First published at EN3515 DICKENS Blog

Who­dun­nit? Not Jasper.

As a result of Dickens’ untimely demise almost exactly in the middle of writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the disappearance of Edwin Drood will remain forever, indeed, a mystery. From the nineteenth century, speculation has suggested, and with ample enough evidence, that John Jasper murdered his nephew in order to secure a future for himself and Rosa Bud, Drood’s wife-to-be. Critics and readers alike have suggested that Jasper’s curious reaction upon learning of Rosa and Drood’s separation indicates that he realised the murder was unnecessary. Further evidence supports the theory that indeed it was Jasper that, presumably, murdered Drood. His monomaniacal obsession with Rosa, his unrealistic and disturbing professed love for his nephew, set within a landscape of opium addiction and double selves would appear to be clinching proof for Jasper’s violently criminal psyche. However, surely we cannot accept such a reductive explanation from one of Britain’s most prolific authors? To release the answer only halfway through creation, indeed implying the answer from the very beginning — is it plausible that Jasper, the violent, obsessive, devilish, obvious maniac could be the answer to all our questions? Surely not.

I shall suggest an alternative theory, one that takes into consideration some of the great themes of Dickens’ work: doppelgangers, childhood bitterness, twisted psyches and, ultimately, extreme plot twists. Into the relatively quiet cathedral town of Cloisterham arrive two outsiders, Helena and Neville Landless. Children orphaned while young and, we learn, brutally treated as they were growing up, resulted in a meek, feminine, yet quietly independent Helena and a passionate, violently driven Neville; twins that seem almost to read each other’s thoughts, and yet so different in temperament from each other. Doubtless many critics have suggested Neville was the murderer — another obvious choice — but I shall suggest instead that his sister is not only the more capable, but also the more rationally plausible.

Overshadowed by a brother that speaks for her, one that admits to having to ‘suppress a deadly and bitter hatred’ that has made him ‘secret and revengeful’, is it not possible that Helena herself could suppress a similar emotion? Neville continues to say: ‘In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are twin children), you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our misery ever subdued her, though it often cowed me. When we ray away from it (we ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading. Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man. I take it we were seven years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when I lost the pocketknife with which she was to have cut her hair short, how desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite it off.’

Interestingly, Neville reiterates the fact that they are twins, even though Crisparkle is aware of the fact; it impresses upon us once more that they are connected not only through blood and, Neville claims, mentally, but also visibly. For such a quiet woman, it is surprising that she has a strong, animalistic urge to tear and bite at her hair when she feels trapped in her female form. This indicates the strong anger of a hysterical woman, a ferocity that neither Neville or Jasper show or are capable of. She is the one to instigate running away every time, showing a highly independent and masculine streak, one that is prepared to put into action what she desires, as opposed to a brother that, curiously, follows her. If she succeeded in cutting her hair short, she would physically look no different from her brother, making them, as it were, true doubles. Helena may be the real, dark side of Neville’s psyche, even while appearances remain to the contrary. Just as there are two Flintwich’s in Little Dorrit, strikingly similar men in A Tale of Two Cities, doubling and mistaken identity in Our Mutual Friend and even double narratives in Bleak House; so in Edwin Drood does this recurring theme appear.

Helena, a repressed version of her brother, stands very much as the Hyde to a Jekyll, a monster to a Frankenstein: outwardly so demure, yet inwardly burning with rage and repressed anger. Moving from Our Mutual Friend, in which Dickens depicts Bradley Headstone as the archetype of repression boiling over into murderous violence, pathologically insane as a result of his obsession with Lizzie Hexam (although this can be deeply questioned), Dickens’ gives us now the opposite: a woman seemingly innocent, but the other, darker half of her passionate brother.

The question of motive remains, which again is revealed when the novel’s other themes are taken into consideration, themes such as colonialism, the outsider and marriage. When Helena arrives in Cloisterham she is confronted with a pretty, white female whose engagement to a nice, white gentleman seems all too cosy. Already disturbed from a childhood of brutality, the hatred with which she might perceive Rosa’s relatively easy life, planned out for her stage by stage, would be intense. Helena’s ‘sunburnt’ skin labels her the other, and what vengeance would be greater than ridding a woman of happiness while feigning to befriend her? Once the deed is done, she could quite easily escape to London — which, surprisingly enough, she does. An overshadowing brother would be suspected of the murder because he fits the stereotype perfectly; there is every piece of evidence against him that one could need to convince a jury of his guilt. It is all too convenient. Helena would not only have passed on her inherent unhappiness to another woman, but she would herself be free to live life as she pleased, not having to follow her brother everywhere and perform through him. Additionally, she may have murdered Drood from anger, since by offending Neville, he offends her through him.

Since Bleak House, Dickens’ had set about depicting females as anything from innocent and self-sacrificing to naïve and money grabbing — but not murderers. Lizzie Hexam is the very picture of virtue; Bella Wilfur may be mercenary, but she eventually becomes the perfect Victorian angel in the house. Not since Hortense had Dickens used a woman to paint a bloody, violent picture. This fulfills Dickens’ last great theme — that of the shocking plot twist, the unexpected overthrowing of what we have been lead to believe. With six installments still to be written and published, any reader at the time would have lost interest if Jasper had indeed been the murderer, having figured out the plot far ahead of time.

Futhermore, and finally, The Mystery of Edwin Drood is fast-paced, violent, sexual and drug infested, much like the Sensation novels at the time. Much desired, these novels sold extremely well, and Dickens’ good friend Wilkie Collins could arguably be the first author to augment the Sensation novel as following on from the Gothic with his novel The Woman in White. In this, a woman that is beautiful from behind turns out to be ugly from the front – ‘The woman was ugly!’ — highly controversial at the time, while another has been driven mad by an evil seducer. In Lady Audley’s Secret, a woman turns out to be the murderer (although in the end, not) of a man by pushing him down a well. In The Moonstone a woman commits suicide by letting quicksand suck her down (reminding us of the quicklime in Edwin Drood that would have quickly devoured a body), and in East Lynne a woman commits adultery, leaving her children and husband for a wicked murderer. From this we can clearly see that what was selling well were the frightening, yet popular, stories of female hysteria, of strange, uncanny events and murderers. In this ‘Madwoman in the Attic’ climate, it is very possible that in leading us to believe Jasper killed Edwin Drood, we have been entirely led away from the fact that Helena is more capable of cold-blooded murder.

5 February 2010