“You must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions”: Imprisonment, Sensorial Isolation, and Altered Mental States in A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Oliver Twist

Kris Siefken
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Abstract

He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair. --Charles Dickens, American Notes 113 This quotation, taken from Charles Dickens's reflections on Philadelphia's Eastern Penitentiary, illustrates this article's intention to focus on Dickens's handling of solitary confinement imprisonment and on how the use of coercive sensorial isolation can create an altered state in the psychology of individuals. In exploring how the experience of being "buried alive" with its "torturing anxieties" may change an individual's mental state, this article explores Dickens's position as to whether such persons, having been "changed by the death they died" during imprisonment, can ever be truly "recalled to life," or whether they are left permanently scarred by the experience, trapped between two states, like "a Spirit moving among mortals" (A Tale 265, 17, 284). In the process, this article interrogates the impact enforced solitude has on the experience of characters' relationships to their spatial environments (how an individual's state of mind might become physically situated) and the way in which Dickens's representation of the effects of forced isolation specifically signposts ways in which the reader can or should interpret these states of mind. Doing so necessarily requires arguing against a long-established critical tradition suggesting that Dickens lacked psychological insight: an absent psychology school of thought that has its roots among Dickens's contemporaries and whose on-going influence could still be seen echoed in the commentaries around the Dickens Bicentenary three years ago. (1) One of the best-known examples of this criticism would be George Eliot's comment: We have one great novelist [Dickens] who is gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could give us their psychological character ... with the same truth as their idiom and manner, his books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. (55, my emphasis). Though one of the most quoted of such critiques, Eliot's comment is hardly unique, and when we note that such critics have included Mark Twain, Henry James, G. S. Fraser, and George Henry Lewes, it is easy to see why this perception gained such strong purchase. One key theme that runs through this school of thought is an Eliotian sense of Dickens's dwelling only on the "external traits" of his characters. Fellow novelist Mrs. Oliphant, writing in 1871, stated that "[Dickens's] instinct leads him to keep on the surface," and comparing Eliot and Dickens in 1883, Nathan Sheppard suggested that "[while] Dickens portrays the behaviour, George Eliot dissects the motive for the behaviour" (678; 8). The influence of this "external traits" perception can still be felt in modern analysis, such as when Andrew Sanders describes Dickens's character-building as being "from the outside inwards"--although crucially Sanders does allow for a movement toward an interior (77). In his essay "Performing Character," Malcolm Andrews eloquently sums up this absent psychology school as holding the position that "having squandered so much on externals [Dickens] either cannot or will not supply much in the way of an interior life [for his characters]" (72). This article argues against the absent psychology school of thought, demonstrating that significant psychological insight into representing and interpreting nineteenth-century states of minds is present in Dickens's works. In doing so, it refutes George Henry Lewes's (author of Problems of Life and Mind) critique that Dickens's "unreal figures" are "wooden, and run on wheels" and his assertion that "one is reminded of the frogs whose brain have been taken out for physiological purposes," leaving "not characters, but . …
《双城记》、《美国笔记》和《雾都孤儿》中的监禁、感官隔离和精神状态改变:“你必须是一个孤独的囚犯才能理解这些令人困惑的区别”
他是个被活埋的人;在漫长的岁月中被挖掘出来;与此同时,除了折磨人的焦虑和可怕的绝望,一切都死光了。这句话摘自查尔斯·狄更斯对费城东部监狱的反思,说明了本文的意图,即关注狄更斯对单独监禁的处理,以及强制性感官隔离的使用如何在个人心理上创造一种改变的状态。在探索“被活埋”的经历及其“折磨人的焦虑”如何改变一个人的精神状态时,本文探讨了狄更斯的立场,即这些人在监禁期间“因死亡而改变”,是否能够真正“复活”,或者他们是否被这一经历永久地留下了伤疤,困在两种状态之间,就像“一个在凡人中移动的灵魂”(a Tale 265, 17,284)。在此过程中,本文探讨了强制孤独对人物与空间环境之间关系的影响(一个人的精神状态如何成为物理位置),以及狄更斯对强制隔离影响的表现方式,特别是读者可以或应该解释这些精神状态的方式。要做到这一点,就必须反驳长期以来认为狄更斯缺乏心理学洞察力的批评传统:一个缺失的心理学流派的思想,其根源在于狄更斯同时代的人,其持续的影响在三年前狄更斯200周年纪念前后的评论中仍然可以看到回响。(1)这种批评的一个最著名的例子是乔治·艾略特的评论:我们有一位伟大的小说家[狄更斯],他具有天赋的最大力量来描绘我们城镇人口的外部特征;如果他能告诉我们他们的心理特征……他的书将是艺术对唤醒社会同情心所作的最大贡献,就像它们的习语和方式一样。(55,我的重点)。虽然艾略特的评论是这些评论中被引用最多的,但他的评论并不是唯一的,当我们注意到这些评论家包括马克·吐温、亨利·詹姆斯、g·s·弗雷泽和乔治·亨利·刘易斯时,就很容易明白为什么这种看法得到了如此强烈的支持。贯穿这一派思想的一个关键主题,是一种艾略特式的感觉,即狄更斯只关注人物的“外在特征”。同为小说家的奥利芬特夫人在1871年写道,“(狄更斯的)本能使他停留在表面上”。1883年,内森·谢泼德将艾略特和狄更斯进行了比较,认为“(当)狄更斯描绘行为时,乔治·艾略特剖析了行为的动机”(678;这种“外在特征”感知的影响在现代分析中仍然可以感受到,比如安德鲁·桑德斯(Andrew Sanders)将狄更斯的人物塑造描述为“由外而内”——尽管至关重要的是,桑德斯确实允许向内移动(77)。马尔科姆·安德鲁斯(Malcolm Andrews)在他的文章《表演角色》(Performing Character)中雄辩地总结了这一缺席的心理学流派,认为“(狄更斯)在外表上挥霍了这么多,既不能也不会(为他的人物)提供太多的内在生活”(72)。本文反对心理学学派的缺席,论证了狄更斯作品中对19世纪心理状态的表现和解释具有重要的心理学洞察力。这样做,它驳斥了乔治·亨利·刘易斯(《生命与心灵问题》的作者)的批评,他批评狄更斯的“虚幻人物”是“木头的,在轮子上奔跑”,并断言“让人想起青蛙,它们的大脑为了生理目的被取出来了”,留下的“不是人物,而是动物”。...
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