Often underrated and woefully under-anthologized, the following story – or more accurately, two stories couched within a frame narrative (we will comment on each, individually) – is perhaps one of Dickens’ most complex and thematically dark tales. Often misunderstood and typically criticized for its “off-kilter” plot, “To be Read at Dusk” is an intricate study in dualism, repression, fate, and psychological influences on personal identity. Dickens uses the frame narrative – which is disarming despite its truly unsettling nature – to commence a conversation on the nature of reality, the source of identity, and the pull of the unconscious – those shadowy things which we avoid or try to deny – on the conscious – the ostensible basis of human identity. In the three stories which he intertwines, Dickens will attempt to cause you to question the power of nurture over nature, of effort over fate, and of self over psychology. And then he will turn the tables again.
By far his most mysterious ghost story, “To Be Read at Dusk” requires intense attention and a mind for interpreting literature. It is, in some respects, a semiotic riddle which focuses on the definition of a ghost, and decides that the definition is not clean cut. Deeply psychological, it ponders the relationship between the conscious and unconscious, and posits that those things which are not seen (or said, or done, or shown) are no less real than those which are apparent – a very haunting concept for the repressed, idealistic Victorians who strove to discipline themselves into goodness.
The tale is a framework settled around two stories: a group of envoys meet at an Alpine lodge under the shadow of a mountain whose snows are known to cover dozens of bodies. An eavesdropper listens to them talk of ghosts and of things which are not quite ghosts: of a refined lady who nightmares of a dark stranger who will take her from her loving husband, and of the moment when the husband befriends a man identical to the abductor in her dream, and of her disturbing disappearance; they tell also of two twins who agree to appear to each other at the moment of death, and of a shocking reverse in their expectations. But it is the eavesdropper himself, perhaps, who will have a ghost story to tell by the time he turns around when the speaking suddenly stops.
II.
In one of the very few critiques written about “To Be Read at Dusk,” Ruth Glancy notes that it has:
“been almost entirely neglected since its first publication… This neglect is unfortunate, because although the little piece has the failings common to much of the fiction written for popular journals, it is also a recognizably Dickensian story, dealing very simply with some of the central issues of his better-known works, in particular the workings of the mind under unusual conditions.”
I will take this a step farther and say that the story’s neglect has been a damn shame and that it is one of the richest ghost stories Dickens every authored – a little masterpiece – and (in my estimation) just one step below “The Signal-Man” in terms of its creepiness and disquieting, modern vibes. The greatest of the few essays (which I will be liberally quoting) on this little-discussed story was written by Kimberly Jackson, who argues that the entire story is built upon the premise of defining an essence through comparison (in short, it is one big simile – a linguistic puzzle of gradual manifestation through juxtaposition). She argues that: “he has made a ghost story of language itself, one which disavows its own nature – ‘Ghosts! There are no ghosts here!’ – even as it spins its macabre tales.”
Beginning with the narrator’s comparison of the snowy mountaintops to spilt wine, which is then compared to spilt blood, Dickens is attempting to use comparative language to direct our attention to a reality (the mountain, though beautiful, is the gravesite of dozens of unnoticed, frozen corpses buried under its loveliness) through comparison.
Likewise, the five couriers attempt to define what a ghost is by telling stories which never quite tell of a conventional ghost, though they touch upon the spirit of – well – a spirit: “the five couriers embark on a verbal mission to complete the simile, to draw out and name the hidden element they are attempting to describe. To do this they must find a name for these phenomena that are like ghosts, but are not ghosts.” The German begins this process with a telling example about how when you pass several strangers in a crowd who remind you of an old friend, you “begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you’ll meet [him].” As Jackson points out:
“This example serves as a preface to the two tales that follow, one about an English bride who dreams of the likeness of a dark man who eventually materializes and carries her away, and the other about a set of twins, one of which sends his phantom to warn the other of his impending death. All describe phenomena of likeness, repeated likenesses which lead to some fateful meeting with the subject of the likeness. In each of the two tales, as in the very first simile (sun like wine), the likeness contains the palpable presence of death and serves as further evidence of the violence involved in this commonly
uncommon linguistic act.”
III.
The first story could easily be referred to as "The Stolen Bride" or "Abducted by the Shadow Man," and it remains a classic of psychological horror[1]. A tale of repression and split identities – light and darkness, transparency and shadow, Super-Ego and Id – it studies the impossibility of maintaining their separation, and the potentially violent coup that one can have when supressed by the other. Concerning this, the most famous section of the tale, Jackson observes:
“Eventually, the likeness presents itself as a guest at the palace. The dark man’s name is Dellombra (of/from the shadow), and indeed he is a shadow of the bride, whose name, appropriately, is Clara [meaning ‘light’]. She is the light part of the simile, while he is the dark and deadly implicit side… It is not surprising that such an internal demon would manifest itself as a character all its own in Dickens’ fictional representation of it. One need only think of Frankenstein’s monster or the later Edward Hyde. Indeed, Dellombra is very much like Frankenstein’s monster, as he, too, is the male demon of a female character, like the monster is ultimately to Mary Shelley.”
When she is abducted (or they run off together), her existential simile is fatefully completed, and she disappears entirely.
The second tale, concerning James and John, the telepathic twins, is a classic story of doomed doubles. Tales of twins are common throughout literature, and are well-represented in horror, especially by the Doppelgänger[2], an apparition that – whether physical or psychical – represents the split nature of humanity. The story that follows, while not nearly as elegant as the first, is perhaps more structurally complicated; it concerns the nature of identity – is it material or is it spiritual? – and the messy, unclear borderlands between Self and Other, between Haunter and Haunted. Once again, the story comes to its climax once a similarity (the appearance of John’s phantom, visiting James, and dressed exactly like him) which heralds the realization of a difficult truth. When the uncomfortable simile is acknowledged, the brutal revelation is shortly coming. Jackson notes:
“James must admit that he has seen the phantom, which is the likeness not only of his brother but also, of course, of himself. James’ fear of possible madness is nothing compared to this violent double severance: on the one hand, from his twin, and on the other, from his own image mirrored in his twin’s phantom… Thus, in both of the internal tales, as in the frame narrative, it is a question of disproving the denial of a violent similitude.”
IV.
But the greatest twist is the mysterious ending – one which perplexes and frustrates many readers, but one which I find gorgeously unsettling: the speakers on whom the narrator has been eavesdropping vanish mysteriously. They are ghosts themselves, perhaps even the ghosts of the corpses buried under the snow of the mountaintop. And this was foreshadowed by their very conversation when the German used the simile about encountering a friend after repeatedly seeing his likeness. Eventually, the narrator met some ghosts. Jackson concludes:
“The ghostly nature of the couriers thus turns out to be another of these instances of similitude which hide a silenced, implied element within. While a ghost appears after its subject’s death, and usually emerges, in literature, to realign a “time out of joint,” the types of similitude narrated by the couriers indicate the splitting of the subject from its likeness prior to death. Not only prior to death, but prior to the encounter with the subject of the likeness itself, the simile is a dangerous presence that contains an awful prescience. The fact that the narrators themselves are victims of this same operation highlights the self-reflexivity of the text. As the title suggests, the couriers are as much passively narrated by their own tales as they are actively telling them.”
And now (with a parting thanks to Jackson for her brilliant assessment) for my own brief observations. “To Be Read at Dusk” is a powerhouse of proto-Freudian literature, exploring the uneasy – often volatile – relationship between the conscious and unconscious (the occupied mind and its repressed anxieties) interwoven amongst uneasy meditations on destiny, desire, and free will. Fate and identity, Dickens suggests, are under the sway of the unconscious, and regardless of our breeding, our higher aspirations, or our (conscious) desires, reality cannot be altered to fit the needs of the conscience or society.
After recognizing her sinister counterpart in Dellombra, Clara is not able to avoid her obliterating synthesis with her dark side when they confront each other alone. After recognizing himself in his brother’s phantom form, James is not able to deny John’s doom when they confront each other in reality. After recognizing the similitude between the wine-dark alpenglow and the bloodshed that their solemn beauty hides, the couriers are not able to continue their ghostly farce when they confront the (implied) cause of their deaths. Kind recognizes kind, especially when tantalized with successive impressions of their own suppressed anxieties. As in “The Signal-Man” and “The Trial by Murder,” Dickens uses the ghost story as a vehicle for illuminating the shadowy territories between unconscious knowledge and conscious denial.
[1] This tale is a perfect example of the Demon Lover genre – the story of a fated supernatural abduction; it was employed earlier by J. W. von Goethe in “The Erlking” and by Fitz-James O’Brien in “The Demon of the Gibbet.” Le Fanu would use the theme in “Schalken the Painter” and “Ultor de Lacy,” and this very story would later serve to inspire the classic supernatural works of Rhoda Broughton (“The Man with the Nose”) and E. F. Benson (“The Face”).
[2] Algernon Blackwood (“The Terror of the Twins”), Poe (“William Wilson,” “…House of Usher”), and Robert Louis Stevenson (“Markheim,” “…Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”) are just a few of the writers who have employed this motif