Dear Serial Readers,
Apologies for my tardiness--somehow the world-outside-the-serial (aka American presidential election) distracted me from DROOD. But I'm back on track now, and will post on #3 installment (chaps 10-12) in two weeks on Nov 24th.
I'm going to frame my comments on #2 through those posted by other readers on the first installment. At the end of her post, Catherine mentioned the tension between Jasper and Ned, and Kari noted that Jasper seems to have a rather strong interest (perhaps "in love") in Rosebud. And Julia remarked on the accumulating suggestions of violence. In this installment, I had the sense that Jasper, with his mysterious mixing of mulled wine which he bestows on his guests Ned Drood and Neville Landless, had his own interests in provoking this "daggers drawn" scene between the two young men. Is this a set up or framing of sorts for the promised "mystery of Edwin Drood" to come, possibly his murder with Neville as suspect, but Jasper as perpetrator? Just guessing--I've not read this novel before! But the reading paranoia that Victorian novels (especially sensation and detective ones, which seem cousin genres to this novel) often perpetuate certainly has infected my high-alert for clues of what's to come.
The tone too is so curious--the quiet, quintessential English cathedral village of Cloisterham laced with very bizarre characters, odd eruptions of violence or cruelty or mystery, and many of the staple features of sensation fiction (drug use, the Gothic traces via old Catholic England with the Nun's House, the will plot, secrets accruing), yet the Dickensian humor too. Mr Grewgious with his Memoranda that even includes "Leave" provided a bit of comic relief after the weird "daggers drawn" incident and its gossipy aftermath.
Julia mentioned the way that rural England in the novel is joined to the wider world--a kind of Victorian globalizaiton with references across the British Empire. In this installment we meet those intriguingly strange "Landless" twins delivered to Cloisterham by Honeythunder. Is "Landless" an allusion to the colonized other, robbed of land by imperial forces? Or a marker of their in-between and geographically decentered status, not quite English, not quite Sinhalese or Indian, from both cultures or neither? From a "wretched existence" in Ceylon, both Neville and Helena are described in hybrid terms with lots of attention to their dark "gipsy" complexions, their hot tempers. Drood insults Neville about his "dark skin" and Jasper comments on "something of the tiger in his dark blood" when describing Neville to Crisparkle.
I'm especially intrigued by Helena, with the "slumbering gleam of fire" in her "intense dark eyes," after Rosa confesses to her that Jasper holds her under his Svengali-like power (even though three decades before Du Maurier's novel TRILBY introduces this character). She reminds me of other fiery, rebellious Dickens heroines, and I can't think things will end well for her.
What did you notice in this installment and where does this narrative seem to be heading?
Until next time,
Serial Susan
2 comments:
Serial Readers: In reading all the comments again, I am struck by Jasper's need to turn to opium, presented here as elsewhere in 19th-century arts as a particularly oriental vice, to cope with "the cramped monotony of [his small-town English] existence." Then he somehow posits his own position of being in demonic conflict with his job and his position in Cloisterham as a warning to Drood, who wants to go "East." At that point, Drood says "I don't really consider myself in danger," though Jasper hasn't suggested any particular danger.
I think now that Jasper warns Drood because Jasper can't stand to see Pussy leave for the East with Drood (I can't resist the nickname this week), and after reading section 2 I can see why Susan puts "in love" in quotation marks! Jasper's interest in Rosa seems more and more disturbing, and Rosa seems to want to avoid him as much as possible.
I find it interesting, also, that Jasper is so interested in orientalizing and demonizing (using each category to help create the other) Neville Landless. Like Susan, I suspected Jasper of perhaps creating an environment in which he can kill Drood and blame Neville L. Because of the title, I keep looking for where the mystery will occur.
I think I have been hoping that Helena will be the female character who is allowed to succeed and be happy in the novel, while poor Rosa suffers, but Susan's instincts about Helena's similarities to other Dickens' characters are also convincing to me.
I am noticing that I tend to read DIckens' novels as a struggle between selfish and generous characters, with the selfish / self-centered sufficiently threatening but ultimately not strong enough to surpass the actions of the generous/loving characters. Because of Jasper's prominence at first and the repeated assertions that he adores his nephew, I at first was expecting him to be in the generous camp, and it took me longer than it should have perhaps (despite his nefarious opium use) to notice that he is actually a rather disturbing character. I think that--Jasper's prominence in the novel and yet dangerous disregard for others--is what makes the tone of the novel seem odd to me, even while Mr. Crisparkle and his mother and Mr. Grewgious bring in that playful delight I expect from Dickens, as does the ultimately unthreatening but quite self-centered Professor of Philanthropy, Mr. Honeythunder. I read the Mr. Grewgious chapter 3 times, and enjoyed it more each time. He refers to himself as "unnatural" and "angular" and yet, in what I think is the ethical language of the novel, could be called more "natural" than those who, say, stir up fights by drugging guests, or who beat their stepchildren.
At last, I can read on!
Hi all--I want to submit a quick response before we move on to the next installment of Dickens's novel.
Jasper is turning out to be a deeply troubling character, and I was struck in this installment by the new layer of mystery that surrounds him. In the first installment, we saw Jasper "warning" Drood in a way that didn't quite make sense, and here we see him "threatening" Rosebud in an equally enigmatic and mysterious manner. Rosebud's description of his subtle power, the way he "forced me to understand him, without his saying a word; and ...forced me to keep silence, without his uttering a threat" (end of Ch. VII) sets him up as a ghostly kind of villain. At the same time, the wine-drugging incident shows a more tangible approach to violence.
It's also interesting to me that the Landless siblings share the power to communicate without words. At this point in the novel, this second model of non-verbal communication also seems potentially sinister.
This is particularly so when Jasper, Neville, and Helena are viewed next to the comic foil of Mr. Grewgious and his "guiding memorandum." This good natured gentleman seems to leave nothing to the imagination...there's no hidden warning or secret exchanges of information going on with him!
For next time, I'm eager to see whether non-verbal communication continues to play a central role in setting up Dickens's mystery. It certainly helps to build a sense of suspense.
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