“ F U G I T I V E A N D C L O I S T E R E D V I R T U E ” : I N N O C E N C E A N D E V I L I N E D W I N D R O O D JUDITH PRESCOTT FLYNN University of Manitoba F e w readers of Dickens can have failed to notice the clear line of develop ment that can be traced from the early to the late novels. Briefly sum marized, that development can be described as Dickens’s growing awareness of evil as intrinsic rather than extrinsic to human nature, an awareness that results in the gradual diminution and eventual disappearance from the novels of both entirely innocent child-protagonists and wholly demonic vil lains alike. One has only to compare the invincible sanctity of an Oliver or Litde Nell with their guilt-ridden opposite number, young Pip of Great Expectations, or the clearly satanic Fagin and Quilp with the more complex and morally ambiguous figure of Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend, to see something of the novelist’s changing conceptions of good and evil. One notes as well, as Mary Lou Sparbel has demonstrated in her un published dissertation, “The Vanishing Garden,” 1 the gradual shrinking of the pastoral enclave that always awaits the hero of the early novels. It is with some surprise, then, that we turn to Edwin Drood, the final novel. Here, at least in the opinion of some,2 the development not only ceases, but a regression apparently takes place in which we are presented with yet another child-like innocent, the aptly named Rosa Bud, who, like Oliver Twist, must resist the blandishments of a clearly demonic villain, the sinister (some would say melodramatic) John Jasper. I say “apparently” because, as I read it, Edwin Drood continues the re-examination of the nature of evil that is so prominent a theme in Dickens’s later works, and in so doing presents us with a clear and definitive refutation of the moral premises of Oliver Twist. The history of Rosa Bud is essentially the story of Oliver Twist told back to front. Rosa is an Oliver who begins where the real Oliver ends — with the guardians and the garden. Unlike Oliver, Little Nell, Flo Dombey, or any of the other early Dickensian innocents, she has always been loved and cherished. The early loss of her parents, far from rendering her defenceless, as it does Oliver or David Copperfield, simply makes her more beloved: English Studies in Canada, ix, 3, September 1983 The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan girl when she first came to Cloisterham, had never cleared away. . . . The general desire to console and caress her, had caused her to be treated in the beginning as a child much younger than her years; the same desire had caused her to be still petted when she was a child no longer.3 Every precaution has been taken to ensure her future happiness. Before he died, her father not only appointed a wise and loving guardian, he also selected a future husband. This arrangement, seconded by Edwin’s father before he too died, was not made with any desire to dominate their off spring,4 but as Rosa herself acknowledges, “for the lasting good . . . and the lasting happiness” (90) of both children. Rosa has spent most of her life at the Nun’s House (the name itself is evoca tive), Miss Twinkleton’s Academy, where she has enjoyed the supervision of a kindly version of Little Dorrit’s Mrs. General, who, as one recalls, instructed her charges that “a truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of anything that is not perfectly proper, placid and pleasant.” Cloisterham itself, where the school is located, is a quiet cathedral city which tends, as its name suggests, to imagine itself a haven from the rough-and-tumble world beyond. Rosa, in short, appears to have been granted at the outset of her career the kind of sheltered, tranquil existence which Dickens’s earliest protagonists achieved only after much suffering and long trial. Even in...