This post was contributed by Céleste Callen, a PhD student at The University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research focuses on time and subjective temporal experience in Dickens’s fiction, by reading his fiction through the lens of Henri Bergson’s philosophy. She can be found on Twitter at @CallenCeleste or by email at C.E.Callen@sms.ed.ac.uk.

As Adelene Buckland notes, “At the symbolic centre of every Dickens novel is the roaring fire of a domestic hearth” (1). The symbolic power of the fireside goes beyond the oral tradition of the fireside tale that his Christmas books represent. Dickens brings the fireside into his fictional worlds, as material spaces in which characters explore their immaterial and intangible subjective world. It is when characters look into the flames that images of the past resurface and where they reflect about the future. Anne Sullivan defines the concept of fire-gazing as “a form of flame-based reverie that typically involves a solitary viewer who perceives animated, moving images dissolving into and out of view in a wood or coal fire” (1). More particularly, the fire acts as a mirrored inner world; the act of looking into the fire illustrates externally, and locates materially, what Dickens’s characters experience internally. In A Christmas Carol (1843) Scrooge’s small fire contrasts with the comparatively warm glow of a generous hearth, emphasising the fire as a symbol of reassurance and generosity. In Great Expectations (1860), Pip too “sat down before the fire and gazed at the coals” (GE 141). Although these are far from being the only instances in which characters’ minds wander while looking at the fire, I will be focusing on passages from The Haunted Man (1848), Dombey and Son (1848), David Copperfield (1849-50), Hard Times (1854) and Our Mutual Friend (1865).

In The Haunted Man, Professor Redlaw is haunted by the memories of his past and Dickens associates a particular place, and a particular time, for these haunting memories to resurface. The “shadows” are released at “twilight:”

When they stole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, are always wandering. (THM 250)

The past comes to life in this in-between world between past and present, memory and reality; the subjective world in which memories of the past intertwine with the present, a perpetual fusion of what is and what could be.

Figure 1: “Redlaw and the Phantom,” Illustration by John Leech for The Haunted Man, 1848. Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham, https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/haunted/6.html

It is no coincidence that Redlaw is “gazing at the fire” when these shadows come and go: the fire “rose and fell, the shadows went and came. When he took no heed of them, with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let them go, looked fixedly at the fire” (THM 250). A ghostly figure appears as “an awful likeness of himself” that mirrors his own posture: “As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back, close above him” (THM 263-264). This phantom represents Redlaw’s haunting memories which: “‘show themselves in the fire, in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving years” (THM 270). Like music, the wind, or the stillness of nighttime, the fire represents a privileged place where one can access one’s subjective inner world, where past, present and future intertwine. For Redlaw, gazing into the fire forces him to confront the images of the past that he would rather repress, and so the fire becomes the repository for that which is hidden but never disappears; the fire, then, is the representation of the past memories that are continuously intertwined with, and a part of, the ongoing present moment.

In Dombey and Son, Florence is waiting for Edith when her agitated thoughts overwhelm her:

She paced her own room, […] listened to the wind blowing and the rain falling, sat down and watched the faces in the fire, got up and watched the moon flying like a storm-driven ship through the sea of clouds. (DaS 663)

As for Redlaw in The Haunted Man, Florence’s subjectivity is associated with the sound of the wind, or the fire. Similarly, when Mr Dombey and his son Paul find themselves “gazing at the blaze,” Paul is described as “entertaining Heavens knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and wandering speculations” (DaS 91). Looking at the fire prompts Paul to ask questions before “looking at the fire again, as though the fire had been his adviser and prompter” (DaS 92). Although these characters seem to be “looking for an explanation in the fire,” it is a subjective journey that takes place in their own minds (DaS 93). Young Paul represents the innocence and curiosity of childhood, and looking into the fire here provides him with an escape from his physical fragility, by looking for answers inwardly. For Florence, the subjective journey she embarks on through fire gazing represents the deep-rooted need for a response, a dialogue and sincere communication that she is looking for, and which is lacking in her relationship with her father.

As David narrates the tale of his birth at the beginning of David Copperfield, he pictures his mother “sitting by the fire” while reflecting on her child’s future:

My mother was sitting by the fire, […] desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer up-stairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, […] very timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her. (DC 3)

The past, present and future intertwine in this passage, just like memory and reality; although a physically static and immovable image by the fire, his mother is mentally wandering in thought. Later in the novel, when David returns home to find his mother had given birth to a new baby, it is when he looks into the fire that his painful experience with the Murdstones resurfaces:

While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire got low […]. (DC 96)

Looking into the fire is an escape to the subjective world where one can attempt to make sense of reality. David sits down “by the fire” when reflecting on Dora’s death; it is the “image of the dear child” rising from “the sea of [his] remembrance” that resurfaces as he wonders about what would have been (DC 658). It becomes clear that looking at the fire influences the passage of time, as David wanders in subjective reflection: “How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s old companion” (DC 658).

Figure 2: Browne, Hablot Knight (“Phiz”). Illustration to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 1849-1850. Etching. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O685192/i-am-the-bearer-of-etching-hablot-knight-browne/ © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

David’s thoughts are “wild running with the thundering sea” because of his concern about Ham, when he falls into an agitated asleep “before the fire without losing [his] consciousness” (DC 677). He is unable to regain composure: “I walked to and fro, […] looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire” (DC 677). These images are the projection of his internal turmoil, incessantly reassessing thoughts and memories. Dickens’s complex interweaving of past and present in David’s narrative voice, as the adult returns to his experiences as a child, is mirrored by his mental projection of images in the fire, illustrating David’s need to make sense of, understand and learn from his past.

In Hard Times, Louisa is often found “looking at the fire” (HT 48). Raised in Mr. Gradgrind’s world of facts, Louisa often looks at the fire “as if she were reading what she asked, in the fire, and it were not quite plainly written there” (HT 48). This allows her to speculate about the future: “But since I have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown-up” (HT 49). When her brother interjects: “‘Wondering again!,'” Louisa replies that she has “‘unmanageable thoughts,'” and ‘”that they will wonder'” (HT 49). The word “wondering” mirrors the word “wandering,” underlining the unpredictable nature of her thoughts. The “red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying” remind her of the brevity of life: “‘It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it'” (HT 49). Later in the novel, she is once again associated with the fire:

Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in days of yore, though with a gentler and humbler face. How much of the future might arise before her vision? (HT 235)

Louisa’s fire gazing is associated with this special ability to access her inner feelings and interiority. The fact that is capable of mentally projecting herself into the past or the future despite the emotionally repressive education she has received, which, on the contrary, should anchor her to the factual day-to-day, reveals the importance of self-reflection and subjective thought in the construction of her identity.

Figure 3: Illustration by Harry French for Dickens’s Hard Times for These Times in the British Household Edition, p. 132, 1870s, Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham, https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/french/19.html.

One of the most memorable characters who sees “pictures in the fire” is Lizzie Hexam of Our Mutual Friend (OMF 381). When Lizzie waits for her father, she is always by the fire, reflecting on how her family’s future will unfold. Where her brother sees “gas,” Lizzie sees “pictures of what is past:” “‘Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the burning coal—like where that glow is now—'” (OMF 27). Lizzie projects images of her brother “as a baby that never knew a mother” (OMF 27). She also seems to foreshadow what is yet to come, when her brother asks her to reveal “fortune-telling pictures” (OMF 27). When Charley compares “the hollow down by the flare” to her “library of books,” the fire is associated with a place of resourceful learning that goes beyond the written word (OMF 28). Sullivan notes that this places “her fireside reverie on a continuum with, though definitely secondary to, books and textual literacy” (15). Drawing a parallel between the fire and the material significance of coal, Buckland argues that the hollow by the flare “provides a space in which Lizzie can simultaneously assert herself […] and gives her an imaginative escape from her repeated denials of self” but also “reconciles her to continue this static, submissive life” in a way that both “preserves stasis and offers a way out” (28). Although the fireside certainly symbolises the domestic space, which can be associated with stasis, I think that fire gazing in this instance is, more importantly, a testimony to the depth and complexity of these characters’ subjective journeys. Ultimately, gazing into the fire allows Lizzie to come face to face with reality, by disentangling the traumas from the past, and her worries about the future.

Figure 4: Perdue, David. The Charles Dickens Page. 1997-2023, Marcus Stone, ‘Waiting for Father’, wood engraving, in Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. https://www.charlesdickenspage.com.

Fire gazing is where these characters confront and engage with their inner world. Rather than a way out or an escape, as I have previously suggested, fire gazing, for Dickens’s characters, is instead the very opposite. It is a confrontation with the complex reality of life, a path to a deeper level of self-awareness, as well as a way for Dickens to explore the complex intricacies of the human mind and subjectivity.

Works Cited

Buckland, Adelene. “Pictures in the Fire”: the Dickensian Hearth and the Concept of History.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Numéro 53, February 2009, https://doi.org/10.7202/029902ar.

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Edited by Nina Burgis, Clarendon, 1981.

—. Dombey and Son. Oxford University Press, 1964.

—. Great Expectations. Edited by Margaret Cardwell, Clarendon Press, 1993.

—. Hard Times. Edited by Fred Kaplan, Norton Critical Editions, 2017.

—. Our Mutual Friend. Edited by Michael Cotsell, Oxford University Press, 1989.

—. The Haunted Man in The Christmas Books: Volume Two. Edited by Michael Slater, Penguin Books, 1971.

Sullivan, Anne. “Animating Flames: Recovering Fire-Gazing as a Moving-Image Technology.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, vol. 25, 2017, https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.792.