Thacker books
43 of infant sex-attraction dwelt so often on
youthful romance. But Jasper at 21 or so knows
well enough that his jealousy must be kept secret
for he is now an adult and a responsible man,
while Rosa is a mere child, in years as well as
nature; if the secret of his love for her should
come out he will quite certainly be removed from
her. The Dean will make short work of him (as
with Neville Landless later) at the least hint of
scandal. 44 over the following seven years of the anomalous nature of his position in relation to that child, who has appeared to be a younger brother but who has an elder brother's rights. Approaching manhood, he finds, possibly without acknowledging it to himself, that his watchful and devoted affection towards that nephew is losing some of its spontaneity and is turning into something like a resolute determination to love him for his mother's sake. Then comes the sexual complication in the shape of Rosa. It is now even more necessary that his love for his nephew shall shine before all men, and for a twofold purpose: to remove any possibility of suspicion of his own passion for the girl, and to assist in the desperate battle which is now going on in his own head between the Jasper who indulges in the secret lust-gratification of murdering his nephew in imagination and the Jasper who fights to resist the temptation and insists, even to himself, that his love and devotion are as strong as ever. He has paraded that love before the whole of Cloisterham, from the Dean to the Verger's wife and the local shopkeepers; but to no one has he insisted on it more than to himself. It is this internal struggle that lies behind the 'look' on his face in that first scene between them: Once for all, a look of intentness and intensity - a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet devoted affection - is always, now and ever afterwards, on the Jasper face whenever the Jasper face is addressed in this direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always concentrated. (Ch. ll, p. 7) This is Dickens at his most ambiguous and cryptic, 'laying the ground', hinting twice that the look is only on the face, does not mirror the soul, and leaving room for a possible later interpretation of the words differing widely from their face value, which appears to indicate devoted affection for the nephew. The word' dividedly' is I feel sure deliberately used here. Whatever division the author may have designed to take place in Jasper's mind later, he means to indicate here that it is singly and completely concentrated on Edwin Drood. I have suggested that in one sense it is a divided mind; but only in the sense that anyone's mind may be so, 45 like Macbeth's between allegiance and ambition or Othello's between love and jealousy. There is no question here, in this first scene, of either angel or devil being in sole charge of Jasper. The struggle to love his nephew is going on within himself; and I repeat here the speech of Edwin just before the crisis of that scene to show, in the light of the suggestions .made above, the deadly irony with which the young fellow congratulates his uncle: '...Yes, Jack, it's all very
well for you. You can take it easily. Your life
is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted
out for you, like a surveyor's plan. You have no
uncomfortable suspicion that you are forced upon
anybody, nor has anybody an uncomfortable
suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that
you are forced upon her. You can choose for
yourself. Life, for you, is a plum with the
natural bloom on; it hasn't . been over-carefully
wiped off for you-' But Jack's life is indeed lined and dotted out, not on. a surveyor's plan but a musical score; and from what follows in the next page or so of the novel it is difficult to believe that he has not been forced on the Cathedral, or that his life has not had the bloom taken off some time before. This speech of Edwin's, the climax of a carefully built-up scene, brings Jasper to near murder. But the nephew and the young girl are not the only forces driving him; another - and this is the novel's essential and supreme irony - is the Christian Cathedral itself .
46 Contents |
Next chapter |