In some ways the Headstone-Wrayburn couple with its repressed homosexual undertones seems to function as an echo of that duplicity and uncertainty about the identity of the son.
The first Scrooge seems to come very close to overcoming the second in that process. The two Scrooges represent opposite attitudesβmoral as well as psychologicalβharsh possessiveness and loving generosity, hostility and openness to others. They also serve as vehicles or symbols for sexual or gender conflicts, as well as moral ones. The son is seen as identifying with him and eventually slaying him in order to assert himself as different from his father and as a male individual.
Laplanche and J. Pontalis 3 in their dictionary. Here gender as a historical, cultural and social concept is fully relevant since homophobia is social and cultural in origin. Manliness and gentlemanliness will also be questioned, since they are central to Victorian ideas of English subject-hood. On the one hand, Mr Pickwick stands as a benign childless fatherly figure, on the other, Oliver Twist is an orphan boy, left defenceless by his father in the hostile world of the workhouse. This cheerfulness is mirrored in the corpulence of the Pickwickians.
However, this stoutness may also be a sign of frustration, exemplified by the fat boy 7 whose bulimia seems to be a substitute for female love, revealed by the cannibalistic looks he casts upon pretty Mary. Nevertheless, one may wonder whether so much revelry is not a way of covertly venting negative Oedipal feelings towards their chief and towards each other cf. Indeed, the word cracks like a pistol-shot or a violent return of a repressed impulse.
The charge of being a humbug is also levelled at Tupman who poses as an admirer of the fair sex. Winkle will be shown to be a coward and Tupman an easily cuckolded lover. However, things are more complex regarding their leader. He is caught breaking into a boarding-house for girls and must beg three women to lock him up in a closet in order to dispel all doubts about his intentions.
