The Rhetoric of Imperial Gothic in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"
The Rhetoric of Imperial Gothic in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"

Author(s): Magdalena Pypeć
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Dickens; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; imperial Gothic; imperialism; atavism
Summary/Abstract: Discussed alongside its cultural context - the infamous Opium Wars with China, the increasing unrest in British colonies and eugenic concerns involving race - Dickens’s unfinished novel reflects his growing uneasiness about the righteousness of British imperial hegemony and deep-rooted fears of due retribution for imperial sins such as violence, exploitation or controversial spoils of imperial conquests. The aim of the article is to examine "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" as a forerunner of the imperial Gothic genre, with its themes of psychic regression, spectres of atavism, reverse colonisation, going native and moral and spiritual corruption of the coloniser. Questioning British expansive imperialist policies as it does, the novel foreshadows the tropes which later novelists like Henry Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle or Joseph Conrad explored more fully in their writing.

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