Victorian Opium Analysis

The Victorians were discovering new lands inhabited by different people, which made the contact with a great variety of different cultures inevitable. Although they were invading larger part of the world and imposing their own culture on others, they were determined to keep their culture free of outside influences. By all manner of means, they were trying to preserve their societal stability, the normality within their own society from the invasion of the different and therefore abnormal. Based on an erroneous interpretation of Darwin’s Evolution Theory, white man felt racially superior and thus tried to impose its culture on others in order to help them become civilized.

With the expansion of the Empire not only food, fabric and different

Surprisingly, opium was such an important trade that it was the reason for two arm conflicts fought between China and Britain from 1839-42 and 1856-60. There were no restrictions on selling drugs until the 1868 Pharmacy act. Therefore, pium was legal and it was used as a magical medicine to alleviate pain, suppress cough, pacify the children and achieve alternate mind sets. To put it differently, the use of opium was considered normal; it was even solicited by the merchants who advertised it as a completely safe cure for many ills, including those experienced by infants. During Dickens’s life the opium trade was at its highest, he used it himself to “calm his nerves before public appearances and to help him sleep, especially while travelling.” Despite the fact that opium continued to be part of daily life of the Victorians even after 1868 when only registered pharmacists and chemists were allowed to sell it, Dickens once again tried to enlighten the reader, warning about the dangers of opium use. With that in mind, he created John Jasper and Princess Puffer, two characters whose lives were ruined by opium, both dark

Dickens tends to explore the implications of doubleness: characters complement one another, though their connection may not be genetically or physiognomically apparent, nor need they even share the same gender.’ The doubling technique is not only used to compare but also to contrast, to distinguish ‘the normal’ from ‘the abnormal’ in order to emphasize the dual nature of men. Surely, we all have characteristics that we consider normal and for that reason we show them to other people, however, we also have traits and habits that we think others may not regard as normal, so we do not like to expose them and when we do, we do it very consciously. For that reason Miss Twinkleton, a prim schoolmistress, turns into a sprightly gossip only after dark, and Mr. Crisparkle makes fun of Mr. Honeythunder and philanthropists in general, behind the closed door, exclusively. For the same reason Neville, after being accused of murdering Edwin, leaves his dwelling solely during the night. By the same token, Edwin and Rosa hide their malcontent with the way their lives have been predetermined and they reveal it only after a lot of pondering. On the other hand, there are characters in the book that are not aware of how