Elements you have to explain:
- “she”,
- the situation (David has come to tell Mrs
Steerforth of her son’s death),
- who Rosa Dartle is, her personality, her scar
(its meaning, its “life”), what her relationship to Steerforth was.
David as character and narrator:
David the character acts as a narrator in this
passage and is not successful. His aim is to convey shocking news to Mrs
Steerforth upsetting her as little as possible. He does it so well that she
suffers some sort of stroke which leaves her permanently speechless.
His euphemisms are obvious: Mrs Steerforth sees
through them and anticipates the news: “My son is ill”. Similarly, his
hypothetical sentences (“If he were at sea...”) are pathetic attempts at
delicacy.
He is then so silly as to make Rosa understand
that Steerforth is dead before he tells Mrs Steerforth. This is the last thing
to do when you know Rosa: she is bound to make a scene. Predictably, she
interrupts David’s narration to tell Mrs Steerforth the terrible news in the
bluntest, most brutal and violent way.
David the narrator makes David the
character an incompetent narrator in order to serve his narrative. David the
narrator handles the situation in such a way that it completely escapes his
control. Thus, it becomes a dramatic scene centered on Rosa Dartle.
Rosa expresses the full extent of her love for
Steerforth and of her deeply ambiguous feelings.
This ambiguity is actually very much a
reflection and a product of Steerforth’s own ambiguity. He was at once a
charmer who made people feel valued (“I attracted him”, “he loved me”, remember
how he seduces the whole Peggotty family) and a manipulator who used others (“I
descended [...] into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be
dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him”,
remember his behaviour towards Emily). Consequently, Rosa is still deeply in
love with a man who has conquered her heart and whom she hoped to regain at the
same time as she hates him for using and abandoning her.
At the end of the passage, contrast David’s
words with Rosa’s: David’s style is trite, conventional, impersonal,
unimaginative whereas Rosa’s is spontaneous, fiery (incandescent), full of
metaphors. David’s tone is moralistic while Rosa is passionate. David
does not appear to his best advantage: he does not seem to comprehend Rosa
Dartle’s passion or her tragedy, which leave him far behind. However, Dickens
uses his character to bring them out.