28
DREAMS IN DICKENS
Claire Slagter
If you like literature, my dear:
don't study it. Don't study it.
Just read it.
Saul Bellow
1. INTRODUCTION
If what is said in The Talmud is true - that dreams which have not
been interpreted are like letters which have not been opened^ - then it
certainly seems a worthwhile subject for a paper to consider the use of
dreams in English literature. It is very interesting to see how usage
of the dream in literature develops and changes throughout the centuries
which is why I have decided to devote one chapter to a short survey of
dream literature. It is bound to be incomplete, yet I consider it
necessary to explore some examples of medieval and classical notions of
the dream and how the dream was used in literature, in order to show
the subsequent development into the subject of my paper.
Having chosen an author as prolific as Charles Dickens was, it seems
inevitable that my chapter on the two novels I have selected, David
Copperfield and Great Expectations, will serve only as an appetizer
for further research. My reason for choosing the novels David Copperfield
and Great Expectations is that they are both written in the first person
singular and therefore seem to give the most reliable information on the
inner life and thoughts of the hero.
In these novels I have come across various types of dreams, like the
real dream which occurs during sleep and is defined by the Concise Oxford
2
Dictionary as a vision, a series of pictures or events, presented to
a sleeping person"; a daydream, a dream as an illusion to replace reality,
and according to Freud these are wishdreams that only differ from nightly
wishdreams in that they take place during the day"^ and dreams as a figure
of speech which are beyond the scope of this paper. When Aunt Betsey cries
out in Chaper 54 of David Copperfield: "I believe he dreams in letters!"
I consider this is not interesting enough for this paper as these words
