The Duchess and the Jeweler is the story of the world’s greatest jeweler who had promised his mother to become the world’s richest jeweler in his childhood but now that his dream has come true he is not satisfied. So, trying to achieve satisfaction, he knowingly buys fake pearls from a duchess in exchange for spending an entire weekend with his daughter with whom he is in love. The purpose of this essay is to show how Virginia Woolf has succeeded in presenting the inner mind of the characters, their struggle, and their communication through the least amount of verbal communication between them.
The silent communication created by Woolf’s “The Duchess and the Jewel Box” is, first, the communication between the reader and the story, and, second, the communication between the characters in the text itself. In better words, this story firstly reveals the minds of the characters to the reader through the least amount of explicit expression of their states and secondly presents the interaction between the characters in the story through the as little dialogue as possible between them.
The first instance in the unspoken communication between the reader and the story is the revelation of Oliver Bacon’s childhood memories that occurs without the author giving them a voice. The reader’s first encounter with Oliver’s childhood takes place when he addresses himself: “you who started your life in the dirty alley” and then falls into childhood memories of him. This brief statement by Oliver to himself is very expressive of his childhood and also of his attitude towards this period of his life. Through the author’s earlier descriptions of where Oliver lives, his servant, and his habit, Oliver Bacon is revealed to be a very wealthy man now, while this brief self-address reveals his childhood poverty. It is also through flashbacks of him that readers realize that he began by selling stolen dogs, continued to sell watches out of a small counter, and eventually rose to his current profession as a jeweler. So it is mainly through Oliver’s silent memories that the reader becomes familiar with his early days. Furthermore, Oliver’s little talk to himself shows the reader that he cares about his childhood and all the efforts he has made to save all his money. Although he never mentions it, his constant flashbacks show how important his childhood is to him. As an example, when Oliver is in his room just before the Duchess enters, he begins to think about his childhood spent in misery and hard times. This shows how Virginia Woolf slyly, without explicitly mentioning Oliver’s preoccupation with her childhood, interacts with the reader through the character’s flashbacks and gives them the opportunity to engage with the text. Thus, Oliver’s mind and also the overall story of him are revealed to the reader through the fewest of the character’s spoken words.
Woolf has also taken advantage of the use of images to reveal Oliver’s dissatisfied state to the reader through his sign language and images as an alternative to words. She resembles Oliver to a camel who is trapped in the zoo and is not satisfied with life for him, because she can see “the blue lake and the fringe of palm trees in front of him”. In other words, Oliver wants more and more and despite all the meetings he feels like a camel mother who thirsts for the water he sees but can’t reach. The reader also reads of Oliver’s loneliness and his need for a soul mate, as Oliver recalls the days when “mademoiselle used to pick a (red rose) every morning and tuck it into her buttonhole.” This image gives the reader the understanding that Oliver feels the lack of a soul in his life; that there has been someone for whom Oliver probably had a feeling of love (image of red rose) and that she has left Oliver due to his greed for money. This is later confirmed by the text itself: “but mademoiselle had married Mr. Pedder of the local brewery, no one put roses in her buttonholes.” This sentence again confirms his loneliness and his need for a wife, although Oliver himself does not mention it directly.
The revelation of Oliver’s mother’s dominance over his life and the fact that she has been dictating him all her life and even now, after her death, is dictating it to her, is understood through his constant recollection of his mother in all the decisions she made in her life. though this is never directly mentioned in the story. He remembers his mother scolding him when he stole dogs as a child and when he buys the fake pearls from the duchess at the end of the story he apologizes to the old woman in the photo and he feels like a little boy again. So these constant memories of his mother also imply to the reader her mother’s dominance over him even after her death, although this is understood and never stated.
The reader also notices Oliver’s arrogance and pride, in his contacts with his workers, although hardly a conversation takes place with them; In the first contact of the workers with Oliver in his workshop there is no spoken communication; however, through his “envying look”, the reader understands his attitudes towards Oliver and his indifference to them is revealed when the author says that “it was only with a wagging finger of the amber glove that he acknowledged their presence”. This unspoken interaction between them is largely expressive of his mutual attitude.
As mentioned above, this unspoken communication between the reader and the text also takes place between the characters in the story. The first silent communication between the characters occurs when Oliver, as a young man, passes through a group of jewelers discussing the price of gold and “one of them would put a finger to the side of his nose and mutter, ‘um-mm, ‘ when it passed. It was just a murmur, no more than a nudge to the shoulder, a finger to the nose, a buzz that went through the group of jewelers… but still Oliver felt it purring at his back, the shove , the murmur that meant, ‘look at him, young Oliver, the young jeweler, here he goes.’ As the text says, the slightest gesture from the jewelers has meant many words of encouragement to Oliver and he still remembers that murmur among the jewelers.
The next position of the voiceless interaction between the characters is the communication between Oliver and the Duchess. In the Duchess’s visit to Oliver’s shop, the author’s highly colorful descriptions of the Duchess, her clothing, her sparkling jewelry, her fragrance, her undulating motion, and her resemblance to a peacock in beauty and swagger reveal much of she. her high status and the influence she can have over Oliver. However, her communications are not limited to unspoken conversation; a dialogue takes place between them, even if this communication is through the fewest number of words. They talk but their use of words is very economical which makes their interaction the most efficient. An example of this brief interaction is the fragmented words of the Duchess when she wants to persuade Oliver to buy her fake pearls; she drops pearls from a bag: “‘From Appleby’s cincture,’ she wailed. ‘the last… the last of all.'” And she goes on to justify her despair: “Dear Mr. Bacon, a bit of bad luck…” and then justifies her cause of coming as “‘that villain! That sharper one'” which explains her objection to her husband. her. These short, simple and apparently fragmented conversations between the duchess and the jeweler very clearly describe their internal states and her mutual attitudes. We understand that both Oliver and the Duchess understand the meaning of this wordless communication. Also, as soon as they shake hands, they feel the enmity between them, although they also feel the need they have for each other, which is why they both participate in this game of deceiving and submitting to deception. One clue to this is his play on the phrase: “old friend”, when the Duchess tries to soften Oliver up by calling him “old friend” twice and Oliver, who understands this, repeats her phrase two more times. the communication continues to the point where Oliver buys the duchess’s fake pearls without questioning the duchess.
In “The Duchess and the Jewel Box,” Virginia Woolf skillfully describes the increased amount of communication that takes place between the characters in the text despite their lack of verbal communication and also the deep understanding that readers can gain from the characters in the text. although her emotions and moods are not explicitly expressed. It replaces lengthy dialogue and direct descriptions of character states with brief but meaningful dialogue and the use of imagery and entry into the mind of the characters and gives the reader an opportunity to read much of their current state and enough of their past lives. she needed to carry out the story of it.