“David Copperfield” (post 3) by Charles Dickens: Dickens's use of the word “scattered” associates David with the multiple personality in Edwin Drood

My first post in 2013 (search “Dickens” in this blog) noted that Dickens used the word “scattered” to describe the mind of three of his characters: John Jasper, the multiple personality character in Edwin Drood; Pip in Great Expectations, and David in David Copperfield.

2013 post: At the beginning of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, there are various ways that Dickens foreshadows the revelation that John Jasper had a split personality; for example, Jasper switches back and forth between two contradictory sets of attitudes. Another foreshadowing is Dickens’s description of Jasper as having a “scattered consciousness,” which makes it noteworthy that in David Copperfield, David is described at one point as having “scattered senses,” and in Great Expectations, Pip is described as having “scattered wits.” Since Dickens used a “scattered” mind to foreshadow a character with a split personality, this implies that not only Jasper, but also Dickens’s alter egos David and Pip were, in Dickens’s view, dissociative.

David Copperfield: “For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point…” (1, p. 190)

 

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004.