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Originally Posted by gmw
I did enjoy the links Catlady posted, and I particularly liked the droodinquiry link from Bookpossum, above. Not only are the caricatures neatly done, there is the "Witness Statement" from Kate Peruginni (Dickens' daughter).
This sounds like Dickens to me. I wonder if he had a plan to redeem Jasper in some way, if not in the story then perhaps in the reader's understanding of the character.
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I agree that the idea of a character study of Jasper does fit Dickens. The book starts out rather dark in the opium den. Much of the early focus is on Jasper. Then he reacts more strongly to news that Edwin and Rosa had broken off their engagement than he does to Edwin’s death. Maybe the reaction was because he learns the murder was unnecessary if its motive was that he wanted Rosa for himself. Then to say that Dickens intended to end it in a prison cell in reflection, like one of his friends asserts, seems appropriate.
From Wikipedia, according to his friend and biographer John Forster:
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The story, I learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him.
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