{"title":"《三人重逢:埃德温·德鲁德的真正复活》","authors":"C. Glatt","doi":"10.1353/dqt.2023.0022","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite a comparatively recent flourishing of postcolonial readings of the novel, criticism of The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been focused predominantly on John Jasper, the respected choir-master and outwardly doting uncle whose opium-fueled fantasies lead, to all appearances, to an earnest, seemingly successful attempt on his nephew’s life. Seething with resentment and frustrated passion, Jasper is a figure of doubleness and repression whose depiction reflects an emerging Victorian interest in the unconscious mind; several biographers and critics have read him as a refracted mirror into Dickens’s own troubled psyche.1 Far less attention has been paid to the eponymous Edwin himself. A self-confessed “shallow, surface kind of fellow” whose early death seems in any case to remove him from the narrative economy (11; ch. 2), Edwin proves less compelling than his tormented uncle. Yet Edwin, I will argue, lies at the center of the novel’s exploration of proto-Freudian notions of consciousness and selfhood. Representative of a character type far more typical of Dickens’s earlier novels, Edwin, in death, suggests the psychological and narrative limits of this model: the surface fellow cannot withstand either a world that demands increasing interiority of its heroes or the villain–protagonist who possesses such complexity. At the same time, Edwin’s disappearance casts into relief the ultimate unfitness of Jasper – and, perhaps, of any other character – to fulfill his vacated place, a position supported by strong hints that Edwin must return in some form before the work of the novel can be completed. As a reminder of a previous phase of Dickens’s career and as a symbolic other half of Jasper’s divided consciousness, Edwin, in death, resists obsolescence and suggests his continuing relevance to models of both narrative and the self.","PeriodicalId":41747,"journal":{"name":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"These Three, Met Again: The Real Resurrection of Edwin Drood\",\"authors\":\"C. Glatt\",\"doi\":\"10.1353/dqt.2023.0022\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Despite a comparatively recent flourishing of postcolonial readings of the novel, criticism of The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been focused predominantly on John Jasper, the respected choir-master and outwardly doting uncle whose opium-fueled fantasies lead, to all appearances, to an earnest, seemingly successful attempt on his nephew’s life. Seething with resentment and frustrated passion, Jasper is a figure of doubleness and repression whose depiction reflects an emerging Victorian interest in the unconscious mind; several biographers and critics have read him as a refracted mirror into Dickens’s own troubled psyche.1 Far less attention has been paid to the eponymous Edwin himself. A self-confessed “shallow, surface kind of fellow” whose early death seems in any case to remove him from the narrative economy (11; ch. 2), Edwin proves less compelling than his tormented uncle. Yet Edwin, I will argue, lies at the center of the novel’s exploration of proto-Freudian notions of consciousness and selfhood. Representative of a character type far more typical of Dickens’s earlier novels, Edwin, in death, suggests the psychological and narrative limits of this model: the surface fellow cannot withstand either a world that demands increasing interiority of its heroes or the villain–protagonist who possesses such complexity. At the same time, Edwin’s disappearance casts into relief the ultimate unfitness of Jasper – and, perhaps, of any other character – to fulfill his vacated place, a position supported by strong hints that Edwin must return in some form before the work of the novel can be completed. As a reminder of a previous phase of Dickens’s career and as a symbolic other half of Jasper’s divided consciousness, Edwin, in death, resists obsolescence and suggests his continuing relevance to models of both narrative and the self.\",\"PeriodicalId\":41747,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"DICKENS QUARTERLY\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.7000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-05-23\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"DICKENS QUARTERLY\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.0022\",\"RegionNum\":1,\"RegionCategory\":\"文学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"DICKENS QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dqt.2023.0022","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES","Score":null,"Total":0}
These Three, Met Again: The Real Resurrection of Edwin Drood
Despite a comparatively recent flourishing of postcolonial readings of the novel, criticism of The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been focused predominantly on John Jasper, the respected choir-master and outwardly doting uncle whose opium-fueled fantasies lead, to all appearances, to an earnest, seemingly successful attempt on his nephew’s life. Seething with resentment and frustrated passion, Jasper is a figure of doubleness and repression whose depiction reflects an emerging Victorian interest in the unconscious mind; several biographers and critics have read him as a refracted mirror into Dickens’s own troubled psyche.1 Far less attention has been paid to the eponymous Edwin himself. A self-confessed “shallow, surface kind of fellow” whose early death seems in any case to remove him from the narrative economy (11; ch. 2), Edwin proves less compelling than his tormented uncle. Yet Edwin, I will argue, lies at the center of the novel’s exploration of proto-Freudian notions of consciousness and selfhood. Representative of a character type far more typical of Dickens’s earlier novels, Edwin, in death, suggests the psychological and narrative limits of this model: the surface fellow cannot withstand either a world that demands increasing interiority of its heroes or the villain–protagonist who possesses such complexity. At the same time, Edwin’s disappearance casts into relief the ultimate unfitness of Jasper – and, perhaps, of any other character – to fulfill his vacated place, a position supported by strong hints that Edwin must return in some form before the work of the novel can be completed. As a reminder of a previous phase of Dickens’s career and as a symbolic other half of Jasper’s divided consciousness, Edwin, in death, resists obsolescence and suggests his continuing relevance to models of both narrative and the self.