The Thing about Aunt Betsy
There is a stubbornness about Dickens’s characters that is more delightful than depressing. I see in them an irony to modern homo-sapiens. Aunt Betsy, I find to be especially interesting.
She arose from “a discontented fairy” to “the best of her race” without even moving her lips. The dramatic reverse of figure seems to be out of her business of care or notice. If there is one person unpretentious, it is her. She has always been one and herself, yet, how?
She is a static lychee. Static, because she does not hold vaulting ambitions. As if she came here to live, to stay a while, but not to make or change. This humbleness, in stark contrast with Uriah Heep’s “umbleness”, though not decided by her, I respect and admire. A lychee, because all the majestic work of her heart is on the outside, not in shortage of spikes. Donkeys? Chase them away! Not a girl? Leave and never sway! Go to school? Tomorrow, what’cha say? Putting aside the idealisms per se, her crystal spontaneity is almost saint-like, a nature so many would long to possess. She stands her ground as a denial to the common tangles of life. While more are deeming it inevitable, she sits by with crossed arms. If she loves you, she loves you true; if she does not, out of her life you fly, by what engine, alas! I do not know!
The thing about Aunt Betsy is that she is pure. Puro dell’ anima. “Nil mirari”, the constant calm against constant calamity, is sought, is called.