CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
THE CHARMS OF ASSUMPTION: ROLE PLAYING IN DICKENS'S LATER NOVELS A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English by Patrick Byron Hunter
January 1988 The Thesis o~Patrick Byron Hunter is approved:
Lawrence Stewart
California State University, Northridge
ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I most especially thank Dr. Harry Stone, whose brilliant expertise as a Dickensian and meticulous attention as an advisor helped to create many of this thesis's virtues and none of its flaws. I also thank Valerie, my dearest friend, whose insight inspired me to begin this thesis and whose support enabled me to finish it.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments •• ...... iii Abstract • • • • • ...... • v Chapters: I. Introduction . . . . . • • • 1 II. Dickens and Role Playing • ...... 8 III. Expected Roles: Great Expectations •• • • • .18 IV. Behavioral Roles: Our Mutual Friend • • .34
v. The Impersonator . • • • ~ .45 VI. The Player Without a Role. • • .57 VII. Conclusion • • . . . .67 Works Cited. • • • • .70
iv ABSTRACT
THE CHARMS OF ASSUMPTION: ROLE PLAYING IN DICKENS'S LATER NOVELS by Patrick Byron Hunter Master of Arts in English
This thesis demonstrates how roles, or the facades which human beings project when interacting with others, provide an approach for understanding the characters and themes in Dickens's fiction written after 1857, from Little Dorrit to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It argues that the characters in the author's final period desperately play roles to find fulfillment and also demonstrates how Dickens himself sought role playing to alleviate his own personal crises.
' ~ v The thesis approaches the fiction by categorizing roles into the two types: expected roles, or those roles demanded by society; and behavioral roles, or those structured, not by society, but by individuals. The thesis also traces the evolution of two character types in the later years: the impersonator, or the character who assumes a different name as a means of escaping his true identity, and· the player without a role, the character who, because he lacks a definite role, also lacks a sense of purpose or direction. Ultimately, the novels demonstrate that Dickens's view towards role playing is essentially comparable to Jung's: that each individual possesses both an inward self and an outward self, and a person only achieves a wholeness of self when both his internal identity and outward facades are harmoniously balanced. In the final period, attaining this balance becomes a prime conflict for Dickens's characters •
• Only in recent decades have psychologists such as Eric Berne demonstrated the significance of role playing in our daily lives. And though a role, whether imposed from without or projected from within, can shape a person's most fundamental actions, most sociologists still have difficulty defining the term. For this paper, however, we can define a role as any consistent pattern of characteristics a person displays in a context (Biddle 58). Context certainly plays an important part in influencing any person's roles; how a male business executive, for example, acts with clients in his office will differ from how he acts at a bar with male friends, or how he acts at home with his wife. like most of us, he draws from his own personal repertoire whatever role is appropriate for the defined context. The many roles we enact daily can be categorized into one of two types: expected or behavioral. As the name implies, expected roles are those that any society exacts; in fact, they are the roles demanded and delineated by any group. behavioral roles, on the other hand, are never demanded by either a society or a group, but are those personal roles we create from individuals whom we admire and use as role models. Although these two types overlap; we can still distinguish them. Expected roles are, by definition, conventional and can aid a person to achieve higher status; behavioral roles, on the other hand, need not involve either status or convention. A person often learns his expected roles not only from other people, but from a variety of sources, including advertising, which can dictate social norms. A person learns his behavioral roles, however, directly from another human being, such as a parent, a friend, or any individual who serves as a role model. To expected roles, people attribute such virtues as responsibility and consistency; to behavioral roles, personality and character. Great writers have long recognized people's needs for roles--the most obvious example being Shakespeare when he wrote for Jacques the speech concerning the seven stages of man. Charles Dickens also gives roles prominence, even in his earliest fiction. Frequently, he creates figures 2 who perform certain roles badly, but who assume that what they project is perfectly appropriate. _Such an approach serves for conveying an ironic or dramatic effect: Mr. Dombey, for instance, believes himself a perfect father and husband when actually he fails at both roles. Dickens also presents characters in conflict with their roles to convey humor; we laugh, for example, in chapter 23 of Oliver Twist, when Mr. Bumble woos Mrs. Corney, because both characters believe themselves to be passionate romantics, whereas actually they are a pair of grotesques: their actual identities absurdly contradict the roles they have chosen. If Dickens had employed role playing only in these ways, then a study this length would hardly be justified, for such role conflicts are plainly used to convey to the reader specific effects of humor or irony. After the period of 1857-1858, however, as Dickens underwent his own personal crises, he raised role playing to complex levels. Most important, his characters are more self aware, in that they recognize they are unsuited to their roles, and, consequently, many of them attempt (vainly) to resolve their conflicts by attaining other roles. Some, such as Pip, acquire new expected roles; others, such as Bradley Headstone and many other characters in Our Mutual Friend, assume behavioral roles from persons they have used as role models. Still others, such as John Harmon, seek new roles to the degree of impersonation, assuming 3 another identity, as a futile means of escaping themselves. Most miserable of all, however, are those, such as Sydney Carton, who lack any definite role, and with it, any sense of purpose or direction. As I suspect is already clear, I intend in this study to demonstrate how role playing, as well as its conflicts, provides a vital approach for understanding the characters and ~hemes that pervade the novels written after 1857. Critics have long recognized that characters in Dickens's later fiction suffer conflicts in their personal identities. Most of these critics, however, downplay the role playing aspects. They seem to presume that an individual's self can easily be separated from his various roles. Jung, however, believed that each individual possesses both an inward self and an outward self. When a person concentrates too much on his roles, his personae8, he fails to achieve selfhood, for he causes his individuality to be submerged. Similarly, when he ignores his personae, he also fails to achieve a complete sense of selfhood. An individual only achieves a wholeness of self when both internal identity and outward facades are harmoniously balanced, and achieving this balance is a prime source of conflict for Dickens's later characters. Curiously, I have found few, if any, Dickens critics who have attempted this sort of an approach in detail. J. Hillis Miller mentions roles only briefly in his classic study, Charles Dickens, The World of His Novels. He 4 describes the Dickensian hero as one who has "no inherited role which he can accept with dignity" (251), but uses such statements to support his primary analysis of how the characters suffer from alienation. And, regarding role playing, some of his claims need more support. He asserts, for example, that the "typical Dickens hero, like Pip, feels guilty because he has no status or relation to nature, to family, or to the community" (252). The source of Pip's guilt can be difficult to pinpoint, but, as I hope to show, Pip does not lack a defined status or a relationship to the community. On the contrary, he has the position of a blacksmith's apprentice, a role with a definite community status, and he feels guilty, not because he lacks a role, but partly because he hates the role he already has; hence, his weeping after confessing to Biddy his disgust "with my calling and with my life: (17: 155). We usually associate role playing with actors, and critics have long recognized the theatre's influence on Dickens's works. J. B. Van Amerongen's The Actor in Dickens vividly details the author's histrionic personality and also argues that most of what we find "objectionable" or "offensive" in the novels can be traced to theatrical influences (258). Several other critics have repeated this charge. Andre Maurois summed up many a reader's complaint when he wrote that Dickens presents characters only with outward signs; except in the case of 5 first person narration, Dickens rarely shows what a character thinks, only what a character does or says, often emphasizing gestures (120). Some have even found Dickens's techniques with his characters unrealistic, forgetting that the only reality we can ever know from other people is what they project to us. Criticism of this sort culminated with Robert Garis's work, The D'ickens Theatre, which seeks to demonstrate that, whenever anyone reads one of the novelists's works, he essentially enters the "Dickens Theatre" (24). Certainly such criticism is helpful, but it has little to do with why Dickens's characters are dissatisfied with their roles or why they try to attain new ones in the later novels. Although many critics have concentrated on how the theatre influenced Dickens, very few have dealt with why he was drawn to the theatre. One of his motivations, as I hope to show, was that Dickens himself loved playing roles, and, having such a love, he created characters who also seek out roles. That critics have neglected the role playing aspect seems remarkable, for most have noted it, if only in passing, in regards to Dickens's characters. V. S. Pritchett observes that the characters quite often talk not to communicate, but to perform (88), just as Harold Bloom writes that they speak with "stage fire" (5). Usually such analysis extends no farther than that: Dickens's characters are performers--period. Obviously 6 more can be said. If nothing else, the role playing qualities provide an added element of realism to the works, because all of us assume roles whenever we interact with others, and Dickens's characters interact constantly. In fairness to these critics, however, only recently has anyone paid serious attention to role playing. It wasn't even until the 1950's that sociologists and psychologists began investigating role behavior, emerging with a branch of the social sciences called "role theory." The following work is inspired in part by role theory and is intended to be selective rather than exhaustive, for the subject is much to rich to be comprehended by a short study. , r) 7 II. Charles Dickens and Role Playing In his recently published memoirs, Lord Laurence Olivier candidly confessed: Nowadays people often ask my wife Joan, "How do you know when Larry is acting and when he's not?" and my wife will always reply, "Larry? Oh, he's acting all the time." In my heart of hearts I only know that I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not (20). Olivier's uncertainty about when he is acting, even when offstage, is hardly an uncommon attitude. Countless other performers have expressed similar views, and not simply stage actors like Olivier, but Hollywood stars as well. Once asked when he first decided to be an actor, Errol 8 Flynn, indecisive where to mark a starting point, simply responded, "Well, I suppose most of us act all our lives, don't we?" (Requium for a Cavalier, Delos Records, 1975). Such statements illustrate what professionals in theatrical circles have known for years: that even offstage, actors, while interacting with companions or acquaintances, will quite often "perform." They mimic others, affect accents, indulge in broad gestures, and project what we casually call histrionic personalities. Apparently, rather than sate a hunger for performing, theatre increases it. No wonder actors have often remarked that they see little difference between the roles they act onstage and the ones they act while off. As the late Jackie Gleason once said, "Everybody acts," and even psychologists have concluded that "there is no sharp line of distinction between the role enactment of a person in everyday life and role enactment on the stage" (Taft 314). Charles Dickens himself enjoyed performing, both offstage and on. He often delighted at being the center of attention at dinners, and enjoyed creating florid roles while interacting with others. Upon first meeting a lady at Broadstairs, he playfully feigned being a courtly lover, and, when the dance commenced, asked, "Wilt tread a measure with me, sweet lady? Fain would I thread the mazes of this saraband with thee?" (Van Amerongen 53). In fact, many who knew him perceived that he was a natural actor. Charles Dickens the younger commented that his 9 father seemed born more for a theatrical career than any other, that Dickens Sr., despite his indefatigable energy, could not have attained his acting talent if "the power had not been there.~ strongly, unusually strongly developed" (Hammerton 97). Dickens also possessed the characteristics of the typical actor's personality. A study conducted by psychologist Ronald Taft concludes that most actors are raised in a stressed family atmosphere and "that their thinking is marked by a great deal of elaborated fantasy" (330). On top of this, most actors tend to be exhibitionists at large gatherings as Dickens certainly could be. Once at a soiree, dressed in a black and white magpie waistcoat, he delighted in hearing guests exclaim, "What is it? Is it a waistcoat? No, it's a shirt!" (Johnson, Theatrical reader, 4). In fact, Dickens actually was an actor and one of exceptional talent. He performed in elaborate amateur theatricals, playing such classic roles as Shallow in Merry Wives of Windsor and Capt. Bobadil in Every Man in his Humour. Usually, however, he chose parts in the more popular entertainments of his time and, although they were amateur performances, his talents seemed on a par with the great professionals. The master carpenter of Kelly's Theatre remarked, "It's a universal observation in the profession, sir, that it was great loss to the public when you took to writing books!'' (Johnson, Theatrical Reader, 10 15). Other sources provide strikingly similar testimonials. The great professional William Charles Macready, usually snobbish toward amateur players, announced, after witnessing Dickens read the Sikes and Nancy murder scene from Oliver Twist, that the performance equalled "two Macbethsl" (Johnson, Theatrical Reader, 18), and Wilkie Collins relates that Dickens as Richard Wardour in The Frozen Deep "literally electrified the audience" (16). According to his close associates, he possessed a remarkable gift for becoming others. He claimed that even as a child, when he read Tom Jones, he would revel in being the character (Forster 5), much the same way David Copperfield did: "I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together" (4: 44). His son relates how he once heard what sounded like a man and woman yelling, and, after hearing the screams repeatedly, he dashed out of the house to investigate the disturbance, only to witness his father "striding up and down, gesticulating wildly, and in the character of Mr. Sikes murdering Nancy, with every circumstance of the most aggravated brutality" (Hammerton 42). It surprises one that Charles the younger, as a young man of thirty, would not recognize his own father's voice, but then, such was Dicken's remarkable ability. John Forster described it best perhaps when he wrote that Dickens "had the power of projecting himself into shapes and suggestions of his 11 fancy which is one of the marvels of creative imagination, and what he desired to express, he became" (381). Most descriptions of his stage performances suggest that Dickens's acting was natural rather than artificial, that like a modern method actor he would be the character he played. The London Times, reviewing his performance in The Frozen Deep, declared, "Where an ordinary artist would look for points of effect, he looks for points of truth" (qtd in Collins lx). Of course, every actor when playing any role retains some degree of his or her identity, yet some can shake off their identities more than others and, by doing so, perform a greater variety of parts (Taft 326), Dickens amply demonstrated this ability to submerge his identity. When acting in Mr. Nightingales's Diary, he amazed audiences by performing six characters "in rapid succession" (Johnson, Tragedy and Triumph, 795). His ability to "live" his roles sometimes aided him as a novelist because, evidently, he portrayed his characters for himself and then integrated aspects of his performances to shape his characters' personalities. His daughter Maimie recounts how once, as a little girl, she was allowed in his study while he was writing Hard Times and after a while he forgot she was present: He suddenly jumped from his chair and rushed to a mirror which hung near, and in which I could see the reflection of some extraordinary facial contortions which he was making. He returned 12 rapidly to his desk, wrote furiously for a few minutes, and then turning towards, but evidently not seeing me, he began talking in a low voice. Ceasing this soon, however, he returned once more to his desk, where he remained silently writing until luncheon time ..•. Then I knew that with his natural intensity he Qad thrown himself completely into the character that he was creating, and that for the time being he had not only lost sight of his surroundings but had actually become in action, as in imagination, the personality of his pen (40-50). Considering such working methods, we can see why Harold Bloom and other critics have regarded the novelists's characters as performers (5). Apparently, Dickens's imagination contained one vast theatre of players for him to draw upon. He once admitted to Forster, "I don't invent--really do not--, but see it, and write it down" (720). Dickens had long performed his characters privately, so it must have been an easy step for him to perform them professionally in 1858. In fact, he viewed the public reading of his novels as a comfort, because performing for him was an outlet for escaping despair. In March, he wrote to Wilkie collins: The domestic unhappiness remains so strong upon me that I can't write and (waking) rest, one ' I'~ 13 minute. I have never known a moment's peace of content, since the last night of The Frozen Deep (Letters III, 14). The "domestic unhappiness" he refers to here was living with Catherine Hogarth, from whom he would legally separate that same year. It was an unhappiness so intense · that the idea of professionally reading his works became all the more alluring. As he wrote to Forster one week later, "I must do something or I shall wear my heart away" (15). He threw all his energies into the readings, which in essence required all of an actor's preparation, indeed, to the point of memorization: • . • so as to have no mechanical drawback in looking after the words. I have tested all the serious passion in them by everything I know; made the humorous points much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated a self-possession not to be disturbed ..• (527). So intensely did he read his scenes that doctors warned him against performing the murder of Nancy. a performance so traumatic that it hastened his death (Johnson, Tragedy and Triumph, 1104). Dickens obviously enjoyed playing roles, and, like most actors, he also gained emotional fulfillment from playing them. In The Uncommercial Traveller, he recounts ' i) 14 that on walks he delighted in pretending to be a policeman on a beat (XXXV 619), and to Bulwer Lytton he wrote: Assumption has charms for me so delightful that I feel a loss of ohl I can't say what exquisite foolery when I lose a chance of being someone in voice, etc., not at all like myself (Letters II, 262). Such a statement implies a desire to escape his identity via role playing, a desire many of his later characters share, as I will demonstrate. My main point here however is that Dickens himself was an adept role player--so adept her could submerge his own identity to create other personae--and that, as Edgar Johnson suggests, he eagerly sought out role playing to alleviate personal despair (Theatrical Reader 13). It only follows that such a major part of Dickens's personality would influence his fiction, especially after he began publicly reading from his works, for he was "an author who frequently, perhaps compulsively, freighted his work with cathartic autobiography" (Stone, Invisible World, 302). As I have previously stated, beginning in 1858 Dickens's characters reveal more complex levels of role playing. One does not have to search long to discover why, for the year was one of drastic change, a culmination of a long developing personal crisis. Most significant was his· separation from Catherine, and his publicly declaring that he had been unhappily married. Along with 15 this action, he severed all relations with Bradbury and Evans, a publishing firm he had worked with for ten years, and put an end to Household Words, a magazine he had edited since 1850. 1858 also marked the beginning of his new career as a professional reader and, with it, the start of a period of reduced literary output. In fact, in the next decade he would write only two novels, and his only work of literature that year was the remarkable short story "Going into Society." Its main character is a pathetic dwarf who desperately wants dignity and respect, and constantly plays roles to achieve these goals. When first introduced, he even poses under an assumed identity. Though actually born with the names Stakes, he tries to pass as "Major Tpschoffi of the Imperial Bulgraderian Brigade," hoping that the impressive appellation will cause others to give him respect. This fails, however, because nobody can pronounce his feigned name. Instead, they call him "Chops," and all of poor Chops's efforts end in similar ironic futility. He takes to performing in a small circus managed by Mr. Magsman, who makes melody with a "sarser," while the dwarf humiliates himself by dancing like a monkey. The meager wages Chops receives from his performing he spends on lottery tickets and ultimately wins twelve thousand pounds. Like Pip, he uses his sudden fortune to achieve his yearned for role of higher status, to "go into Society" as he claims. 16 Ironically he discovers, like several performers before and after him, that role playing offstage differs little from role playing onstage, that "Society" is essentially no different from dancing like a monkey: Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs. At the court of St. James's, they was all a doing my old old business--all a goin' three times round a Cairawan, in the hold court-suits and properties. Elsewhere, they was most of 'em ringin' their little bells out of make-believes. Everywhere, the sarser was a going round. Magsman, the sarser is the universal institution! (429). After losing most of his money, he returns to performing in Magsman's circus, because "When I was out of Society, I was paid light for being seen. When I was in Society, I paid heavy for being seen" (430). Sadly, however, after performing as a monkey once more, Chops, recognizing the hopelessness of achieving what he so wants, commits suicide. Like several other Dickensian figures in this period, Chops hates his role, and, also like many others, he hopes to gain happiness and self-worth by attaining another role. Chops marks the beginning of a recurring pattern, one, as we will see, that pervades Dickens's later fiction. 17 III. Expected Roles: Great Expectations Myron Magnet argues convincingly that such Dickensian misanthropes as Ralph Nickleby and Ebenezer Scrooge are similar, not simply because both are skinflints, but because both reject social facades. Each one chooses a strategy for "authentic selfhood" (25), convinced that roles consist only of "cant" and "humbug"--in other words, hypocrisy, a disguise of true selfhood. Yet all social interaction demands some hypocrisy and, in Dickens's earlier novels, rejecting human companionship on such grounds results not only in alienation, but, ironically, in limiting true selfhood: A fully human identity is necessarily stagey and contrived: how can it not be, if we live in a 18 society and are continually playing to others. Though most of us do not go around in the full regalia of "false hair, false colour, false calves, false muscles" like the Crummles company (24), we are theatrical enough--even histrionic -in our own way (Magnet 44). After 1858, Dickens continued to create characters who reject social interaction--Miss Havisham stands out as an example--but they no longer reject society because of the hypocrisy of its roles. In his short story "Tom Tiddler's Ground," written in 1861, Dickens created a character, aptly named Mr. Mopes, who rejects society but lacks all of Scrooge's and Nickleby's hatred of hypocrisy. On the contrary, he is a hypocrite himself, a man who makes himself appear older than he is, who perversely finds fulfillment from playing the role of a dirty hermit for gawkers, insisting he "likes to be seen" by them (505). The story's other main character, Mr. Traveller, frankly tells Mopes of his hypocrisy and reprimands him for refusing to join humanity, because, "every man must be up and doing something, and all mankind are made dependent on one another" (507), a message the author obviously agreed with, for, despite his increasing pessimism concerning human nature, Dickens never viewed alienation as a viable option for human beings. However, Dickens would no longer produce a misanthrope who rejects society because of its 19 facades, perhaps because he had become critical of social roles himself. Dickens is critical of role playing in all his later novels, but he primarily attacks expected roles, roles usually associated with a person's class, position, gender, or occupation. In A Tale of Two Cities, for example, he presents Mr. Lorry as a man who wears "the composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank" (I, 4: 49) to such a degree that Lorry's own identity and humanity become submerged. Lorry himself claims, "I have no feelings; I am a mere machine'' (54); however, the tough-minded Miss Pross will not allow such excuses and reminds him that he is actually a human being. After he causes Lucy to faint, Miss Pross disconcerts him by saying, "Do you call that being a Banker?" (58). Mr. Lorry is actually a sensitive and compassionate fellow, yet his role as a banker stifles his humanity. Appropriately, he ultimately retires from Tellson's, but the bank continues, forcing other employees to acquire inhuman facades: When they took a young man into Tellson's London House, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue mould upon him (II, 1: 85). Being a Tellson's banker requires repressing one's sense of humanity, a word which not only refers to being ' t) 20 compassionate, but also to being a human being. Expected roles, Dickens is saying, can smother a person's sense of compassion and identity. The Dickens novel that most severely attacks such roles is Great Expectations. Pip especially conveys Dickens's attack since Pip craves to become a gentleman, or rather, to alter his role as a apprentice, a common "Blacksmith's boy" as he calls himself, to a role of higher status. Much of his craving stems, as Dickens suggests throughout, from a lack of self-worth. Indeed Pip, after learning that he will finally become a gentleman, openly states: "Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course, I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself" (18: 170). A key moment comes when Pip tells Joe he won't show his gentleman's suit to the villagers because they will make a "coarse and common business" of it--using the very adjectives which, not only Estella had berated him with, but which he had used to describe himself to Biddy. In other words, the villagers will remind Pip of how he views himself. Shortly after stating this, Pip insists on not showing himself in his suit to the villagers because "I couldn't bear myself," to which Joe responds, "Ah that indeed, Pip! ... If you couldn't abear yourself--" (18: 171). Dickens repeats the phrase only to·underscore part of Pip's problem: his dissatisfaction with himself. 21 Why Pip has this attitude is difficult to analyze because he is so rich and complex a creation; however, several critics have connected the immediate cause with his upbringing. Dorothy Van Ghent shows that Pip as a child was conditioned to stifle his sense of self because he was not treated like a human being, but more "as if he were a thing, manipulable by adults for the extraction of certain sensations" (69), just as Lawrence Frank remarks that Pip's attitude toward himself results from being reared by a constantly berating mother figure (154). Mrs. Joe Gargery perhaps strikes most readers as a merciless termagant, one who is shrewish without motive; however, much of her viciousness results from bitterly resenting her own role as a mother figure. When Dickens first introduces her, she complains, "I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife without being your mother" (2: 41), a comment that implies she is as overly conscientious about roles as Pip is. As a sister, society demands she must raise the little brother she has been shackled with, but, paradoxically enough, rather than try to escape her role, she perversely reminds herself of it by wearing its traditional trapping, an apron: She made it powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe. • • Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all: or why if she did wear it at all she 22 should not have taken it off, everyday of her life (41). The apron serves no practical need other than to remind herself of her being a mother figure, a role she resents and, because she resents it, performs it badly. The apron is a ball and chain for her, because she feels her role imprisons her. When Pip tells her he had been off to hear Carols, she jealously and resentfully replies, "Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear to Carols ..•• I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any" (4: 53). Dickens italicized "I" to emphasize that she believes her role limits her personal identity. Pip cannot even address his sister by her first name as he can with Biddy or Joe. At the most intimate, he calls her "Mrs. Joe" (2: 46), a name which, like her other one, Mrs. Joe Gargery, suggests that her identity is submerged by her role, a theme one finds with several other characters in the novel, but especially with Pip. J. Hillis Miller argues that Pip desires wealth and social rank because he hopes they will endow him with "true selfhood" (271). Quite true, yet Pip often prefers the role more than its wealth. Upon first arriving in London, Pip is disappointed to discover he will live in the "dingiest collection of Shabby buildings ever squeezed 23 together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats" (21: 196). The houses disgust him, for they remind him of his lower-class background, yet Pip never moves to a wealthier establishment, not even after attaining 500 pounds a year. His dwellings never hinder him from portraying his new gentleman's role, and, for Pip, the appearance and status of a gentleman matter more than the comforts. Indeed, Pip is obsessed with the value of appearance. When he first obtains his new role's trappings, his gentleman's suit of clothes, he dresses himself, not for his own vanity, but "for their delight, and sat in their splendour until morning" (19: 185). Pip cares nothing for how the suit fits him; he cares only for how he fits the suit. Only after being outfitted does he feel he is a gentleman, or at least, only then does he begin his outrageous snobbishness. He begs, for instance, that Joe not accompany him to the coach when leaving for London because of "the sense of contrast" they would exhibit. Pip's concern for appearances separates him from both Biddy and Joe, the two who love him without regard for roles. On the other hand, it exalts him in the eyes of those concerned only with appearance, such as Pumblechook, who "lauds to the skies" Pip's decision to leave the town in his gentleman's clothes unobserved, and who flatters Pip in his new role enough for Pip to forget Pumblechook's past injustices toward him as a child: "I remember feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, 24 and that he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow" (19: 181). Obsessed as he is with appearances, Pip naturally expects others to judge him by his new appearance. He assumes his role will cause others to view him as a new person. Most of all, he needs to prove himself a gentleman to Estella since she was the first to objectify his self-hatred with the phrase that he was "coarse and common," words traumatizing enough to him to repeat them several times in the course of the novel. If he can prove to Estella that he is a gentleman, then he proves to himself that he has self-worth. After attaining the dress, behavior, status--in short, the role--of a gentleman, Pip sees her again; yet she treats him without the respect he believes the role should give him. Indeed, his role fails him, and he slips "hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again" (29: 256). Miss Havisham then asks Estella if Pip has "changed:" "Very much," said Estella, looking at me. "Less coarse and common?" said Miss Havisham . . Estella laughed. • • • She treated me as a boy still. As Estella claims, Pip has changed, but only outwardly, only with his role; otherwise Pip is still Pip. This particular moment proves a hard blow to Pip's misguided hopes. After this meeting, he begins to doubt the power of 25 his new role. He confides to Herbert, "I am ashamed to say it, and yet it's no worse to say it than to think it. I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday, I am--what shall I say I am--today?" (30: 269). Pip recognizes here that he equates his roles with his self, that he considers them synonymous with his very identity. The far more level-headed Herbert advises, "Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase," a comment which not only shows that Herbert understands that each human being is far more than what any role can encompass, but also that each person should place a priority of being a "good fellow" above all else. Herbert emerges as the most authentic gentleman in the novel. Dickens even informs the reader that Herbert's grandfather was a knight (23: 212), so that Herbert even possesses an aristocratic heritage. Unlike Pip, he has a technical right to call himself a gentleman, yet he never does, and, for that matter, he views the charade of roles as a trifle absurd. When informing Pip that Miss Havisham's wealth came from brewing beer, he digresses: "I don't know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possible be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew" (22: 203). It is from his experiences with such characters as Herbert that by the end of the novel, Pip learns not to place so much importance on roles. As much as he resembles David Copperfield, Pip shares 26 affinities with another character, one who also appears in the later works: Tip in Little Dorrit. Both young men are dissatisfied with their lower class roles and desire the status of a gentleman. Although Tip cannot hold any job for long before getting tired, once he becomes a gentleman he plays his new role with previously unsuspected enthusiasm, even wearing a glass he does .not need, "with a face much twisted, and not ornamentally so, in part by the action of keeping his glass in his eye" (II, V: 403- 404). Tip uses the glass purely as a prop. It serves no practical purpose except to reaffirm for him the new role he has acquired, as the apron does for Mrs. Gargery and the gentleman's suit does for Pip. Both Pip and Tip go by remarkably similar nicknames and both hope to dispense with them as soon as they assume their new roles, preferring the pretensions of their formal names. Tip insists on being addressed as "Edward Dorrit, Esquire" (II, III: 378), just as when Pip first encounters Herbert, he asks to be called, not by the nickname which he is known by throughout the novel, but by the more formal "Philip" (that he requests this, despite his guardian's stipulation that he must always use the name Pip, only underscores his intense desire to change his identity). Herbert wisely rejects the formal name. He creates his own nickname instead. Shortly afterwards, he introduces his new· friend, not as "Philip Pirrup," but as "Mr. Pip." (22: 202) . " 27 Frankly, Pip needs to learn how to live with himself just as he is. He contrasts strikingly not only to Herbert, but to Joe, who, like Herbert, is not overly concerned with his role. When Pip tries to "raise Joe's station," Joe answers, "I'm so awful dull. I'm only master of my trade" (19: 117). The statement is an example of Dickens's sometimes subtle irony because Pip could never boast the same for himself. Pip is neither an adept blacksmith's apprentice not an adept gentleman. Unlike Pip, Joe is not anxious to change his station; he simply wants to do well in the station he already has. Also, unlike Pip, he understands the role he is best suited for. After his reunion with Pip in London, Joe, embarrassed by his 'gentleman's suit, confesses: It ain't that I'm proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchens, or off th' meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put you head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the burnt apron, sticking to the old work" (27: 246). 28 Joe knows the role that best suits him: Joe the blacksmith. Unlike Pip's, Tip's, or Mrs. Gargery's props, Joe's props, his forge dress, hammer, anvil, and pipe, serve needful functions and are not used to reaffirm his role to himself. He may be clumsy and uncomfortable with Pip; however, in London, in a gentleman's suit, he is obviously out of his context. Joe, as well as recognizing his proper role, also recognizes its proper context. As he says, "I'm wrong out of the forge." Recognizing the importance of context, when and where to play certain roles and when and where not to, is not a quality to underestimate. Joe is, for example, unlike Jaggers, who acts his role as an attorney with no regard for context. When he interrupts a casual dinner, Jaggers doesn't bother to introduce himself; instead, he interrogates poor Mr. Wopsle and cross-examines him "as if he had a right to him" (18: 161). Jaggers plays his role so strongly he causes others to feel guilty just by his presence, and, later, when Pip confesses he doesn't know what to make of him, Wemmick responds that Jaggers' behavior is "not personal; it's purely professional: only professional" (24: 221). Wemmick, unlike Jaggers, is able to shed his occupational role, but can only do so when separated from the office and Jaggers. For him, in fact, it is vital to segregate his roles into separate and defined settings. He insists, "Walworth is one place and this office is 29 another. Much as the Aged is one person and Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together" (36: 310). Context means everything to Wemmick, just as it means nothing to Jaggers. Jaggers, for instance, hardly blinks at the thought of inviting Wemmick to dine with him, not recognizing that dining is a context in which people should slip out their occupationa~ facades. Dining is normally an occasion of rejoicing for Dickens's characters, yet, when invited to dine at Jaggers's residence, Pip is surprised to find Wemmick still acting the office clerk role, and only "externally like the Wemmick of Walworth" (48: 404). Wemmick even acts his role to the degree of refusing to acknowledge Pip's presence. And Wemmick himself anxiously dislikes dining with Jaggers: "I feel that I have to screw myself when I dine with him--and I dine more comfortably unscrewed" (404). Wemmick would never make such a comment concerning the Mr. Jaggers he knows in the office; in that context, Wemmick feels no anxiety whatever. Both Wemmick and Jaggers drop their roles, if momentarily, when Pip divulges that Wemmick has a "pleasant home" in Walworth. Shocked at discovering his clerk possesses a hidden, humane personality, one which his clerk never indicated while performing his role, Jaggers accuses Wemmick of being "the most cunning imposter in all London" (51: 424). The statement unmasks Wemmick, for he discards his usual servile facade and 30 bluntly retorts, "I think you're another." And Wemmick is correct: playing the role of a lawyer so constantly does make Jaggers an imposter. Gruff and imposing as he is, he also has a humane nature hidden by his role, a man thoughtful enough to save Estella as a baby from being reared into becoming a vagabond. When Wemmick avows that someday Jaggers will open a pleasant home of his own when he "gets tired of all this work," Jaggers nods "retrospectively two or three times." He recognizes here an aspect of his self that his role as a lawyer represses. In this sequence, the two share in fact a good deal. Both work in the cutthroat legal profession which demands roles that deny a human being's sense of compassion. Both recognize that the other possesses a hidden sense of compassion and, consequently, realize the hypocrisy of the office facades. As a result, each has difficulty performing his accustomed role: ••. each seemed suspicious, not say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such 31 ill terms; for generally, they got on very well indeed together (426). Suddenly both have become uncomfortable with their roles, so both defensively overcompensate by overplaying them. Each wants to regain the former security of his office facade, and, luckily, a client enters for both of them to act aggressively to, an action that, although cruel, enables them to re-establish their roles. When the distraught client sheds tears. Wemmick demands, "What do you come snivelling in here for?" (427). After the client pleads he cannot help his feelings, Jaggers joins Wemmick and shouts, "Get out of this office. I'll have no feelings here." And, of course, having no feelings is just what Wemmick's and Jaggers's office roles demand: having no compassion, no sympathy--just efficiency. Indeed, this is the essence of Dickens's theme: showing, as with Pip, how expected roles can undermine a person's humanity. But of course the real fault lies not with the roles, but with those who place too much importance on them. Two of the novel's most humane characters, Joe and Herbert, have roles: Herbert as a businessman and Joe as a blacksmith; however, both keep their roles in balance with their identities. As I indicated earlier, Herbert states that a person, like Pip, should prize his identity, should be a "good fellow," before worrying about his role. And Joe uses his role not to inflate his status, but to serve a needful function. 32 Perhaps more important, Joe never bases his judgment of other human beings by their roles, as Pip does. Although Humphrey House marveled at how Dickens holds "the reader's sympathy throughout a snob's progress" (156), I think we realize how the novelist accomplishes this. Most of us have experienced a high status role that elevates our sense of self. The danger is to take the role too seriously, to be seduced by the charms of assumption, as Pip is, and presume a facade substitutes for a sense of self. Unlike a behavioral role, an expected role has, at best, only the appearance of an identity. 33 IV. Behavioral Roles: Our Mutual Friend As Edgar Johnson observes, in the world of Our Mutual Friend, society has ceased paying homage to aristocracy and instead reveres the Podsnaps and the Veneerings (Tragedy and Triumph, 1028). To illustrate what sort of people the Veneerings are, Dickens first describes the family as "bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran new quarter of London" (2: 48). Curiously, he does not use the standard term "brand-new," but "bran-new"; in his day, the word "bran" possessed a meaning, now obsolete, which indicated "sort" or "class." In other words, the Veneerings represent a whole new class--the nouveaux riches. They also exemplify Kenneth Rexroth's definition of a snob: someone who, because of his own insecurity, tries to imitate the manners of those above him (114). 34 • <) In Little Dorrit and Great Expectations, two novels set in the past, characters such as Fanny, Tip, and Pip yearn for upper-class roles; in Our Mutual Friend, which takes place in Dickens's present, middle-class characters have already attained their upper-class roles and have become in effect the new ruling class. That they are snobbish is evident in every scene in which they are presented; that they are insecure with their new roles is also evident. With the most famous example, Mr. Podsnap, we see a man who loves the arts only if they confirm the values of his lifestyle, of "getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven" (I, 11: 174). Podsnap clings to his upper-class role with the fervor of a convert. As the new rulers of society, he and his kind refuse to admit such a thing as social dissatisfaction: He never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself. Yet social dissatisfaction is what Our Mutual Friend primarily dwells on. Laurence Frank claims that each of the novel's characters pursues a quest for the "unified self" (207). At one point, after renouncing her desires for the Harmon 35 estate, called "Harmony Jail," Bella announces, "Now, I am complete" (III, 15: 666). Yet she is the only character who makes such a claim, for this novel is one that portrays how human beings desperately gra$p roles to find some sense of completeness: the quest for the unified self. One character who typifies this quest is Boffin, whose very identity can baffle a reader. Even his name is not always clear. He calls himself ''Noddy--or Nick- Boffin'' (I, 5: 92) to Wegg; yet later, after becoming wealthy, he assumes the name of ''Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire." Boffin at first appears like a variation of Tip or Pip, one who adopts his formal name in the same breath as his new title, assumes that the upper-class role bestows a new identity, and allows the role to unleash the baser parts of his nature, in this case, craftiness and miserliness. Ultimately, however, Dickens reveals that Boffin is actually the most adept role player in the novel, an actor who only assumes the part of a bullying skinflint--a revelation that has consistently displeased critics. Humphrey House summed up many a reader's feelings when he wrote, "the episode of the miserhood is so convincingly done that one is tempted to wonder whether Dickens did mean it to be genuine and only changed his mind toward the end" (169). The facts indicate, however, that Dickens intended from the start for Boffin to only 36 impersonate a miser. When Marcus Stone offered a sketch of the cover of the first monthly part, the novelist instructed him to make the Golden Dustman less horrible and more droll (Cohen 205). Boffin only begins to play the miser at the start of the novel's twelfth part, and Dickens scribbled in his note for this chapter, "Mr Boffin and Rokesmith and Mrs Boffin, having, unknown to reader, arranged their plan, now strike in with it" (Stone, Working Notes, 357), plainly aware that Boffin was in collusion with the other two to play his role. Nevertheless, the critics have a point, because Boffin's performance is powerful. Indeed, one leaves the novel remembering his moments when feigning to be a miser more than those when he is being himself. As A. 0. J. Cockshut asserts, "a very deep excitement spreads into the writing" (181) in these scenes. However, even though Boffin's performance seems more real than Boffin himself, I don't find the final revelation unconvincing. As an actor, and as one who has worked for years with actors, I know that it is not uncommon for someone who appears meek or timid in real life to transform and project a thunderous persona when performing a part. Significantly, the prototype that Dickens used for Boffin, Henry Dodd, was a dustman famed for his interest in drama (Fielding 276). Boffin's performance has its undesirable effects, however. After Wegg's attempt to blackmail Boffin has been foiled, Wegg tries to explain his actions: 37 " •• it's not easy to say how far the tone of my mind may have been lowered by unwholesome reading on the subject of Misers, when you was leading me and others on to think you were one yourself sir" (IV, 14: 861-862). Wegg claims here that Boffin's performance influenced him to adopt the characteristics of Boffin's role, those of an avaricious bully. Apparently, Wegg has become base partly because he acquired a role from someone else who acted basely. I realize that his is hardly an orthodox interpretation of Wegg, yet I find a good deal to suggest it. He is certainly not just the base scoundrel that John Harmon believes him to be. For instance, after discovering, to his surprise, that Boffin is not a miser, Wegg refuses the two pounds he is offered, behavior which is hardly consistent with being the greedy blackmailer he seemed a moment before. Like several characters in this work, Wegg uses his role to aid him in his own quest for a unified self. Early in the novel, Dickens provides clues that Wegg's sense of identity is not fully developed. When Wegg introduces himself, he implies an uncertainty as to his identity: "Silas Wegg. • . • I don't why Silas, and I don't know why Wegg" (I, 5: 89). In the same chapter, Dickens describes Wegg as one who was "so wooden a man that he seemed to have his wooden leg naturally" (I, 5: 89). In other words, someone who does not seem to be made 38 of flesh, someone not fully human. Yet, once he assumes the role he acquired from Boffin, Wegg develops into someone more humanlike, to the point that his wooden leg is no longer an extension, but acts "like a drag" (III, 5: 551), and is "highly unaccommodating" to him until the end (IV, 14: 862). As bullying as Wegg's personality finally becomes, his role has helped him to change into someone less wooden and more human, to gain a more complete sense of self. In the years of his later fiction, Dickens apparently realized that each individual will normally use someone else as a role model to help build a sense of personality and selfhood. In fact, he crams the novel with characters, painfully isolated in their quests for unified selves, who assume roles they have gained from others. Dickens describes, for example, Mortimer Lightwood as follows: He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at school; and at this hour imitated him no less, admired him no less, loved him no less, than in those departed days (II, 6: 337). Nor is Mortimer the only character to use another as a role model. Charley Hexam uses Bradley Headstone as a role model to the degree of becoming a schoolmaster. At one point Fascination Fledgeby tells Lammle not to address him "as if I was your doll and puppet, because I am not" 39 (II, 5: 323), an ironic comment, for in the very same chapter we realize that Fledgeby is. After Lammle has bullied him by threatening to pull his nose, Fledgeby angrily walks over to Pubsey and Co. and pulls the housebell "as if it were the house's nose (327, and again on 328). Not content with just the house he continues to follow Lammle' s example and bullies Riah.· The most striking of all the characters who depend upon role models, however is Bradley Headstone, who imitates Rogue Riderhood. Striking because both are so dissimilar: whereas Headstone is stiffish, learned, and obsessive, Riderhood is slouching, ignorant, and frequently indifferent. Nevertheless, Riderhood does serve as a role model,· inspiring Headstone to attempt murder. Bradley Headstone stands out as one of the novel's most complex characters. Although part of his motivation for hating Eugene is his obsessive love for Lizzie, he is also curiously obsessed with Eugene Wrayburn: "With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I went on. With Mr. Eugene Wrayburn in my mind, I spoke to you just now. With Mr. Wrayburn in my mind, I have been set aside and I have been cast out" (II, 15: 457). Wrayburn becomes for Headstone a personification of all his frustrations. Again and again (by my count, eight times in a two page section), Headstone repeats "Mr. Eugene Wrayburn,'' speaking the complete name and title as 40 if he feels Wrayburn were someone who possessed a unified self and envies him for it. Certainly, much of his hatred of Wrayburn stems from his feeling powerless and insignificant compared to him. As Headstone puts it, "I have stood before him face to face and he crushed me down in the dirt of his contempt, and walked over me" (II, 15: 458). The moment he refers to here occurs when Headstone first confronts Wrayburn: "You think me of no more than the dirt under your feet," said Bradley. "I assure you, Schoolmaster," replied Eugene, "I don't think about you" (II, 6: 345).- Throughout their confrontation, Wrayburn refuses to acknowledge that Headstone has any significance. He refuses even to confirm Headstone's identity, and consistently calls him "Schoolmaster," to the point that Headstone must assertively affirm his identity to him with the retort "Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone." He wants desperately to demonstrate to Eugene that he has some significance; however, he cannot do this in his role as schoolmaster. As much as he tries he finds that the role constricts his efforts, and finally he says: "Oh what a misfortune is mine ..• that I cannot appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I felt in a day can so ' ~ 41 command himself" (345) Headstone resents Wrayburn because the latter can "command himself," which the impassioned schoolmaster cannot, but he also feels the need for a role other than the one he now has, to "appear a stronger creature than this," in order to murder Eugene. To become a stronger creature for Headstone means playing a role other than that of schoolmaster. Hence, when he first joins with Rogue Riderhood, he wears the exact kind of sailor outfit Riderhood himself wears, one which he "committed to memory and slowly got by heart" (VI, 1: 697). Without his realizing it, Riderhood has served as a role model for Headstone, enabling the schoolmaster to feel the freedom to commit murder. Riderhood even comments, upon first seeing Headstone, "if you ain't ha' been a imitating me" (697). Certainly, while attempting murder, assuming a disguise seems only logical; however, Headstone is not simply being cautious. He actually gains a great deal of emotional fulfillment from playing his new role. While describing Headstone, Dickens relates that: •.• whereas, in his own schoolmaster clothes, he usually looked as if they were the clothes of some other man, he now looked in the clothes of some other man or men as if they were his own (697). The comment shows not only that Headstone is unsuited to 42 his role of schoolmaster, but also that he now finds that role so intensely stifling that he would be more comfortable and fulfilled with any other. He even admits, while operating with Rogue, "These are my holidays" (699), to which Riderhood astutely answers, "Your working days must be stiff 'uns if these be your holidays." After committing his attempted murder, Headstone tries to rid himself of his new role. He bathes and afterwards emerges "completely clothed, another man, and not the Bargeman" (IV, 5: 775). When he tries to dispose of his Bargeman suit, his face shows "a suspicious look of suicide." And, in a manner of speaking, suicide is just what he is engaged in; he kills not only the role that enabled him to break the law, but also the role that best represents his identity: a role that suits him far better than the role of schoolmaster he must return to. After he returns to school, he fits, easily if unhappily, back into the role of schoolmaster he finds so taxing; as Dickens describes the scene, the students see "little or not change in their master's face, for it always wore its slowly labouring expression" (777). He is also unhappy because he presumes his life will continue as it did before, but he cannot escape the consequences of his attempted crime. This fact emerges most dramatically when Riderhood appears in Headstone's classroom holding the Bargeman's outfit which the schoolmaster assumed he had destroyed. 43 Like Wegg, Fledgeby, and most of the novel's characters who use models, Headstone's quest for selfhood results in personal defeat, adding to the somber tone that pervades the work. Yet as unpalatable as many readers find Our Mutual Friend, it stands as Dickens's definitive novel on role playing. With it, he not only portrayed how people assume behavioral roles from others, but fully developed two·major types of role players that evolved in his fiction after 1858. However, each of these types deserves a chapter to itself. 44 V. The Impersonator The most obvious kind of role player in Dickens's later novels, the one who most closely resembles a professional actor, is the impersonator, the character who assumes a different surname. Dickens always enjoyed playing with names, but unlike his countless characters, like Dodger or Pip, who simply possess affectionate nicknames, Dickens's impersonator figure is one who attempts to hide his true identity, who always assumes an alias for the purpose of deception, and consequently plays a role of being someone other than himself. From the start of his career, Dickens created impersonators. As early as Pickwick Papers, Mr. Jingle, appropriately enough an actor, posed as Captain Fitz Marshall in order to fool Mrs. Leo Hunter. In his next novel, Oliver Twist, he created Monks, a murderous schemer 45 who ultimately reveals himself as Oliver's step-brother, Edward Leeford. Dickens continued to create impersonators even in his more mature works, including Mr. Bounderby and Rigaud; but, before 1858, they all shared similar traits of deviousness, indeed, they were opportunists, if not outright villains. After 1858, however, the impersonator evolved toward a new direction, as Dickens began to make this figure more appealing, sometimes even heroic. In 1859, Dickens wrote the short story "Hunted Down," containing a villain based loosely on the infamous poisoner Thomas Wainwright (whom, according to Forster, Dickens had met). The story's villain, Julius Slinkton, has no need to impersonate himself, perhaps because he is sufficiently deceptive in the roles he plays. Indeed, he first introduces himself dressed in mourning for the girl he has murdered, demanding to be accepted in his false guise: "You must take me ..• just as I show myself" (683). So assured is he in role playing that he insists that others look him directly in the eye, a sign that most of us assume indicates sincerity. However, the narrator, relating the story years later, cautions us: I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day of the week, if there is anything to be got by it (683). 46 The world that Dickens creates in his later works does not contain such obvious dissemblers as M9nks, but ones all the more cunning for not resorting to impersonation. Having already murdered once for insurance payments, Slinkton hopes to poison two more victims: his niece and his old drunkard roommate, Mr. Beckwith. However, Mr. Beckwith reveals himself to be Mr. Meltham, the former lover of Slinkton's first victim, who has assumed a disguise in order to capture the poisoner. Yet, after revealing his true identity and successfully capturing the murderer, Meltham feels a loss of any purpose in life and a sense of guilt. Though he has avenged his love, he does not feel he as atoned for her death: "He might have saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself" (704). Such a burdensome sense of guilt haunts several Dickensian impersonator figures in the later period. To portray the impersonator not as a villain but as a crusader against a villain certainly denotes a change in Dickens's development of this figure. Nor was Mr. Meltham the only example of this change. Most scholars agree that Datchery in The Mystery of Edwin Drood is in disguise, presumably to reveal that Jasper is a murderer. If Dickens intended that a sleuth from Scotland Yard, someone such as Detective Bucket in Bleak House, would solve the novel's mystery and capture the murderer, no such character exists in either the incomplete novel or working 47 . ' notes. In fact, just why Datchery needs to act in disguise remains a mystery, but, like Mr. Meltham, he probably resorts to such a strategy in order to entrap and defeat the villain. Taken in all, such characters as Meltham and Datchery remain at best sketchy; however, Dickens did create more developed impersonators in his later works, almost always making them sympathetic. Magwitch in Great Expectations, for example, is every bit an impersonator. He enters England under the alias "Provis," and when he must leave the country, Magwitch conjures up the plan of disguising himself as a sea captain, even to the point of adding "a touch of powder" (40: 353). Despite his being gruff and, at times, fearsome, Magwitch, by h~s extreme generosity, is very much a sympathetic character. He also has a problem that leads most readers to sympathize with him: he is a man excluded from his native land. Indeed, in Magwitch's case, a man who will be executed if he returns to his native land. Philip Collins in Dickens and Crime points out that Dickens "conceals or ignores" the fact that Magwitch's offence had "notoriously ceased to be de facto capital by the time when the action of the novel takes place" (281); yet, regardless of Dickens's accuracy or inaccuracy, the law emphasizes Magwitch's lacking any secure sense of homeland, a trauma from which he has suffered all his life: "I've been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and ' t.l 48 put out of that town ••• I've no more notion where I was born that you have--if so much" (42: 360). Magwitch's problem, that of being a man without a homeland, is one that Dickens frequently employs for the impersonators in his later works. The problem not only underscores this figure's sense of rootlessness but also closely connects with his lacking a secure perception of his own identity. A little later, for example, Magwitch relates: "I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine did" (360). Magwitch claims here to have learned his name only instinctively, and, as the final sentence shows, he has some uncertainty as to what his true identity is. One finds similar qualities as early as Little Dorrit in Rigaud, one of the last of Dickens's villainous impersonators. As an extortionist and megalomaniac, he hardly evokes any sympathy from the reader; indeed, we feel gratified when the Clennams' house crushes him. However, Rigaud foreshadows several traits of Dickens's later, more sympathetic impersonators, for he too is very much a man without a homeland. In the novel's first chapter, he describes himself: "I own no particular 49 country. My father was Swiss--Canton de Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was born in Belgium" (I, 1: 48). Later, he defines his condition more accurately: "In effect, I am of no country" (I, 30: 404). Not having a homeland, he lacks any definite sense of identity as well; even while impersonating, he poses, just as John Harmon will in Our Mutual Friend, under more than one identity: first as Blandois, then as Lagnier. Rigaud is a man possessing several countries and several identities; however, he lacks any one to call truly his own. Dickens's novel that follows Little Dorrit, A tale of Two Cities, does contain two villainous impersonators, Barsad and Roger Cly, both foreign agents and therefore impersonators by profession. Yet, both are minor characters compared to the work's major impersonator figure, Charles Darnay, whose actual name is Charles Evremonde, and also a man who lacks a homeland. Indeed, upon returning to his native soil, the government accuses him of being an immigrant, and he is thereafter referred to as "the immigrant Evremonde." Like so many other major characters in Dickens's later novels, Charles Evremonde also suffers from guilt. When he confronts his uncle the Marquis, he makes it clear that he has renounced his surname because of his guilt over his family's cruel history. Nevertheless, admirable as his indignation may be, Charles Evremonde does not 50 resolve his burdensome guilt: he only tries to escape it. He travels to another country where he can call himself Darnay and even hopes to start a new life with his new name; hence he calls England "my Refuge" (II, 9: 156). Ironically, however, Darnay does not escape the Evremondes. Even his own father-in-law is revealed as one of his family's victims. And, at times, his need for escape suggests a lack of responsibility. After the revolution, his servant Gabelle, whom he has burdened with running the Evremonde estate, pleads for help, and finally Charles Darnay recognizes his responsibilities: He knew very well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never been done (II, 24: 271). He realizes here he had been too anxious to escape the responsibilities of being an Evremonde--too anxious to escape who he really is. He has often been criticized for being a thinly sketched character, especially when compared to his more fascinating double, yet, with this character, Dickens was producing a new type of impersonator figure, one who is rootless--a quality that underscores his insecurity concerning his place in society--and who also renounces 51 his surname and uses his impersonation to escape his very identity. Dickens would develop these aspects in a more complex impersonator figure: John Harmon in Our Mutual Friend. Like Darnay, John Harmon is a man without a homeland. Even before Dickens first presents him, characters such as Mortimer Lightwood are uncertain about his origin, designating him as "the Man from Somewhere," also the title of the chapter. And when Harmon is introduced, the first words he speaks are "I am lost. . • I-·-I--am a stranger, and don't know the way" (I, 3: 66). Obviously, Dickens at the onset establishes that Harmon, as well as being confused and misguided, is a stranger to his native country. For most of his life, Harmon has not even lived in England, since he had gone abroad at the age of fourteen and before that spent much of his childhood in Brussels. Harmon, however, not only lacks a homeland, but, even more than Charles Darnay, loses touch with his actual identity. Darnay, ashamed of his family and name, poses under an assumed name in England to start life anew, but he never tries to destroy or forget who he is. When his servant in Paris calls for help, he immediately responds, and he is even willing to reveal his true identity to Dr. Manette. John Harmon, on the other hand, takes his impersonation to a greater extreme, using it as a means of escaping his actual identity. His motives for preferring a life as an impersonator 52 are complex. Ostensibly, he persuades himself that he should hide from the Boffins so they will inherit the Harmon estate, yet he later invalidates this motive since he maintains his impersonation long after both Boffins have found him out. He also believes he must keep his true identity a secret from Bella because, "her marriage with John Harmon, after what I heard from her own lips, would be a shocking mockery, of which both she and I must always be conscious, which would degrade her in her mind, and me in mine" (429). Yet Harmon sustains his impersonation long after he has married Bella. In fact, his being secretive about his identity does not help his marriage, but adds an unnecessary strain to it. At one point, Bella tells him in "a tone of injury": "You are nothing better than a sphinx! And a married sphinx isn't a--isn't a nice confidential husband," (IV, 11: 815). At first, he impersonates to explore Harmony Jail and to protect himself against what the identity of John Harmon entails: being entrapped in a marriage and occupation not of his choice and living an existence predetermined by Harmon Sr. Yet Later, he uses his impersonation, as Darnay does his, to s~art a new life altogether. Seduced by the charms of assumption, Harmon presumes his impersonation will enable him to escape his identity permanently. Whenever he hears the name John Harmon, he interjects such pronouncements as "Who I wish had never been born!" and "He is better dead" (II, 14: 53 437). However, John Harmon is not dead and certainly no disguise can make him so. Nevertheless, he avers he will "bury" forever his identity: "Cover him, [John Harmon] crush him, keep him down" (II, 13: 435). Dickens's imagery of burial suggests death (what Harmon wants with his earlier identity) and also repression (what he actually does with it). In effect, Harmon, hoping his impersonation will kill his identity, only represses who he actually is. Unlike Darnay, Harmon never confides his secret to anyone, and he only confesses it at the novel's end because Lightwood discovers him. Later, when Mrs. Boffin recounts how she and Mr. Boffin insisted on giving the estate to its rightful heir, she discloses how John Harmon avoided accepting it: "Now John, if you don't fix a time for setting her up in her own house and home, and letting us walk out of it, I'll turn Informer" (IV, 13: 844). And, of course, she has to make such good-hearted threats because Harmon himself never seeks to claim his actual identity; instead, he prefers impersonating as John Rokesmith. In fact, one finishes the novel feeling that if Lightwood had not discovered him, Harmon would never have revealed his true identity. Evidently, however, he finds contentment in being John Harmon again after he marries Bella. He is certainly more fortunate than the novel's other impersonator figure, Jenny Wren, who, although actually named Fanny Cleaver, 54 had "chosen to bestow upon herself the appellation of Miss Jenny Wren" (II, 2: 283). She is the most pathetic character in Our Mutual Friend, not only because she is deformed, but because her deformity baffles everyone who tries to categorize her. Even Dickens describes her as "a child--a dwarf--a girl--a something" (II, 1: 271). When Eugene introduces her, Miss Abbey must ask him "Child or woman?" to which Eugene answers, "Child in years, woman in self-reliance and trial" (II, 2: 498). Since Jenny cannot fit in any acceptable social role, she creates imaginary roles, and most of her relationships require imaginary role playing. She hasn't even a normal role relationship with her father, whom she calls Mr. Dolls, and whom, like one of Jenny's own dolls, she acts as a mother to. When he dies, she reproaches herself and her "responsibility as a mother," declaring "it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day" (IV, 9: 801). But Mr. Dolls is not a child; he is Jenny's alcoholic father, Mr. Cleaver, and she created her imaginary role relationship to escape the cruel actuality of what her father is. Jenny also shares a relationship of imaginary role playing with Riah, whom she frequently calls "Godmother," just as he often calls her "Cinderella." Appropriately, she is closer to Riah than any other character, because the imaginary roles they both play gratify her wish fulfillment. Apparently for Jenny, reality only offers pain, but in her fairy-tale role ' ~ 55 playing with Riah, she at least finds some release from pain, even enjoyment. Although the characters in this chapter have different motives for hiding their identities, I find it curious that each one uses his or her role ultimately for the same purpose, namely escape. For Charles Darnay, it is the Evremonde family that he wishes to escape; for John, his very identity; and for Jenny, the actuality of her relationships, perhaps even actuality itself. Significantly, actors have been known to seek stage roles as a means of escaping reality (Taft 318). Perhaps Dickens was aware of this, either from his knowledge of actors or his experience of acting himself. 56 VI. The Player Who Lacks a Role Throughout the later works, Dickens seems pessimistic about the value of role playing. Repeatedly, the novelist's characters hope to use roles as a means of attaining happiness and fail in the process. One could even infer that Dickens's attitude toward role playing was another example of the pessimism of his later years. However, it is hardly that simple, for he apparently recognized people's need for roles, no matter how shallow or unfulfilling those roles might be. After 1858, Dickens developed a recurring figure apathetic to projecting facades, essentially a man who lacks roles and who, at the same time, feels a want of direction, purpose, or significance. Perhaps the earliest example is Sydney Carton, the most fascinating, but also the most unfulfilled character in A Tale of Two Cities. 57 That Carton is apathetic to acting the role of a lawyer becomes clear when he is first introduced in court, all the time gazing up at the ceiling as if removed from the surroundings. On top of this, his manner lacks all the courtroom formality expected of a lawyer. His appearance is slovenly and his manner so indifferent as to be construed as insolent (II, 3: 108). He does not bother to hand Stryver a note; instead, he ''screwed it up and tossed it to him" (104). Carton is skillful in his profession; his note suggests that he be posed next to Darnay, a defense strategy that frees his client. Although this moment reveals his resemblance to Darnay, underscoring the theme of doubling that pervades the novel, it also shows that Carton can obviously be a good lawyer. He simply cannot be motivated to act like one. After the trial, he removes his wig and robe and is "none the better for it in appearance" (II, 4: 112). In uniform, out of uniform, how he appears to others makes no difference to him. When he performs the act of being compared to Darnay, a piece of courtroom strategy that depends upon his personal appearance, he is so apathetic that he must be reminded to remove his wig. Even as a guest at the Manettes' house, he makes no effort to present himself in some agreeable fashion, causing Stryver to declare: "Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind" (II, 11: 169). 58 No one, however, hates his indifference more than Carton himself. In his first conversation with Darnay, he asks, "Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme?" and when Darnay affirms that he does, Carton responds, "It must be an immense satisfaction!" (II, 4: 114). Obviously, Carton does not belong to anyone or anything, which only adds to his sense of purposelessness. His only sense of purpose is to be of some service to Lucy Manette, and, ironically, his greatest service to her requires his acting a role, that of Charles Evremonde. After attaining his role, he finds a sense of purpose and also a keener sensitivity to others. While awaiting execution, a young seamstress pitifully seeks comfort from him, causing him to weep. Carton, who earlier boasted, "I care for no man on earth, and no man cares for me" (II, 4: 115), actually offers comfort to her, to the point that before her death, she says, "I think you were sent to me by Heaven" (III, 15: 402). He responds, "Or you to me," indicating that he has found salvation by being of service to the young seamstress, as well as to Lucy. The author's message is obvious: one cannot detach oneself from humanity; one must join in and be of service, which normally requires assuming roles of some sort. Dickens believed that human beings should try to involve themselves with other human beings--to belong--and in his novels, role playing is an essential part of belonging. 59 One sees this more clearly with a character who resembles Carton, Eugene Wrayburn from Our Mutual Friend. Just as Carton repeatedly declares "I have no business," asserting he does not participate in his society, Wrayburn likewise claims "I have had no business at all, and never shall have any" (I, 3: 62). Like Carton, Wrayburn becomes morose at social gatherings. When Dickens introduces him at the Veneerings, he repeatedly describes him as "gloomy Eugene." Wrayburn also prefers idleness, but, like Carton, his idleness results, not from being lazy, but from perceiving very little worth striving for. When Mortimer Lightwood says "show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you energy," Wrayburn quickly answers, "And so will I" (63). Dickens uses Lightwood as an alter ego for Wrayburn; rarely does one appear without the other, to the degree that Rogue Riderhood identifies both of them with the same name, "T'other." Yet, as much as they resemble one another, Lightwood differs in one key respect: he at least plays roles, no matter how shallow he may find them. Though he too finds the Veneerings disagreeable, he doesn't sit "buried alive in the back of his chair. gloomily resorting to the champagne chalice" (I, 2: 53) as Wrayburn does; instead, he obligingly entertains guests by relating John Harmon's life story. Like Wrayburn, Lightwood does not take his occupational role very seriously. Contrary to Jaggers, he can slip in and out of 60 acting as a lawyer as he wishes. When advising Boffin, for example, he can speak at times "with the irresponsible imbecility of a private individual, and not with the profundity of a professional advisor" (I, 8: 131). However, at least we see he can perform his expected role; not once, on the other hand, does Dickens show Wrayburn acting as a barrister. Lightwood serves as a foil for Wrayburn, a reminder that one must assume roles of some sort for social interaction. After learning of Wrayburn's relationship with Lizzie, Lightwood inquires: "Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?" "My dear fellow, no." "Do you design to marry her?" "My dear fellow, no." "Do you design to pursue her?" "My dear fellow, I don't design anything. I have no design whatever. I am incapable of designs. If I conceived a design, I should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation" (II, 6: 348). Wrayburn avoids all roles, whether they apply to occupations, social gathering, or marriage. When he confesses he has no designs for Lizzie, he affirms he wants a relationship without responsibilities, that he will not commit himself to the patterns of consistency and 61 . ' social behavior required with spousal roles. In this scene and throughout most of the novel, Lightwood shares a relationship to Wrayburn similar to the one Stryver did with Carton, that of friendly advisor (although Lightwood is less pompous and more compassionate). He reminds Wrayburn that human beings need to live by certain patterns of social behavior, for, immedia.tely after the above conversation, Lightwood asks him, "What are you doing? Where are you going?" (349). The words run through Wrayburn's mind, haunting and nagging him, mainly because subconsciously he wants a secure role for himself and an accepted role relationship. Despite the fact that he avoids marriage and all its domesticity, Wrayburn surrounds himself with domestic trappings, such as kitchen utensils, which he will never use, claiming, "The moral influence of these objects, in forming the domestic virtues, have an immense influence upon me" (II, 6: 337). Earlier, when Wrayburn dreams of living his life in a lighthouse with only one other person, Lightwood has to inform him that such a notion is not at all far from wanting a marriage relationship (I, 12: 194). At the novel's conclusion, while Wrayburn lies on what seems his death bed, Lightwood advises him with the one word "wife"; in other words assume a relationship with Lizzie that provides her with a spousal role. The word helps to revive him, and later Jenny asks if Wrayburn is 62 conscious: "'He is conscious, Jenny' murmured Eugene, for himself, 'He knows his wife'" (IV, 10: 824). Wrayburn's "consciousness" means seeing the value of role playing, both for himself and for Lizzie. Like Carton, acquiring a role causes Wrayburn to gain a keener sensitivity to others, in this case, to Lizzie. Also like Carton, Wrayburn attains salvation through his role, but Dickens goes one step·further by equating finding a role with life and resurrection. At one point, Lizzie, seeing him resign himself to death, cries out, "Eugene, my dear husband." Her calling him by his new role revives him, causing him to answer, "You see how you can recall mel" (824). According to Marcus Stone, the illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, Dickens originally planned for Wrayburn to die after gaining salvation, just as Carton achieved salvation before his death. That Dickens altered his plan demonstrates his willingness to experiment with his figures rather than rely solely on previously proven formulas. He developed even further his player lacking a role when he created Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. John Jasper shares similarities with the previous characters who lack roles. He even feels uncomfortable performing his role as an uncle, and he demands that his nephew Edwin not call him one because "uncles as a rule . are so much older than their nephews" (2: 8). Edwin treats Jasper more as a friend that as an uncle, often calling him "dear Jack" and even wishing that Jasper were 63 younger than himself. Later in the novel, Mr. Sapsea hints that Jasper should get married, stating "it is not good for a man to be alone" (4: 26), much the same way Stryver advised Carton to find a wife who would take care of him. Significantly, in his working notes for this chapter, Dickens jotted "Connect Jasper with him (Sapsea)" (Stone, Working Notes, 383). We can only· speculate how Sapsea'.s relationship with Jasper might have developed had Dickens completed the work. However, if Mr. Sapsea's relationship with Jasper is not as fully developed as Stryver's is with Carton, or Lightwood's with Wrayburn, perhaps the reason lies in Jasper never suffering Carton and Wrayburn's ailment: idleness. Both Stryver and Lightwood advise Carton and Wrayburn to find a sense of purpose by joining society and playing the roles society expects. Jasper hardly needs such advice because he already performs an expected role, in fact, one that others admire him for, that of choirmaster. Unlike Carton, Jasper is never idle; unlike Eugene, he is never bored; unlike both of them, he is restless, or, as he tries to describe it, he suffers form "some stray sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what shall we call it?" (2: 11). Just as Wrayburn asserted "I hate my profession" (I, 3: 62), Jasper claims that he hates his own as well. More than anything else, he despises the "cramped monotony of my existence [that] grinds me away by the grain" (10). 64 Wrayburn's boredom stems, as boredom often does, from inactivity. Jasper's dissatisfaction, on the other hand, results from routine; however, he presents the appearance of being completely satisfied with his role. Indeed, Edwin answers, "I though you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack," to which Jasper bitterly retorts, "I know you thought so. They all think so" .(10). Edwin, astonished to discover that his uncle is unfulfilled by his role, mentions that Rosa and all others believe the choirmaster was made for his vocation. Jasper responds, "I must subdue myself to my vocation; which is much the same thing outwardly. It's too late to find another now" (10). Jasper is the sad case of a restless spirit who appears to fit his role, but actually does not. Like the other characters in this chapter, Jasper has an occupational role; unlike them, however, he performs his role and appears to perform it well. His agony is that it does not provide him with what every role should offer, however slightly: significance and self-esteem. All it offers him is monotony and a sense of imprisonment. His role is only a sham and, even worse, he recognizes it as a sham. Worst of all, he cannot state what role he might prefer, a problem which Wrayburn and Carton also share. Compare Jasper, on the other hand, to Pip when Pip was dissatisfied with his role as a blacksmith's apprentice. Pip could at least communicate that he wanted to become a gentleman. Jasper, however, doesn't know what 65 role would satisfy him; he only knows he hates the one he has. Despite the fact that his conflict concerns his expected role, Jasper has little or nothing in common with Pip. Pip yearned for a role of higher status. Jasper has no need for status; he already has it. Indeed, the fact that he does have it, ironically, hurts him all the more. He first confesses his hatred of his role when Edwin describes Jasper's exalted status in the community: your being so much respected as Lay Presenter, or Lay Clerk, or whatever you call it, of this Cathedral; your enjoying the reputation of having done such wonders with the choir; your choosing your society, and holding such an independent position in the queer old place (10). What resolution Dickens planned for Jasper's conflict remains conjectural, although I think it significant that Dickens resolved the conflicts of his previous characters lacking roles by their ultimately attaining them. Despite possibly being shallow or hypocritical, roles remain an inseparable part of any human being's quest for purpose, esteem, and acceptance. 66 VII. Conclusion I find that most of the themes explored in this study exist in all the novels written after 1858. Even as late as the next to the last part of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens showed how stifling expected roles can be with the gloomy Mr. Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious's clerk of "a dissatisfied, doughy complexion" (11: 88), whose discontent, according to his employer, stems from his feeling "misplaced": "So misplaced," Mr. Grewgious went on, "that I feel constantly apologetic towards him. And he feels (though he doesn't mention it) that I have reason to be" (20: 180). Like other characters in the later period, Bazzard's role stifles his self-esteem and potential: Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and he feels it very much." 67 "I am glad he is grateful," said Rosa. "I didn't quite mean that, my dear. I mean that he feels the degradation" (181-182) Appropriately, Dickens presents Grewgious as a contrast to Bazzard (and, for that matter, Jasper). Grewgious is fully contented with his role, one of the lucky few in modern society who "by chance, had found .his niche" ( 11: 87). Unfortunately, how Dickens intended to develop both Grewgious and Bazzard remains, as much else in the novel, a mystery. As I hope I have demonstrated, what also runs through the later novels are such recurring figures as the impersonator, who escapes his self through playing someone else, and the player who lacks a role, a figure whose fate seems the most miserable of all Dickens's role-related types. Yet, of all these aspects of role playing, I find Dickens's presentation of behavioral roles curiously restrained, for he never explores the period when such roles affect human beings the most: childhood. As V. S. Pritchet observed, the typical Dickens child is isolated (88), and, underscoring this, the Dickens child lacks any adequate role models for molding his sense of selfhood. Joe, for example, never serves as a role model for little Pip; the boy does not view him as a father figure, but as "a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal" ( 2 : 40). Pip certainly loves Joe, but he never--at least during his boyhood--imitates him. On the contrary, he . " 68 wants only to leave the forge Joe loves. Dickens himself certainly felt a dearth of adequate role models as a child. He had an improvident father who led the family to bankruptcy and a mother who, young Dickens felt, had betrayed him when she wanted him sent back to Warren's Blacking warehouse. One is tempted to hypothesize that Dickens anxiously sought roles to attain a sense of selfhood as an adult, and one can find evidence to support such a claim. Forster, for instance, mentions that the novelist was "always the more himself for being somebody else, for continually putting off his personality" (qtd in Kingsmill 139) Whether or not such was the case we can never determine. Much more important, however, is that Dickens as an artist knew the seductiveness of role playing as well as its dangers. 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