Quote:
Originally Posted by Victoria
It’s an interesting question. “Mystery” may have been chosen by the publisher to increase public interest. (According to Wikipedia, Dickens died on June 9, 1870; the first of 6 instalments was published in April 1870, following a stroke; however his health was already precarious before the first release. )
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Madden in his interesting introduction to his continuation of the novel does make reference to the fact that all the evidence is pointing to Edwin’s murder by Jasper. But there is still a mystery. He goes on to say:
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” is not an early whodunit, competing with the writing of Dickens’ colleague Wilkie Collins, but a novel about the disappearance and death of Drood, presumably to include how Jasper managed to carry it out, how he was discovered and punished, and how these circumstances affected both him and the other dramatis personae. As Dickens’ daughter Katey reminds us, her father “was quite as deeply fascinated and absorbed in the study of the criminal Jasper, as in the dark and sinister crime that has given the book its title”.
So what deeper impulses, fantasies, and delusions motivated him? He “loves” Rosa Bud—but why and how? What in his background drew him to opium and why the hatred of the old woman who supplies him?
Further, I think Dickens is writing at the top of his form and had he lived I suspect that
Drood would have been a masterpiece. The characters are vividly created and memorable. Personally, I very much like Crisparkle and see him as a foil to the poisonous Jasper— who is also unforgettable. I’m not happy about the name, “Rosa Bud” and she verges on being one of Dickens’s appalling “good girls”. But she has some common sense and initiates the ending of the engagement to Drood. And I suspect that she would not have been the major love interest in the conclusion.
I do look forward to the Madden continuation.