The prevailing critical comment on Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been directed more toward the second than toward the first half, that is, more toward what Dickens did not write than what he did. As a result most of the criticism has taken the form of speculation, with the major recent effort representing a masterly Sherlock Holmes solution to its mystery (Felix Aylmer, The Drood Case (New York, 1965). Critical reluctance to engage with anything as problematic as half a literary creation is only natural, but the result has been a devaluation of the novel, the general opinion being that it is the tired work of a tired imagination. There are, however, sufficient guide lines to permit our understanding of its aims: complicated patterns of character relationship and density of symbolic texture manifest the fine imaginative intricacy of Dickens' treatment of a subject which had long occupied him.

A recurrent concern in Dickens' novels is with the dualism which constitutes the human entity: the relation between the inner and outer man. The inner man is that part of a person which determines his being as an entity separate from the world around him. It includes those faculties which determine what is real within the individual consciousness, whereas the outer man is that part of a man which provides him with a reality outside his individual consciousness, in the world. In their ideal states the inner and outer parts of man are so balanced and blended that they cannot be distinguished analytically, but in fallen or corrupted man, these two conditions of self become separated. They exist disjunctively in the single character of Wemmick in Great Expectations, where his public self relates to the outer world of Little Britain and his private self to Walworth (which is indeed walled-in worth). In Wemmick the two halves of the self are so far disjoined that they cannot confirm each other. The characters who receive the brunt of Dickens' satiric attack are those who have neglected the interior self in order to foster an exterior self, since the reality of such men tends to be unreal. For example, in Martin Chuzzlewit, what Pecksniff is inwardly directly contradicts, and hence negates the reality of, what he appears to be. He is wholly the exterior man, viewing himself as others see him publicly, not as he might view himself — as does the reader — from within. So many of Dickens' characters seem unreal because they have lost contact with the reality of their inner selves. Yet if there is a danger in a person's losing contact with his inner self, there is an equal danger in his losing contact with his outer self by his withdrawal into his interior reality. Both kinds of incomplete self are delineated in Hard Times, where Bounderby is the epitome of the exterior man and Gradgrind, of the interior man. Since for Bounderby only the outer world is real, he takes his reality from his relation to it: he exists only in terms of his status in it; especially does he exist in the opinions of others. Gradgrind, on the other hand, takes his reality from his own mind, and he does not so much regard the external world as possessing an objective reality and worth as he considers it a construction of his own mind. For Gradgrind, reality — including self, family, and world — is mathematical. For Dickens the paradox of the dualistic self is that while the exterior man makes himself unreal by forsaking his inner self, the interior man makes himself unreal by losing contact with the outside world. Both aspects of the paradox are realized in Wemmick, who does not become human until he relates his inner self to the world outside by assisting Pip. Of Dickens' penultimate effort, J. Hillis Miller has written: " Bradley at least no longer lives as a false surface, as do the Veneerings, but his tragedy is evidence that it is impossible for men to live entirely in terms of their depths. These are entirely asocial, entirely destructive and self-destructive. To accept them without transmuting them in some way is inevitably to be swallowed up by the interior storm. Thus, in Dickens' last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, John Jasper, Lay Precentor in a placid provincial cathedral town, is driven to murder by an amorous passion rising from the stormy depths of his being to overwhelm and engulf the quiet surface of his life. What had been a subsidiary theme in Our Mutual Friend here holds the center of the stage."

In a novel whose focus is not determined by personal perspective, the unifying agent of its diversity is the theme, or conceptual perspective. Such seems to be the case in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, where no single character occupies the stage for a majority of the time; yet in so far as the narrative begins with Jack Jasper and events collect (or are organized) around his intentions, he may be said to provide a partial or distorted focus for the novel's multiplicity. The novel begins with a doubling of focus which makes us aware of two realities: an inner and an outer, the fantastic, opiated mind of Jasper envisioning Turkish palaces and dancing girls and the more local reality of the English Cathedral Tower in the world just outside the window. In the second paragraph of the novel, we learn that the external reality (the cathedral rising in the "background") does not exist: it is less real than the internal fantasy, for the former is questioned, whereas the latter is not. And when Jasper wakes up, it is to the foreground reality of the opium parlor — "the meanest and closest of small rooms" — which, symbolizing his private reality, confirms the fantastic vision to which it has given rise. But it is an isolated private reality which is unrelated to the objective world just outside the window of the self. Jasper's task in the unfinished course of the novel is to find a way of relating his inner vision to the world outside. He travels in quest of an object in the outside world which will correspond, and hence give reality to, his vision; but he is "a jaded traveller" (Chapter I) one who is not satisfied with the world as it is, and would not relate to it so much as transform it, reducing it to the mere substance upon which he can project his inner world. Such a relation of the inner man to the outer world is established by what Dickens calls the "unclean spirit of imitation" (I), for there exists only the imitative illusion of relationship so long as the inner man will not submit to an external reality more pedestrian or gross than the visions which his mind creates to satisfy itself. Hence Jasper is one who "lived apart from human life. Constantly exercising an Art which brought him into mechanical harmony with others, and which could not have been pursued unless he and they had been in the nicest mechanical relations and unison, it is curious to consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or interchange with nothing around him" (XXIII).

This division between Jasper's inner and outer selves — which receives explicit notation when Dickens says of Jasper that he became "a breathing man again without the smallest stage of transition between the two extreme states" (III) — is reflected in other characters. Of a minor character Dickens observes, "As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism, there are two states of consciousness which never clash... so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being" (III). But not all of the characters in the novel have dual beings; Edwin, Durdles, and Sapsea, reveal the limitations of those who, having abjured their inner selves, relate only to the world outside. Such characters have dehumanized themselves by externalizing themselves. Hence, to understand Dickens' sympathy for Jasper, who is almost totally the inner man, we must first glance at these characters who have reduced themselves to outer men. Through these solely exteriorized selves, Dickens indicates the need for the inner self; and through the excessively interiorized self —Jasper — Dickens reveals the necessity for relating the interior self to the exterior world. Jasper does work to exteriorize his inner self — through Rosebud — but his effort is misdirected because he seeks to interiorize external reality: to draw the world into the realm of his mind merely to utilize the world as matter to substantiate his dream; he does not — as do Crisparkle, Grewgious, Tartar, and Neville —attempt to direct his inner self into an outer world which is often hostile to the self. The world, seeking conformity to its ways, tries to force the individual to surrender his inner self and advance his exterior self in accordance with exterior values. The value difference between the exterior and interior goals of life is marked by Jasper in his differentiation between his and his opium supplier's dreams: "What visions can she have? ... Visions of many butchers' shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horroble bedstead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that! — Eh?" (I).

The character in the novel most patently deficient in inner self is Sapsea, "the purest Jackass in Cloisterham" (IV); and it is ironically appropriate that he achieves the greatest station in that part of the world. The outer man gains his reality only from society: by renouncing the self as origin of value and acquiescing to society's dictation of values, he is rewarded with reputation. In such a case, the self's reality exists in the minds of others, and even though that self's reality may seem to be substantiated by its status in the world, this reality is only apparent if there is no interior substance for the world to reflect in its opinion. Sapsea's reality is that of an image in a mirror before which no one is standing. To exist as a mere outer man is for Dickens not to exist at all, since for Dickens reality involves "the honest and true" (XX). Sapsea's externalized self is so unreal that it can hardly be recognized as his: "Mr. Sapsea 'dresses at' the Dean; has been bowed to for the Dean, in mistake" (IV). The Dean, whom Sapsea imitates, would seem to incarnate the purely social values, as Sapsea indicates when he commends the Topes to Datchery: "'Very good people, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Tope,' said Mr. Sapsea, with condescension. ' Very good opinions. Very well behaved. Very respectful. Much approved by the Dean and Chapter'" (XVIII). Sapsea's reality is merely social: "Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposition is carried by a large local majority, even including non-believers in his wisdom, that he is a credit to Cloisterham" (IV). But though Sapsea receives his reality from society, he gives it nothing to deserve that external reality; remaining completely "self-sufficient," he uses rather than serves his society: "he would uphold himself against mankind" (IV). Sapsea uses society merely as the substance for realizing his insubstantial outer self; his opposite, John Jasper uses Rosebud, as we shall see, simply as the substance for supplying reality to his dream. Just as Sapsea would become the enemy of all mankind if need be, so likewise Jasper would be satisfied with Rosebud's hate might he have her (XIX).

Like Sapsea, in whose company he is first introduced, Durdles is "highly conscious of [his] dignity" (IV). In fact, Durdles would seem to be a kind of extension of Sapsea, or at least a kind of walking metaphor of what the outer man, Sapsea, is like inside: that is to say, Sapsea has no inside, for Durdles is a walking dead man. That Durdles is a personification of the dead inner man is first indicated by his preference for the company of the dead to that of the living. His nickname "Stony" (he has "the sterile coldness of the stony-hearted," XXII) and his outer appearance further indicate that he is one of the dead: "Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot" (IV). Durdles' deficiency of inner self is manifested by his peculiar way of referring to himself in the third person: "He often speaks of himself in the third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to his own identity" (IV). He has only an exterior being — his third-person existence in the minds of others — and thus knows himself only as a distant person. Immediately prior to Durdles' appearance, Sapsea had lapsed into the third person in speaking of himself: "What if her husband had been nearer on a level with her?" It is appropriate that Dickens should make this trait explicit when Sapsea has risen to the mayoralty: "There was something in that third-person style of being spoken to, that Mr. Sapsea found particularly recognizant of his merits and position" (XVIII). The symbolic connection between Sapsea and Durdles now becomes obvious; in fact, Durdles makes obvious the implication of Sapsea's existence: that the outer man is inwardly dead.

The importance in the novel of Sapsea, and through him Durdles, is clarified when the similarities between Sapsea and Edwin Drood are observed. It would seem that Sapsea represents the kind of character into which Edwin would grow were he never afforded the opportunity to alter his personality — from that of a primarily outer man to that of the inner man. Edwin's deficiency in imagination (II) and his profession of engineer reveal him to be an outer man; his values and his treatment of Rosebud show that he is well on the way to becoming himself a Mr. Sapsea and to transforming Rosebud into a Mrs. Sapsea. Edwin, it is said, regards his expected marriage as a "proprietorship" (VII), and he intends to change Rosebud into a docile creature according to the gravely good values upheld by men like Sapsea: "I'm going to paint her gravely, one of these days, if she's good" (VIII). The pun on "gravely" indicates that Rosebud's inner self would be laid to rest just as surely as Mrs. Sapsea already is. Furthermore, Edwin already regards Rosebud as Sapsea did his spouse. Edwin realizes finally that he "had always patronized her, in his superiority to her share of woman's wit" (XIII), and Sapsea remarks that his own betrothed was "imbued with homage to Mind. . . . meaning myself" (IV). It would seem, then, that Sapsea is important in the novel as the representative of the outer man and that his presence is made relevant to the main action, as it centers around Rosebud, when Sapsea's character is related to Edwin's. In Sapsea we discern, as in a symbolic embodiment, the reason why Edwin does not merit the symbolic rosebud of life and why Rosa Bud dreads to become Mrs. Drood.

Both Edwin and Jasper love Rosebud, but the dissimilarity between their two kinds of love manifests the vast difference between the outer and the inner man. As he pleads his case before Rosebud, Jasper observes the great gap between Edwin and. himself: "Much as my dear boy was, unhappily, too self-conscious and self-satisfied ... to love as he should have loved, or as any one in his place would have loved — must have loved!" (XIX). We are made to sympathize with Jasper in so far as we are meant to regard the inner man as superior to the outer man. It may be possible that we are meant to consider the murder (which may never in fact have happened) symbolically: that is, if the self must kill the outer man in order to liberate the inner man, we can sympathize with the necessity of symbolic death needed for a psychic rebirth. At the literal level, Edwin does undergo a great change on the very day of his supposed death, becoming more nearly an inward man: his new relationship with Rosebud now "became elevated into something more self-denying, honourable, affectionate, and true" (XIII). It would seem that Edwin and Jasper are related symbolically as the two halves of a single being, just as Helen and Neville form a symbolic two-in-one relationship. Not only are Helen and Neville twins, but they speak as one person (VII). Similarly, Jasper and Edwin are blood relatives, though Jasper is several years the older; significantly, Edwin's change of self causes him to become suddenly "old already" (XIII). But though we can sympathize with a symbolic murder, it is more difficult to accept the literal kind. Jasper's love is as excessive as Edwin's is deficient: and similarly, just as the inner man is absent from Edwin, so the outgoing man is absent from Jasper. And further if Sapsea, Durdles, and Edwin are inwardly dead because they lack an inner self, so Jasper is morally dead because he lacks an outer self.

A major faculty of the inner man, the imagination, is absent from Edwin, whose most poetic thought is to give Rosebud a birthday gift of as many pairs of gloves as she is years old: "They must be presented to-night, or the poetry is all gone" (II). In contrast Jasper, as we are aware from the opening paragraph, has a tremendous imagination; it is in fact the largeness of his imagination which prevents him from acquiescing to the smallness of his outward existence: "I hate it. The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the grain" (II). His description of the town seems accurate: "Cloisterham is a little place. Cooped up in it myself, I know nothing beyond it, and feel it to be a very little place" (VI), for it is supported by Dickens' references to it as "A monotonous, silent city" (III) and a place of "insignificance" (VI). As a result, we sympathize with Jasper for trying to escape a mean outer world by withdrawing into the interior world of his own imagination. But this inward withdrawal involves a distortion since it contracts all reality to the obsessive dream image, which it creates in order to free the self from the constrictions of exterior reality. We are reminded repeatedly that Jasper is one who concentrates reality: Jasper's face "is never, on this occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always concentrated " (III), and he is " so concentrated on one idea, and on its attendant fixed purpose, that he would share it with no fellow-creature " (XXIII). Earlier the act of concentration was related to opium smoking and hence the act of imagining: Jasper's opium supplier is described "Blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows... concentrates its red spark of light" (I). The red spark that is Jasper's concentrated idea or image is, outwardly, Rosa Bud.

The image of Rosebud in Jasper's mind and the real Rosebud are not quite the same, but Jasper's desire to verify his dream will not, it seems, stop even at murder to fuse the inner and the outer realities. From the very first Jasper is concerned to determine what is real, and in this he is like Dickens searching toward and trying to define what is existentially, imaginatively, and morally real. Just as on the first page Jasper has trouble ascertaining what is real, so during his last appearance he is still concerned with that problem, remarking in the midst of his last opium dream, " I told you so. When it comes to be real at last, it is so short that it seems unreal for the first time.... Look at it! Look what a poor, mean miserable thing it is! That must be real" (XXIII). The infinite vision is in itself not sufficiently real; it permits Jasper to transcend the limitations of a finite world, only to be left with the limitations of the infinite. Therefore, the red spark of the mind seeks incarnation in the rosebud of the flesh. Jasper escapes inward and upward from an outer and base reality; through his imagination he rises to a glorious celestial reality (I), populated not only with a Turkish sultan (I), but also with an "angel" (the term with which Jasper addresses Rosebud in Chapter XIX). It is not enough, however, to descend from the visionary reality and enter the outer world again with only a visionary image to comfort one there: Jasper says that he "worshipped in torment for years, I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly " (XIX). Before Jasper can possess a visionary reality, the image must take flesh. For that reason Jasper seeks Rosebud's substance rather than her love: "How beautiful you are!" he tells her. "You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me" (XIX). He does not need her love because he does not give her his. Although he avows the sincerity of his love to Rosebud: "My love for you is above all other love, and my truth to you is above all other truth" (XIX), there is neither love nor truth in the relationship he desires with Rosebud. Since she seeks only to impose his image on her flesh, Jasper, Rosa's music-master, masters her, instead of offering himself to her in a reciprocal relationship. Since it is not Rosebud's inner self, but her outer self — her beauty — which attracts Jasper, he resembles his opposite, Edwin the outer man. By disregarding her inner self, her individuality, both would establish a relationship of "bondage" (XIII).

The act of imposing an image upon reality reduces that reality by confining it to the image. Jasper is to be admired because he does possess an inner self, but he is to be judged severely because he does not send it out into the world to meet another self. What he seems willing to do is attempt, by murder, to draw a part of outer reality (Rosebud) into his mind. Whereas a man like Sapsea externalizes himself in order to determine his reality in an external world, Jasper interiorizes external reality in order to give reality to his inner self. The result in either extreme, is untruth, unreality. Furthermore, Sapsea habitually proclaims his vast knowledge of the world when in fact he has never been beyond the confines of Cloisterham. It seems that Sapsea's habit of implying a professed egress into the world, which is contradicted by his continuous residence within Cloisterham, serves as a kind of symbolic mirror of Jasper's own profession that in love his self has gone out to another self when in fact it has not. And just as the basis for Sapsea's knowledge of the world is the articles that come into his possession, so likewise the only basis for Jasper's love is his interiorization of Rosebud's personality into his own mind.

One must make the trip to the interior of the self m order to avoid being a merely outer man, like Sapsea, Durdles, or Edwin; but once having discovered the inner man there, one must guide the self back out to the external world in order to relate truly to others and to oneself. The figures in the novel who relate the interior self to the exterior self, that composite self to the outer world, are Grewgious, Neville, and Crisparkle. In Grewgious we see an outer man trying to be courageous enough to recognize his inner self; in Neville we observe the inner man strongly developed and trying desperately to establish contact with an unsympathetic outer world; and in Crisparkle, who serves as a friend to Grewgious and as guide to Neville, we discern the whole man, his interior and exterior selves perfectly synthesized.

Grewgious obviously has an interior self, but it is one which he has not discovered at the outset of the novel; Dickens says of him: "there are such unexplored romantic nooks in the unlikeliest men" (XI). When Dickens goes on to add, " even old tinderous and touchwoody P. J. T. Possibly Jabbered Thus [i. e., like Grewgious], in or about seventeen-forty-seven," it is clear that P. J. T. is a symbolic representation of Grewgious, since Grewgious is as dried out, or dead, as the man whose quarters he occupies: "he had snuffed out his ambition (supposing him to have ever lighted it), and had settled down with his snuffers for the rest of his life under the dry vine and fig-tree of P. J. T., who planted in seventeen-forty-seven " (XI). In Grewgious we observe a dead man coming to life, in contrast to Sapsea or Durdles, who are leading dead lives.

When he first appears, Grewgious is obviously an incomplete man: in creating him, Nature had said, " I really cannot be worried to finish off this man; let him go as he is" (IX). In contrast to Jasper, Grewgious has almost no internal self: he himself confesses, "I have no imagination" (XI); instead he is "so literal a man " (XI), that is, an outer man. Yet Grewgious has a potential inner self. Just as the given name of P. J. T. is Perhaps ("Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe Tyler," XI), so the inner self of Grewgious has only a subjunctive reality: when Grewgious toasts Mr. Bazzard's success, he stammers, "And May! ... I am not at liberty to be definite — May! — my conversational powers are so very limited that I know I shall not come well out of this — May! — it ought to be put imaginatively, but I have no imagination —May! — the thorn of anxiety is as nearly the mark as I am likely to get — May it come out at last!" (XI). It seems likely that in toasting Bazzard (whose tragedy, titled The Thorn of Anxiety, has not yet "come out," (XX), Grewgious is addressing a reflection of inner self. Grewgious is unable to relate his inner self to the outer world because of what he calls "the thorn of anxiety," the fear of expressing the inner self through the outer self by taking action in a world hostile to the self. In this respect, as in others, Grewgious is the complete opposite of Jasper, since Jasper, apparently, has the daring to realize his inner self by killing his own nephew. The direct contrast between the timid Grewgious and the bold Jasper is indicated by an inverse parallel in their personal histories. Whereas Jasper steps in to take Rosebud away from her betrothed, Grewgious, who loved Rosebud's mother, had her taken from him by a bolder lover; Grewgious muses about Rosebud's father, "I wonder whether he ever so much as suspected that some one doted on her, at a hopeless, speechless distance, when he struck in and won her!" (XI). Though in the past Grewgious lost Rosebud's mother to a more courageous man, he takes bolder steps in the present to see that he does not lose Rosebud to Jasper.

Just as Jasper's vision must remain unreal until it is realized in the world outside his mind, so likewise Grewgious's inner self remains tentative until it is pressed out into the world outside. Since the inner self can become itself only by an outgoing fusion with the world, it is hard to determine whether the existence of inner self precedes the outgoing of self or whether it comes into being in the very act of egressing. If one regards, as does Dickens, the meaning of a statement as the equivalent of the inner self, and its expression as the equivalent of the outer reality which manifests it, then Grewgious's alternative reasons for his inability to verbalize amount to the same thing: "And if I do not clearly express what I mean by that, it is either for the reason that . . . I cannot express what I mean, or that having no meaning, I do not mean what I fail to express" (XI). Although it is hard to say whether an existing inner self is pressed out (ex-pressed) into the external world or whether it comes into being only after it finds expression there, Dickens seems to imply that both events occur simultaneously when the self relates itself to another self in love. Says Grewgious, "my picture does represent the true lover as having no existence separable from that of the beloved object of his affections, and as living at once a doubled life and a halved life" (XI). Insofar as the self is doubled in outgoing love, the self comes into being by loving; insofar as the self is halved by loving, it exists prior to its outgoing. The need to express, in both senses, one's inner self is great in Grewgious; and though Grewgious's smoothed out face is repeatedly said to bear no expression, he does make a valiant effort in the present, stammering though it may be, to force his inner self out: "And yet, through the very limited means of expression that he possessed, he seemed to express kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness might have been recognizable in his face at this moment. But the notches in his forehead wouldn't fuse together, and if his face would work and couldn't play, what could he do, poor man!" (IX).

If in Grewgious we behold the exterior man trying in the present to develop the interior self which he abandoned in the past, in Neville we have something like an exaggerated reflection of what Grewgious's interior self might have been in the past, he willing. The symbolic connection between the two is supported by the parallel in the relation between Grewgious and Rosebud's mother, whom Grewgious loved and might have won, and the relation between Neville and Rosebud. The symbolic connection between Grewgious and Neville is more strongly indicated by the fact that in the later chapters the latter takes up residence in the same building with Grewgious, coming under his close watch.

In Neville we see present what was absent in Grewgious — courage. Derived from the Latin cor, meaning heart, courage is an essential constituent of the inner self. If we can say that Jasper represents something like the inner self as mind (or imagination), we can also say that Neville resembles something like the inner self as heart or feeling. Jasper and Neville are similarly described as dark men (darkness being associated in the novel with the "twilight depths" — XIV — of the interior self), but whereas Jasper stays in his darkness, Neville comes out of his. Although the imagination may help the self to reside in itself, the heart wants it to go out; as we have already heard Grewgious say, "the the lover [has] no existence separable from that of the beloved object." Hence it is not Edwin or Jasper, but Neville, who, loving Rosebud with respect, seems to deserve her.

Neville's history within the novel seems to manifest the gradual emergence of the self from its dark interior region into the external world. Described at the outset as a tiger, Neville has just come from the dark jungles of Ceylon "like a barbaric captive . . . brought from some wild tropical dominion" (VI) to the civilized shores of England. Neville makes repeated symbolic attempts to bring his self out into the world; it is appropriate that he should be going for a long walk through the countryside on the very morning when Jasper, we are given the impression, murders Edwin and that Jasper's act should be committed in the dark whereas Neville's take place in the light of day. A further way in which Neville's intention to come to terms with the world is indicated by his study for the law, the branch of knowledge concerned, with the relationship between the individual and his society. Neville's conjunction with the world is assured, symbolically, when a friendship between himself and Tartar is cultivated: "you seem to like my garden aloft here," Tartar tells Neville, "If you would like a little more of it, I could throw out a few lines an stays between my windows and yours, which the runners would take to directly" (XVII).

Whereas Neville is in the process of relating to the world, Crisparkle manifests the achieved inner harmony which both leads to, and results from, relating: he is an "early riser, musical, classical, cheerful, kind, goodnatured, social, contented, and boylike" (II). Crisparkle is apparently the whole man in whom there exists a perfect musical harmony of the self reverberating in the social world outside. Repeatedly Crisparkle is presented as a synthesis of the inner and outer man. He combines the Pagan (the dark, withdrawn inner man) and the Christian (the outgoing man): " lately 'Coach' upon the chief Pagan high roads, but since promoted ... to his present Christian beat" (II). The synthesis is described in other traditional terms: "you are always training yourself . . . , body and mind" (XIV), he is told. And his synthesis is defined in a less traditional fashion: "he had the eyes of a microscope and a telescope combined" (VI). Like Jasper, Crisparkle has the inner self's microscopic power of concentration, but he also recognizes the truth in Jasper's remark that "A man leading a monotonous life, . . . and getting his nerves, or his stomach, out of order, dwells upon an idea until it loses its proportions" (XW); and so he combines it with the telescopic vision of the outer man. Whereas Jasper represents the inner man in a state of disease: "I have been taking opium for a pain — an agony — that sometimes overcomes me" (II), Crisparkle represents him in a state of health: "A fresh and healthy portrait the looking-glass presented of the Reverend Septimus" (VI).

It is not easy for the self to reach the synthetic state of health, for the world is hostile and the self is cowardly. And we may wonder how that achieved state ("you always are, and never change," Crisparkle is told — XIV) is to be acquired, just as Edwin wonders what might have happened "if, instead of accepting his lot in life as an inheritance of course, he had studied the right way to its appreciation and enchantment" (XIV). The character of Tartar provides a symbolic definition of the way. In Tartar there is a fine combination of symbolic sea (of inner self) and land (of outer self) — a synthesis reached by voyaging out (Tartar "had twelve or fifteen years of knocking about first" — XVII) and then journeying back: Tartar resigned permanently from the sea to "feel [his] way to the command of a landed estate" (XVII).

Sea and water are used throughout the novel to symbolize the inner self and its mode of feeling. For example, Rosebud's inner self is described in aqueous terms: "Possessing an exhaustless well of affection in her nature, its sparking waters had freshened and brightened the Nun's House for years, and yet its depths had never yet been moved" (IX). Deficiency of inner self is marked by a certain dryness of soul: Grewgious is, thus, described as "an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground immediately into high-dried snuff" (IX). But one must not only contain the waters of feeling, he must also, as Rosebud's immaturity shows, dive into the deep waters of self; hence we are told of Crisparkle that he is "perpetually pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the surrounding country" (II). It is clear that the self must also rise again from its dark waters to return to the sunlit world lest it drown in itself; the danger of complete retirement into self is put symbolically on the night that Jasper, who describes himself as "a muddy, solitary, moping weed" (XIV), seemingly murders Edwin: "The river at Cloisterham is sufficiently near the sea to throw up oftentimes a quantity of seaweed. An unusual quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and the confusion of the water . . . and an angry light out seaward . . . foreshadowed a stormy night" (X).

Protesting for Rosebud a love that is mad, Jasper has unleashed his feelings through his wild, unlimited imagination. It is clear from his case that the inner self must be controlled: "Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them" (II). A man can control the self naturally by permitting the female part of himself to express itself: speaking of Helena's character to her brother, Neville, Crisparkle remarks, "Your sister has learnt how to govern what is proud in her nature. She can dominate it even when it is wounded through her sympathy with you. . . . Another and weaker kind of pride might sink broken-hearted, but never such a pride as hers" (XVII). The inner self is composed of mind and feeling, as Dickens indicates when he describes Rosebud's sparkling water of self: "heedless head, and light heart" (IX). In Jasper's case his head masters his heart, whereas in Crisparkle's case, the heart guides the head. As the description of Helena's inner self reveals, it is the outgoing of self through heartfelt sympathy for others which corrects the unhealthy, masculine withdrawal into self.

After its voyage into its own deep waters, the self must make the symbolic return to land: it must return to earth, substance, reality lest it lose itself in the fantastical creations of its own imagination. The need of the inner self to come to terms with outer reality is suggested in Neville's symbolic surname — Landless. Likewise, the former sailor Tartar has been "accustomed to a very short allowance of land all [his] life" (XVII) before returning to the land. His occupation as sailor has been symbolic, for living a life of the sea, he has always had to submit to order and limitation. There is a symbolic import in Tartar's description of the limited quarters to which a sailor is accustomed: "I chose this place, because, having served last in a little corvette, I knew I should feel more at home where I had a constant opportunity of knocking my head against the ceiling" (XVII). Whereas the mind of Jasper has no bounds, Tartar's is literally confined. Not only do Tartar's quarters manifest the limits which he sets for the self, they also manifest the state of order in which his self exists: "Mr. Tartar's chambers were the neatest, the cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, and stars" (XXII). Furthermore, Tartar's apartment, like his inner self, combines aspects of the sea and the land: "His bath-room was like a dairy, his sleeping-chamber . . . was like a seedsman's shop," and yet "there was a sea-going air upon the whole effect so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained to stern-windows afloat" (XXII). Tartar combines the inner and outer man through a meaningful discipline, controlling self-interest with concern for others: he saved Crisparkle from literal drawning, and he saves Neville from psychological drowning by sending out flowering runners which connect his and Neville's windows of self.

The voyage into the dark waters of self is frightening, but the journey back is equally dangerous, especially when the self approaches the hard shore: "John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his lighthouse is shining when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it . . . mariners on a dangerous voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached" (XXIII). It is appropriate that Jasper's dwelling be compared to a lighthouse, because his solitary existence is situated on the dangerous line of demarcation between inner and outer self. He lives a life at the edge of the land, the outer world; and that edge is the danger zone for the self since there it begins contact with an inimical outer world — as does Neville — or there it has to submit its unlimited dreams to the limits of a finite reality — as does Jasper. Tartar is one whose inner self reaches the haven beyond the shore because he sets limits to his interior ambitions: "it would never do for a man who had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at once" (XVII). Contrariwise, Jasper, whose narrow light beams like that of a lighthouse upon the dark waters of the nighted self, sets no limits to his boundless ambitions.

Dickens sympathizes with the inhuman Jasper because he (Dickens) feels that to be human one needs to dream. He says that the perfect man, Crisparkle, has a "serenely romantic state of the mind-productive for the most part of pity and forebearance" (VI) and observes that when Grewgious speaks loftily of human love, there is "something dreamy" (XI) about him. The dream is to be found by voyaging from mere literal, external reality into the dark waters of self; hence Tartar's apartment is "a beautiful place," "like the inside of the most exquisite ship that ever sailed," and is "Like a dream" (XXII). This inward voyage is also an upward climb into the regions of the imagination; thus when she visited Tartar's apartment. Rosebud never quite knew how "she ascended ... to his garden in the air, and seemed to get into a marvellous country that came into sudden bloom like the country on the summit of the magic beanstalk. May it flourish for ever!" (XXI). But if one never returns from the mind's realm of dreams, the dream may become a dangerous nightmare: of Jasper it is said, "he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most" (VII). One must descend back to the level of ordinary reality outside the fantastic self: " But Mr. Tartar could not make time stand still; and time, with his hard-hearted fleetness, strode on so fast, that Rosa was obliged to come down from the bean-stalk country to earth and her guardian's chambers" (XXII).

Below and outside the self is mundane reality. Wrapped in the darkness of one's deep dreams, the inner self may never touch the outer light of reality. In contrasts to Tartar's apartment, Jasper's is "mostly in shadow." Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand ... or the unfinished picture [of] Rosebud" (II). Jasper's self remains within its own darkness; but a similar self, Neville's, finds reality by moving outward into life's light: "You have only to remember," Crisparkle tells Neville, "that you are here yourself, and she [Helena] has to draw you into the sunlight" (XVII). Down to earth and in Rosebud's guardian's chambers health can be found through reconciliation of the inner and outer selves. In Grewgious's quarters congregate all those with genuine selves: Grewgious himself, Helena, Neville, Rosebud, Crisparkle, and Tartar. Had he lived to complete the novel, perhaps Dickens would have revealed that Jasper did not in fact murder Edwin and that he, too, would have found his way into the warm-hearted chambers of Glorious Grewgious. Earle Davis has argued, for example, that because he wanted to surpass the plot of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, Dickens intended to show that Jasper had not murdered Edwin: "But one may legitimately guess that he intended, to write a novel which would be as sensational and mystifying as the one Collins wrote. He could lead the reader to expect that John Jasper murdered Drood, because all the signs pointing that way are in the tale. But if he were to surpass Collins, he would have to provide a sudden and surprising conclusion which would startle the reader as The Moonstone had done. It is therefore most likely that he intended to show Jasper, also under the influence of opium, thinking he had committed a murder, even confessing to it. The surprise would be that Drood had really escaped and disappeared." Felix Aylmer, whose book offers evidence from within the novel to support Davis's contention, concludes, "There will naturally be a violent change of heart at Staple Inn. Grewgious and Rosa will be bitterly ashamed of their suspicions."

For too long commentary on Edwin Drood has presumed that "it is not possible to grasp the genuine significance of these materials— to know, that is, what Dickens would have made of them." Commentators have felt that we must finish Dickens' novel for him before we can begin to determine its significance: "How it would have been concluded, therefore, is not mere idle speculation, or a detective-game, but an essential preliminary to any proper critical understanding." Paradoxically, the criticism has argued that one must speculate in order to understand, but has then concluded that because speculation is dubious one cannot understand. The inability to understand has led commentators to conclude that the final product of a mature brilliant writer is an inferior work: K. J. Fielding concludes that "The writing itself does not show Dickens at his best," that "It is not particularly interesting to judge the work solely as it stands"; A. O. J. Cockshut concurs: "When a mature artist reverts to the style of his early popular successes, we are apt to diagnose fatigue and loss of interest; particularly, perhaps, when we know that his health was failing and that he died with the book unfinished"; and Monroe Engel reiterates: "The rich undercurrent of suggestion, thematic and metaphorical, that sustains the greater novels of Dickens' maturity, is largely lacking here, where a tired but highly conscious and wily novelist seems to have fallen back primarily on his undiminished ability to tell a gripping story." The prevailing critical premise that speculation must precede understanding has not only prevented understanding, but led to misunderstanding. And so my efforts have been aimed at reversing the current critical logic applied to the unfinished novel by foregoing speculation about the unknown for analysis of the known. The finished half permits us to see that the novel is not Dickens' weakest effort but one of his strongest, one in which Dickens "dropped away here all the burden of analyzing society," as Edmund Wilson has noted, to concentrate on the psychological problem. Yet we may say that the two problems are not distinct, but that the social problem manifests, and has its cause rooted in, the psychological. It may be possible to say of the novel what Wilson has said of its opening pages: that it "is perhaps the most complex piece of writing from the psychological point of view to be found in the whole of Dickens."