Trauma, Memory And Railway Disaster: A Christmas Carol, And Oliver Twist

Not very long ago and not very far away, Queen Victoria was launching Great Britain into what would later be known as the Victorian era; a time of creativity, industrial boom, and the romanticizing of the ever-looming presence of death. Yes, it seemed that Victorians began an era that seemed to focus on their fascination with death, ghosts, and other typically gothic themes. Many examples of these elements can be seen through the work of the artists and authors of the time. One such author, Charles Dickens, wrote many novels during his life that became well known to the public and earned him fame in his life; he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and Oliver Twist just to name a few. Many of his stories dealt with ghosts and his
according to Trauma, Memory, and Railway Disaster: The Dickensian Connection by Jill L. Matus, Dickens himself narrowly escaped death on trains a number of times. The incident most relevant to this story in particular took place “in 1865 [when] Charles Dickens narrowly escaped death when the train on which he was traveling… jumped a gap in the line… Only one of the first-class carriages escaped the plunge [off the bridge], coupled fast to the second-class carriage in front.” (Matus, 413) Following this incident he understandably developed what we would recognize today as trauma. The story of “The Signal-Man” was published only one year following this incident and it is hard to ignore the ties between the death Dickens narrowly escaped and the death that took the signal-man. As Matus points out, dickens’ writing of the signal-man’s character is very much in line with how he would write himself since “to be traumatized is arguably to be haunted, to be living a ghost story.” (Matus, 428) It also brought to light that Dickens was living in a time when railway accidents were commonplace and he also lived near a station very similar to the one described in the signalman, thus furthering the parallels between himself and this character. However, Matus tells us that the most compelling aspect of trauma to which the story gives voice is the feeling of powerlessness in the survivor” and how the narrator’s lingering sense of impending doom is another connection to Dickens himself. (Matus, 428) The point one can draw from Matus’ research of this short story and its author is that the spectrality present in the narrative is merely a stand-in for the real trauma from which Dickens was