Charles Dickens: Female Eroticism in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Perversely I will begin this brief appreciation of Edwin Drood with a reference to David Copperfield:'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.'Copperfield's preoccupation with authorship and control is significantly readdressed in Dickens's last novel. For Dickens presents us with a novel 'told' by a third person narrator, yet strangely 'first person' in its intimate involvement with its protagonist John Jasper. And this protagonist is not a hero in any moral sense, (he is a killer) yet he is the central focus of the novel's interest and attempts to 'author' the destiny of the novel's characters, and author the reader's reaction to this worlds and its words.Dickens's last unfinished novel begins sensationally in an opium den:'There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has no sense or sequence.
Wherefore 'unintelligible!' is again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some rat-ridden door-keeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes out.'We are in a fallen world. The instability of perception in such a place acts as a metaphor and impetus for the rest of this perplexing narrative. Jasper, the protagonist is bewildered as to the reality of his reality - and so are we! For John Jasper leads a double life. His public life is one of respectability-he is a choirmaster in Cloisterham; his private life is one of addiction -he enjoys opium and plots to murder his nephew Edwin in order to sexually 'enjoy' the virginal beauty Rosebud.'Wherefore 'unintelligible' is again the comment of the watcher.'This narrative investment in miscommunication and evasion remains central to the w
hole energy and direction of the text. Intimacies are ambivalent and unresolved. The novel's opening in an opium den foregrounds the exoticism of the Oriental and challenges our ability to decipher safely the coordinates of such a world: is Jasper evil or just deranged?Everything and everyone seems ambiguous and none more so than the 'Author' of the mystery, John Jasper himself: Opium addict, choir master, besotted uncle, predatory seducer and probable murderer. If the author is 'dead' in the 'rational' sense then reader is at the very least bemused at the possibility of any full comprehension of the text's mysteries ever arriving at all.And of course the death of the real author Dickens half way through the writing of Edwin Drood leaves the novel literally unintelligible in terms of final significance. Ironically Jasper's own authorship of murderous fantasies about his nephew Edwin emanate from this contaminated space.The unintelligibility of the narrative originates in thi
s den of vagrant signification and ends with the death of the author himself, a death that ironically is prefigured in Jasper's own 'authorship' of murderous fantasies in his drug induced state. For Jasper, like Dickens has imagined murder. He maintains a diary that is only partially legible to any public. His desire for Edwin Drood's fiancee Rosa, inspires him to create a complex plot through which he will be able to satiate his desires. Yet we are not convinced by the plot and neither we feel is Jasper. His plot is too legible, too public, and too transparent to match the vehemence of his sexual desire.What we wonder lies beneath the legibility of such passion? Is Jasper's professed affection for his nephew converted into an act of murder as a form of displacement? He kills his nephew rather than accept his Ned's sexual maturity with Rosa? What does Jasper really bury in the lime pit?The novel with its exploration of duality anticipates Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde an
d Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and perhaps suggests that the real unintelligibility of Jasper's desire is the illegitimacy of homosexual passion. This premise is further hinted at through the intimacy of Rosebud and the exotic Helena Landless:'The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the clinging arms and bosom, and the wild black hair fell down protectingly over the childish form. There was a slumbering gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though they were then softened with compassion and admiration. Let whomsoever it most concerned look well to it!'The exoticism of Helena is clearly eroticised here; and this exoticism links Helena ironically with Jasper. The maternal act of care is elided with an almost vampiric Sapphic energy and the rest is hidden behind the 'wild black hair' - how far are we here I wonder from Coleridge's Christabel or Rossetti's Goblin Market?!A mere whisper...

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