The reputation of the much revered novelist Charles Dickens has taken another dent with the publication of letters from Catherine Dickens, mother of his ten children, to one of her sons. When Dickens left Catherine for a teenage actress, the same age as one of his daughters, in order to prevent any public fallout he claimed that he was leaving a woman who was a cold wife and an uncaring mother. Yet the letters received by their son Plorn after he moved to Australia aged 16, are warm and affectionate, written by someone who clearly misses her child.
From a 2019 post: Charles Dickens, renowned for his compassion for the poor, the suffering and the downtrodden, whose plight he exposed in his novels, appears to have been a good deal less saintly in his private life than his image suggested. Letters have emerged which tell the tale of how he tried to have his wife, mother of his ten children, committed to a mental asylum when she had lost her looks and he had started a long affair with an actress. The doctor in charge, a friend, refused to certify her and was called a ‘medical donkey’ by Dickens.
Born 7 February 1812 at 7.50pm Portsmouth, England, Dickens was sent to a blacking factory at 12 years old when he father was clapped in debtors prison. Even after the father’s release he was left there. He became a legal clerk, then a writer who soared to great success in England and the USA.
He was a cerebral Sun in Aquarius on the cusp of the hard-working 6th house trine a successful Jupiter in Gemini in the 10th. Communicative Mercury, ruler of his 10th house of career, was in his entertaining 5th house. He had a bleak Saturn in Capricorn in his 4th house of childhood in a cruel-treatment square to feisty Mars in Aries in his 7th. He did have a hard childhood but seems to have been very uncaring about his own children.
His Sun was square an independent, rebellious Uranus in the 3rd. His emotionally confused Moon Neptune was in square a passionate Venus Pluto in Pisces on the cusp of his 7th.
With intense controlling Pluto and argumentative Mars in his 7th house of relationships he was guaranteed to run into hostility in marriage. And his relationship chart with his wife Catherine was truly terrible with a composite Mars Pluto square Neptune, trine Uranus, sextile Saturn – so volcanic quantities of anger, bitterness and resentment.
Catherine, 19 May 1815, was a stalwart Sun Taurus sextile/trine a pushily-confident Pluto opposition Jupiter with a volatile Mars square Uranus. Her Saturn was conjunct his Sun which is cold and critical. Certainly not someone to be tramped underfoot.
His mistress Ellen Ternan, 3 March 1839, didn’t look easy since she was a Sun Uranus in Pisces square Saturn in Sagittarius so would be erratic and highly strung. But her Venus in Aries fell in his 7th conjunct his Mars which would help to smooth rough edges. Her Sun Uranus was conjunct his Venus Pluto which would be instant attraction but a fair amount of disruption thereafter. Her Neptune was conjunct his Sun which isn’t ideal though can give a spiritual or self-sacrificial bond. Her Saturn was conjunct his Moon which can block out nurturing feelings – so he couldn’t quite escape his 4th house Saturn and his deprived childhood.
Ellen’s Sun Uranus conjunction in Pisces collided with the composite Pluto Mars in Pisces square Neptune in Charles/Catherine’s relationship chart – the marriage was undoubtedly struggling but she was the catalyst – or arrived at the right juncture – to cause the split.
Is Saturn in the 4th always bleak? My son has it in his 4th with Taurus. My husband and I have Saturn in the first house which has affected our self esteem. We both had extremely difficult childhoods.
I have Sun Saturn in the 4th and I was adopted as a baby.
RFK Jr is said to have Neptune, Saturn and Mars in the 4th, which would fit with his family tragedy. However, his birth time is speculative.
Thank you Marjorie. What a complicated, damaged man Dickens was.
His close friendship and role as ‘mentor’ to the novelist Wilkie Collins adds another layer I think. Collins’ famous ‘sensation’ novel, The Woman in White, was first published in Dickens’ magazine, All the Year Round, as a serial in 1859-60. Dickens met Ellen Ternan in 1857. The central part of the Woman in White story is the woman in white herself, who has been packed off to what was called a ‘lunatic asylum’. Women at this time were sometimes placed in asylums by husbands, when they became burdensome in some way. As were unmarried mothers in some families. There was sometimes a financial motive for the family or husband as well. Collins wanted to highlight the injustice of this. I don’t know if there’s any record of his thoughts on Dickens’ cruel behaviour towards his wife.
Collins himself was an unconventional man. He did not believe in marriage, but lived for many years with a widow and shopkeeper, and her daughter. He also, eventually, had a much younger mistress, with whom he had two children. He divided his time between those two households until his death.
Collins, 8 January 1824, has Mars in Libra, right opposite Dickens’ natal Mars in Aries, with that bleak square you talk about to Saturn in Capricorn. Collins’ Mars opposes his natal Moon in Aries, squres his Jupiter in Cancer, and his Uranus/Neptune in Capricorn. His Pluto is 0 Aries. They were close friends and associates, but with those aspects the tension between them must have been complex.
Collins Sun is in what might be conventional Capricorn, however it is conjunct Uranus, and aligns with Dickens’ Mercury. Collins’ Saturn in Taurus squares Dickens Aquarius Sun and Scorpio Uranus – another interesting tension between the younger Collins and the older Dickens.
Interesting about ‘The Woman in White’, Jane. Collins also allegedly wrote the first ever detective novel, ‘The Moonstone’. But Dickens had alteady introduced this genre in ‘Bleak House’ with the character of Inspector Bucket.
The thing about WC was that he had no fear of being judged by society for his unconventional approach to relationships. His father was a landscape painter, an artist and WC never married which enabled him to keep two mistresses simultaneously. But Dickens on the other hand had a reputation to maintain and since his background was more impoverished, he was subjected to a certain snobbery in literary circles. The way he dressed brought ridicule, for it was seen at the time as flamboyant and slightly gaudy.
But Dickens loved the theatre and the world of theatre, the actors, actresses and everything about that world. In some ways he felt at home there. He loved itinerant communities such as travelling theatre companies and had a deep affection for the Romani people. But he felt it important to maintain a conventional and respectable facade and a divorce with Catherine may have tarnished that reputation. That may explain the astro tensions in their synastry and the deep fear that Dickens had of his affair being discovered.
I meant to say the synastry between WC and Dickens. It may have irked Dickens that Collins was able to enjoy this freedom in his relationships with women.
Yes, I think you’re right VF. There’s that inventive Uranus sextile Mercury, inconjunct the wordsmith Jupiter in Gemini in Dickens’ chart. WC’s Sun in Capricorn and Saturn in Taurus connect with that – both masculine symbols, one being potentially ‘fatherly’ even though WC was younger.
Dickens also enjoyed performing, and his fame and success were huge at the time. Lack of freedom in his personal life seems to be the price he paid for all that applause and attention. Those who lived quieter or less elevated lives were able to get round the impossibility of divorce by simply marrying again anyway! I’ve been looking into this for a while, and bigamy and trigamy were everywhere! As were unmarried couples simply pretending to be married while living together, as I think WC did with his younger partner and their children, using a false name to protect her and the children from disapproval, or worse.
There were remarkably few trials for bigamy, compared with the number of ordinary people doing it. Much easier to get away with all manner of things in those days, poor record keeping, no internet or social media and so on. And get away with it they did……
Yes, the incidence of common law marriages among the Victorian Working Class was much higher than we think and young unmarried women who became pregnant may have been able to conceal the pregnancy if their own mothers were still fertile and able to claim the child as their own late baby. I have something like this in my own ancestry with a Great Grandmother who was 22 and the eldest of 9 when suddenly another baby comes along on the census, even though the supposed mother is in her mid 40s and past peak fertility.
When Dickens was involved in the terrible Staplehurst rail crash on 9th June 1865, he was travelling with Ellen and her mother. He was of course terrified that this would somehow be revealed, but helped Ellen and her mother to escape the carriage before aiding other victims by administering brandy, water and support for the dying which traumatised him so badly he was unable to speak for two weeks after the accident. But he was also fearful that someone would have recognised him with his mistress.
He was so haunted by the carnage that a year later he wrote the ghost story, ‘The Signalman’, wonderfully dramatised for TV in the 70s. (And worth watching if you haven’t seen it). Dickens died 5 years to the day of the Staplehurst rail crash, which his son later said he had never recovered from. The astrology of that accident has transit Chiron at 18 Pisces – right on Dickens’s Venus/Pluto in Pisces.
Thanks for reminding me about the terrible rail crash and Dickens The Signalman. I have seen it, and there’s also a R4 version from 2022 that’s still available to listen to online. He loved a good ghost story apparently. Perhaps his Moon/Neptune comes into this somewhere?
Ha ha re the ‘late babies’ of that era as well. Yes, there do seem to be more than one might have imagined considering the general health and lack of health care at the time. Babies handed to childless relatives were a common phenomenon too. Many people will not have the ancestry they imagine, and that includes the aristocracy. The internet and DNA research have acted as what – Saturn and Pluto? – to begin unravelling so much.
Worth noting that a number of scholars think that Ellen was actually Dickens’ own daughter, rather than his mistress. If correct, then it puts a different spin on the Venus/Pluto and Moon/Neptune in his chart.
How about that, I visited Broadstairs yesterday for the first time in my life, had a lite bite in the Copperfields restaurant at the Charles Dickens. I’d had Bleak House pointed out to me earlier, though I’ll leave that for a later visit. The Dickens House museum was closed, but I did walk the Turner/Dickens path to Margate. Broadstairs atmosphere felt nicer to me than Ramsgate or Margate, reckon I’ll get back there sometime. Sorry, no comment on the astrology, just wonder how Charles and Catherine met, did their families know each other?
Charles Dickens knew Catherine Hogarth through her father George who worked on the Morning Chronicle when Dickens’s Sketches by Boz were first published. They became friends and I believe Catherine then met Dickens at his 23rd birthday party. The courtship was swift and they married quite soon after.
If you’re at all interested in CD, do get a copy of his collected letters, they’re full of information about his life and incredibly revealling about his personality.
Thank you, both of them seem worthy of further study. Saw her grave in Highgate West from a distance as area overgrown and one is encouraged not to leave the marked paths.
Recently I read a wonderful book on Dickens that goes a long way to addressing his wierdness as to life and women, his wife in particular, called The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson.
Sorry, typo:
I meant: Even a very kind, giving, considerate, mature, Sun-Algol, can do real harm to self and others,
In the United States, children grow up with cartoon versions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ broadcast every year around Christmastime. We all learn about “Scrooge” growing up. I’m 45 and in 2022 when Uranus began transiting my 4th/5th house and opposing my Venus\Mercury conjunction, out of nowhere, I built life sized paper mache figures of the characters from ‘A Christmas Carol’. They were put on display at the local coffee shop for the town’s Christmas display contest.
They were truly, shockingly magnificent and I say that not to be a braggart, but because they came from the ethers and they were truly original. Very Uranian to say the least. I always wondered if I was truly an artist and when these figures blasted out of me, it was confirmed. I wondered then and now, what would Charles Dicken’s have thought of a woman in America, in the year 2022, making hand painted paper mache figures of his characters and putting them on display in a cafe?
Did paper mache even exist when he was alive? Probably not. I’m sorry to learn that he was an asshole but he was a literary genius and his art continues to inspire, even across the globe! I can’t begin to wrap my head around the suffering that inspired the creation of his characters that continue to influence our lives.
A small point of clarification – papier mache was around long, long before. Referred to in the Middle-Ages and even as far back as 2,000 years ago, in China. Ingredients would probably have been somewhat different to today, but technique was very much the same.
Interesting! Thank-you.
I feel that’s quite Aquarius: caring more for the collective than the individual.
The life long burden of ten children and an incompatible wife clashed with his Uranian energy, making him feel horribly trapped.
The compulsion to detach brought out the very worst in him.
Poor Catherine. Dickens was a contradictory character, forever replaying aspects of his childhood trauma in his work and at times showing such empathy for the suffering, yet often so emotionally stingy with those closest to him. He wrote movingly of his years at the blacking factory as a time of great despair, when all his dreams for his future seemed to have been stolen from him. (He was also a physically small boy forced to work long hours, completely unsupervised, among adults who were mostly reprobates; who knows what sorts of abuse he might have experienced, or escaped, or witnessed?)
His letters reveal that he was very bitter toward his parents–especially his mother–for having no qualms about forcing him into child labor to maintain them in debtors’ prison while continuing to live as extravagantly as they could manage (e.g., using the money he earned to pay for music lessons for his sister). He was justifiably outraged. Even has a child, he had a huge sense of his own destiny–a huge ego, really–and he wrote movingly of how his parents’ actions had, in his mind, robbed him of his future–a truly monstrous betrayal.
It’s ironic, then, that he never seemed to fully make the connection between his own suffering and his mistreatment of others; he seems to have substituted devotion to “Humanity” in the abstract for care for individuals in his own orbit, including his family. (Possibly an Aquarian proclivity?) I’m sure Catherine was especially ill-treated because on some level she was a stand-in for his mother, whom he hated.
Then, too, it’s credibly speculated that even at the dawn of his relationship with Catherine, the one he really wanted was Mary Hogarth, her beautiful younger sister (the pattern for several pathetic Dickens heroines), who lived with the newlywed Dickenses for several months before dying unexpectedly–in Dickens’ arms. He never got over her.
Also, imagine the monstrousness of a man who complains–as Dickens did in his letters–that his wife’s waist has grown thick and her looks have faded after 10 pregnancies! And, moreover, with vast hypocrisy blames her for those pregnancies in an era when there was little in the way of reliable birth control (especially for “respectable” women), and when she couldn’t legally deny him his conjugal rights.
His attempts to get her committed to an asylum were shocking even then, and he turned his back on long-time friends who disapproved. Talk about betrayal.
Poor Catherine: it was her tremendous misfortune to have married the damaged, cruel genius who was Charles Dickens, instead of the good man she likely deserved.
Thank you, AI22 for those biographical details and Marjorie for this interesting article.
The phrase, ‘street angel, house devil’ springs to mind when one looks at Dickens’s cruel treatment of Catherine Hogarth, a phrase which astrologically I associate with the shadow side of Aquarius with its cerebral love of humanity (Uranus) contrasting with it’s capacity for tyranny (Saturn) when in the domestic sphere. This is ramped up somewhat by his Aquarian Sun in square to Uranus in Scorpio. His Jupiter, the focal point of a Yod with Uranus in Scorpio and Mercury in Capricorn (if you allow for a 4 degree orb) is also in an out-of-sign opposition to Saturn – strong in Capricorn – perhaps an indicator of his mental struggles, the yo-yo-ing of his moods, the possible bi-polar disorder that modern psychologists have diagnosed him with along with supposed obsessive-compulsive disorder. To manage his crippling depression he often went on long, midnight walks miles and miles away from his home which he claimed relieved the torment of his mental anguish.
Like many great writers, he was at heart an unhappy man tormented by the demons of his childhood which I don’t think he ever recovered from but which informed many of his most memorable characters. Mr. Micawber for example was based on his hopeless-with-money father. But for me, his greatest weakness as a writer were his virginal and perpetually sweet young women, who have no depth, no inner life of their own and who are simply idealised notions of teenage girlhood. I see he has Moon square Venus, which (ime) in a man’s chart can be a tendency to see women as either mothers or lovers and the inability to see women who are also mothers as sexual beings at all. He also has that cursed Piscean Venus square Neptune which can make the fantasy of a relationship seem more alluring than the reality and the tendency to fall in love with someone who is for whatever reason unavailable. That Venus is conjunct Pluto for an obsessive love nature. And when you see that the Moon in Sag also conjuncts Neptune, that idealisation is ramped up even more. Therefore it’s not surprising that Dickens fell in love with his wife’s younger, unmarried sister – she was in his eyes pure and untainted. Dickens wrote on the other hand some truly wonderful older female characters such as Betsy Trotwood and Sarah Gamp. But oh, how this modern woman would like to throttle that simpering twit, Dora!
It’s interesting that Dickens’s marriage was disintegrating when he worked with the writer, Wilkie Collins on the production of his play, ‘The Frozen Deep’ and that he then met the 17 year old Ellen Ternan who was acting in the play. At that time, transit Neptune was on Dickens’s Venus/Pluto and square his Moon/Neptune in Sag, while Saturn opposed his Moon/Saturn midpoint. ‘The Frozen Deep’ was written some years after the disappearance of the ship, ‘The Terror’ following the Franklin Expedition. Neptunian themes a-plenty.
Very interesting stuff, thanks Marjorie, AI22 and Virgoflake.
The nodes in the charts of the couple reveal more toxic fumes lurking in the magma under this particular caldera.
In synastry, the South Node slows the other person down, literally, it zaps the energy of the other person’s planet, making the possessor of the planet -or angle- feel stuck, entrapped, or actually get stuck, and s/he ceases to feel the possibility to grow. Generally, the issue is specific: The South Node person wants the planet person to stay frozen in the past somehow. Growth and change are threatening to the SN, and in worst case scenarios, the SN person will try to stifle or destroy the other. Problematically, the issue is not necessarily felt early in the relationship. It can take years, decades even, and it typically requires a trigger. Zodiacal Releasing, a technique based on the idea that each planet has a specific cycle of influence, and the dominant planet in a cycle determines the themes and events of that period of the person’s life, is useful to explain why a couple like this married, blind to the storms coming. Their nodes had not been activated in each other’s charts.
With Saturn’s placement in Capricorn in the 4th (privations, obstacles, delays, family coldness, no love) square Mars (aggression, abuse), he married, expecting to have a home that felt like a home at last. And it probably did, for a period. Dickens must have fell hard—his Venus is conjunct Pluto, and both are on her ASC/DESC axis. His Venus conjuncts her Pluto, which makes a relationship feel fated, transforming. Her Mercury conjunct the Sun in Taurus can be both droll and profound, she could discuss his writing, perhaps even contribute, inspire. Her Venus in Cancer would make her tender, affectionate, protective, a good cook. People with the combination Taurus-Cancer tend to have a talent for real intimacy, and her Mercury is conjunct her MC, so initially, conversation together must have been really fun for both. And Taurus is almost always loyal, which he needed greatly.
But her MC, Sun and Mercury are on the Pleiades, and he was a man to make a woman cry. Taurus is an emotional accountant, and Mercury in Taurus will read a spouse the riot act, chapter and verse. Any crying must have been exasperating to Charles, with his Moon in fire conjunct Neptune, and especially his Saturn in Capricorn in the 4th, which fails to see the point of even bringing stuff up. Her South Node conjunct his Saturn made him stifled, and would eventually drive him nuts because, on his Saturn, it rubbed precisely the wound of his early life, and must have made him feel like he was being held underwater. Not only that, Dickens might have had some cause. Her Mercury and Sun sit on Algol, at 23 Taurus in the early 1800’s. This is a tricky placement. Sun on Algol can throw a fit to scare the gods. Just look at Israel right now. Even very Sun-Algol, can do real harm to self and others, however unintentionally. And any planet on Algol always makes the bearer suffer, if not personally, then as witness to great suffering, to great barbarity. With Mercury and the Sun on Algol on the MC, these experiences were the north star of her life, it is what she was born to learn and process. Casting Dickens’s chart with a few asteroids and fixed stars reveals the extent if the greek tragedy in this marriage: his Sun at 17 Aquarius is conjunct Perseus, slayer of the Medusa, at 19 Aquarius, and both square her Mercury-Sun on Algol. His Venus -Pluto conjunction at 16-17 Pisces, is in fact a stellium with Ixion (Rebel with a cause, unafraid to break laws) at 12 Pisces, and Sedna (sadness and suffering, representing Saturn and Neptune, necessary to create a new world) at 20 Pisces, all right on his DESC. Sedna is the rage of a drowning woman, begging to be saved in a storm, thrown overboard by her own father/family man. She clung to the boat for dear life, but he cut off her fingers with a knife to drown her. Sedna’s placement on his Venus, Pluto and DESC, and conjunct her Pluto, suggests that Dickens might have been brutal to her, and with Ixion and Pluto there, he might have enjoyed being brutal (to give you an idea, Charles Manson has a prominent Ixion); it indicates that Catherine’s knowing bulls-eye gaze must have been unbearable to Charles’s ego. She became, by and by, the mirror image of him that nobody saw, the repository of his imperfection, his portrait of Dorian Grey. Certainly the way he tried to put her away, so typical of aquarian insensitivity, would have been intolerably painful and unpardonable for a loyal Taurus. It’s like Tennessee William’s Suddenly Last Summer — the intent to put a woman in an insane asylum to shut her —Mercury—up. But it also suggests that, as in the Sedna myth, he thought her obliteration necessary for him to survive. Psychologically, it was a life or death struggle.
Yet Catherine’s situation in terms of the nodes is worse than his, as Charles puts his 8 Pisces SN on her Pisces 4 Mars (vital energy, initiative, fight or flight response). And his Nodes are on her ASC/DESC axis, affecting personal growth and marriage maturation. With Uranus in the 4th she had a separation in store, but, despite the trauma of abandonment, once she eased into it, especially with her Uranus in Sag, she probably felt free at last, free at last…
As for Charles, how did it go with Ellen? I can’t imagine it went that well, after the infatuation wore off. The SN is a point of loss. For Catherine, the home. For Dickens, whose SN conjuncts his Venus and DESC, the point of loss is love, true partnership with a woman.
@ Brigitte:
“I’m sorry to learn that he was an asshole but he was a literary genius and his art continues to inspire, even across the globe!”
A literary genius is right. Destined to do something great. Like Alfred Hitchcock, J. K. Rowling, William Shakespeare, Nikola Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci, Stephen Hawking, Salvador Dali, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and others, Charles Dickens had Makemake in close aspect to his Sun.
Charles Dickens: Sun 17 Aquarius, Makemake 45 degrees away, at 2 Capricorn, conjunct his depriving and disciplining Saturn. 45 degree aspect is 3 x 15. The 24th harmonic indicates change of trend. In culture, it makes for trendsetters.
Wow Lucy, thanks for a very interesting and comprehensive explanation of the placings, thought provoking and a pretty depressing prospect for those who also have SN conjunct Saturn in synastry. Does similar apply if with family members? What about NN conjunct Saturn?
Very interesting about the nodes and the role of the South Node in their relationship, Lucy. Thank you.
I am glad that you mentioned Mary. Dicken’s behaviour with both his wife and sister-in-law was absolutely appalling!