Last class we spent a lot of time discussing what the half of Drood we have suggests about the state of England. The tone of the book is, like most late Dickens, caustic and dark, and also, notably, perhaps more editorial than ever before; but, upon investigation, the facts of this case don't provide grounds for hope, either. Unless Datchery is a professional detective, the guiding hand of a national government seems absent from Cloisterham; the Church, in the form of the ubiquitous church tower, is very present, but doesn't seem to offer much of a system of support (Jasper, after all, is one of its staff); there are few - or no - happy, functioning families; and the town's children are ragged and bestial. The town itself, as a constellation of the animate and inanimate, Dickens writes again and again, has a soporific atmosphere; it's even, in some instances - one thinks of Durdles - difficult to tell the animate and inanimate apart.
Of course, we can't say whether Cloisterham would have been saved - whether a marriage between Rosebud and, maybe, Tartar would have brought new life to the town; whether justice would have been done to Jasper, or whoever was responsible for Edwin's disappearance; whether Edwin would have turned out to be alive. The kind of pastorship that Lauren Goodlad writes about might have appeared, perhaps in the form of Tartar, or Crisparkle, or Datchery. Or, private individuals, like the Cheerybyles in Nickleby, might have - preposterously but not impossibly, given Dickens's many manic authorial moments - made everything right in the end.
What strikes me about what does happen in the book, however, is that Cloisterham's stagnation seems to reach such a pitch that it's the stagnation itself that appears to provoke the novel's action. It's his his boredom, his cramped and monotonous lifestyle, that drives Jasper to the opium addiction that - it seems - make it possible for him to - at least attempt to - murder. And it's, again, boredom - the sense of inevitability and inertia - that leads Edwin and Rosebud to call their marriage off. One act - the possible murder - is horrible, and other - the breaking of the engagement - might lead to new, and better, choices, but the stagnation itself drives both acts. If Cloisterham is a microcosm of England, or of a part of England, I wonder if Dickens's suggestion is that, no matter what, something is going to happen to England - things are incapable of going on the way they have been. Is, then - I wouldn't want to call it hope, exactly, but - possibility buried within the inertia of the novel? And is the question for England, then, not are things going to change, but how are the English people going to handle changes that are coming?
Michael, I find your conclusion very persuasive. I've also been thinking about the future of Cloisterham. Paul suggested in class that the imagined succession of names for Cloisterham ("It was once possibly known to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the Romans by another, and to the Saxons by another, and to the Normans by another") positions change/modernization inevitable. However, that reading implies a narrative complacency about the state of Cloisterham that seems belied by the darkness and anxiety of the novel. Your reading of the town's stagnation reaching a crisis point resolves that for me. If we consider Jasper's and Edwin and Rosa's actions as a microcosm of what the town as a whole (and by extension England) needs to revive, the "possibility buried within the inertia of the novel" seems to be that of dramatic action. Going back to Cloisterham's succession of names from Druidic to Roman to Saxon to Norman, each of the shifts in civilization/government that would have caused those name changes were brought about by conquest - not passive but violently contested transformation. We know that this transformation must and will happen in Cloisterham - it will someday be on the train line, if nothing out - but by analogy we also know that it will happen by force.
ReplyDeleteThere are scenes where Dickens represents the railroad as coming in and utterly doing violence to the town/community. Dombey & Son has one such scene. Dickens is not subtle: modernity poses a threat. But the only option is to adapt.
DeleteThere is perhaps a tiny quibble, but I think that Cloisterham could more properly be described as being in an acute state of decay, rather than stagnation. I agree with Alyssa about the sense of darkness and anxiety that pervades the novel--it's as if all of the supporting timbers of the town are rotting away, one by one. As you note, Michael, the Church seems to offer little real support to the citizens of Cloisterham. While Crisparkle has good intentions, any moral authority he has seems to arise more from his peaceful disposition and cozy home-life than his identity as reverend. And the people who are designated as caretakers and guardians often fail to fulfill their roles as much as one would hope. Honeythunder is an obvious terror, of course, but while Miss Twinkleton exerts herself on behalf of Rosa's respectability, Rosa can't trust her with any real secrets, and Miss Twinkleton's beloved globes suggest her true interests lie elsewhere. I think part of the reason that we like Grewgious so much is because he actually troubles himself on Rosa's behalf, and such demonstrations of real care-taking are unfortunately rare in Cloisterham. On that note, I have to say that I found Durdles's bizarre arrangement with Deputy to be one of the book's most affecting and horrifying passages. It's touching to see Durdles display a sympathetic interest in the urchin-boy--he's keenly aware of the problems that Deputy faces--but he aids him by paying him a small fee to pelt him with rocks when he's out late. Is this representative of the means of charity in Cloisterham?
ReplyDelete(Also, when rereading the Durdles/Deputy section just now, I was reminded that Deputy goes by that unindividualized name expressly to prevent the police from identifying him whenever he's locked up in the Cloisterham prison. As the police are otherwise largely absent from this narrative, it's interesting to consider that little detail as one of their only intrusions into this text.)
And I think Helen's point here speaks to Michael's sense that Goodladian pastorship is lacking (one could argue for Crisparkle as a pastor-figure, but his support for Neville, for example, is highly individual). Indeed, the horrific inversion of civil society represented by the Durdles/Deputy arrangement (kid policing the streets, a masochistic understanding of discipline) is sufficiently dystopic to make Crisparkly goodness completely inadequate.
DeleteMichael asks if there is hope buried in the inertia of Cloisterham, despite its decrepitude and sinister mien. I feel that there is indeed hope in the town, and not simply due to the potential for one of Dickens’s “manic authorial moments,” as Michael so aptly describes them. While Cloisterham is a prison for some, particularly Jasper, it is also a sanctuary. Minor Canon Corner and the presiding Crisparkle constitute a fairly unambiguous haven, and Miss Twinkleton’s boarding school is safe and sheltered, if somewhat repressive. While Cloisterham may labor under a presentiment of doom, it does, for the present, stand as a retreat from such unsavory characters as philanthropists and London opium-eaters. While there is indeed something sinister in Cloisterham’s sleepy solitude, there is also a measure of solace to be found in its introspection.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michael, for this interesting post. Is DROOD dystopic? Is there any hope and, if so, does it remotely relate to the benevolent authority of the state (in the figure of the policeman) that has been emerging piecemeal over the past half-century? I was struck, in re-reading DROOD, by the utter contrast between Cloisterham and Cranford. As you may know, Gaskell published Cranford in random installments in HOUSEHOLD WORDS from 1851-53. In both, the towns are ones that time has seemingly forgotten and the railroad looms on the horizon as a symbol of both change and violent intrusion/inversion. Both tend to be read as works that represent some kind of Old Time and the Novel's role in doing archaeological and/or ethnographical work on these relics. But where DROOD is dark and its characters turn violence inward (murder? addiction?), in CRANFORD, while there is hardship and back-biting and even episodes of violence, the moral of that story is that community is meaningful and can adapt. Is there such a difference between 1870 and 1850? Sort of. But I guess I'm wondering if with a mystery and a detective (however lame Datchery might seem to be), the community is not relied upon to rally.
ReplyDeleteI think an argument could be made, as well, that the violence that erupts in Drood is due not only to the stagnation / decay of the town, but to the interruption of stagnation that occurs when the foreign element is introduced (the Landlesses). Each Landless is put to use by someone else: Jasper exploits the potential rivalry between the two boys as a cover for the murder / disappearance and the image of Helena is at the back of Edwin's mind as he breaks up with Rosa.
ReplyDeleteWhat strikes me as I think back on the novel is that there's never really a question or a fuss made about the twins coming to Cloisterham - in some ways, it is presented as a welcome interruption, and the gendered, cloistered set-up of Cloisterham is seen as ideal for a brother and sister with no-where and no-one else. Crisparkle remarks upon receiving Honeythunder's letter: "There can be no doubt that we have room for an inmate, and that I have time to bestow upon him, and inclination too" (40). The use of 'inmate' to denote lodger is striking in light of Helen's comment about the police presence in Cloisterham, but more generally the twins are seen as filling a natural gap, Neville as the son/student of Crisparkle's inclination, and Helena as the close female friend/ confessor of Rosa. Although much is made of the color of their skin and their foreign ways, at no point is it suggested that a small, stagnant town is an odd choice for their education in England / into Englishness. Are the Landlesses the possibility buried within the novel? Or is the possibility the very 'rightness' of the small English town, with its sense of continuing history, the one thing that will naturally absorb and counteract the foreign intrusion better than London?
Janie, I think the Landlesses are meant to be the "potential" for the town - their acceptance could usher in new blood, both literally and metaphorically. I worry, however, that the town's rejection of the twins (mostly Neville) upon Edwin's disappearance is Dickens' signal that the town may be beyond hope; Cloisterham used to be able to change name and character with the invasion of foreign elements, but by leaving Neville out of larger society, it fails to incorporate this latest invader, and fails to change. After our conversation last week, I am more and more convinced that Neville is meant to die (otherwise, why introduce Tartar as another romantic possibility for Rosa?), and I think Dickens is leading us to believe that stubborn stagnation is to blame. Towns used to be able to adapt to change; they are no longer willing to do so, and so we must all move to the "gritty" city instead.
DeleteI was thinking about the railway as a possible future disruption of the stagnation of the town. Then I was reading "Railway Navigation and Incarceration" this week for a paper I am working on and it got me thinking about the trains in some other ways. First of all, Certeau sees the railway as a model of social control: he writes that the train is “a bubble of panoptic and classifying power, a module of imprisonment that makes possible the production of an order, a closed and autonomous insularity,” adding “that is what can traverse space and make itself independent of local roots.” Nothing moves in the train, and nothing moves outside the train - people are still and the landscape they view is still. Only sensorial experience can provide a small opportunity for being set free. This brought me back to Jasper's opium fantasies. He is similarly immobile, his body doing less than it does when it fulfills his quotidian obligations. And yet, the visions he has, the feelings they offer him access to provide the potential for true action. So why is that action necessarily violent, why is his only chance to "do something" a chance to kill? It is because of the stagnancy of Cloisterham? Jasper is using opium to alleviate boredom, but is it a vehicle of self control, helping him to defer his dangerous desires through fantastic fulfillment, or is it the way that he can imagine a road out of the unbearable unchanging rot of the town?
ReplyDeleteInteresting questions, Laura. What I might say to Certeau is "aren't there stops?" This is the kinda-subservsive, kinda-hegemonic aspect of the railway in the 19th century. On the one hand, it is, like the Panopticon, a technology that regulates and insulates; on the other, it brings multiplicities into contact with one another (not at all closed) and invites frequent opportunities to assert one's own will. It both maps out, rather violently, modern power onto a more "innocent," local landscape and disrupts the hierarchies that such landscapes depended on. Two really interesting things to look at about this would be Wolfgang Schivelbush's THE RAILWAY JOURNEY: THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF TIME AND SPACE IN THE 19TH CENTURY and Jonathan Grossman's CHARLES DICKENS'S NETWORKS: PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND THE NOVEL.
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