The Swiss Alps and Character Framing in No Thoroughfare

Overview & Synopsis

Dickens insisted that the climax of the novel took place in the Simplon Pass, in other words, in one of the most dangerous No Thoroughfares in Europe. By 1867, when the novel was published, Dickens had witnessed and experienced major changes in Britain. A new economic order was defining new rules in society and progress in rail transportation massively spread travelling. From then on, not only would people travel to settle somewhere else for good or at least for a long period of time, the growing number of businessmen rendered travelling Europe and the world part of their daily life. Considering these major evolutions, character framing in fiction writing was also to change. This is precisely what Dickens does in No Thoroughfare. As in many of his works, the main characters of this novel are orphans, people with a blurred story. They are the perfect illustration that one's identity does not depend so much on their history as on their environment. Moreover, with No Thoroughfare, Dickens ads new criteria to character framing. He brings forward the idea that characters are not only determined by their direct environment. He shows that the constant interactions between the characters and their environment lead to a constant mutual definition and redefinition of both characters and the continent. In this article I will show that travelling has become necessary in the character framing process, for Dickens here pictures any individual's life in itself as a No Thoroughfare. Using element of geopoetics, I will eventually explore the Simplon Pass as the No Thoroughfare which epitomizes the network of No Thoroughfares that permeate the novel.