Dear Serial Readers,
I knew when I started THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD that Dickens died before finishing it. But still I felt a bit unprepared for the rather abrupt in medias res of the last existing chapter.
In the intro to the Oxford edition, Margaret Cardwell reviews the various speculations about how Dickens intended to conclude the novel. I was surprised to learn there has been a rift between readers who believed Jasper murdered Drood, and readers who believed that Drood did succeed in his determination to wander abroad. Actually, this difference of opinion is shared by the residents of Cloisterham, as indicated early in the last chapter.
To my mind, there were so many (bordering on the overdetermined) clues that Jasper had indeed murdered Drood. First, his motivation to marry Rosa by getting rid of Drood seems so evident. Jasper's "ghastly figure" and fall in a faint to the floor in #4 when he learns from Grewgious that this motivation, and thus the murder, pointless, because Rosa and Edwin had determined not to marry. And then all the details from Durdles about the corrosive effects of the lime in the river where Jasper presumably threw his victim's body, and the gold ring that Edwin had taken from his meeting with Grewgious. One of you serial readers pointed out too that Jasper's insistence that his nephew was murdered, rather than had run away, implies his guilty knowledge. What other clues did you discover? Are you fairly certain about the "mystery" even without clear resolution?
According to John Forster, Dickens's original biographer, Dickens meant for that gold ring to be recovered as metal that would resist the effects of the lime, which would have been on Edwin's body, now destroyed by the corrosive lime. The exact details of Jasper's crime were to be presented in final chapters, claims Forster, as the murderer confesses in writing from his prison cell. Forster also believed that Rosa was to marry Tartar and that Crisparkle and Helena were to marry. No word, at least from Cardwell's intro, about plans for Neville Landless. In a 1906 magazine article, Kate Dickens claimed that her father cared less for the intricate working out of the plot details than for "his strange insight into the tragic secrets of the human heart."
My favorite part of these last chapters is the return of "the Princess Puffer," the "haggard old woman" from the East London opium den in the opening chapter. In a way, she figures as a detective who had heard something about Jasper's imagined wanderings during his opium episodes, something that seems to make her suspicious that "Ned" is a "threatened" and "dangerous" name, as she tells Drood in chap 14, just before he goes to his uncle's that fateful Christmas Eve. Why does the Princess Puffer then follow Jasper back to Cloisterham after his return trip for more opium in chap 23? And who is Dick Datchery to whom she relays some of the details of her opium business? I was also intrigued by the details of opium consumption in the novel, both in the first and last chapters. Does opium usage facilitate some insight or illumination that assists the working out of the mystery here? A few decades later, Arthur Conan Doyle certainly seemed to think that cocaine aided Sherlock Holmes in his detective work. Who knew he was indepted to the Princess Puffer!
So concludes my comments on Dickens's final, if inconclusive, serial novel. Stay tuned to our next reading adventure, Serial Readers! I'll send out a message directly on Anthony Trollope's THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON!
Serially finished, for now,
Susan
1 comment:
Just like Susan, I also spent time wondering whether Jasper really killed Drood, but the signs for me that he did are the heavy foreshadowing about the ring in the chapter where he and Rosa break off the engagement and the mysterious appearance of Dick Datchery, who clearly comes pre-informed about the town and with the intent to keep an eye on Jasper and find evidence against him. Yet, it's not clear that the evidence is primarily about Drood's death--it might just be about Jasper's opium problems and self-obsession. Datchery does not hear that Jasper has threatened Edwin, as the Princess Puffer had told Edwin himself, when he puts the long score against Jasper on his board.
So, hmm, what if after the Princess Puffer warned Drood he just left? But why would he leave his watch and pin? And not return the ring? On the other hand, it's hard to know who sent Datchery if Edwin himself did not--I guess Grewgious could have. That does seem highly likely, indeed more likely than that Drood did, since Grewgious has much reason to be suspicious of Jasper, even before Rosa shows up in London.
So, although I enjoy the idea of Drood living on in the East and bringing his new Anglo-colonial wife home to reunite with the entire group and to use the ring as a wedding gift to Rosa or as a token that this really tan and mature man is really him, it seems the foreshadowing and the actions of Jasper and Datchery lead strongly to the analysis that Drood is dead. These actions include Jasper's discussion with the Princess Puffer about journeys taken over and over in an opium haze with a fellow traveller who doesn't know he's there and then came "to be real at last." Those pages, 207-08 in the Oxford edition, in chapter 23, seem like a confession.
I also suspect that Jasper's fatal blow against Neville would be the discovery of the body, though having the body not be in the river would point less to Neville.
Susan pointed out that Neville's future is not clear in the introduction or these last chapters we have, and I'm wondering whether he would gradually disappear--he is increasingly in the shadows. I very much enjoyed the introduction of the gardening Tartar and I like speculating on Rosa and Tarter making a snug and flowery home together with Grewgious as a frequent guest.
I was intrigued by the Bazzard story and I'm not quite sure how the failed playwrite ties in to the rest of the text, but it's an interesting variation on the trend of those who aspire to greatness in a variety of ways such as Sapsea and Twinkleton. (also interesting that Joseph Hatton wrote an unsuccessful, never performed play, of this novel with the ending that he claimed Dickens told him on a walk--Jasper revealing his murder plot in an opium den after it was done.)
I also wasn't sure why the Princess Puffer is now pursuing Jasper. Is it because he called her "Unintelligible"? How interesting to have that as the term of offense, and that her revenge would be to make sure that everyone understands what he's really like (at least, that seems to be her goal).
I was less delighted with the introduction of the no-first-name Billickin and her conflicts with Twinkleton. After what I wrote last time, though, I was so relieved that Rosa immediately headed to London after Jasper's threats.
Even with the book unfinished, it sends such strong signals of order about to be restored in a number of ways, even the Princess Puffer's sensibilities being attended to and contributing to an eventual justice, whether Drood is alive or dead. It also seems that the novel is disinclined to be generous to those who intend bad as well as to those who do bad (such as murder), and also ends critical of and therefore not rewarding those who *think* they are great but actually are harmful (such as the professors of philanthropy). But those who slip into bad behavior through accident or social forces seem to gain some sympathy, such as the Princess Puffer.
So, my pleasure reading needs are met--pompous folks are mocked, thoughtful folks are rewarded with intimacy, and doers and planners of evil are on their way to justice. I sigh with relief. And I can start another book. Thanks for the insights!
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