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Charles Dickens and G. K. Chesterton – Admiration in Many Forms
Ist Teil von
Dickens quarterly, 2012-12, Vol.29 (4), p.350-362
Ort / Verlag
Oxford: The Dickens Society
Erscheinungsjahr
2012
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Literature Online (LION eBooks)
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Mr. Pickwick had died in Hanwell." Since the suggestion that Mr. Pickwick might have expired in the notorious Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum is not one readers can take seriously, it is equally incredulous that anybody might choose to kill Sir Armstrong. The person who involuntarily kills Sir Armstrong is his loving daughter who, misunderstanding the apparently violent scene, slashes the rope her fiancé had attached to Sir Armstrong to save him when he threatened to jump and so causes him to crash through the window to his death. [...]Chesterton creates another paradox, this time based on the theatrical convention: there are too many tools of death for just one murder. Since the pantomimic mode incorporates the most absurd situations, Flambeau as the Harlequin neatly gets rid of the real policeman, whom everybody believes to be Florian dressed up as a representative of law and order: Flambeau is the star in the criminal world, but by being caught red-handed, he becomes a fallen star. Since in accordance with the conventions of pantomime, Grimaldi's Harlequinade plays and Dickens's fictional world, all must end well, so in Chesterton's story no one suffers any harm: the policeman is not dead, the jewels are not stolen and eventually the thief will turn into a decent man.