David Copperfield Research Articles

Adapting David Copperfield for children in China: examining the representation of Christian views

Adapting David Copperfield for children in China: examining the representation of Christian views

Professionalization and Gender in David Copperfield

ABSTRACT Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–1850) is a novel about the emergent profession of authorship, and its protagonist is the embodiment of Dickens’s idea of the professional novelist. The most significant qualities underlying David’s characterization relate to gender, and as a feminine male novelist, David blurs Victorian gender boundaries. Whereas many critics have illustrated the androgynous nature of the male novelist with a focus on his feminine traits, this article will show that his masculinity is crucial to his authorial identities and serves to foster his professionalization, and at the same time redefine his femininity in the context of the mid-nineteenth-century discourse on professionals. By doing so, this article will finally reveal how Victorian male novelists such as Dickens thought of their professional and gender identities, and especially their ideals and anxieties. This investigation will also shed light on the significant inter-relationship between Victorian professionalism and gender issues, especially in the world of authorship.

Dickens’s Signs: Language, Authority, and Communication Problems

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a particular aspect of language in Dickens that has not been studied: the authority over the signs as shaping interpersonal, ethical, and social relations. Who masters linguistic signs? What does it mean for a Dickensian character to aspire to control language? Surprisingly, the work of one of the greatest geniuses of the English language betrays a distrust of those who presume to master the signs. A question that preoccupies Dickens throughout his career is whether the purpose of communication systems is, indeed, to communicate, commune, and form a community or, instead, to assert one’s exclusivity and privilege. This article compares two characters who serve as contrasted analogues: Doctor Strong in David Copperfield, the compiler of an unfinished dictionary, and Doctor Marigold, the protagonist of Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions, who adopts a deaf child and invents a private sign language. The article explores Dickens’s changing conceptualization of communication, agency, and disability in the context of Victorian debates over these issues. His growing support of signing over lipreading indicates his developing view of disability and linguistic marginalization as an arena of acquired ability that the privileged agents of language are unable to possess.

Blood and Choice: Reconstructing the Marriage Plot in David Copperfield and Iola Leroy

ABSTRACT Using the exemplary pair of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield from a recent Dickens Universe conference, and Frances E.W. Harper’s Iola Leroy, this article explores what it might mean to read two novels from different traditions “together.” After identifying models of “togetherness” from comparison to what she calls “defamiliarization,” Michie looks at how both novels defamiliarize the traditional (white, female-centered) marriage plot. While David Copperfield challenges the neat binary structure of the white female marriage plot, Iola Leroy, with its representation of the violence of slavery, offers a counter-structure that questions the plot’s dependence on virginity, individuality, and choice.

Investigating the Interrelationship between the Desire for a Cohesive Community and Opioid Abuse: A Neuropsychological Study of Demon Copperhead

Abstract Foregrounding the increasing global crisis of opioids as the “leading cause of deaths in fatal overdoses,” the World Drug Report 2023, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), mentioned that in 2021 more than 80,000 people died due to opioid overdose in the United States of America. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health protection agency in the United States, has reported that “the predicted number of drug overdose deaths showed an increase of 0.5% from the 12 months ending in December 2021 to the 12 months ending in December 2022, from 109,179 to 179,680” (“Provisional Data”). Although the trajectory of opioid use disorders (OUDs) has affected different sociodemographic groups in the country since its first wave in the 1990s, teenagers in poverty-stricken rural areas are more vulnerable to such addiction (Keyes et al.). Poor parental guidance, impoverishment, troubled childhoods, detrimental familial structure, scarce opportunities, and accessibility to opioids are often considered to be the primary risk factors for unprivileged teenagers to develop a psychic reliance on opioids for engendering a perpetual sense of contentment. According to the incentive sensitization theory, the persistent desire to transcend physical and psychical limitations for a sense of relief, triggered by chronic drug misuse, often evokes a sense of “wanting” or incentive salience, a compulsive inclination towards drug-associated stimuli (Berridge and Robinson, “Drug Addiction” 22). This intense desire of “wanting” often generates a perpetual sensitization of the mesolimbic systems in the brain which is also activated by mental representations of drug-associated cues (Robinson and Berridge 3139). Focusing on drug-induced changes in the brain such as hypersensitization and neuroadaptation, this study analyzes Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, a modern reimagining of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. The selected text addresses primarily some pertinent socio-political crises, such as the poor foster care system, poverty, and the engrossing opioid endemic in Southern Appalachia. However, this study attempts to analyze the precarious state of some characters, who become addicted to opioids seeking recognition from peer groups and perpetual psychic stability, in the selected text from a neuropsychological perspective.

Description as a Fiction-Writing Mode Between Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley: A Comparative Study

Comparative literature expounds on the areas of convergence in literature and reproduces the cultural similarities between East and West, demonstrating its results in guiding literary and intellectual renewal movements. Arabic literature takes advantage of the works of literature of other nations and is always keen to develop and enrich its awareness and culture. As the novel is a celebrated genre used in the comparative literature area, the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, well-known as the Dickens of Egypt, is one of the key poles of the international Arab novel. Mahfouz's novels and short stories convey Cairo, the capital of Egypt, its neighborhoods, inhabitants, and groceries to the home of every reader. The images and representations of Cairo drawn by Mahfouz are compared to the masters of English literature, namely Charles Dickens who significantly impacted Mahfouz's writings, especially his great love for describing and depicting everything his eyes see. With appropriating a comparative study of Dickens’s and Mahfouz’s selected works, this paper examines the concept of “description as a fiction-writing mode” as reflected in two literary works—Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850) and Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley (1947) following the School of Comparative Literature based on the principle of similarity in its study and analysis of literary works.

Oliver as Object: Character, Genre, and Agency in the Victorian Novel

Abstract: This essay revisits the perennial question of Oliver Twist's flat and inert character. It argues that the different genres overlaid within the novel—allegory, statistical report, it-narrative—allow Dickens to make the social critique that drives the novel. The statistical report and itnarrative, particularly, demonstrate that the discourse of Benthamism, which underpinned the New Poor Law, is inadequate to narrate human subjectivity. These genres dramatize Dickens's critique of the law: that it turns people into fungible units. The flat characters and objectifying genres of Oliver Twist drive the novel's powerful argument about humanity and community. For most of the novel, Oliver can be read via a posthuman critique; he has more in common with the objects and animals of it-narrative than with Pip or David Copperfield. To bring about novelistic resolution, Dickens finally turns to a familiar and satisfying romance plot, revising Oliver into a true protagonist with agency and a unique identity. This essay challenges the convention that flat characters are authorial failures by arguing that in Victorian novels, as genre and character co-create one another, they construct particular, strategic models of human subjectivity and agency.

Mudfog: Crabbe and Dickens, and the View from the Marshes

Abstract: This paper asks about the relationship of Crabbe's poetry (and his life) to Dickens, and pursues an interest in the marshy and muddy landscapes of David Copperfield, Bleak House , and Great Expectations , with attention also to Little Dorrit . I am interested in Dickens's neologism "mudfog," and how this extends through his fiction; in this specific case looking at Orlick in Great Expectations . I read him as deriving from Crabbe's Peter Grimes, and as an incarnation of the oozy stagnancy of the marshes in the novel. Here I draw on Julia Kristeva and Georges Bataille on the abject and the formless as a way of conceptualizing what Orlick, one of Dickens's more surprising characters, might represent. The whole paper is a continuation of interests discussed in an earlier paper on "Mudfog" ( Dickens Quarterly , June 2024).

Child Labor in English Literature

Child labor is an old social problem. It peaked during the Industrial Revolution which greatly influenced English society, such as rural exodus, lack of equal job opportunities, miserable living and working conditions, social classes, lack of mandatory education, poverty, and, most importantly, child labor. The paper investigates the crimes against children carried out under the cover of child labor and poses the question of whether authorities, governments, religious institutions, businesses, and even parents are complicit in these crimes or have chosen to overlook them in spite of the constant backlash against them. The main aim of this study is to show the positive role of some authors like Charles Dickens, William Blake, Frances Trollope, Charles Kingsley, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Caroline Norton, and Elizabeth Barret Browning who refused to ignore such atrocities and their consequences. These writers showed their opposition to child labor through great literary works such as Oliver Twist, Hard Times, David Copperfield, The Chimney Sweeper, A Voice from the Factory, The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land- Baby, and The Cry of the Children. The study follows the close reading method and the sociology of literature approach. The study concludes that poverty and urbanization were some of the adverse outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. It reveals the official’s role in profiting from child labor and presents the authors’ role in changing The Poor Laws and Factory Acts to ban hiring minors. The study recommends national child labor regulations that should be enacted and enforced in order to prevent or at least control child work, as recommendations for further research.

Controlled Childhood and the Moulding of the Children's Characters; Critical Analysis of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Great Expectations

This study reads Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Great Expectations as "condition of England novels" by applying realism and naturalism theories, which focus on "parole". The term referred to by Ferdinand de Saussure in language acquisition to mean "performance". This paper addresses how Charles Dickens uses the term "parole" to refer to children's performance under social influences. Through his works, Dickens shows that the environment plays an elementary role in building children's characters as they grasp knowledge from their surroundings. They interact with the social environment, which fosters or hinders their development. Childhood is a crucial stage in the development of societies. Through the portrayal of children in Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Great Expectations, Dickens highlights the ordeals and suffering of children in the nineteenth century and shows the plight of the Industrial Revolution as it damaged the essential block of Victorian society. Accordingly, schools, factories, streets, workhouses, teachers, masters, and parents all of these take part in the formation of the child’s character. Children during that time faced different types of social pressures that affected their characters and future lives. This study investigates Dickens’ embedded message, showing how childhood is not only a stage of playing but is also important and influential in the performance and shaping of the child’s character.

Dickensian Dimensions: A Transatlantic Dialogue

Abstract: “Dickensian Dimensions” makes use of Dickens’s manuscript revisions to uncover the extra dimensions of emotional depth and temporal complexity that his sentences acquire in the immediate midst of composition. When the effects of those little changes were offered to a group of serious ordinary readers in the UK, their responses to selected passages from David Copperfield showed how much the tiny revisions could matter emotionally. The second part of the essay considers revised passages from Dickens’s next first-person narrator, Esther Summerson of Bleak House . We suggest that Esther’s apparently coy evasions can be more sympathetically read as writing problems stemming from her existential situation as a virtual non-person.

A lexicon-based diachronic comparison of emotions and sentiments in literary translation: A case study of five Chinese versions of David Copperfield.

In the Chinese context, translations have served as a useful conduit for providing access to wider literature authored in other languages. A prominent question has been whether translators' linguistic choices are influenced by factors such as translators' social and cultural background and emotions towards the texts they are translating. When multiple translations of the same text over a span of time are produced, another layer of complexity is introduced, and research such as the present study, must examine how or whether variation in the expression of emotions within translations produced over a period of time is discernible. To this end, the present study made use of Lexicon-based Sentiment Analysis (LBSA), a common natural language processing (NLP) approach, to study people's attitudes, opinions or emotions towards a certain person or thing. LBSA has attracted much attention in the literary works or translated works for analyzing reader response and appraisal of the works themselves. The present study undertook a diachronic comparison of emotions and sentiments in five translations of David Copperfield based on the emotion lexicons. The corpus of the study comprised translations of five books and 3,084,599 tokens. We applied the computational method of emotion and sentiment analysis to the emotion words in the five translations. In addition, we used python and R package to analyze the positive and negative words in five versions. The study revealed that translators as social beings in the target world express unique reactions towards the same emotion in the original text as well as in literary translations. Yet, the modern vernacular Chinese versions also showcase a similarity in the expression of emotions thus demonstrating the decisive role of the overall flow of emotion in the original plays and in translation. The contribution of the study is significant as it is a pioneering investigation given that it undertakes a sentiment and emotion analysis of literary translations in Chinese.

UTILISING CORPUS STYLISTICS TO FACILITATE LITERARY ANALYSIS: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SEMANTIC DOMAINS IN IDENTIFYING MAJOR LITERARY THEMES IN A SELECTION OF CHARLES DICKENS’ NOVELS

Though still in an early stage of development, corpus-assisted literary analysis is becoming increasingly popular as having the full potential of corpus linguistics methodology for literary stylistics. This paper argues that corpus linguistic procedures can be considered an addition to the analytical inventory of traditional stylistics. It aims to explore how corpus linguistic procedures, particularly semantic domains, can be effective in detecting major literary themes in fiction. In order to do so, five corpora were compiled: a corpus for each of the four novels of Charles Dickens’ selected (i.e., Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend) and a compiled corpus combining all four novels. Wmatrix 5, with the BNC Sampler-Written as a reference corpus, was used to extract the key semantic domains in each corpus respectively. The literature on the selected novels was consulted to identify the major themes. Then, it was verified whether these themes were reflected in the corpus analysis, and, finally, the extent to which the procedure was effective in reflecting the major literary themes was also explored. The findings confirmed the effectiveness of the procedure of analysing semantic domains in studying literary texts, particularly in relation to their themes.

Aging Yet Independent Women in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford and Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield

In the Victorian England whose ideal woman was the Angel in the House, a devoted and submissive wife and mother, it would generally be unfortunate for women to be still unmarried past their reproductive years. Using feminist lens, this study compares the Jenkyns sisters (Deborah and Matty) of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853) and Betsy Trotwood of Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield (1850). While aging and single, they are financially independent. Husbandless and childless, the Jenkyns sisters and Betsey could easily fall into the category of redundant women, but they skillfully manage the house and class relations the way the Angels in the House do.

Iannucci and Branagh’s Adaptations of David Copperfield and Much Ado about Nothing: The Problematic of Race-Bending

This paper embraces a counter-argument approach to the contemporary theatrical trend of race-bending mostly through color-blinding. Two cases are examined: Armando Iannucci’s film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield under the new title The Personal History of David Copperfield, and Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing under the same title. Color-blind casting is a non-traditional theatrical practice that encapsulates undermining the actors’ ethnicities when playing a certain character, cancelling the typical alliance of ethnicity between character and actor. The paper utilizes Stuart Hall’s theorizations on cultural identity in addition to August Wilson’s objections to the method, questioning the compatibility of the race-bending strategy with its stated purposes: embracing equality and multiculturalism. It seeks to demonstrate that, on the contrary, this strategy neither enhances cultural diversity nor advances equality, as it both demolishes historical authenticity and causes distraction in the construction of the cultural identity of people of color. Keywords: Race-bending; color-blinding; Stuart Hall; The Personal History of David Copperfield; Branagh’s film Much Ado about Nothing.

Just an Illusion?

Just an Illusion?

The plight of the figure of the child-woman in David Copperfield and A Pair of Blue Eyes

The plight of the figure of the child-woman in David Copperfield and A Pair of Blue Eyes

Charles Dickens: But for You, Dear Stranger by Annette Federico

Reviewed by: Charles Dickens: But for You, Dear Stranger by Annette Federico Chelsey Pinney (bio) Annette Federico. Charles Dickens: But for You, Dear Stranger. Oxford UP, 2022. Pp. vii + 164. £18.99. IBSN: 978-0-1928-4734-8 (hb). Annette Federico’s But for You, Dear Stranger exemplifies how nuanced and analytical personal responses to literature can be. Rather than solely thinking our way through Dickens’s corpus, Federico demonstrates the rewards to be reaped from feeling our way through as well. She achieves this quietly, but unashamedly, unapologetically, and with admirable honesty. Federico has previous form with such an approach, as evidenced in her 2020 project, My Victorian Novel: Critical Essays in the Personal Voice, and it shows. The narrative that unfolds is highly creative, at times poetic and even therapeutic through its combined personal and critical engagement with Dickens’s novels. Despite the modest admission from the outset that “I never thought of myself as a Dickens expert” (ix), the breadth and depth of her knowledge and thinking around Dickens, his life and his work are never in question: more importantly for this book, neither is her love for them. But for You, Dear Stranger underscores how personal experience can be used effectively to revitalize areas of literary study and how the personal is not the enemy of the critical. Federico outlines in the preface that this book, in line with Dickens’s own ethos, is part of an attempt to “grow more childish,” to go on “a pilgrimage away from mere intellectual knowingness toward some other kind of knowledge” (xi), through a consideration of her past, her relationships and herself. This pilgrimage takes the form of three chapters, each one dedicated to a focal novel–Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield (1850) and Little Dorrit (1857), consecutively–with a concluding section about A Tale of Two Cities (1859). In chapter one, entitled “Where Is Love?,” Federico begins by revealing the loss of her parents and thoughtfully examines her relationships with them. She describes an 1895 decorative plate owned by her parents depicting the [End Page 254] first meeting between the Artful Dodger and Oliver (a photo is included), and it is this object which acts as a springboard to reminisce about her and her father’s mutual love of the story. Carol Reed’s film adaptation (1968) of the Oliver! musical, in particular, plays a mythologizing role in this parental relationship, but also in the development of Federico’s consideration of the novel. The film/musical’s central song, “Where Is Love?,” cleverly becomes the hook line–the refrain–of the chapter: a way for Federico to variously probe and tease out the differing forms of love in the novel. In particular, the readings of Nancy stand out here. Love in Dickens is certainly not a new topic, yet Federico’s interweaving of anecdotes and social comparisons breathes new life into this habitual theme. The second chapter, “Blessed Little Room,” changes focus. It contemplates the role of the reader and the multifarious forms the act of reading can take in relation to David Copperfield. Federico describes her experience of teaching a Dickens course prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. What emerges is a reassuring and relatable insight into how the lockdowns affected her teaching and reading processes. At some point, amongst the restrictions and remote classes, Federico stopped worrying about teaching Dickens and really enjoyed reading the texts. She proposes that “[s]ometimes we have to read with what Marion Milner has called ‘wide attention’ […] without determined purposefulness” (55). Federico convincingly demonstrates the benefits of such reading through observations of “Dickens’s throwaways, the strange, superfluous details that he can’t resist” (55). Stripped of a rigid, critical agenda, just as David “is not a studious, critical reader” (54), she runs through what reading can phenomenologically mean within and without David Copperfield. Reading is “power, it is validating,” “intimacy,” “security” and “projection” (63–64 original emphasis). With these attributes in mind, the theme of marriage in the novel becomes the focus, and a way for Federico to explore her own marital relationships: love and reading are likened, especially when approached with wide attention. In the...

Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby

Reviewed by: Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby Joel J. Brattin (bio) Nick Hornby. Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius. Riverhead Books, 2022. Pp. 171. $18.00. ISBN 978-0-593-54182-1 (hb). Novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby has tried his hand at nonfiction before, writing books, essays, and book reviews on pop music and football. Here, he proposes links between Charles Dickens and the Minneapolis performer and recording artist Prince Rogers Nelson, more commonly known as Prince (1958–2016). This short book is written in an engaging style, offering information about both title figures in an accessible and often colorful manner. The two men have quite a lot in common, according to Hornby: among other things, both died at age 58 (except for Prince, who was only 57), overcame childhood poverty and deprivation, met with extraordinary success in their twenties, worked on multiple projects at once, achieved great financial success but were convinced they were being robbed, failed to make their marriages work, were outstanding performers, and had a remarkable work ethic, with “no off switch” (15). Hornby suspects there are few artists as prolific as Dickens and Prince. I thought of Anthony Trollope and of Telemann, but Hornby shut me up by saying “maybe you’re reading this and shouting Wagner! Picasso! If you are, you’ll have to write your own book” (7). Much of what Hornby tells us about Dickens will be familiar to readers of this journal, and perhaps few of those readers will care deeply about Prince. But there are interesting tidbits along the way. Of Prince, we learn that he recorded a Jehovah’s Witness album, and that he liked not only Led Zeppelin, but Grand Funk Railroad. We also learn that Robert Christgau said, in the wake of Prince’s album Dirty Mind, that “Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home” (43). Hornby offers some arcane bits of Dickensiana, too, noting that a business called “Havisham[’]s Wedding Centre” operated, and then didn’t, in Rochester (Kent); that a young Davy Jones, later of Monkees fame, played the Artful Dodger on Broadway; and that novelist Stephen King juiced up the old urban legend about crowds in New York waiting on the dock to hear a report of little Nell’s death by moving the locale to Baltimore and by drowning several of the crowding Dickens fanatics. He also says that Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy drove himself to the Marble Arch cinema to see an adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Hornby has a unique comic perspective. He says if your nine-year-old child is reading David Copperfield, “please stop them. It will kill any future enjoyment they might get from those extraordinary novels. And also, you’re a terrible parent” (7–8). Referring to Prince’s often embarrassing interviews, Hornby says “Sometimes, to be a fan of Prince was to be cast back to one’s [End Page 257] school days, struggling to defend an inarticulate and possibly malodorous guitar hero while he postured and pranced on TV in front of my witheringly scornful mother” (45). He says that Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop “is so clearly an influence on Wodehouse that Bertie Wooster would have been entitled to a DNA test” (90). And he notes that “there are, regrettably, a number of movies called A Tale of Two Titties, but these do not seem to follow the plot of the book” (156). Hornby never really identifies what he means by “a particular kind of genius,” but I suspect he’s primarily thinking about hard work. Finally, Hornby concludes that his book is “about work, and nobody ever worked harder than these two, or at a higher standard, while connecting with so many people for so long” (159). The book is light reading: fun, interesting, and often provocative. Hornby makes a variety of mistakes of fact and has a less nuanced view of Dickens than, say, many a university professor. But he makes no claims to expertise: he’s a fan, of both Dickens and Prince. It’s unfortunate that Hornby misspells Dickens’s full name...

Dickens and the Anatomy of Evil: Sesquicentennial Essays ed. by Mitsuharu Matsuoka

Reviewed by: Dickens and the Anatomy of Evil: Sesquicentennial Essays ed. by Mitsuharu Matsuoka Jen Baker (bio) Mitsuharu Matsuoka, editor.Dickens and the Anatomy of Evil: Sesquicentennial Essays. Athena Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 366. ¥3,636. ISBN: 9784863403376 (hb). Setting the scene of this project commemorating 150 years since Dickens’s death, the editor notes that, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, it almost did not make its deadline. Yet, in true tribute to Dickens’s own strict adherence to deadlines, the collection was successfully published (in even greater tribute) on Christmas day of 2020. The influence for the work, as Paul Schlicke identifies in his Introduction to this edited collection, is that “[a]mong Dickens’s firmly held beliefs is the conviction of the existence of evil” (2), and each of the twenty essays anatomizes the “various kinds of evil” (ix) at play, focusing on one of Dickens’s major works, roughly in chronological order of publication. Schlicke frames the collection according to what he argues Dickens saw as the primary evils–murder and the abuse of children. As well as the thorough and solemn evil of murderers and abusers like Sikes and Murdstone, there are the “comically grotesque figures,” taking on “allegorical status more powerful than any realism” (4). Tomoya Watanabe identifies Jonas Chuzzlewit as such as character, while Mark Weeks shows another function of the comic grotesque through an examination of affective laughter in Pickwick Papers, seeing overflowing embodied experiences and energies in the novel as an antidote to “the evil seen to be inflicted upon bodies by the law” (26). Unique in Dickens’s works, suggests Schlicke, is an evil showcased in The Haunted Man–a type that is not an “active ingredient” but the “negation of goodness” that comes with the removal of memories which create positive qualities such as empathy (5, 6). Yet, almost conversely, suggests Yasuhiko Matsumoto of Dickens’s unfinished Edwin Drood, the constant access to imagination Jasper possesses, and to which the reader is partly privy, “presents an uncomfortable possibility that imagination, often regarded as a foundation for empathy, can serve evilness” (365). The private, rather than public, setting of The Haunted Man is expounded in Hiroshi Enomoto’s analysis of the Christmas books, where he suggests that, “[r]ather than taking social evils at face value,” Dickens “addresses them as [End Page 251] private experiences in order to make his writing resonate with a wider range of people” (167). Expanding on the cast of specific “evil” types of character, both Keiko Kiriyama and Sari Nishigaki separately explore how James Harthouse of Hard Times and Compeyson of Great Expectations, respectively, are evil dandified figures, each of whom “succeeds in concealing his true character” through his good and gentlemanly looks ([Nishigaki] 318). Each author charts the breakdown of their character’s “chain of evil”–the former owing to an innocent antithesis, the latter through a more complex thread of forgiveness and consolation. Mitsuharu Matsuoka offers an alternative focus by considering how the wider material and economic context of postal anonymity had positive aspects for customers, but “also caused maladies or evil effects, including […] the promotion of valueless products, defrauding recipients, blackmailing for money, and threatening to reveal dark secrets” (244), in Bleak House. Yet, what many of the essays in the collection essentially argue is that there are characters, narrative and generic tensions, topographical descriptions through which the reader is “led to doubt” the “indisputability” of the otherwise “clear demarcation between Good and Evil,” and the unstable or inconsistent aspects “shake and endanger the seemingly unassailable distinction” (44). For Mio Hatada, even with positive guardianship in Oliver Twist, the child figure is nevertheless shown to be both “promise and threat” and this strongly suggests “that the seemingly innocent and good Oliver might prove no exception to this dual-sidedness” and can be viewed as “the source of the collapse” between good and evil (47, 58). Similarly, Keiko Inokuma suggests that “behind various episodes that reveal his immaturity, David Copperfield shows the flickering image of an almost nefariously mature David,” for “[w]hat appears to be innocent and pure contains what could be mature and even evil” (217, 221). Both point to...