Writing to Control the Narrative: Charles Dickens, PTSD, and the Staplehurst Rail Crash

Abstract

Abstract: Charles Dickens's involvement in the 9 June 1865 Staplehurst Rail Crash was a traumatic event that resonated with the author for the remainder of his life (which ended five years to the day of the accident). This article merges examinations of Dickens's symptoms of what is now termed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the Staplehurst Rail Crash, auxiliary personal events that may have contributed to his PTSD, and his position as a public figure who controlled his image and expressed himself through his fiction and nonfiction works. Combining these three means of understanding Dickens's PTSD provides further insight into how Dickens attempted to use his authorial identity and writing to control the trauma that haunted him.