This is a review of four novela and two short stories by Charles Dickens with hints as to their relevance to present times. With the exception of A Christmas Carol the works belong to the middle to late period of Dickens' writings when Dickens increasingly focused on religious and mystical interpretations of life.

1. WHAT THE DICKENS IS GOING ON?
A Review of Four Novels and Two Short Stories by
Charles Dickens with Hints as to the Relevance to the
Present Day
HARD TIMES with Charles Dickens
Hard times are in the news these days. In view of this fact I suggest that it is
timely to consider the title of a novel by Charles Dickens that bears ‘hard times’ in
its title. We today tend to associate this expression with periods of economic
decline in general and the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties in particular.
Now Janet Yellen tells us that statistics don’tmatter so much as a pointer to a
possible recession as long as people 'feel good' abouttheir lives, whereas Harry S.
Truman opined: ‘It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression
when you lose yours.' In short, there seems to be a general consensus that hard
times have to do with fluctuations in economic conditions. In the caseof the
conditions recorded in during the greater part of the nineteenth century by Dickens
we find no basis for ascertaining a particular phase of economic decline. For the
working class all times were uniformly and consistently bad. We must seek change
not in conditions themselves but in a growing critical awareness of the injustices
and exploitation that plagued the state of society in the Victorian period.
In 1854, the year in which Dickens published Hard Times in serial form the
burning issues that caused the greatest consternation were raised by the Irish
famine and the Crimean war. However. the revolutionary events that shook
continental Europe in 1848 had repercussions in Britain where the Chartist
movement challenged the establishment to initiate a radical agenda of reform.
Some in this movement sought change through legislative reforms while others
advocated more forceful means including coercion under the threat of violent
action., which aroused apprehension and mistrust in ruling circles, and not only
there. Dickens found a place in Hard Times, for Stephen Blackpool, a humble
factory worker whose conscience prevented him from joining the local trade union
on the grounds that he objected to the union’s recourse to threats and what he
deemed to be its bullying tactics. Later Bernhard Shaw would rise to the defence of

2. the union movement in its early days and alleged that Dickens had misjudged
union policy and practices of the time. Was Dickens a little out of his depth or at
least out of his comfort zone when venturing from London and the south east of
England to Coketown, a fictional location in the industrial north of England?
‘Hard Times does not easily fit into the general picture of Dickensian fiction. It is
relatively short. It is not a historical novel to the extent that it does not depict such
an event as the storming of the Bastille or the Gordonriots, nor does it bear a
person’s name in its title or follow one individual’s passage through life. Perhaps it
can be aptly described as snapshotof industrial Britain and hence a study in the
area of social and economic history. On the other hand some have claimed to
discern in the novel the quality of a fable or allegory rooted in religious mysticism
. While we may not narrow down the ‘hard times’ named in the novel’s title to
anything as specific as an economic cycle, there is nothing to prevent us from
viewing such times as that period of history when two philosophies vied for
supremacy in the battle between so-called ‘utilitarianism’ and the gathering call for
freedoms to be enjoyed not only by people according to their inclusion within a
class or group but also by each personas an individual.
As early as in the year 1843 Dickens evinced a strong aversion to any theory
based on a view that treated human beings as impersonal factors within the field of
statistical analysis. Before his moral reformation Scroogewas a devoted follower
of Malthusianism, a philosophy based on the thesis that the exponential growth of
the world’s population would always outpacethe finite provision of the world’s
supply of food. Mass starvation, understood as the logical result of this fact,
regrettably but necessarily corrected the imbalance between limited supply and
unlimited demand, and should therefore be accepted as 'a fact of life.' indeed one
that conveniently dispensed with the need to remedy the world’s ills by excessive
acts of charity and relieved the rich from the pangs of a bad conscience. In 1854
the target of Dickens’ moral criticism was Utilitarianism, a philosophy devised by
Jeremy Bentham and endorsed by John Stuart Mill, which proposedthat the chief
object of government and society was to achieve ‘the greatest happiness for the
greatest number.’ Bentham could not be accused of defending the status quo and
all the miseries that would involve. Indeed, he differentiated between ‘the law as it’
and ‘the law as it ought to be.’ He tirelessly sought to apply his principles to every
branch of law, public administration and government but, as he himself conceded,
the rights of the happy majority might invade the rights of unhappy minorities and
even impose on these some form of discrimination. Arguably Stephen Blackpool
suffered such a fate when he was ‘sent to Coventry’ by his fellow workers.

3. Dickens was not the first to find fault with Utilitarianism’s alleged disregard for
the intuitive and spiritual side of the human mind and souland its inordinate stress
on quantitative criteria in matters of the heart. In much the same vein Bentham
perceived value and meaning solely in words to which one could attach references
to specific facts and identifiable objects. Words that he considered to be devoid of
such powers of reference were too vague and nebulous to be of any value. We
witness a parodyof the utilitarian evaluation of words in the classroomwhere
Thomas Gradgrind, the school’s superintendent, required his students to define ‘a
horse.’ He was prepared to accept only a definition of a horse that enumerated the
number of teeth in a horse’s mouth, categorized a horse as a quadruped and listed
other relevant countable features. Gradgrind held that proper education should
fasten onto ‘facts’ and facts alone. He assigned numbers to his pupils instead of
calling them by name. Pupil number 20, a female orphan engaged in circus
performances, naturally entertained an alternative notion of what constituted a
horse. The pernicious effects of his educational system exposed themselves in due
time by the misery they inflicted on his own daughter and son.
A fellow upholder of Coketown’s harsh and inhuman world was Mr. Josiah
Bounderby, an associate if not a close friend of Gradgrind. This ‘self-made man.’
cottonmill owner and the proprietor of his own bank to boot, played a central role
in the novel as the employer of Gradgrind’s wayward son and Stephen Blackpool,
whom he not only fired in a fit of pique but also banished from Coketown by dint
of his status and ‘influence. We see here an early case of an employer’s use of the
lockout as a means of exercising control. Bounderby also became the husband of
Gradgrind’s daughter Louisa, aged twenty at the time of her marriage to
Bounderby, thirty years her senior. She married Bounderby out of a misguided
sense of loyalty to her father, who had assured her that statistics showed
incontrovertibly that a wide age difference between spouses presented no serious
problem to contented marital relations.. Thus Louisa joined Dorothy Casaubon,
Effi Briest and Anna Karenina in a century when the force of female emancipation
had yet to overcome the force of male supremacism. Only when Louisa fled to her
father in despair did he admit the error of his ways, thus becoming one of Dickens’
penitents along with Scroogeand Mr. Dombey. Finally, Stephen Blackpool made a
bid to return to Coketown but on his way fell down a derelict mineshaft and died
from the injuries he sustained, though not before he uttered his valedictory
message to the world that included an evocation of the star of Bethlehem.
Commentators have questioned the suitability of the way Dickens put an end to
Blackpool’s life, an end that did not result from an irresolvable inner conflict or
from a train of events occasioned by his own actions. Did Dickens simply bump
him off as other authors, Goethe included, have done to the offspring of their
inventiveness?

4. Hard Times is perhaps the novel my Dickens that is most relevant to our present
time. In Conservative clubs you can still hear disgruntled voices inveighing again
‘lazy parasitical workers.’ Politicians still jazz up accounts of their rise 'from rags
to riches,' much as Josiah Bounderby did. One recalls the case of Neil Kinnock and
Joe Biden. Minority opinions earn those who hold them the disdain and rejection
of the righteous majority, as Jeremy Corbyn has recently learned to his cost. Last
but not least, ‘hard times’ will be with us for some time yet.
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BARNABY RUDGE Why one of the less celebrated novels by
Charles Dickens possibly has relevance to the present situation at
Westminster.
Barnaby Rudge poses something of an anomaly among the works of Charles
Dickens. With A Tale of Two Cities it belongs to a small segment of Dickensian
fiction, that of the historical novel. Its protagonist, apparently a simpleton treated
as a mereerrandboy byhis superiors,inspiresnoneof thepathos arousedbyOliver
Twistor Little Dorrit. Indeed, Dickens originally contemplated placing the name of
another person in the title of the book, a fact suggesting that there is no central
figure in the novel capable of lending it structural consistency, which in any case
critics have found to be lacking.
In whatway could this novelhave a bearing on Westminster, as proposed by the
title of this discussion? The reference to Westminster is founded on the scene
depicted in chapter 43, the scene that encapsulates the historical core of the
novel, events surrounding the Gordon Riots of 1780. These followed a public
petition sponsoredbyLordGeorgeGordonto theHousesof Parliamentdemanding
the quashing of a bill proposing a minor reduction of the impositions placed on
Roman Catholics. Unruly elements got the upper hand and public order in London
disintegrated, bringing the firing of Catholic churches and property and the

5. storming of Newgate prison in its wake before the disturbancewas crushed to the
loss of over four hundred lives. Among history’s many ironies one could point to
the fact that John Wilkes, the Lord Mayor of London and the man who ordered the
suppression of this uprising was the agitator who wth his slogan ‘For Wilkes and
Liberty, set the scene for the American and French revolutions.
In Chapter 43 Geoffrey Harewell. a proud and devout Roman Catholic and a
significant character in the novel , when witnessing the anti-Catholic march on
Parliament,, is identified as a ‘Papist’ by a group of demonstrators and barely
escapes with his life before delivering an impassioned and stirring statement in
defence of his faith..Doesnarrativein Chapter 43 reflect a sympathyfor the Roman
Catholic causeon the part of Dickens himself? Nominally Dickens was an Anglican.
In his youth he proved broadminded enough to attend Baptist services. Dickens is
well-known for his satirical attacks against what he saw as religious humbug,
particularly if discovered in those professing evangelical beliefs but at heart he
was a true Christian if his unrelenting defence of the downtrodden and
underprivileged is anything to go by. It is implicit is the depiction of events in
Chapter 43 that what he presented as most admirable in Harewell was his
integrity, sincerity and, not least, his courage when standing up for his convictions
in the face of a violent mob. Dickens has been accused of anti-Jewish bigotry with
regard to his frequent recall of the word ‘Jew’ in Oliver Twist. In Barnaby Rudge,
however, there is a favourable reference to Lord Gordon as righteous person
“tzadik’ in recollection of his conversion to Judaism some seven years after the
riots.
I view of his references to Gordon as a devout person, we can assume that
Dickensendorsed the courtdecision to acquit Gordonof High Treasonon grounds
that he did not foresee or wish to provokethe riots of 1780. It is clear, however,
that Dicken deplored the grotesque populism that reared its ugly head once the
riots had started. Here he took a leaf fromSir Walter Scott, the reputed originator
of the modern historical novel, . particularly with regard to the riot scene in The
Heart of Midlothian portraying the lynching of a much hated s Captain John
Porteous.
An element of historical retrospect also enters Barnaby Rudge for after sixty
intervening years Dickens writing at the beginning of the Victorian age lived in a

6. different world from the one he described in Barnaby Rudge. Perhaps in a
whimsical almost nostalgic state of mind Dickens looked back on an age when
travelling at night the ten miles between Chigwell and London was an adventure
involving fears of being waylaid by highway robbers, for by 1840 the rail link
between Birminghamand London reduced a former journey thattook two of more
days to five and a half hours. Under Victoria the monarchy was becoming an
institution promising to represent middle class values in the place of a profligate
and even scandalous aristocratic order. In his description of the world in 1780
Dickens detected a spirit of discontent with the status quo expressed at various
levels by the generational gap between Joe Willet and his father, the subversive
meetings of an apprenticeat variancewith his master as well as by the misdirected
ire of the rioters unable to define the true causes of their discontent. We could
compare this potentially revolutionary situation with Dickens’ depiction of the
descent of the French Revolution into the reign of la Terreur.
I write today under the impression made by ugly scenes recorded by the media
of a prominent politician being verbally abused and aggressively jostled in the
forecourt of the Houses of Parliament, yea, at the threshold of the mother of
parliamentary democracy, where only months before a policeman was knifed to
death by a terrorist. May it not be that Britain only avoided a bloody revolution by
avoiding issues through dubious compromises or by ‘kicking the can down the
road.” Roads have to end somewhere We have not only the Gordon Riots to
consider but also the execution of Charles the First and the Gunpowder Plot.
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Does the Legend of the Wandering Jew Underlie the Part Dr. Manette
Plays in A TALE OF TWO CITIES?

7. ‘Dr.Manette’srole asgothic wanderer islargely based upon the Wandering
Jew. Dickensintentionally depicts Dr. Manette in prison as a shoemaker to link him
with the Wandering Jew because Ahasueruswasalso a shoemaker.’
. The Gothic
Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption,
. Tyler R.
Tichelaar,Ph.D. T, Ann Arbor, 2012, 198
Introduction
Depending on which school of criticism he or sheprefers, a student of literature
is likely to be inclined or disinclined to discover in works allusions to somesuch
figureas theWandering Jew or even Jesus,though this, ostensibly atleast. has little
or nothing to do with a character depicted in the plain text of the surrounding
narrative. Thoseprone to detect such allusions may point to no morethan a single
word or phrase to justify their claim. Could therefore the presence of the word
‘crossbow’in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner point to a religious theme related
to the story the storyof the WanderingJew? Wefind an example of this approach
in the citation at the head of this discussion according to which both Ahasuerus
and Dr. Alexandre Manette ‘were shoemakers,’ but without further evidence to
establish a link between them we might dismiss the alleged connection as
somewhattenuous. Should we maintain this conclusion after paying due attention
to such matters as the inner coherence of a literary work subject to our
investigation in the matter before us as well as to its typicality within the body of
works written by the same author and even wider afield within its contemporary
and historical contexts?
Let us begin by considering the legend itself with a view to recognizing its
relevance to the question as to whether Dr. Manette can be identified as the
Wandering Jew in the way Tyler R. Tichelaar has contended. The legend arose in
the Middle Ages and reached its definitive shape at the beginning of the
seventeenth century with the publication of a document in German about a Jew
named Ahasverus (Ahasuerus)who goaded Jesus to walk faster on the way to the

8. Cross. Jesus replied by saying ‘I go but you must remain till I return.’ The author,
one named Christoff Crutzer, also referred to Ahasverus as a ‘cobbler.’ In Queen
Mab the poet Shelley recalled this story and echoed Jesus’ answer to Ahasuerus
with the words ‘I go / But thou shall wander o’er the unquiet earth / Eternally ’
(VII. 182). In the same work Shelley referred the Wanderer as ‘a phantasmal
portraiture’ of the inner workings of the mind, especially the mind in that afflicted
and distraught condition by which poets themselves, overcome by extreme self-
consciousness, wereburdened. Shelley’s interpretation of the Wandering Jew as a
symbol of the mind and what we today might understand as the Unconscious
gained currency during theRomantic period and even in the Victorian period when
authors such as Dickens, Gogol and Georg Buechner took a scientific and clinical
interest in erratic mental processes.
Whatarethe coreelements of the legend that are relevantto this studyand how
may these correspond to the representation of events we follow as read the
novel.? I suggest two such points of departure for further investigation. First, the
legend’s associationofthe Christian symbolofthe Crossandthe actof pronouncing
a curse. Second, the implication of an affinity between the Wandering Jew and the
occupation of a shoemaker.
The Cross and the Curse
In furtherance of his contention that Dr. Manette was the Wandering Jew
Dr.Tyler R. Tichelaar finds corroborating evidence in a passage in the novel that
informs the reader of Dr. Manette’s initial encounter with the St. Evremonde
brothers, two aristocrats who engaged him in the task of diagnosing the dire and
deteriorating condition of two siblings, a boy and a young woman. The boy had
sustained a stab wound and the young woman, whom the doctor found to be
pregnant, was in an advanced state of delirium. Both were dying. With his final
breath the boy, making the sign of the Cross with bloodstained hand, laid a
perpetual curseon all members of the Evrémonde family. Manette drew the only
conclusionpossibleaboutthe partplayed bythe Evrémondebrothersin the deaths
of the youngvictims.However,theboy managed to providehis youngersister,also
present at the scene, with a means of escape. When grown into adulthood she in
her capacity of leading revolutionary firebrand would do her utmost to eradicate
every traceof the Evrémondeclan, not sparingthe youngchildren among them. At

9. firstthe Evrémonde brotherswronglyassumedthatManette would hold his peace
concerning this misadventure, once compensated financially or out of respect for
the prevailing social order. They were disappointed. He wrote a letter to the royal
court to notify the authorities of the foul play he had witnessed but this letter fell
into the hands of the Evrémonde brothers, who duly saw to it that Manette would
spend the next eighteen years of his life in the Bastille. Even so Manette seized the
chance to make an entry in his diary effectively endorsing the will of the dying boy
that that the entire Evrémonde family be punished for all time. Little did he know
that he would suffer collateral damage in the aftermath of the curse, but more on
that later. The first tragic outcome of Manette’s arrestwas his separation fromhis
infant daughter Lucie, whom he would meet again after many long years.
Thenceforward Manette became the darling of the revolutionary causethough he
abhorred tyranny and extremism in all their forms, whether promoted by the
aristocrats of the Ancien Regime or by the radical wing of the advocates of
revolution.
The heavy curseimposed on the Evrémondes spared none, allowing little
roomfor exonerating even innocent members of an accursed group. Such an
innocent was Charles Evrémonde, the son of one of one murderer and the
nephew of the other. His mother in her final hours charged Charles with the
mission to purge the dishonor into which his family had fallen by counteracting
the evil effects of his father’s crime. He was faithful to this chargewhen as a
young man he renounced his aristocratic title, adopted ‘Darnay’ as his new
surname and emigrated to London where he earned an honest living teaching
French to privatestudents. He returned to his wicked uncle’s chateau where he
defended his decision to renouncehis aristocratic privileges. His uncle the
Marquis St. Evrémonde, was a vain, coldhearted and ghoulish character who was
despised by the common people on account of his arrogantand inhuman ways.
Only the day before Charles’s visithad his carriage run over and killed a child
while careering through Paris at breakneck speed. The Marquis tossed a coin to
the father of the dead child and complained that the accident may have injured
his horses. Thefather of the child took the law into his own hands and
assassinated theMarquis shortly after his Charles’s visit. A witness of the
incident that caused the death of a child was noneother than Madame Defarge,
the third sibling who had escaped the clutches of those who murdered her

10. brother and sister; she had already become an indefatigable devotee of the
revolutionary cause. She and her husband took Dr. Manette under their wings
after his release fromthe Bastille by providing him with lodgings on their
property, which included a wine shop and an inn She was a habitual knitter of
clothing and. true to form, she was knitting at the moment she witnessed the
fatal accident.
Darnay did not have an easy time during his early days in England. He was
accused of being an enemy spy and had to stand trial at the Old Baily where a
verdict of guilty would entail the death sentence. He was saved by evidence
provided by Dr. Manette and his daughter as well as by the diligence of his defence
lawyer, one Sydney Carton , the very person who would savehis life again after he
had been condemned to the guillotine by a revolutionary tribunal in Paris. Dickens
was well aware that English justice could prove no less arbitrary and savagein its
treatment of the poor and destitute than that meted outby a French revolutionary
tribunal. Hefell in love with Manette’s daughter and married her, thus enjoyingthe
prospect of leading a happy married life until he suddenly felt morally bound to
return to France to rescue a former servant in his uncle’s household from great
danger. Hardlyhad he setfootin Francethan he wasarrested on suspicionof being
an aristocratic agent. Being born into an aristocratic family was reason enough to
ensure a guilty verdict against him despite his renunciation of his aristocratic
status. In any case Madame Defarge’s relentless hatred of the Evremonde family
left no roomfor clemency. ThoughDarnaywasacquitted when firstbroughtbefore
a revolutionary tribunal, Madame Defarge called for his retrial on the grounds of
freshincriminating evidencewhich wasprovidedbythe entryin Dr.Manette’s diary
that implied that the heinous actions of two members of the Evrémonde family
branded the entire family as eternally evil. Only the bold and selfless action of
Sydney Carton saved Darnay from the guillotine and the full rigor of the curseof
the young victim of the Evrémonde’s wickedness. The idea that a good influence
can mitigate but not fully annul the effect of a curse we know from the story of
Sleeping Beauty.
Dr. Manette the shoemaker in conflict with Madame Defargeand other demons
Having been condemned to wandering eternally as pedestrian over on the face
of the earth Ahasuerus chosefor himself the occupation of a cobbler with a vital

11. interest in the provision of a constant supply of hardy footwear. Besides, making
shoes offers a way of working off frustration and anxieties in line with the
benefits of occupational therapy without which Manette could not have survived
his ordeal in a cramped and dank cell in the Bastille. He suffered not only bodily
privations but also deep psychologicalpain that gave riseto long bouts of amnesia
and an occasional inability to recall his name and other signs of his identity. He
was still recovering fromposttraumatic stress long after his release fromthe
Bastille, both during the time he lodged with the Defarge couple in the Saint
Antoine sector of Paris and even later when he resided in London. Manette was
not the only character in Dickens’ novelto suffer fromthe effects of a severe
trauma. Witnessing the murder of her siblings before very eyes left Madame
Defargewith a deep-seated psychologicaland emotional disturbance. Does she
not then deservea measureof our sympathy? While we may muster up some
understanding for her urgeto redress theills of the Ancien Regime as a leader of
the Revolution, we can hardly countenance the fact that she in her own way was
justas inhuman and cruel as the Marquis St. Evrémondein her resolution to
destroy innocent lives. Dickens has her leading the assaultof the Bastille and
personally beheading the governor of the fortress. This governor did indeed lose
his head but not at the hands of a Madame Defarge. There is, of course, no need
to reproach Dickens for blending fact and fiction for the figure of Madame
Defargeepitomizes essential elements of the French Revolution, not least during
its most violent phaseduring La Terreur. Even so, Dickens did lay on touches of
Gothic horror and intimations of devilish influence with the participation of
Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Blue flies buzzed around ominously on the two
occasions when Darnay was threatened with the death penalty. A barrel of wine
tumbled onto the street in front of the wine shop owned by the Defarges and
disgorged its contents on the ground whereit was lapped up by humans and
animals alike in a mostdisgusting manner, especially in view of wine’s importance
as a symbolof the sacred and sacramental. Madame Defargecombines traces of
Lady Macbeth in taunting her husband for being irresolutein the pursuitof
violent action, while her habit of knitting could remind us of Clotho, the Fate who
determines when the thread of life is to be severed, not to mention thoseladies
who knitted while watching the operation of the guillotine. Then there is the
chillingly impersonal designation of Manette’s cell in the Bastille to consider: ‘105
Tower North.’ This number penetrated Manette’s mind so far as to be confused

12. with his own name. Is it too fanciful to discern in this designation a pointer to
Room 101 in Orwell’s famous dystopian novel1984 or even the numbers tattooed
on the limbs of prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps? Of course,
the Bastille had an evil rep
utation as is evident fromWilliam Cowper’s prophetic wish in The Task that the
Bastille, which he interpreted as Pharaoh’s ‘houseof bondage,’ should fall at last.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the original legend of the Wandering
Jew carries at least one positiveimplication as it promised an end of wandering
on the return of Christat the end of days. The symbolismof the Resurrection
pervades The Tale of Two Cities no less than that of the Crucifixion. Itis during his
nocturnalwandering in the streets of Paris that Sydney Carton, the heroic savior
of Darnay, resolves to lay down his life by becoming Darnay’s substituteat the
steps of the guillotine. Itis also during this walk that Carton cites words in Saint
John’s Gospel. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’
A note on how the Staplehurst railway accident on June 9 in 1864
relates to Charles Dickens’ novel OUR MUTUAL FRIEND and the closing
phase of the author’s life.
novel Our Mutual Friend, the last novel Dickens was to complete, written in
installments in 1864 and 1865, marks theculmination of the author’s novelistic
artistry in more than one way. Itdeserves esteem as a mature credo-like
statement of Dickens’ philosophy of life that took account of human mortality and
the flaws of Victorian society in many of its mostcallous and hypocriticalaspects.
Itcontains one of the author’s mostpoignant and touching passages in the record
of the last day in the life of a destitute woman as sheseeks dignity and freedom
fromthe impositions of all that the workhousesystemevoked in her mind. To
escape the incarceration she so dreaded sheis forced to surrender her last shilling
and pence to an unscrupulous officialand in this deprivation of money froma
dying person we may trace the reverberation of a leitmotif established at the very
beginning of the novel with the macabreimage of a man engaged in the process
of dredging the river Thames in order to recover corpses of the drowned and
fromthese any money to be found in the pockets of the clothes that covered

13. them. The waterman engaged in so gruesomea task as that outlined abovehas
his daughter with him as his obedient albeit inwardly reluctant assistant. They
encounter a former partner of the waterman, a man of low character and an arch
schemer to boot, whoseattempt at blackmail results in his own violent death
beside the river Thames as described in a chapter placed near the end of the
novel. The other, his daughter, marries a young lawyer despite the imparity of
their respective social stations and the fact that the bridegroomis fighting for his
life after a brutal assaultby a rival suitor.
At this junctureI may introduce the motif of a train journey, oneoccasioned by
the necessity of attending the wedding of the waterman’s daughter and the
lawyer now feared to be approaching the door of death.
On reading this passagewenote a striking contrastbetween the tranquility of
the English countrysideand the evocation of brute force demonstrated by a
train’s power to forge ahead, underscored by terms that normally find their place
in the military sphere, such being ‘bomb-shell,’ ‘rocket,’ ‘shot’ and ‘bursting.’
Relentless progress, a callous disregard for the train’s bucolic and pastural
surroundings,a gratuitous disruption of urban cohesion are all recalled in this
brief description, making the train an explicit symbolof time in the aspect of
Chronos the destroyer bringing all things to their inevitable conclusion, death in
short. A ponderous philosophicalnote reverberates in ‘the loadstone rock of
eternity.’ The lugubrious mood of the description is further enhanced, as the
passagecited above explicitly states, by being set during the night and the context
of the narrative itself that foresees a deathbed wedding. The reference to the
‘solemn river’ found in this passagecombines two contextual planes of so great a
scopethat one envelops the entire novelwhile the other opens the vista of
Dickens’ own life and ultimate destiny. For reasons already intimated the image of
the sluggish river Thames assumes the nature of the river Styx in Greek mythology
and even, on a positivenote, absorbs a sacramental quality in keeping with
orthodoxteachings on baptismand the Resurrection. The protagonistdies in the
eyes of the world when presumed to havedrowned in the Thames but returns to
life under a new identity, henceforward freeto win the heart of the beloved by
virtue of his own labours of love instead of having to rely on the allurements of
wealth that would be his by right of his former identity. All this brings us to reflect
on Dickens’ own near-death experience that occurred on the ninth of June 1864.

14. Dickens was on the last leg of his return journey fromParis in the company of lady
generally thought to be his mistress. The train was traversing a stretch of the line
whererepair work was in progress, atStaplehurstin Kent. As a result of human
error the train could not brakein time to avoid a grievous accident involving ten
deaths and many injuries as carriages either fell directly into the muddy sludge of
a riverbed or, as in the case of the carriagein which Dickens was situated, hung
precariously suspended fromtheraised section of the line. Dickens not only
survived butalso played a heroic role in aiding and comforting the less fortunate
victims of the accident.
Oddly enough, he returned to his carriagein order to retrieve a part of the
scriptof. For all that, this traumatic experience shook Dickens to his timbers. He
was never quite the sameman afterwards. Heavoided travelling by train if at all
possible. I supposethe passagecited above discloses his negative feelings about
trains, never very positiveto begin with, even before the Staplehurstcrash. His
lack of composureinvaded his outlook on life moregenerally but can even his
premonition of his own death explain the following? Six years after the accident
to the day, also on a Thursday, Charles Dickens, aged only 58, died at his Gads Hill
residence near Rochester Kent on June the ninth 1870.
*********************************************
Gravy or the Grave?
Examining TwoChristmasGhost Stories by Charles Dickens with a View to
Showing How Dickens Satirized or Analyzed Attempts to Explain Away
ParanormalPhenomena

15. By A. E. Abbey, 1876
When directly confronted by Marley’s ghost, Ebenezer Scrooge desperately
sought to assuage his dread of the unknown by offering himself a rational
explanation of Marley’s appearance. He speculated that a bout of indigestion had
made him hallucinate, a half-boiled potato perhaps being the instigator of this
mental affliction. Further evidence forced Scrooge to accept that Marley’s ghost
like the spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future truly
existed in a mystical realm that lay beyond the ken of rationalists and scientists.
However profound the message conveyed by Scrooge’s failed attempt to explain
awaya supernaturalevent, the reading or viewingpublic, for the mostpartat least,
relishes the humorous and entertaining side of Dickens’ world-famous shortstory
without pondering its philosophical and religious-mysticalimplications. Christmas
jollity has precedence over Christmas-inspired devotion.
The last Christmas Dickens ever celebrated was disturbed by the failure of a
Christmaspresentto arriveon time athis table. The year in question was1869.The
present in question was a turkey and the cause of its loss in question was a train
accident. Strangely enough, Dickens’ and trains did not get along well together,

16. certainly notsincethe Staplehursttrain accident in 1865whenDickens,whoalmost
came to grief,heroically helped to savethe lives of injuredfellow passengers.Inhis
novel Our Mutual Friend there is a description of a nocturnal train journey that
arouses images of the instruments of war and thoughts of death as life’s final
destination. The samelugubrious toneis struck by a shortstory composed in 1866,
its title: The Signalman. Strangely enough, this story continued a tradition
constituted by a ghoststoryforreading at Christmasand this tradition was initiated
by A Christmas Carol.
Essentially The Signalman raises the very same question as that which informs A
ChristmasCarol but it does so in an altogether serious and searching manner. How
can the rational mind contend with phenomena that are not readily explicable on
the basis of scientific knowledge and logical thinking?
The person given the role of the first person narrator in this story is an erudite
down-to-earth and well-meaning proponent of a common-senseapproach to life.
While walking along the upper edge of a railway cutting he notices a man who is
standing beside the railway track below him and under the influence of a
spontaneous urge he makes his way down to the track and meet this man, who
turns out to be a signalman. His job requires him to work inside a shed-like
observation post and telegraph communication centre. At times he muststand by
the track at the opening of a tunnel and wave a red flag to warn incoming train
drivers of any imminent danger.
The signalman admits to being deeply troubled by his situation in life. On two
occasions he has heard the eerie ringing of the telegraph bell shortly before a
terrible accident occurs, either one that results froma collision of two trains within
tunnel near his post or from the deadly fall of a young woman that takes place as
the train exits the tunnel. There are other omens of doom. The signalman sees a
ghostly face at the mouth of the tunnel. A red signal has turned on for no
understandablereason. The narrator tries to convincethe signalman that his fears
are needless, occasioned by meaningless ‘coincidences’ butthe signalman remains
unconvinced by such an explanation.
On the third occasion when the signalman hears the bell ring, and only he can
hear this ringing, he places himself at the mouth of the tunnel wherehe stands as
though entranced by an unknown power until he himself is run over by the next
train. While in A Christmas Carol warning signs have a positive heal effect, the
signalman is powerless to alert engine drivers to imminent dangers. Why this
difference? Have

17. the Staplehurstaccident and Dickens’ separation fromhis wife anything to do with
it?
Link: A Lady in the Smoke – Facts | My Reading Journal (wordpress.com)
And oh, the Staplehurst accident occurred on the 9th of June 1864, exactly six
years before the 9th of June 1870, the day of Dickens’ death.
The Signalman in a short film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_4VHxdXng