All the Year Round

What was interesting about this part of the first page of All the Year Round’s July 18^th, 1868 periodical was the fact Charles Dickens wrote that it was “incorporated [with] household words" (121). The use of “household words” connotes that Dickens intends on the audience being those people who are family-orientated, but also are educated enough to read and write. This section of The Moonstone was all from Ezra Jennings’s narrative, so it can be argued that since Ezra was an inspiring doctor he can be seen as a caretaker-type. In a regular Victorian household, the mother was the caretaker of the children, while the father was the caretaker of the whole family, especially when it came to working and making money.

With regard to Leverenz’s argument, she says that these periodicals are “to address current events and to express emotional responses to the state of the nation” (34), so when it comes to Dickens claiming this periodical is written for the house, then the men who are these caretakers feel more obliged to read it, and take into account these events for everyday life and create a better, stronger home.

Leverenz, Molly Knox. “Illustrating The Moonstone in America: Harper’s Weekly and Transatlantic Introspection.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism, vol. 24, no. 1, 2014, pp. 34.

Dickens, Charles. All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal. 28 July 1868, pp. 121.