GALLOWAY'S ESSAY
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WORLD
In discussing
and public concerns tend to be related by
the third-person narrator, while private and domestic life, and the possibilities
for fulfillment, are the prime subjects of
simply narrow my analysis approropriately
but the double narrative provides an obvious guide. The third-person narration
contains the themes of economic interconnectedness and social criticism
while Esther's narration emphasizes moral connectedness and individual
responsibility. My analysis will explore the parallel narratives and their
themetic spheres. Though I'm not sure about Joseph I. Fradin's assertion
that the double narrative of Bleak House is "a metaphor of the divided
modern consciousness," I agree with his suggestion that the technique "carries
the dialectic between self and society" in its expression of both Esther's
subjective perception and the third person's objective and ironic social
analysis. The suggestion of synthesis is
intriguing and I will conclude with a speculative
look at what the novel has to say about 'life as a mystery that must be
discovered', the function of revelation in the text, and the possibility
of either social or individual transformation within this fictional world.
The tone of the impersonal third-person narrator is variously ironic, urbane,
familiar, detached, witty, and, at times, expressive of real anger. The
reader can easily detect the bitter irony in many narrative remarks such
as the description of "One ruined suitor...who can by no means be made
to understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence
after making it desolate for a quarter of a century", but also enjoy the
humorous portrayals of characters like Mr. Chadband who has "a fat smile,
and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system".The
narrator wittily describes Sir Leicester, "He would on the whole admit
Nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with
a park fence)...", yet outrage and anger are clear in the announcement
of
Most of the impersonal narrator's commentary concerns the public sphere,
especially the three areas of Bleak House society that are central
to the plot: Chancery, the aristocracy, and urban poverty as represented
by the slum of Tom-all-Alone's. Chancery is introduced in the first
chapter and from the opening sentences the Court is linked with the symbols
of fog and mud: "Never can there come a fog too thick, never can there
come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering
condition which this High Court of Chancery...holds, this day". But the
Court is not just blind and inefficient, its work is much more sinister:
"This is the Court of Chancery...which gives to monied might, the means
of abundantly wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience,
courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there
is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give-the
warning, 'Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!'".
Obviously this Court has little to do with justice. Rather, "The one great
principle of the
English law is, to make business for itself.
There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained
through all its narrow turnings". As Graham Storey asserts regarding the
Court of Chancery, "[it is] presented as corrupt and life-destroying, a
ghastly parody of a Court founded to administer justice and equity".
The second chapter, '
The links established between these various public spheres can best be
understood through the symbolic significance of Chancery as representative
of the entire society. After all, a Chancery suit is, as Sir Leicester
reflects, "a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing". Likewise
Mr. Kenge declares of Chancery, "This is a great system...and would you
wish a
great country to have a little system? Now,
really, really!". Yet the nature of Chancery, its methods and effects,
like those of Circumlocution Office in
costs" (Daleski, 20). Just as a biological
parasite will eventually weaken and destroy its host, the parasitical corruption
of a national institution will eventually weaken and destroy the rest of
society. Thus, the primary symbol of Chancery and its effect on the society
is that of disease resulting from moral corruption and social parasitism
with death looming behind. The infectious disease of Chancery becomes the
practical way in which Chancery connects the spheres of law, politics,
and the high and low classes. Richard Carstone withers away from the moral
corruption of Chancery while the disease bred in Nemo's burial ground and
Tom-all-Alone's infects Jo, then Charley and Esther, and probably contributes
to Lady Dedlock's demise. As Jeremy Hawthorn writes, "Disease is such a
powerful symbol for Dickens in Bleak House because it involves different
kinds of expressive connections: it arises from specific, concrete and
material living conditions, living-conditions which are themselves the
cause of particular social realities, and it also links the poor with those
rich who wish to disclaim any relationship with or
responibility for them". The social and physical
disease created and spread by Chancery becomes a metaphor for the corruption
of the entire society.
The deadening effects of the corruption and disease that infect Bleak
House society can be seen most vividly in the portrayals of various
key characters. The descriptions of Krook and his Rag and Bottle Shop are
meant to function as a grim moral parallel with the Lord Chancellor and
Chancery. Mr. Krook attests, "I have so many old parchmentses and papers
in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs...And I
can't bear to part with anything once I lay hold of or to alter anything,
or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning...that's why I've got
the ill name of Chancery. I go to see my...brother pretty well every day,
when he sits in the Inn...There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub
on in a muddle". Krook's shop, in its filth and horror, exemplifies in
a concrete, physical way the true moral nature of the Court. Likewise,
the lives of those who work within the Court like Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr.
Vholes have been infected with spiritual decay but of a predatory kind.
Tulkinghorn is "a dark, cold object" and "like a machine" who jealously
guards aristocratic family secrets and has become rich administering marriage
settlements and wills. Mr. Vholes looks at Richard "as if he were making
a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional
appetite". This inhuman parasitism extends out through the society to characters
like the Smallweeds whose "God was Compound Interest. [Their patriarch]
lived for it, married it, died of it" and
who are also variously described as animals
of prey such as "a money-getting species of spider, who spun webs to catch
unwary flies". The link between lawyers of Chancery and the Smallweeds
as social parasites is rendered exact by the analogy of "lawyers [who]
lie like maggots in nuts" and Mr. Smallweed's grandfather who valued only
"grubs" and "never bred a single butterfly".
The corruption of Chancery is mirrored in another institution, the hilarous
parody of politicians in Parliament. Rather than properly exercising the
duties of their offices, the politicians, like the lawyers, are concerned
exclusively with either dividing power among themselves or winning elections
through bribery. Sir Leicester, as representative of the aristocratic class,
sanctions such corruption when he contributes money he knows will be used
for bribery to the campaign) but he would not think of reforming any national
institution for this "would encourage some person in the lower classes
to rise up somewhere". The Dedlock political satire serves to emphasize
"the close fit between the class system and the political system" (Brown,
69).
The two parasitical systems reinforce each
other resulting in the same deadness that pervades Chancery. Lady Dedlock
is usually "bored to death," the Dedlocks are childless, and Chesney Wold
is "a deadened world".
Such a pervasive system of disease, decay and death cannot be without its
victims.
The deaths of Richard and Jo are strangely counterpointed in that both are essentially born and bred in Chancery. But Richard's abilities and advantages are not enough to save him. Though Woodcourt diagnoses that Richard's illness is not physical, he still "consumes himself with the care and suspense and distrust and doubt engendered by Chancery" (Daleski, 31). At the other end of the social spectrum, Jo is a victim from the start. Dreadfully poor and uneducated, he can only react to his circumstances in this parasitic society. But the disease that is bred in Tom-all-Alone's, the ultimate effect of society's corruption and neglect of the most unprotected, both causes and revenges Jo's suffering and death, thus exacting justice of a different order. The third-person narrator makes this clear: "There is not an atom of Tom's slime...not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness...but shall work its retribution, through every order of society, up to the proudest of the proud, and to the highest of the high". Though the biblical overtones of this passage suggest Miss Flite's pronouncements, Tom's Revenge does not wait until the next life.
In introducing Jo to the reader, and of course through Jo's subsequent fate, the third-person narrator makes explicit one of the major themes of the novel. He asks, "What connection can there be between the place in Lincolnshire...and the whereabouts of Jo the outlaw?...What connection can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together?". The ultimate answer is that we are all part of the human family, but in the world of I, where many labor under the delusion that their lives and destinies are separate from each other, this point must be reiterated through plot, symbolism, parody, and imagery. Yet what links everyone in the society of Bleak House are just those things that shouldn't: greed, corruption, disease, and death. The law as represented by Chancery, "which gives monied might, the means of abundantly wearing out the right", "is the visible symbol behind which lurk the forces of greed and privilege spinning their labyrinthine webs of corruption" (Johnson, 24) and these threads extend out to the rest of society. Chancery represents the twin evils of dehumanizing bureaucratization and the power of money with its attendant vices of greed and self-interest since a large part of its business has to do with wills and wills are about money. Brown believes this increasing commodification, "this shrinking of the whole of life to be encompassed in a narrow, sterile, business mould is seen by Dickens as unforgivable" (26). In tandem with this process of rapid industrialization and the growth of cities, 19th century British society also increasingly organized into bureaucratic structures. Smith contends that Dickens' "continuing concern was with the ways in which these bureaucratic structures, despite the best of motives, obscure face to face contact between individual human beings" (Charles Dickens: Bleak House, 45). The dehumanization of so many of Bleak House's characters and their portrayals as various animals, indicating they have regressed to a more bestial or selfish nature, supports the views of both critics. Indeed, Bleak House insightfully explores one of the paradoxes of modern life in an industrialized economy; as economic centralization proceeds and people become more economically interdependent, they also become morally and spiritually isolated and disconnected from each other as every aspect of their lives tends to become absorbed into "the system."
But though the system may indeed be dehumanizing at best, evil at worst,
the individuals who give in to and/or endorse the system contribute to
that evil through abdication of personal responsibility. From the High
Court of Chancery, which does not take responsibility for dealing adequately
with the cases brought before it, to the Parliament's laxity in dealing
with urban
poverty, to Mr. Smallweed's cruelty at the
behest of his fictitious "friend in the city," the public world of finance
and power claims either 'no one' or 'someone else' is to blame. But these
institutions are composed of individuals who unfortunately "participate
willingly in their own human impairment" (Smith,
Dickens, Money, and
Society, 29). This seems to me the deeper
issue that Bleak House raises, that
regardless of how monolithic the system, individuals can still choose how
to live and react within its strictures. One needs to remember that the
Chancery cases of Bleak House "have all originated in family quarrels-the
Jarndyces', Miss Flite's, Gridley's" (Scott, 109). As Esther's parallel
narrative indicates, "The struggle of the individual against that system,
the vital being against the debilitating machine, is the protest of life
against death" (Manning, 106) and is the struggle every person in
Bleak
House must undertake to be fully human.
Esther Summerson's first-person narrative begins in the third chapter, composes approximately half of the novel, and concludes the book. It is her personal account of her own life related in the past tense from her present point as a happy wife and mother. Compared to the tone of the anonymous narrator, Esther's tone "is uniformly delicate, self-disparaging, often painfully hypersensitive" (Storey, 21) and her opening sentence sets this tone, "I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever". Esther's narrative tone counterpoints that of the third-person narrator in that her voice is subjective, optimistic, and sympathetic in contrast to his objective, intellectual, and ironic voice, and her concerns are primarily personal and domestic whereas his are public and social. However, as Jacob Korg points out, the general opinions of the two narrators are similar: "Both sympathize with the poor and helpless, oppose burdensome traditions, and favor benevolence over abstract humanitarianism as a means of solving social problems". I think it's clear that Esther is also the moral center of the Bleak House. Her conduct, reactions, and ultimate fate function as a standard of morality in an overwhelmingly corrupt and diseased world.
Besides being a narrator, Esther is also a character in the novel and her story, especially the discovery of her parentage, is central to the plot. Further, she "supplies the central observation point, because relations are measured according to their nearness or farness from her" (Donovan, 39). Though many have criticized her character as too idealized and her narrative as dull, I agree with Robert Donovan that her sensibility is due partly to the demands on her as a narrator: She must be simplistic, even transparent, so the reader trusts her judgments and doesn't feel her impressions are colored too much by her own personality. Other critics claim that Esther does not develop at all but that she is consistently "static, passive...and good" (Harvey, 149). I disagree, and think that Esther does grow and develop in awareness and maturity, but her experiences do not make her bitter or cynical. Rather, they reinforce her commitments to those she loves. Indeed, her "progress" towards full maturity, which includes both harsh experience and surprising discoveries, comprises most of the vital action of the novel; the larger society of the third-person narration is much more static and timeless. And her journey towards self-definition and discovery ties many of Bleak House's themes together in both illustrating how people are damaged by a corrupt society and how they can live successfully in spite of it.
The reader learns from the outset that Esther has endured a cold and emotionally
deprived childhood. Told by her godmother from her earliest memories that
she has a blight on her existence, that she "is set apart" from other children,
she finds her only comfort is her doll. As she reflects, "my disposition
is very affectionate" and she would confess to her doll, "I would try,
as hard as ever I could, to repair the fault I had been born with (of which
I confusedly felt guilty and yet innocent), and would strive as I grew
up to be industrious, contented, and kind-hearted, and to do some good
to some one, and win some love to myself if I could"). Because of her childhood
vows, Esther is zealous in her loyalty, affections, and duty but she also
has
difficulty in believing in her own lovability.
Thus, Esther's constant harping on her own deficiences and the goodness
of others in attributing virtue to her, as well as the strong need to give
and receive love, grows "organically out of Esther's upbringing" (Smith,
Charles Dickens: Bleak House,18). Consequently, much of Esther's psychological
development in the novel centers around the issues of identity and self-definition.
Joseph I. Fradin explores this aspect and points to two nightmares that
Esther has in which she feels her sense of identity is in peril. The first
is when she falls asleep at the
Esther is only one of several orphans in the book and this fact reinforces
one of the novel's major themes, the abandonment of parental responsibility,
a theme that is analogous to that of the third-person narrative, the institutional
abandonment of social responsibility. In different ways Jo, Esther, Charley,
Richard, and Ada are abandoned children. Mrs. Jellyby, Mrs. Pardiggle,
Abandoned and neglected children are necessarily the result of absent or neglectful parents. And not surprisingly, most of the novel's neglectful parents seem to be infected by the same socially pervasive disease of parasitism. Harold Skimpole is perhaps the clearest example of this. Continually portraying himself as an "eternal child," he both escapes the responsiblities of adulthood and parenthood but also does a tremendous disservice to the real children around him. The prime example of this behavior is his betrayal of Jo for a bribe. Regarding the incident he protests to Esther, "You know I don't pretend to be responsible. I never could do it. Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me...". Yet Mr. Bucket's insight about Skimpole is more to the point; "Now, Miss Summerson, I'll give you a piece of advice...Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as lambs in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it...". Skimpole's willingness to betray his relationships for money and material pleasures differs little in essence from Vholes' predatory intentions toward Richard, who was introduced to Vholes by Skimpole for a five-pound note! Likewise, Mr. Turveydrop, who has for years been supported by his wife and then by his son, extends this arrangement to include Caddy as Prince's wife. Yet, neither Caddy nor Prince had healthy relationships with their parents in which they were allowed to enjoy their childhoods, so when Mr Turveydrop consents to their marriage, Caddy and Prince "were as much overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrifice in their favour"). Finally, both Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle, in their misguided schemes of philanthropy, not only myopically overlook such needy orphans as Jo who is right under their noses and "is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians, [or] one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha", but alienate and neglect their own children. Yet though their motives may be pure but misguided, their methods indicate they are also infected by the greater society's concern with money and business. "Mrs. Jellyby, always 'full of business,' treats her daughter, Caddy, as a clerk or employee, and makes her home into an office" (Brown, 63) and she simply ignores her husband and her other children. Mrs. Pardiggle is noted for her "rapacious benevolence" and demonstrates a "mechanical way of taking possession of people" yet also demands charitable contributions from her "weazened and shrivelled" children. Through their blindness and neglect and failure to understand that 'charity begins at home,' both women help insure that their children will be among another 'damaged' generation.
There are some characters who do exhibit a sense of reponsibility towards children and each other. The Bagnets are perhaps the only intact and happy family yet they are also willing to help their friend George when he needs them. Mr. Jarndyce benevolently takes in Richard, Ada, and Esther, and rescues Charley Neckett and her younger brother and sister. Yet Esther as the "little woman" and "Dame Durden" best represents the novel's ideal of responsible womanhood as exhibited through efficiency, nurturing, and tenderness. Even Skimpole tells her, "You appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which you are at the centre, I feel inclined to say to myself...that's responsibility". From the outset, children are naturally attracted to her. Esther's early days at Greenleaf her first meeting with Peepy Jellyby, Caddy's inclinations to place her in the role of a mother, and Jo's instinctive devotion are only a few of the instances in which young people are drawn to her. In all cases she responds with sincere interest and loving compassion. Her unpretentious concern with others' welfare contrasts sharply with the self-serving benevolence of a Mrs. Pardiggle and with the parasitical, calculating attitude of the many characters who reduce people to monetary objects. Esther's motherly warmth finds an echo in Mrs. Bagnet's stout devotion to her family, Mrs. Rouncewell's concern for her son George, and even Lady Dedlock evinces a motherly impulse that, though long-suppressed, still emerges in her attachment to her maid, Rosa. As Sylvia Bank Manning argues, "The characters in Bleak House who engage our sympathy are those who fight against becoming inhuman and rigid" and the majority of these figures happen to be women. Mr. Jarndyce, Mr. Boythorn, and Mr. Woodcourt are the notable exceptions yet their best qualities are also those of compassion and service that are not inharmonious with the traditional "feminine" virtues.
Thus, the themes of Esther's narrative are not unrelated to those of the third-person narrative but are simply many of the same issues viewed from a different perspective. The effect is to perhaps underscore the novel's most significant theme of all, the interconnectedness and interdependence of all persons in society, regardless of geography, class, or profession. As the reader goes back and forth between the narratives, observing and experiencing the various characters and locations from various viewpoints, the realization is forced on one's consciousness that the public and private worlds are, in essence, two sides of the same world. At base, they are indivisible. Yet, at the same time, Esther's "progress" of self-discovery and her search for meaning and fulfillment emphasize how incumbent it is for each individual to be as fully human as they can be, to choose and to act as much as possible according to their highest aspirations and ideals regardless of the values and tendencies of the larger society. Bleak House powerfully asserts through Esther's example that the struggle to live even within an atmosphere of death is still a worthwhile and noble struggle.
Bleak House shares a number of structural elements common to the mystery novel genre, a fact noted by many literary critics. These include the obvious importance to the plot of the facts and connections that are revealed and/or discovered. In Bleak House, discoveries occur either through individual efforts, as in the cases of Mr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Guppy, or Mr. Bucket, or they occur by chance. In most instances, revelation comes about through a combination of both. Yet through the process of reading, the reader also participates in the unraveling of Bleak House 's mysteries. Thus in this highly complex and multi-faceted novel, many reader response critcs have pointed out another layer of meaning, one that highlights some of the novel's existential implications. For myself, as a reader and a critic, many of these implications underlie what the text has to say about the need for, and the possibilities of, transformation in both the novel's public and private worlds.
Jeremy Hawthorn credits Dickens' double narrative technique with causing the reader to "continually 'reset' his or her attitude to what is depicted... as we shift from the anonymous narrator to Esther, and back again, we keep being faced with problems of reconciling their viewpoints and values, and this makes the reader an active searcher after meaning rather than the merely passive recipient of an authorial or narrative 'truth'". One result of this process can be that the reader comes to recognize the deeper ways in which mystery and chance are endemic to the human condition. This is another reason why it is essential the reader sympathize with Esther. As she explores her world and her discoveries justify her innocence, her commitments to those she loves increase and she leads the reader as far from the influences of the bleak world around her as she can (Sanders, 43). And the reader both explores with Esther and is privy to knowledge that she isn't through the third-person narrator. Thus the larger point is made about the real world: it is both causal and random, connected and contigent, and we are both free and determined beings (Harvey, 155). Yet Hawthorn makes the important distinction between being a first-time reader for whom the mysteries of the novel are new, and a second or third-time reader in which we can more easily see the well-crafted "connections, parallels, [and] patterns". In these cases one reads more critically and the world that is revealed, for Esther and the reader, is indeed a "bleak" one. By the novel's conclusion, Chancery, the political and class systems, and urban poverty continue, these conditions seem to be in the very nature of Bleak House society. What possiblities for transformation exist in such a singularly life-denying world? Of course, there are the obvious examples of Esther and her small circle but the text also points to two other possibilites within the public sphere, social revolution and the rise of an industrial middle-class as represented by Rouncewell.
The references to social revolution in the novel are numerous. One of Sir
Leicester's recurrent and secret fears is that the lower classes will again
rise up somewhere led by a "Wat Tyler," leader of the Peasant's Revolt
of 1381. An analogy between disease and revolution is suggested in a description
of Tom-All-Alone's, "Verily, what with tainting, plundering and spoiling,
Tom has his revenge". Brown points out that this theme is related to a
pattern of imagery, "the image of the springing or exploding of a mine
or bomb". In another passage describing Tom's, " Twice, lately, there has
been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in Tom-All-Alone's;
and, each time, a house has fallen...the next crash in Tom-All-Alone's
may be expected to be a good one" the possibility of social upheaval is
implied. And the effect of a revolution on the upper classes is likened
to the effect the truth about Lady Dedlock has on Sir Leicester when Bucket
reveals it in the chapter titled "
Rouncewell's success in business and politics is presented as a viable and desirable alternative to revolution. He is a self-made man who has both educated himself and built up a business that provides jobs and opportunities for others in his class. He successfully runs for Parliament and aims to educate his daughters so that they are "worthy of any station". Compared to the Dedlock class which is "in decline," Mr. Rouncewell represents a new spirit in the land in which "many great undertakings are in progress". The Dedlocks have no heir whereas Rouncewell does have a son and heir , indicating where the future of Britain lies. That Rouncewell's class will eventually predominate over Sir Leicester's is brought home by the fact that Rouncewell's son is named "Watt," recalling Wat Tyler and his revolt. But the transfer of power and money from the landed classes to the industrial classes has been proven by historical hindsight to be peaceful and productive, probably because it was a gradual process that extended hope for a better life to those who were willing to work hard in the new industries and it was an increasingly prevalent alternative to violent change.
In the private sphere, Esther's move up north with her loved ones provides the moral analogy to Rouncewell's successful ironworks and illustrates the possibilities for personal transformation. That salvation is possible is suggested at Jo's deathbed where, led by Woodcourt in prayer, Jo finds a light "upon the dark benighted way". As the ultimate victim in the novel, surrounded by disease, ignorance, and death, Jo receives a final comfort through Mr. Woodcourt's compassion. After her bout of illness and her discovery of her birthright, Esther too is resurrected or transformed through her reaffirmation of her innocence and of her commitment to those she loves. She and Allan marry and have children, they share a home with Ada and her son, and they all gladden the old age of Mr. Jarndyce. But Esther and Allan do not forget the needy around, they minister to those in pain and suffering. Woodcourt is a doctor for the poor in the industrial north, and "his capacity to communicate with members of the working class... implies that not only will he improve the quality of life for working men in that area but will also help to break down the 'iron barrier' between classes" (Brown, 81). As a helpmate to Allan, Esther also brings to bear her understanding of the interconnectedness of her life with those around her and asserts that what shall connect them is love and mutual responsibility, not the default links of money, tradition, and self-interest. That this view is meant to be the moral message of the novel is suggested by the structure in which the reader must follow Esther as she negotiates her way through the dark maze of Bleak House society to emerge in a place where she at last creates a happy life that is yet very connected to the lives around her.
Many critics have viewed Esther's establishment as the mistress of the new 'Bleak House' as an unconvincing escape out of the dark world of the novel from which the reader is yet constantly reminded that there is no escape. Brown argues, as do many critics, that this is "a basic contradiction within the structure of the novel" (65), but I disagree. Bearing in mind that all of the Bleak House characters are surrounded and shaped by social, political, and economic forces, that everyone in this world is both determined and free, Esther's life is clearly not idealized. She suffers as an illegitimate orphan, is marred by smallpox, and must construct both an identity and a life for herself that has meaning and purpose. Total success in Bleak House is impossible and Esther is far from completely successful in her aims and hopes. She and Mr. Jarndyce fail to save Richard and spare Ada a life as a single parent. She tries but cannot help Jo and she can do little to ease the hardships of the bricklayers' lives. She cannot save Caddy Jellyby from a marriage that brings with it much sacrifice on Caddy's part. She fights the battle of affirming life within a world of death but it is an uphill battle. Esther's triumph and that of those whom she loves, is that she can still perceive the possiblities of life within death and allow them to change and transform her. In this respect, she can be said to escape in a spiritual sense since she does not become entrapped like other characters in rigid ways of living and rigid states-of-mind but I would not characterize her move north as an escape. She bears the marks of past suffering and is still involved with those in her greater community.
Yet those who do who characterize the conclusion of Bleak House as an unrealistic escape from the all-encompassing world Dickens has taken such pains to construct are, I think, operating from certain assumptions about what a novel of "social criticism" should do or advocate. Certainly it's natural to want to see a corrupt system overthrown, if not in real life then in one's fiction, but it is a tribute to Dickens' commitment to his style of realism that he doesn't do this in Bleak House. Esther's fate may be an example of a "romantic side of familiar things," but Esther's predicament is indeed "the predicament of [human beings] in modern industrial society" and the novel expresses the result of this predicament, "the fragmented individual" (Harvey, 156). All we can do, like Esther, is perform our duty, and a certain amount of personal freedom lies in the recognition of that necessity. And contrary to the views of some, Esther's destiny is not without political import. Rather than dealing with a powerful and corrupt system head-on, sometimes the smartest (or only) thing people can do is to start changing conditions and relationships in their local communities. Such an approach is the least centralized form of democratic action and it helps people reclaim those aspects of their lives that they can control. This can also reconnect people in more genuine human relationships, the lack of which so outraged Bleak House's third-person narrator. One should not underestimate the potential of this approach. Esther's life in the new 'Bleak House' "opens up a promise for the future which lightens the encircling gloom" (Sanders, 164), and since all things are connected, perhaps Esther's solution can also spread and transform the world.
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You can find this page (as well as the
books references) in
Curso Académico
1999/2000
Narrativa
en lengua inglesa I
© Ioana Basterra López
© a.r.e.a/ Dr. Vicente Forés López
Universitat de València Press
jobaslo@alumni.uv.es