'The ghost of an idea': past, present and future memory in Dickens' fiction

Abstract

Dickens' interest in the workings of memory has been well-documented but few scholars have attempted to trace his portrayal of memory via his fiction. I will argue that Dickens displays a preoccupation with concepts of memory in his work and that this interest developed with his increased understanding of Victorian mental sciences and phantasmagoria such as Spiritualism and mesmerism. For instance, in The Pickwick Papers (1836-7) and Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9), Dickens incorporates inset tales as an analogy for the act of remembering. Each of these stories contain distressing themes which disrupt the text in a similar way to an unpleasant associative memory. As a result, the reader is forced to take notice of their didactic content and to remember the social concerns raised. With Dickens maturity as an author, he was able to incorporate his interest in memory without the need for inner tales. This is exemplified in many of his ghost stories, which may be interpreted literally or as psychological manifestations of memory. The ghosts that visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve, for example, are no doubt supernatural beings, but I argue that they may also be interpreted as the hallucinogenic creations of Scrooge s psyche. In two of Dickens later novels, David Copperfield (1849-50) and Great Expectations (1860-61), he explores the concept of incorrect recollection and errant memory using an adult s perception of childhood. Each protagonist has the ability to reconstruct their past from a present perspective and, as such, the mind becomes a palimpsest, allowing new recollections to settle over old memories. Without being anachronistic, much of Dickens interest in memory anticipates Freud in many respects and I will develop this idea throughout the thesis.