ディケンズの『バーナビー・ラッジ』におけるヘアデイルとチェスターの決闘の意義

抄録

Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge is regarded as one of his few historical novels, as it deals with the Gordon Riots in 1780. Many critics have analyzed Barnaby Rudge by using two words, ‘public’ and ‘private,’ as key concepts. The point is that although he chooses historical and hence ‘public’ events, namely, the Gordon Riots, as a main plot of the novel, Dickens’s intention is, basically, to write about ‘private’ lives of its main characters. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this point by focusing on the duel between Geoffrey Haredale and John Chester which is depicted at the end of the novel. Before the duel takes place, Haredale and Chester encounter and have a quarrel with one another several times, which becomes more and more violent after each encounter and which leads up to the duel in the end. By closely examining these scenes in which they face each other one by one, I argue that this conflict between Haredale and Chester also has both ‘private’ and ‘public’ aspects, that the duel has a meaning of a punishment on Chester, and that it is quite appropriate that this duel concludes the novel which portrays ‘private’ lives of its main characters.