alfred's increasing lack of interest in her, her lack of spunk (she left her six living children behind and regretted that they never came to see her in ten years, never venturing to look at the separation from their point of view!), and her tireless devotion to the man who had cast her out of his life and never looked back, all combine into a portrait of a rather tiresome woman.  I won't even comment on her nickname, "Dodo"!  What makes this novel interesting is Ms. Arnold's detailed portrayal of Gibson /Dickens and the way in which Dorothea begins to come to life and into her own after her husband's death at the age of 58, 10 years after their separation.  After reading this, I want very much to learn more about the literary phenomenon that was Charles Dickens and about his marriage to Catherine Dickens, the real-life Dodo.