The Haunted Man

I've long treasured Dickens's A Christmas Carol, reading it aloud with the family every year before Christmas. Dickens loved Christmas, commemorating several Christmases by publishing new books. A Christmas Carol was the first of his five Christmas novels (published in 1843), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848) was the last. I'd never read any of these books except the most famous one, but I'd always been a little curious. Earlier this year I read an enormous biography of Vincent Van Gogh, where I learned that The Haunted Man was one of Vincent's favorite stories, one that he would often read at Christmastime. So I decided to read it this year.

The Haunted Man is an intriguing idea. We meet Redlaw, a scientist, who wants to forget all the sorrow, wrong, and trouble he has ever known. A doppelgänger ghost appears in his room (much like Marley appears to Scrooge) and offers to grant him this wish—with the additional caveat that not only will he forget his own sorrow, wrong, and trouble, but that he will impart this same gift to everyone he comes into contact with. "All men and women have their sorrows,—most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, and sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life," Redlaw muses as he considers the bargain. "Who would not forget their sorrows and their wrongs?" (323). When he asks the ghost what he will lose in this bargain, he is told, "No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on, and nourished by, the banished recollections. Those will go." Redlaw is only able to ponder this according to his study of the natural world: "But, if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of antidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast it out, shall I not cast it out?" (324). He takes the bargain.

When he awakes from this nightmarish evening and begins moving about the neighborhood, he finds that the effect, on himself and on those around him, is not at all what he imagined. In this story, Dickens is exploring the purpose of sorrow, wrong, and trouble in our lives. Are all of these a mistake? Wouldn't we be better off without them? What Redlaw learns is that it is those very things that give us the capacity for compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Without the sorrows we've experienced and even the wrongs we've committed, we are angry and bitter. The people whom Redclaw comes near emerge much worse from the encounter, as they receive his "gift." Families break down, common courtesy and compassion evaporate. It's quite horrifying.

The ghost's bargain is irreversible, but Redlaw begins to find his way free of it through the mercy and love of another person, Milly. He sees that the natural law that he had studied and taught is not all there is in the world. Clinging to science alone doesn't bring us to life as God intended it to be.

"I have no learning, and you have much," said Milly. "I am not used to think, and you are always thinking. May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us, to remember wrong that has been done to us?"
"Yes."
"That we may forgive it." (379)

It's a powerful story. Though it's not quite as perfect a tale as A Christmas Carol, it cuts a little deeper in the error and deception it exposes within all of us. It's more uncomfortable to read (and also more confusing—this first time through, I was a little baffled by some of Redlaw's history, which for much of the book seems to be only assumed and hinted at where I wanted more detailed explanation). I can see why Vincent appreciated it, and I believe I'll return to it in future Christmases, too.