Repress verb 1. tyrants repressing the people conquer, tyrannize, oppress, master. 2. repress a rebellion quell, suppress, squash, stamp down, crush. 3. repress a yawn/repress his feelings bury, check, constrain, suppress, strangle, bottle up, restrain, subdue.

Everyone gets aggressive and ‘wicked’ feelings — but how to cope with them, particularly if you’re in a position of respect and trust? You can’t give free rein to anger and lust. But is it wise just to bottle them up?

Whether people should repress or act out/give in to their desires and animal impulses (Jasper: “We must sometimes act in opposition to our wishes”) was a hot topic for much of the 20th century, and it’s a theme which Dickens anticipates in his remarkable novel.

Cloisterham: to ‘cloister’ means to confine and restrain within narrow limits, but people (Dickens says) won’t be repressed. As Shakespeare wrote: ‘The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on’.

Joe to Mr Honeythunder: “I say!” expostulated the driver, becoming more chafed in temper, “not too fur! The worm WILL, when—”

Mr Honeythunder is a bully who tries to crush everyone else. He ‘walked in the middle of the road, shouldering the natives out of his way, and loudly developing a scheme he had, for making a raid on all the unemployed persons in the United Kingdom, laying them every one by the heels in jail, and forcing them, on pain of prompt extermination, to become philanthropists.’

Crisparkle on Honeythunder’s manners: “They are detestable. They violate ... the restraints that should belong to gentlemen”.

Jasper, knowing his man in Mr Sapsea, ingratiates himself by singing him ‘the genuine George the Third’ ditty ‘exhorting him to reduce to a smashed condition all other islands but this island, and all continents, ... and other geographical forms of land soever, besides sweeping the seas in all directions’. Speaking from the heart, Jasper says, “Cloisterham is a little place. Cooped up in it myself, I ... feel it to be a very little place”, and asks Mr Sapsea how he copes. He does so, in his foolish way, by artificially (and self-importantly) inflating both his world and himself. “If I have not gone to foreign countries ... foreign countries have come to me.” He evidently swells and puffs himself up so much that his mousy wife, entirely overshadowed, gives up the ghost. And even on her tombstone, with his urn-shaped ‘tribute’, Mr Sapsea represses the poor woman practically out of sight:

ETHELINDA,

Reverential Wife of

MR. THOMAS SAPSEA,

AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c.,

OF THIS CITY.

Whose Knowledge of the World,

Though somewhat extensive,

Never brought him acquainted with

A SPIRIT

More capable of

LOOKING UP TO HIM.

STRANGER, PAUSE

And ask thyself the Question,

CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE?

If Not,

WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.

Some people, however, are anxious not to be so tyrannical: “I am going,” said Mr. Grewgious ... “to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first. He mightn’t like it else”. And: “In giving him directions, I reflect beforehand: ‘Perhaps he may not like this,’ or ‘He might take it ill if I asked that;’ and so we get on very well”. And: “He is very short with me sometimes”. Thus, with a typical Dickensian twist, the master is oppressed by the servant. (Set in amusing contrast to the rebellious Bazzard is ‘this slave’ the flying waiter, an unfortunate man who’s wholly repressed by ‘an immovable waiter’.)

Rosa: “He has made a slave of me with his looks”.

Durdles is Cloisterham’s ‘chartered libertine’. He’s a free spirit who refuses to be dictated to in any way at all. But such freedom doesn’t bring happiness. Far from it. His life is so cold, gloomy and lonely that he drinks to forget, deliberately numbing his mind to the misery of day-to-day reality. Thus, Durdles, like many people, chooses to repress, rather than try to live with and conquer, his problems and sorrows. Although given his situation, I guess, it’s as effective a solution as any, particularly as he restrains himself to a degree and seldom gets drunk. When fuelled with alcohol, normal social restraints fall away — one reason why Durdles is so outspoken.

Princess Puffer: “I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to [opium]”. Evidently a victim of some tragedy or heartbreak, Princess Puffer, instead of facing up to her affliction (and so getting over it), tried to repress her painful thoughts through drugs — hence her shredded lungs and wizened state.

Mr Grewgious is an almost ludicrously repressed and impassive man (his ambitions, romantic hopes etc. all snuffed out, he ‘had settled down with his snuffers for the rest of his life’), but everyone has their limit. When Rosa (who’s the spitting image of her mother, who Mr Grewgious loved) runs from the lustful Jasper and asks him to protect her ... “I will!” cried Mr. Grewgious, with a sudden rush of amazing energy. “Damn him! ‘Confound his politics! Frustrate his knavish tricks! On Thee his hopes to fix? Damn him again!’” [Miss Pross speaks the original lines in A Tale Of Two Cities.] After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. Grewgious, quite beside himself, plunged about the room, to all appearance undecided whether he was in a fit of loyal enthusiasm, or combative denunciation. He stopped and said, wiping his face: “I beg your pardon, my dear, but you will be glad to know I feel better”. Better for having ‘uncorked’ himself and let his anger out. A brief tantrum (even indulged in private) is a wonderfully effective way of relieving your feelings. Newman Noggs uses a similar technique in Nicholas Nickleby, but far more often and aggressively. ‘Lashing himself up to an extravagant pitch of fury, Newman Noggs jerked himself about the room with the most eccentric motion ever beheld in a human being ... until he sank down in his former seat quite breathless and exhausted. “There,” said Newman, “that’s done me good.”’

‘Whether they [the nuns] were ever walled up alive ... for having some ineradicable leaven of busy mother Nature in them which has kept the fermenting world alive ever since ...’ A nun with a bun in her oven risked being ‘walled up alive’, but their repressed sexual urgesstill broke out — they couldn’t be denied.

‘Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being. Every night, the moment the young ladies have retired to rest, does Miss Twinkleton smarten up her curls a little, brighten up her eyes a little, and become a sprightlier Miss Twinkleton than the young ladies have ever seen. Every night, at the same hour, does Miss Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous night, comprehending the tenderer scandal of Cloisterham, of which she has no knowledge whatever [Dickens is being ironic here] by day.’ In the interests of discipline and headmistressy correctness, Miss Twinkleton strait-jackets herself during working hours, but as soon as school’s done she breaks out at once — so it’s only a job-induced, part-time repression and does her no harm.

‘But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes ... and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.’ i.e. censorship — the repression of text. Miss Twinkleton often has to censor herself: ‘Miss Twinkleton was annually going to add “bosoms,” but annually stopped on the brink of that expression, and substituted “hearts”’.

Durdles on Deputy: “Own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in life.” “At which he takes aim?” Mr. Jasper suggests. “That's it, sir,” returns Durdles, quite satisfied; “at which he takes aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three penn'orth a week”. So the Wild Boy’s behaviour has been controlled not by repressive means (locking him up in Cloisterham jail, which didn’t work), but by constructivelyrechannelling his ‘wildness’. More orthodox sports, such as boxing, are used for a similar purpose today — redirecting not repressing aggressive young energy, and giving aimless lives an object. Ironically, the first UK prison for young offenders was set up at Borstal, which is on the outskirts of Rochester/Cloisterham.

‘The Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take the pretty old lady's entering face between his boxing-gloves and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and putting in his right, in a tremendous manner.’ The Reverend Septimus is a consistently gentle, pious, kind-hearted man with an even temper. How does he manage it? Not by dangerously bottling up his aggression and negative feelings (to possibly come bursting forth at some future date), but by using intense physical exercise and shadow-boxing as a safety-valve through which he can channel his aggression and work his frustrations off. Additionally, cold water is well-known for shrivelling up lust — Saint David dived into the freezing sea to control his sexual ardour — and the celibate Crisparkle is an obsessive icy-cold plunger! Of the Weir, ‘he knew every hole and corner of all the depths’, and he’s ‘perpetually pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the surrounding country’ — the randy sod.

Neville: “I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. This has made me secret and revengeful. I have been always tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven me, in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean”.

Jasper to Crisparkle about Neville (deleted text): “You must sometime — no doubt, often — have to put yourself in opposition to this fierce nature and suppress it ... I am fearful even for you”.

Neville: “In short, sir,” with an irrepressible outburst, “in the passion into which he lashed me, I would have cut him down if I could, and I tried to do it”. And: “This stepfather of ours was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one. It is well he died when he did, or I might have killed him”. Neville, with his ‘tigerish blood’, entirely lacks self-restraint and needs not just a safety-valve but also a cap. (Crisparkle recommends his own method of physical exertion, particularly long (Dickensian) walks.) In his present state, he finds it almost impossible to repress his feelings which are constantly erupting. Even the ‘restraint’ of having four men in front and four men behind, penning him in but in no way impeding his progress, is an intolerable oppression. And his passions in Jasper’s study are all the more volcanic because Edwin and Jasper are suppressing their own.

Neville: “In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are twin children), you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our misery ever subdued her, though it often cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading”. Helena Landless is a fascinating example of the theme as she successfully struggles to restrain her own proud character. In hercase, repression and submission (when rightly called for) are entirely beneficial. “Your sister has learnt how to govern what is proud in her nature.”

‘Helena, whom he had mistrusted as so proud and fierce, submitted herself to the fairy-bride (as he called her), and learnt from her what she knew.’

‘Billickin had somehow come to the knowledge that Miss Twinkleton kept a school. The leap from that knowledge to the inference that Miss Twinkleton would set herself to teach her something, was easy. “But you don’t do it,” soliloquised the Billickin.’ (We don’t know the Billickin’s Christian name as, in the interests of safety — being a ‘solitary female’ — she represses it. She atones for this one piece of secretiveness, though, by determinedly (and amusingly) repressing absolutely nothing else.)

Edwin: “No, but really — isn't it, you know, after all — ” Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly. “Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter? There, Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world.” “But you have not got to choose.” “That's what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy's dead and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation. Why the — Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their memory — couldn't they leave us alone? ... YOUR life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted out for you, like a surveyor's plan”. Just the constraint of being married ‘by anticipation’ is enough to sour Edwin’s and Rosa’s relationship, and Rosa, in the ‘Nuns’ House’ chapter, determinedly checks all Edwin’s advances. “It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was not bound upon me, by any forfeit”, says Rosa, but in their eyes it was still an imposition and, consequently, not to be tolerated. “We should both of us have done better, if What is to be had been left What might have been.” People won’t be repressed — not even when they’re being impelled to do what, given a free choice, they would otherwise wish!

Rosa’s ‘panting breathing comes and goes as if it would choke her; but with a repressive hand upon her bosom, she remains’.

All of which leads us to a certain John Jasper ...