Seven Years of Darkness is a fitting title for this murky and claustrophobic Korean thriller written by You-Jeong Jeong in 2015. The Prologue tells usSeven Years of Darkness is a fitting title for this murky and claustrophobic Korean thriller written by You-Jeong Jeong in 2015. The Prologue tells us:
“People would refer to that night’s events as the Seryong Lake Disaster. They would call Dad a crazed murderer. The story was so big that I, too, became famous, as his son. I was eleven years old.”
For seven years, Choi Sowon, now a lonely teenager, has lived in the shadow of his father’s shocking crime. For all that time he has been ostracised because his father, Choi Hyonsu is in prison for mass murder. Hyonsu used to be a professional baseball player, but after an injury he had taken to drink. Nevertheless the murder was inexplicable; a seemingly insane act which led to many deaths. Hyonsu was charged with not only (view spoiler)[ killing the young daughter of a neighbour, and also the girl’s father, throwing his own wife (Sowon’s mother) into the river and destroying most of a nearby village - including drowning four police officers - by opening the floodgates of the dam where he was head of security. (hide spoiler)] We learn all this very near the beginning of the novel.
But not all is at it seems. This is a dark and disturbing novel, which is full of twists and turns.
The setting is the Seryong reservoir, Hansoldung and the small area surrounding it, on the other side of Peryong mountain from the town of Sunchon, in the Chungchong province. Those responsible for maintaining the reservoir and arboretum do not mix with the small community of about a dozen people who live nearby, and Sowon has no friends from either group. For the last seven years he has been passed from relative to relative. Everyone tries to make someone else take responsibility for the boy, as his father Hyonsu’s case weaves its way through the courts. At first Sowon thinks he can make a new start in his new home, but he is pursued by an anonymous sender of newspaper articles. The whispers start so that yet again everyone soon knows about his father’s crimes.
Now the final day of execution is nearing, and Ahn Sungwhan (Sowon’s guardian whom he calls Mr Ahn) disappears. Shortly after, Sowon receives a package (view spoiler)[ containing a manuscript penned by Ahn Sungwhan, who had been attempting to make a living as a writer. It purports to tell the true story of what happened at Seryong Lake. (hide spoiler)] Much of the novel is told this way through flashback, to enable us to piece together and make sense of what happened, and to give us the perspective of most of the people involved. As more facts and suppositions are revealed, we also see that being socially ostracised is the least of Sowon’s worries; he is actually in a great deal of danger.
Through the manuscript we learn the back story. Ahn Sungwhan, a diver, was working as a security guard at Seryong Lake, a ‘first-tier’ reservoir located in the remote Hansoldung village. Dr. Oh Yongje, a dentist owned the arboretum on the reservoir; and Sowon’s father, Choi Hyonsu had just been hired as the new head of security at Seryong Dam (making him Sungwhan’s boss).
Seven Years of Darkness concentrates on these three men, as their inner thoughts build resentments and bristling relationships between them. Two of these men are unsympathetic characters, controlled by their anger and brutish, or drunken behaviour. The third becomes a loyal and supportive friend to one of them, although no reason is given for this. Finding anyone to identify with in Seven Years of Darkness is mostly a lost cause, but this character is perhaps one we can feel empathy for. Each of the three men has something to hide about the night of the reservoir disaster. They are all trapped in an elaborate game of cat and mouse, as each tries to uncover what really happened, without revealing their own closely guarded secrets.
The females are very much secondary characters. Most prominent are the wives of Hyonsu and Yongje; the aspirational and upwardly mobile Eunju, and Hayong the cowed and bullied wife of the dentist. Each is ruled by their emotions, and lives their life as an adjunct to the males; an aspect I have noticed before in Korean literature. We see their frustrations and fears, and how this impacts on the events. There are two children of similar ages: Sowon and Yongje’s daughter Seryong. I would have liked to see more about their interactions, but they are objectified casualties, and very much secondary to the mind-games between the adults.
There is terrorising, domestic violence - some of which is vicious and graphic - and a brief episode of animal cruelty as well as ongoing child abuse (i.e. bullying and brutality, not sexual). There is little let up from this, until one night when things come to a head.
The plot is a finely worked web, with the devious spider at the centre signalled very early. We watch how the villain crafts and sets the threads carefully in place so that the designated victims are ensnared. The machinations of the plot are all told through the manuscript, so that we learn of this alongside Sowon, who is trying to fit all the pieces together. Personally I think the novel would have benefitted from exploring Sowon’s perspective rather than simply retelling these past events. I have no sense of how Sowon feels about his predicament. I also feel that the ending was rather rushed. I would have liked more to have been made of the relationship between past and present.
The novel is translated into American English by Chi-Young Kim. It is quite a careful translation, with only an occasional lapse of tense or parts of speech (“shined his torch” irked me a few times, too). For those not familiar with name order in South-East Asian names where the surname is at the beginning, the text often helpfully says something like “Dr Ahn” for Ahn Sungwhan, which serves as a reminder. (Incidentally, as you can see, the translator has chosen to switch her name Kim Chi-young (김지영) round, and arrange it using the conventional Western name order.) As another aside, at the end I was surprised to discover that You-Jeong Jeong is a female author. I always maintain that if I can tell the gender of an author, this often acts as a indicator that I will not enjoy the book. I deliberately do not read blurbs immediately before, either, so knew nothing about this one before I began. Yet all the way through, I was conscious of an erroneous feeling that this was a male author.
Am I glad I read Seven Years of Darkness? Not really. My experience of Korean literature is limited; I have only read one other book so far by a South Korean author, an eco-thriller which I much preferred. In places it reminded me of American hard-boiled crime thrillers; a genre I do not care for. However there were a few beautiful passages which hinted at an aspect I would have liked to see developed, such as this flash of memory at a critical moment for Hyonsu:
“sorghum fields swaying bloodred under the moon, the ocean breeze wafting over the stalks, the glimmer of the lighthouse beyond the mountain at the far edge of the field. A boy walking through the fields, clutching his father’s shoes and a flashlight.”
Seven Years in Darkness is very atmospheric in places, such as the description of a night dive through the underwater “drowned” village. There are places where there is a feeling of unreality about the whole thing:
“the recurring dream he’d had every night for the last three nights was not a dream; it was reality within a dream and a dream within reality.”
There is a sense all through of lost dreams, of thwarted ambitions and momentary decisions which drastically affect and wreck everything which happens afterwards. Although the plot is ostensibly about revealing the truth, we are left in no doubt that this can sometimes be a grey area. You-Jeong Jeong said that this is the core of Seven Years of Darkness:
“Fate sometimes sends your life a sweet breeze and warm sunlight, while at other times a gust of misfortune. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions. There is a gray area between fact and truth, which isn’t often talked about. Though uncomfortable and confusing, none of us can escape the gray. This novel is about that gray area, about a man who made a single mistake that ruined his life. It’s about the darkness within people, and the lightness made possible by sacrificing oneself for someone else. I am hopeful that we can say yes to life in spite of it all.”
For me though, in the end Seven Years in Darkness is about power, and not about “truth”.
Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that there is no such thing as absolute truth: that there is no eternal and unchanging truth.
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
We certainly see here that people impose their metaphorical truth on others in the pursuit of power. A strong sense of this comes through to me, rather than You-Jeong Jeong’s idea of light through self-sacrifice. I was rooting for a different ending throughout this book, although that could possibly be my cultural expectation. In some ways Seven Years of Darkness does not conform to the Western prototype for thrillers. As “Crime Time” said:
“this powerful tale of family violence, the abuse of drink and the sins of the fathers proves fascinating as it explores a way of life so different from our own and makes powerful statements about South Korean society and mores”.
The “Financial Times” calls it “an admirably tough fable about the fragile search for the truth.”
The “Los Angeles Times” calls You-Jeong Jeong a “certified international phenomenon … one among the best at writing psychological suspense”.
Germany’s “Die Zeit” has said You-Jeong Jeong is “rightly compared to Stephen King”, and named Seven Years of Darkness as one of the top ten crime novels of 2015.
You-Jeong Jeong is hugely popular in South Korea: the “Queen of Crime” who has written four best-selling psychological suspense thrillers. The author’s work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Thai and Vietnamese. It remains at my default of 3 stars, but depending on your taste, you may well think that Seven Years of Darkness is a gripping read....more
Wobble to Death? What an intriguing title for a crime novel!
Was the victim perhaps upended into a huge vat of jelly? Or done to death, wobbling on a hWobble to Death? What an intriguing title for a crime novel!
Was the victim perhaps upended into a huge vat of jelly? Or done to death, wobbling on a highwire trapeze? What about being electrocuted by one of those road drilling machines? That would make the sorry victim wobble for sure …
The answer is sadly none of these, and the murder methods employed are far more conventional. The word “wobble” in the title refers to a specific competitive sport, which we now know as speedwalking. Sorry if that’s a letdown.
It’s easy to see why the sport was given such an apt appellation. The gait employed in such a race is characteristically ungainly; most odd, in fact unique. In the 1880s these “wobble” races became popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Since the English crime writer Peter Lovesey also writes non-fiction histories of track and field athletics, he decided to draw on his interest in this to introduce Sergeant Cribb to his reading public via a “wobble” race, setting the story when they were all the rage. Sergeant Cribb is thus a Victorian-era police detective based in London, who proved so popular that he went on to feature in 7 further novels, all of which are sports-related.
Wobble to Death is the first novel in the series, and was written in 1970 in the typical whodunnit puzzle style of an earlier Golden Age Mystery. The setting is the Agricultural Hall of Islington, North London in 1879. This is not to be just an ordinary walking race “wobble”, but a bizarre six-day endurance race, arranged by Sol Herriott, who usually organises horse racing events. He has hired Walter Jacobson as his manager - who also has no experience with “pedestrian” events, as these are called.
Not only is this wobble to take place over 6 days, but the entrants are drawn from all levels and walks of life; it is open to all. This proves to be a big draw. Also, the anticipation of a degrading spectacle as men gradually become more spent and exhausted as the event continues, means that large crowds descend on the arena every day, from all over London. Plus Sol Herriott has had a brainwave.
Instead of the “toffs” being in with the hoi-polloi, he has designed a two-lane track. Thus a select few who do not wish to mingle with the unwashed, may remain separate at all times, whilst keeping their challenge of equal length and duration. The “pedestrians” make their way round the track at their own speed, and each has a dedicated person recording their laps. At the end of each day these are tallied up.
This is a neat way to divide up the novel, too. At the beginning we are faced with quite a few names of contestants, and at the end of each day they are listed with their progress. Since there is not one but two murders (as in all the best crime novels) and some drop out through exhaustion, the list narrows down nicely through the 18 chapters of the novel. We also have assistants and trainers, but oddly, only two female characters in the entire novel, and one of these is a mere cameo role.
The bookies’ favourite is Captain Erskine Chadwick, running both for pride in challenging himself, and for the honour of his regiment. He is aided by Harvey, his batman. Chadwick is independently wealthy, and has bet quite a bit on himself to win, since he is a world class amateur athlete. Notwithstanding, his power of endurance matches the other favourite, Charles Darrell.
Darrell comes from a lower class, but he is a professional athlete, so has been put in the same track as Captain Chadwick, to increase the visible competition and attract the crowds. He also has an experienced trainer in Sam Monk. Darrell’s wife Cora sometimes comes to watch - and also to be watched - which she clearly enjoys. She is, in the vernacular of the time, a flashy female, “no better than she ought to be”. Her maid enjoys sharing confidences about her mistress, who is (view spoiler)[ having an affair with Sam Monk, and also, we learn at the end, with someone else too, which proves to be more deadly than she could have possibly imagined (hide spoiler)].
Of the rank and file, a few stood out to me. Feargus O’Flaherty (evidently an Irishman) is also a good pedestrian, and will give it his best shot. There is Peter Chalk; George Williams; Billy Reid with his trainer, his brother, Jack; and a thin weedy chap Francis Mostyn-Smith, who is a doctor in his professional life. The crowd tend to make fun of Mostyn-Smith, because of his physique, so he prefers to run at night, when few are there to watch. Mostyn-Smith is also a well-off competitor, and quick on the uptake. (It’s always good to have a doctor on hand in a murder mystery …)
Wobbles like these were different from races today, as the pedestrians could take part whichever hours they liked. They were allowed to take breaks; resting, sleeping, washing and eating what they chose, either in the basic and insanitary double cabins provided, or at hotels or houses outside, if they wished.
The story has an omniscient narrator, and although it is true to 1870s London in its setting, dress, details, and social mores, the language is up to date apart from the names of a few Victorian artefacts etc. So when I heard “half-breed” used to refer to someone, just as casually as “doctor”, “Irishman” or “wife”, I was shocked. When did English people ever breed humans? Even slavery had ended in England just over a century earlier, in 1772. This seems to be a sickening aberration on the part of the author, since it was used purely as an indicator, and not to show any one character’s racist point of view, nor to reflect an opinion. The word is not one I had ever heard before, (and do not wish to again) although when this novel was written, it is possible some people still used the word “half-caste”. I am familiar with quite a few English novels written in the late 19th century, and nowhere have I ever read the word “half-breed”.
The pedestrian referred to thus was George Williams. “Williams” is a Welsh name, and the city of Liverpool borders Wales. As Liverpool is a main port, traditionally it has always been ethnically diverse, like London. Therefore I deduce that George Williams is of mixed race, probably from this locale with one black parent and one white. Still, the half dozen times it occurred in the novel, I found this word very jarring and offensive.
Moving on, we have a motley collection of “proven pedestrians” starting off at 1am on a November Monday morning. It does not take long before one of them is dead. (view spoiler)[On Tuesday, one of the main contenders for the title is suspected to have died from tetanus, due to walking around on the filthy track with no shoes, and thus picking up the infection from blisters on his feet. His trainer is mortified, and apparently commits suicide because he feels so guilty. He even leaves a note to explain. (hide spoiler)] However in time neither of these reasons is shown to be the case, although the victims are dead nonetheless.
Sergeant Cribb from Scotland Yard is called in. He is:
“tall, spare in frame, too spry in his movements ever to put on much weight. His head … was burdened with an overlong nose … and heavy eyebrows …” An authoritative presence, Sergeant Cribb also sports stylish “Piccadilly Weepers”, which are long, bushy but carefully combed side whiskers, of a type most fashionable in the mid to late 1800s in London, (and I’m sure you will have seen in period dramas such as Sherlock Holmes).
The sergeant is aided by Constable Thackeray:
“… a burly, middle-aged man with a fine grey beard …”. He takes notes assiduously, but it is clear that Constable Thackeray lacks the quick wits of his superior officer; his brain power seems as stolid as his build. The interactions between the two are amusing to read.
Sergeant Cribb suspects poisoning at first, in various ways, but this is another case of the 1870s being very different from modern times (or even 1970, when this novel was written). All sort of drugs were allowed. Strychnine, for example was routinely given in small doses, as a stimulant for energy, in a tonic. (view spoiler)[One of the wobblers was killed by an overdose of strychnine deliberately added to his tonic. (hide spoiler)] There were all sort of dirty tactics employed by unscrupulous trainers too, against the opposition, such as (view spoiler)[ putting ground walnut shells in boots, to make the pedestrians’ feet sore. Harvey did this. (hide spoiler)]
There follows a series of revelations and red herrings. As I say, the novel is paced well, and Sergeant Cribb and his sidekick know that they must solve the crime(s) within the 6 six days of the wobble, or else the contestants will diperse all over London, and even further afield. We follow them down blind alleys galore.
It is a shame that I did not enjoy this more, but 2 stars on Goodreads means "it was OK", and this is what I felt overall. The penultimate chapter (17) involved an exciting chase through North London, after (view spoiler)[ Jacobson, who had stolen the cash for the wobble (hide spoiler)]. I did feel this was observed well, with many authentic features I recognised both from life, and details of the time from Charles Dickens’s later novels. However, mostly I found the writing to lack verve and wit. I learned about wobbles, for sure, and some likely facts and figures. The top prize for this 6 days wobble was £500; the winning prizes varied between £500 and £5, the basic prize for completing the course - which not everyone did. By the end there only seemed to be 9 who actually won any money. Bearing in mind that this wobble was held in a huge arena which has evidently previously been used by farm animals, not everyone was hardened to the basic living conditions, never mind the pedestrian wobble itself. The cabins were filthy, the camp beds ditto, and although gas was laid on both for heating and for cooking, this presented its own dangers.
Another interesting fact was that although most wobbles were set for distances of 50m., 100m., or 150 miles in total, because in this arena the pedestrians wobbled round and round the track in the Agricultural Hall of Islington, it was anticipated that the winner would walk at least 500 miles, setting their paces at 90-100 miles per day!
However, the daily descriptions of the race, and interaction between the pedestrians was … pedestrian (sorry!) Moreover, I did not feel it was possible to work out the murderer (not that I'm ever very good at that!); it was sprung on us in the last chapter, and even Sergeant Cribb admitted that (view spoiler)[ how and where the murderer obtained the strychnine, a record of which must be held by pharmacists, (hide spoiler)] was a mystery to him! And as for the motive … We may believe that someone would be upright enough to (view spoiler)[want to marry the person they are having an affair with. But can we believe that in order to do this, they would happily murder that person's spouse? Not only that but then they go on to commit a second murder, to cover it up? (hide spoiler)] No, I’m sorry but this is not psychologically plausible, or consistent with such a moral world view.
Nevertheless the critics seemed to enjoy it:
“Here are true Victorians, not pious frauds of legend. A first-rate story of sustained thrill.” - John Dickson Carr
“First prize-winner, and a worthy one … excellently done.” - Edmund Crispin: Sunday Times
“Brilliantly evocative … It is long since I came across so original a setting.” - Cyril Ray: The Spectator
“A brilliant reconstruction.” Maurice Richardson: The Observer
Wobble to Death is listed in the Mystery Writers of America Top 100 Mystery Novels, and won the Macmillan/Panther First Crime Novel Prize of £1000 in 1970, from about 250 entries.
A piece of trivia which might make you smile concerns the actress Barbara Windsor. This Cockney sparrow grew up from humble origins, but was always very bright, and once won a mathematics competition out of the whole of London. Nevertheless, despite the fact that she was very intelligent it was her well endowed figure which people remarked on. Her most popular roles were in the increasingly lewd “Carry On” films, carrying on the comic tradition of 19th century English music hall and bawdy seaside postcards.
Barbara Windsor was known to be a good sport, and a crowd-pleaser, so perhaps it was predictable that on publication day for Wobble to Death, a 24-hour charity “wobble” was staged around Sloane Square, started by Barbara Windsor jointly with the author.
I may try to track down some later ones in the series. I also understand there was also a TV series made between 1980 and 1981, with Alan Dobie as Sergeant Cribb. In the end though, I do think the best thing about this crime book is its title.
And you're not likely to forget what a wobble is now, are you?...more
This is a review of the Norton Critical Edition. For my review of the text of “Oliver Twist: A Parish Boy’s Progress” please LINK HERE***PLEASE NOTE:—
This is a review of the Norton Critical Edition. For my review of the text of “Oliver Twist: A Parish Boy’s Progress” please LINK HERE.
The Norton Critical Editions are excellent, and I was curious as to which edition of the text the editor Fred Kaplan would choose for Oliver Twist. Nowadays Oliver Twist is a favourite classic story, but when Dickens started to write it, he had no idea that it would be a novel. The story began as episodes of “The Parish Boys Progress by Boz”, a continuation of his serial “The Mudfog Papers” published in monthly installments from February 1837, in the popular magazine “Bentley’s Miscellany”. “Mudfog” was based on Chatham in Kent, his childhood home, and it was named in the first sentence of Oliver Twist. (However, Dickens was later to edit this to say: “a certain town … to which I will assign no fictitious name”, to fit in with later events in the story.)
At first, Dickens used to edit “Bentley’s Miscellany” as well as write some features for it. But relations between its owner Richard Bentley and Charles Dickens grew very strained, and the arguments between them increased as the summer went on. Tempers rose and reached fever pitch, until on 30th August 1837 Charles Dickens decided to write no more installments of Oliver Twist unless he was paid more money. For a while it looked as if this was as much of Oliver Twist as anyone would ever read! Charles Dickens was adamant, and there was a gap of two whole months while his readers waited with bated breath.
There seemed to be a stalemate, as Charles Dickens was by now in a serious dispute with his publisher, Richard Bentley. His friend John Forster had done his best to help resolve the situation, and now his illustrator George Cruikshank was trying to mediate too. On 16th September Charles Dickens additionally threatened to resign the editorship of “Bentley’s Miscellany”. But on 28th September Richard Bentley backed down, and signed a revised contract, agreeing to give Charles Dickens £500 extra for each of the two novels he was under contract to write.
So it is only down to John Forster’s diplomatic skills that we can read the rest of Oliver Twist at all. Otherwise we would just have had the first 7 installments (16 chapters). In fact Charles Dickens had to ask Bentley for spare copies of the magazines, so that he could reread the first few chapters of Oliver Twist and remind himself of what had happened. Chapter 17 begins very strangely with a defence of his writing, and what seems like almost two pages of apologia for the “sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place”. (Critics refer to this as the "streaky bacon" account). At this point Dickens virtually restarts the story, back at the workhouse, where it had begun. Only now did Dickens know that these episodes must be turned into a novel, and that he would develop the story for 35 more chapters.
There were yet more difficulties as time went on too, as Dickens was desperate to “burst the Bentleian bonds” as he put it. He decided to complete Oliver Twist quickly, and issue it in book form before the serial was finished in the magazine. So he raced to finish the story, providing incredibly convoluted explanations in the closing chapters for the various events. Then he published it as three volumes in November 1838—under his own name for the first time, rather than “Boz”—very probably as another snub to Bentley.
It is not surprising therefore, with all the hiccups, false starts and a rush at the end, that over the next few years Dickens would be dissatisfied. He tweaked his novel half a dozen times in the first couple of years, republishing each time, (although much of this has been lost) and trying to resolve the structural difficulties that had been forced on him by circumstances. Writers of serial fiction always had the problem that what they had written could not be changed, but this was an extreme case.
Charles Dickens’s final edits were in 1867, just 3 years before he died. However, the Norton Critical edition has gone with the 1846 text, the last edition of the novel which was substantially revised by Dickens, and the one that is said to most clearly reflect his authorial intentions. A selection of just three out of George Cruikshank’s original 24 steel etchings accompany the text.
The best editions of Dickens novels contain his Preface(s) plus perhaps a critical introduction and a few footnotes. This has all that, but the text still only takes about half the book. There is then over 250 pages of extra material. This begins with a map of Oliver’s London—not one purporting to show his locations—but a straightforward double spread of central London in 1837.
The section titled “Backgrounds and Sources” focuses on The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which was central both to Dickens and to the characters in Oliver Twist. The act’s far-reaching implications are discussed in articles that include parlimentary debates on The Poor Laws, a harrowing account of an 1835 Bedfordshire riot, and “An Appeal to Fallen Women”, Dickens’s 1847 open letter to London’s prostitutes which urged them to turn their backs on “debauchery and neglect”.
It is possible to trace how Oliver Twist evolved, by means of a chart tabling Dickens’s differing installments and chapter divisions in various editions over the years. Using this one can compare texts, to see the extra paragraphs and titles he wrote. Burton M. Wheeler goes into this in more detail in his essay, later in the book.
There are ten letters on Oliver Twist, all of which were written between 1837 and 1864. They include those to the novel’s publisher (Bentley), the novel’s illustrator (Cruikshank), and the writer John Forster, (Dickens’s close friend and future biographer). Also included is “Sikes and Nancy”, Dickens’s rewritten reading copy which he composed in order to perform to large audiences at public readings in the last few year of his life, sometimes several times a week.
The “Early Reviews” section provides eight witty, insightful, and at times very strongly expressed responses to both the novel and Oliver’s plight, by William Makepeace Thackeray and others, including John Forster (anonymously).
We then have a section titled “Criticism” which lifts this edition of Oliver Twist head and shoulders above any other. Included here are the cream of the Dickensian scholars who have written specifically about Oliver Twist; twenty of the most significant interpretations which have been published over the years. There are essays by Henry James, George Gissing, Graham Greene, J. Hillis Miller, Harry Stone, Philip Collins, John Bayley, Keith Hollingsworth, Steven Marcus, Monroe Engel, James R. Kincaid, Michael Slater, Dennis Walder, Burton M. Wheeler, Janet Larson, Fred Kaplan, Robert Tracy, David Miller, John O. Jordan, and Gary Wills. These are a rare treat. It is difficult to pick any out for special mention. All of these authors are Dickensian scholars, and some have written full biographies about him. Michael Slater’s, from 2009, is still considered by many to be the best since that of Peter Ackroyd’s whopping 2000 one of well over a thousand pages, with Claire Tomalin’s shorter and slightly later one from in 2011 in its shadow.
However these essays concentrate on specific aspects of Oliver Twist. One interesting focus is shed by John Bayley, in “Things as They Really Are”. Building on the novel’s allegorical aspect, he explores the idea of daydreams as being part of our essential double nature. The goodness of Mr. Brownlow’s world and the evil of Fagin’s, he maintains: “coexist in consciousness, they are two sides of the same coin of fantasy, not two real places that exist separately in life”. He says that they appeal to our fantasies; our ideals of how they should be. We therefore want Oliver to be confronted by terrible situations, because we want him to fight and overcome them. “"Dickens villains have the unexpungable nature of our own nightmares and our own consciousness ... We shrink from the fate, and desire it”.
In “Oliver Twist and Christian Scripture” Janet Larson analyses Oliver Twist’s many biblical references, both overt and hidden, whereas David Miller writes a detailed factual piece about the police and how the law affect the events in the book. John O. Jordan's fascinating essay is titled “The Purloined Hankerchief”. It is about the cultural early Victorian mores, and the symbolism of handkerchiefs throughout the novel, from Bill Sikes’s “dirty belcher handkerchief” (named after a famous boxer, James Belcher)—through Mr. Bumble’s two handkerchiefs: one workmanlike one he keeps under his hat, and a dainty one for show, to spread on his knees when he is taking tea with Mrs. Corney—and on to Rose Maylie’s lace-edged one (view spoiler)[ given on request to Nancy, who holds it aloft to heaven at the time of her brutal murder (hide spoiler)]. All the essays are excellent, and I was so impressed with Fred Kaplan’s, that I tracked down a rare book he had written on Dickens and Mesmerism, and have been engrossed in it ever since!
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included in the final pages.
It feels extraordinary to me to recommend an American edition of a work by one of our greatest English authors, but there is no question that leaving the small print size aside, this is the one I prefer. (For personal reasons, I use a Large Print one for the text itself, and use magnifiers for this.) Yes, England has more than one Oxford Edition, Penguin, Collins, Clarendon and many others, but none can compare with the scholarly bounty of the Norton Critical Edition....more
“What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any“What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all?”
Heaven was written in 2009, and its English translation was published in 2021. It is the second novel by Mieko Kawakami to be translated into English. Mieko Kawakami is a prize-winning Japanese literary author who does not shy away from controversial issues. Another internationally best-selling novel by her is “Breasts and Eggs” in which she was described as writing “with a bracing lack of sentimentality”. In this case, the novel is centred on teenage bullying, and written straightforwardly, so that the prose is simple and easy to read. However the theme is unremitting, and some episodes are described graphically enough for it to be called by some “torture porn”.
We begin with a 14-year old unnamed narrator, who is constantly bullied at school and called “Eyes” because he has a lazy eye (strabismus). He finds a note from someone saying “we should be friends”. After some thought he responds, and it turns out that it is from a classmate called Kojima. Kojima is also bullied, because she comes from a poor family, has kinky hair, does not like to take baths, and has dirty clothes. The two victims carry on their friendship mainly through written notes. They do meet up (and you can imagine the fallout from their tormentors) but never discuss the bullying episodes or abuse they receive. The bullying increases in intensity as the plot continues.
I found it hardhitting and heartbreaking in equal measure. Both the narrator and Kojima seemed to be in a cycle of passive acceptance.
“Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.”
The main bully is a popular boy, Momose. Ninimoya, his friend who complies and falls in with Momose, tells Kojima that bullies act that way, just because they are able to do so. We know that for this age group, social pressures mean that all their peers are tempted to side with, or look away from, the bullies. Ninimoya is handsome and well-liked, and no adult seems to be concerned. Oddly, no parents or teachers notice Ninomiya and Momose’s swaggering demeanour, nor the clues which denote a bullied child. Were the adults fearful for some reason?
Then I realised that the book is about a culture of bullying, and a mindset where acceptance denotes strength. This novel is set in Japan, in 1991. I have learned that bullying is not seen as a problem, as it is here in the UK. Indeed it is brutal, and common in Japan, and there is an extremely high suicide rate. Teachers even have a name for “normal” children; i.e. those who are deemed accepted. “Mina-san” means “everybody”, but anyone who is different from the accepted convention would be excluded from this description. Inclusivity of differently abled children, or anyone who has special needs, does not exist. Uniform normality is the aim, and children are encouraged to reject anything else.
The Japanese author Haruki Murakami has called Mieko Kawakami his favourite young novelist, which is quite telling. When I realised that I would not complete this read, I considered the wider significance of this book, and the influence of Nietzschean philosophy. The blurb says:
“These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.”
Heaven is a bleakly savage read, which has been called “a raw, painful, and tender portrait of adolescent misery”. Momose’s view is nihilistic. One child eventually resists, but there will be no true winners in this novel. I did not complete reading this book, as I found it too disturbing. My rating stays at my default, based on the quality of the writing and the insights of the author, but I had no wish to put myself through the wringer any further.
“But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.”
“Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.”
“Listen, if there is a hell, we’re in it. And if there’s a heaven, we’re already there. This is it.”
And the title? It is after a painting in the story, to which Kojima gave a new name. She believed that accepting bullying helped to purify her, although the author of Heaven makes it clear that this attitude harms Kojima.
The title of this book may have many readers scratching their heads. Dickens and … what? Dickens and Mesmerism? Surely this is not about the down-to-eThe title of this book may have many readers scratching their heads. Dickens and … what? Dickens and Mesmerism? Surely this is not about the down-to-earth author who wrote such great stories, and created so many memorable characters? Not the one who tirelessly campaigned for a fairer deal for so many who were suffering, and who was determined to make social conditions better? The popular author Charles Dickens was a writer whose stories were rooted in realism, wasn’t he?
Well yes he was, in a sense, but Charles Dickens also wrote ghost stories, and was fascinated by the supernatural. Plus he was profoundly interested in exploring the unknown, and keenly followed all the scientific discoveries exploding around him at that time. In fact his interest in mesmerism, far from our 21st century tendency to scoff, was more to do with the latter scientific discoveries than the former fanciful imaginings he indulged in.
In Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction, the academic Fred Kaplan explores the significance of mesmerism both in Dickens’s own life, and in his works. He demonstrates that there is hardly a work of fiction Dickens wrote, which is not underpinned by these convictions.
From the earliest “Sketches by Boz”, before Charles Dickens had even announced his real name to the reading public, he was aware of the research into mesmerism, and had written about “magnetism”. Instances of dreams and visions continued all through his writing life, climaxing in ”The Mystery of Edwin Drood” which may well have a more intriguing solution than any yet postulated. Dickens was fascinated by the will, and the mind’s powers, both known and unknown. When we learn that during the late 1830s and 1840s the mesmeric movement in England had intensified dramatically, these mentions all fall into place.
After many early publication troubles, Oliver Twist was the first fully blown novel to describe major mesmeric episodes in detail. It was written between 1837 and 1839, at the height of “The Mesmeric Mania” in London, and Dickens was a close friend of Dr. John Elliotson, who experimented with “animal magnetism” and was at the movement's forefront. The two were to remain staunch friends all their lives, with Dickens dying just two years later than his friend. Afterwards, it was discovered that his huge library contained 14 well-thumbed volumes on mesmerism, including one personally inscribed to him by John Elliotson.
Dr. John Elliotson was an outspoken senior physician, and Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine at the University of London. He worked out of the new University College Hospital, which is still a leading London Hospital. His demonstrations of the “mighty curative powers of animal magnetism” (or therapeutic effects of mesmerism) on patients with nervous conditions, and those we now know to be suffering from epilepsy, were astonishing. By 1849, John Elliotson was also performing surgical operations without chloroform; neither did he use ether, which had been introduced in 1847. Instead he used mesmerism to relax the patient and keep them free from pain, well before modern anaesthesia.
The first demonstration by John Elliotson on record which Dickens attended, was in January 1838. Charles Dickens’s letters show that he was regularly to view such demonstrations, despite the enormous pressure of his writing and editing work. He and his illustrator George Cruikshank were also personally invited to attend private treatments, with a small group of up to half a dozen viewers; other leading figures of the day from both the medical, scientific and the literary world. They included the writers Robert Browning, the historian John Forster, the great actor and Charles Dickens’s friend William Macready and many others, who all attended the lectures or demonstrations. William Makepeace Thackeray and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were also greatly interested in mesmerism.
The demonstrations were reported in the medical professional magazine “The Lancet”; a weekly magazine which had been created by Thomas Wakley in 1823 to deter charlatans, and to disseminate the best original medical research. “The Lancet” remains the world’s leading general medical journal. This was cutting edge research for sure, but it was in its early stages, and as with so many other theories, some aspects now seem bizarre.
John Elliotson’s basic two principles in 1838 were that:
1. Mechanical laws working in an alternate ebb and flow: “control a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the Earth and animate bodies which exists as a universally distributed and continuous fluid … of a rarified nature.”
2. Since all the properties of matter depended on this operation, its influence or force could be communicated to both animate and inanimate bodies. It was therefore possible he believed, to create a new theory about the nature of influence and power relationships between people, and also between people and the objects in their environment. If such were proved to be true, then he said “the art of healing will reach its final stage of perfection”.
Magnets were thought to be especially good conductors of the force or influence, so to distinguish it from mineral magnetism, he called it “animal magnetism”. It became known as Mesmerism after the doctor who conceptualised this first, in the 18th century: the Viennese doctor Franz Mesmer. Interestingly, it was a small circle of wealthy Jewish merchants who first paid for the private publication of an 1822 text by the German M. Loewe, which originally sparked interest in London.
Dickens read widely, including the works of Franz Mesmer. His belief in a mesmeric fluid was already established, and he had already written 2 key passages in “Oliver Twist”. In July of the previous year (1837) he wrote a long passage in chapter 9 about Oliver (view spoiler)[’s strange awareness of Fagin and his treasures (hide spoiler)]:
“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed …”
It carries on at some length, and is clearly a description of what mesmerists called “sleepwaking” (waking dreams). Dickens was to write another very similar passage almost a year later, for chapter 34 in June 1838, beginning:
“There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure … ”
This is at the point where (view spoiler)[ Oliver is reading and drowsing in a back room at the Maylie’s holiday cottage, and Fagin and Monks appear at the window. It is followed by a description of how Oliver knew exactly where he was, but also felt he was back in Fagin’s lair. The conversation was thus heard by Oliver visiting them, in a mesmeric trance, involving clairvoyance.
“It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes; and they were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them …”
(hide spoiler)] Eyes, or staring, or a strong irresistible gaze are mentioned numerous times both in “Oliver Twist” and Dickens’s other novels. Also, (view spoiler)[Monks (hide spoiler)] suffers from fits, as did most of John Elliotson’s patients. The practitioners of mesmerism themselves too were also said to sometimes writhe and foam at the mouth.
These are clearly descriptions of mesmeric trances, although retellings and dramatisation of the story simplify and distort such episodes into mere daydreaming. In an earlier chapter 28, Oliver seems to be half dreaming. Dickens mentions Oliver’s “rapid visions”: memories or partial hallucinations (view spoiler)[ on his journey to the house at Chertsey, primed for burglary (hide spoiler)], in this long paragraph:
“He seemed to be still walking between Sikes and Crackit … when he caught his own attention, as it were, by making some violent effort to save himself from falling, he found that he was talking to them. Then, he was alone with Sikes, plodding on as on the previous day; and as shadowy people passed them, he felt the robber’s grasp upon his wrist” and so on.
There are numerous instances in all the novels: Amy Dorrit, Lady Dedlock, Sydney Carton, Jenny Wren or Affery’s dreaming for instance. Fred Kaplan references literally dozens of instances, but to share them would mean using far too many spoiler tags! Once you recognise the scenarios and type of language, it is possible to find examples quite easily.
As well as his interest in animal magnetism John Elliotson also funded and became the first president of the London Phrenological society in 1824, and this is where some of the managers of the hospital began to have reservations about his theories. Earlier Charles Dickens himself had poked fun at phrenology in one of his Sketches by Boz “Our Parish”. From around 1842 the supporters of “Phreno-magnetism” or “Phrenomesmerism” were divided from the more scientific investigations; the transcendentalists versus the mesmeric scientists, and various factions began to be set up, some with a more spiritual view of reality. Dr. John Elliotson’s reputation as a scientist was solidly secure in 1837, but mesmerism was about to become deeply suspect.
Dickens now developed an abiding belief in phrenology. Ten years later, in 1847 he refused to admit one woman as an inmate to his reformatory at Urania Cottage, on the grounds of her phrenology, stating that: “she had a singularly bad head, and looked discouragingly secret and moody”. And in 1868, nearing the end of his own life and receiving news of his friend John Elliotson’s death, he still said: ”I hold phrenology, within certain limits to be true.”
Charles Dickens remained a staunch friend and believer. When “The Lancet” began to turn against mesmerism, Dickens wrote with great anger:
“When I think that every rotten-hearted pander who has been beaten, kicked and rolled in the kennel yet struts it in the Editorial We once a week - every vagabond that a man’s gorge must rise at—every live emetic in that nauseous drugshop the Press—can have his fling at such men [Elliotson] and call them knaves and fools and thieves, I grow so vicious that with bearing hard upon my pen, I break the nib down and with keeping my teeth set, make my jaw ache.”
At 25 Charles Dickens was a very angry young man indeed!
However the terminology was changing, along with the discoveries. Gradually the concept of a mesmeric “fluid” began to be set aside, as was the clairvoyance aspect, and the power called “animal magnetism” was seen to be within the person, thus paving the way for the definition “hypnotism”.
Seventy years after the concept had first been suggested, it was established that there was no invisible all-pervasive fluid or force. Any metaphorical language was abandoned, but mesmeric effects were agreed to be effective. The observed results were seen to be due to powerful imaginations working in congruence; mental forces not separate from the mind. What the mesmeric operator did to their subject had a new name. It was called “hypnosis”, a term invented by the Scottish surgeon James Braid, and it was seen that such “hypnosis” could indeed play an important role as a curative agent. Modern science now accepts part, but not the whole idea of animal magnetism. Most of the aspects have been debunked by the establishment, but we are left with hypnotism, which is established as a genuine therapeutic tool, as John Elliotson maintained—but without the strange “fluid”—and addition of magnets or mirrors to strengthen the bond (although possibly some hypnotists choose to use these).
Charles Dickens himself practised mesmerism both as entertainment and therapeutically. His first subject was his wife Catherine, and also his friend John Forster. Dickens became adept as a mesmeriser, most notably in 1844 with a Madame Augusta de la Rue. She suffered from extreme anxiety, spasms, hallucinations and strange thoughts in which she spoke of being pursued by a “phantom”. She improved greatly after a month, although Dickens was to treat her on a daily basis for a long time. Chapter 4 records in great detail the interdependence between the de la Rues and Dickens, and also how jealous Catherine became of the time her husband would spend with Mme. de la Rue. He would rush to be with his patient, and over time their bond became so close that Dickens sometimes mesmerised her remotely.
Once, Dickens records, he was travelling inside a coach, fully absorbed in mesmerising Mme. de la Rue remotely by prior arrangement, as she was in a different country. But he found that he had mesmerised Catherine, who was seated outside, on top of the coach, and dropped her muff. When he investigated, she was in a trance. (I cannot explain this, but then neither can I explain why if I stare at the back of someone’s head they turn around and look at me!)
Charles Dickens firmly believed that this procedure would help relieve pain, and relax the patient. He helped his friend and illustrator John Leech (the illustrator of “A Christmas Carol” six years before) in 1849, after a bad fall. The accident had left the artist with concussion-like symptoms which would not disappear, despite all the best efforts of his doctors. He was in a great deal of pain and unable to rest. Dickens rushed to help his friend, and within a few days John Leech’s condition had improved. Others of his “patients” were also notable figures, and he gained quite a reputation, half-joking once that he could make a reasonable living from this practice alone.
There are two more key words in the terminology of mesmerism, “will” and “willpower”. It was thought that operators fed into the mesmeric fluid in the universe, and that their own strength of will was the conduit. Dickens himself was possessed of a strong will, and reports of his public readings frequently referred to his ”hypnotic gaze”. In his fiction, we often find his villains have an inordinately strong will, and a commanding or mesmeric gaze. Fagin has this, as does Quilp, and strong characters such as Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade, Mr. Tulkinghorn, John Jasper and others, all have this penetrating gaze.
Dickens’s heroes and heroines also use their mesmeric powers. They start neutrally, but succeed when they discover their will to be energetic, and use that energy for beneficial purposes. Sometimes they will be overcome by a sudden surge of energy, and not know where it has come from. Their choice is whether to use this new found power for good or evil. His villains on the other hand, use their will for self-interest. There are frequent instances in the text detailed by Fred Kaplan, in the chapters “The Discovery of Self”, “The Past Illuminated” and “The Sources of Evil”. Another chapter, “The Sexuality of Power” goes into the reasons why mesmerism fell into disrepute in the scientific community. By and large the practitioners were middle-aged men, and the patients were often young girls. There were some scandalous cases of sexual misdemeanours by fraudulant doctors, and thus the press also dismissed all those who practised with genuine intentions of healing, as depraved charlatans.
Prior to this, Dr. John Elliotson had made many ongoing investigations on two sisters called Elizabeth and Jane O’key, who were long-term patients at the University College Hospital in London. The experiments were often reported in “The Lancet”, while his reputation held good. They led Dickens to believe that the mesmeric fluid flowed very strongly between blood relatives. In most of Dickens’s novels we have examples of this: many brothers and sisters, twins, lookalikes, or disguises, or doppelgängers, and it is noticeable that often their actions seem uncanny or inexplicable in some places.
Dickens believed the current scientific theory at the time: that in mesmeric trance the order of human experience is distinctly different from that of ordinary consciousness. But there were believed to be varied possibilities of reaction from instance to instance, and from subject to subject. Dickens thought that this served his needs as a novelist perfectly; the possibilities seemed endless! He need not feel his credibility questionable if he changed the details from instance to instance, as the particular fictional situation demanded. This is what he is describing with the kind of sleep which “frees the mind and enables it to ramble at its pleasure” and the “mighty powers bounding from the earth, and a consciousness of all that is going on about us”. In this mesmeric state, he thought, one is in a receptive state of consciousness in which communication can be effected through means other than physical organs. Sometimes, such as in Oliver Twist(view spoiler)[ with Oliver’s sleepwaking state, aware of Fagin and his treasures (hide spoiler)]), it is an instance of double consciousness, but sometimes the physical location is immaterial, such as when Monks says (view spoiler)[he would know Oliver in any circumstances, “even if you buried him fifty feet deep”. (hide spoiler)] Fred Kaplan argues that this is not mere hyperbole, but another aspect of mesmerism.
Charles Dickens’s novels are all peppered with his mesmeric beliefs, interpreted variously as esoteric, spiritual, gothic or allegorical. Also characters demonstrate the mesmeric power of their will in every story. Often we see characters overcome by the strength of another character, such as in “Our Mutual Friend”(view spoiler)[ Bradley Headstone is driven mad by Lizzie Hexam’s hypnotic quality, whereas the dilettante Eugene Wrayburn is energised and given a sense of purpose by her mesmeric power (hide spoiler)]. This is his final completed novel and the mesmeric beliefs are still there, waiting to reach their climax in the extraordinary “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. He had refined the use of them in fiction to an exceptional degree. Clairvoyance is part of many strange experiences which readers sometimes categorise (or even dismiss) as gothic, but almost certainly have Dickens’s belief in mesmerism at their root. Clairvoyance and “the ability to project one’s mind to another time and place” was at this time believed by some to be another aspect of mesmerism.
A broad view of mesmerism at the time is intrinsic to a full understanding of some of the most baffling passages in Charles Dickens’s writing, and Fred Kaplan’s book, although quite hard to obtain, presents a compelling case....more
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