Damien Kane: The Macabre Mind of Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol is arguably one of the most famous pieces of ghost fiction in literature, but not many people understand the influence of the supernatural over the works of Charles Dickens, and his use of the macabre in his everyday writing.

For anybody who has avoided Dickens for the mere fact they think his novels are ‘classic literature’ - please, don’t be fooled. I thought the same when I was at school and I never understood with such ‘classics’ why we are taught to regurgitate opinions that have been handed down for generations (there’s more about this in my previous article 'Horror and I'.

If you have never read Dickens’s ghost stories, you’re in for a huge surprise. The first ghost short story I read of his was called ‘Captain Murder and the Devil’s Bargain’. To this day, the storyline stays with me. There is a brilliance to his work that still shines 150 years later.

There are two parts to this story. The first is about Captain Murder who takes brides and chops off their heads, makes a pie and eats them. The second describes the devil’s role in the Chips family history, buying their soul with goods that include a talking rat. Dickens includes a small rhyme from the devil that impresses upon the reader that, as sure as the sun sets, so will he have the latest in the Chips family.

When reading Dickens’s ghost stories, one finds there is no lethargy to the characters or the plot. Many stories carry a deal of repetitive behaviour which influences the story long after it has been read, including the repetitive nature of both Captain Murder and the devil in the above discussion. Another example of his repetitive authority are the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.

I don’t see it as my role here to discuss in detail the works of Dickens. There are volumes of the stuff on the internet and in textbooks around the world. My role here is to simply identify the impact of horror on Dickens, and the impact of that experience in his writings. I want you to consider that the depths of Dickens’s writing in the macabre is not as well documented as it should be – not only in short stories, but also in his novels.

His characters give us good examples of the use of the horror genre. In David Copperfield, you will identify with names such as Mr Murdstone (murder – stone) and Mr Micawer (macabre); Magwitch in Great Expectations and Mr Cripples in Little Dorrit. The themes of his literature are not usually horrific but are found rather in the carpentry of his writing. I further consider his literature becomes darker later in his career. Many of Dickens’s villains are interwoven with the work of the macabre, melodrama and stereotypes although only the latter two of these are studied in detail.

Dickens had many influences in his life that led him down the path of the macabre. One of the most notable was his nurse maid Mary (‘Mercy’) Weller who used to tell him ghost stories and had a notable impact on his life. Dickens also endured a great deal of hardship in his life that forged the way his novels were written. It is this hardship which gives his writing power.

In Oliver Twist and Bleak House, there are resonances that typify his personal experiences of trauma and opinions of the vulgarity of life which taught him through many bitter experiences. One of his most popular short stories, ‘The Signalman’, appeared a year after he was involved in a major train crash in Kent, England, and he personalized the story by placing it in first person point of view. There are various resources on the internet to read the story for free, including this one at Page by Page Books.

I would like to finish this brief article by indicating that Dickens never completed his final novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’. An apt title, considering that the ending of the novel will be, and will always be, a mystery unto itself. Considering the paranormal flavour to his works, this final novel proved to be a very apt title!

There are incalculable sources on the internet for sources on Dickens. I have considered many of them and come up with a short list I hope you will find valuable:

Read about Charles Dickens on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens