Reformation in Bleak House

Throughout Bleak House, Charles Dickens exposes the need for change and reformation. He does this through showing the absurdity of the Court of Chancery, creating sympathetic characters such as Joe, and poking fun at the upper class. However, he doesn’t champion every type of reformation. Dickens makes a very clear case that the reformation should start at the home and from there spread to the rest of England. He does this by showing the attempted charity acts of Mrs. Jellyby and contrasting it with the charity acts of Mr. Jarndyce.  

Mrs. Jellyby’s is shown to be a woman who is very concerned with doing her Christian duty and sending money and aid to people in Africa. She wants to help reform their culture to give them a better life. However, even though she has good intentions, Mrs. Jellyby’s actions have negative effects on her family. Her children run wild, her husband is unable to provide for the family, and her eldest becomes engaged without her even knowing. The reformation that Mrs. Jellyby is championing, while ambitious, reeks havoc on the English household. Helping people in a different continent ends up making matters worse for those who live in England. The Jellyby family and household goes bankrupt at some point and most of the children are not given proper instruction on how to help English society. Dicken’s’ portrays the reformation that doesn’t focus on the home to be ultimately destructive. 

On the other hand, Mr. Jarndyce’s reformation activities are shown in a positive light. Jarndyce doesn’t have one cause that he is concerned with. Instead, he takes care of cases that come his way. He takes in Esther as his charge even though he had no connection to her. He also gives Charley a position as Esther’s maid. He is very free with helping others, especially if they can’t help themselves. Dicken’s positions Mr. Jarndyce into a positive role model who helps out many who he comes in contact with. This is the type of reformation that Dickens wants. The kind that looks out from the front door and helps those in need. He argues this by contrasting Jarndyce’s actions with those of Mrs. Jellyby’s actions. 

Esther's Mysterious Man

By the time you have read over half of Bleak House, you barely know the man that Esther seems to be interested in. Her decision to withhold information tells us something about her character. During the parts of Bleak House from Esther’s narration, we, as readers, get the feeling that she is very aware that she is telling us a story and picks what she wants to tell us. As a result, sometimes information that we think might be important to us, she leaves out. This choice of hers tells us a lot about what she thinks is important at various times in her life. This cannot be seen more than by the way she introduces us to Dr. Allan Woodcut.

The first time Esther introduces the reader to Woodcut it is as an afterthought. She states, “I have omitted to mention in its place, that there was some one else at the family dinner party... It was a gentleman” (214). At this point she doesn’t even bother to tell us his name merely describing him as “a gentleman of a dark complexion - a young surgeon” (214). Because she doesn’t tell us his name, it is clear that she doesn’t seem to think that we will be very interested in him. She at least deems the happenings between Richard and Ada more interesting and more important than her own romantic interests. This shows us that Esther’s character is more concerned with other people than with herself. She is outwardly focused, tracing the development of other characters more than her own. Her thoughts about the doctor are only important to give us some information to consult later in the book. However, Esther deliberately doesn’t tell us much about him, keeping our focus on Ada and Richard’s relationship. I believe that it is because this early in the novel Esther isn’t looking for a relationship. She is still establishing her position in the house, her relationship with the people she lives with, and her position within society. Pursuing a man, or being pursued by one would only upset the security she has recently found.

Later in the book though, we find out more about Esther’s thoughts about Woodcut. When she is at Mr. Boythorn’s house recovering from her illness, Esther tells us that she considered loving Woodcut. She had kept the flowers that he had given her earlier in the novel. What is interesting is that the flowers are one of the first things she tells the reader about after she sees how her looks have changed. She wants to connect the memories she has of Woodcut, dried and put away like the flowers, with her new outward appearance. I’m sure she had other thoughts, but she only foregrounds the ones which pertain to Woodcut. This tells me that her feelings towards Woodcut were more serious than she led us to believe. Instead of informing the reader about how she perceived herself would compare to Ada’s perception of her, or anyone else who hadn’t seen her yet, she focuses on a man we barely know anything about. At this point in her life, when she has a lot of free time and has to deal with the way she looks, Woodcut becomes important. Before, when she could focus on other things, she pushed him towards the back. However, because of this scene, it is obvious that he has always been in the back of her mind. It also becomes clear that she worries about what he thinks of her. It is after a drastic change to her appearance that she brings him up, suggesting that she connects her looks with his perception of her.  

Critiquing Deportment

Dickens uses the idea of being fashionable as a job to critique the system of having Nobility. He does this through the character of the elder Mr. Turveydrop. Mr. Turveydrop is said to be “celebrated, almost everywhere, for his deportment” (221). This deportment is like fashion; it is how one dresses and acts. It is considered to be high class to have deportment. We are first given to assume that Mr. Turveydrop has very fine, elegant taste in all aspects of life. However, Esther describes him as a having “a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers and a wig” (225). We are given the idea that this great deportment is in reality a falsity. It creates something that is not like the other people in the world. He makes his own little world that has nothing to do with how other people act or present themselves. Dickens connects this idea of being false with nobility by having Mr. Turveydrop’s role model be the Prince Regent. Mr. Turveydrop claims that England “has not many gentlemen left” and that he must follow the example of the Prince Regent to ensure that practices of gentlemen continue. He tries to move past his station and bring the world of nobility into the world of the common people. We are left with the impression that Turveydrop’s desire to embody the role of Deportment has made him indifferent to his family. Esther is told that his wife practically died from being overworked in order to provide for Turveydrop and his son who grew up with that mindset and is working just as hard for very little benefit. This could be a stretch to say that the noble’s Deportment makes them indifferent to the common people. Just like how Turveydrop doesn’t care how much his wife and son work to give him his wealth, nobles also don’t care about the common people who provide them with their riches. Esther becomes afraid that Caddy will become trapped in Turveydrop’s world and will be unable to be content. However, because it is better than her home, Caddy doesn’t seem to realize the negative effects of the elder Mr. Turveydrop. I see this as a connection to how the common people are trapped in the world that the nobility have created, but are unable to see the negative effects because they believe it is the better alternative. While Dickens by no means suggests that Caddy should stay at her home, he also doesn’t champion the idea of her being stuck with the elder Mr. Turveydrop. Any way I look at it, I cannot see a positive aspect of Turveydrop’s deportment. If Dickens had just left it at that, I probably wouldn’t have noticed anything other than a bad parent. However, because Turveydrop references the Regent Prince in immediately bring into mind nobility and the nobles roles. It seems clear that Dickens is making a deliberate move in order to critique the upper levels of society in Victorian England. 

Summary of "Outlandish Nationalism: Villette"

In the chapter “Outlandish Nationalism: Villette” from Disorienting Fiction: the Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels, James Buzard touches on many ideas of immersing into an alien land as a Briton and how the novel deals with the complications that can arise. He starts out by claiming that arrival scenes are important to generating the idea of otherness. In the first moments of her arrival, Lucy is bombarded with the differences between where she is and England. Creating this duality from the start allows the novel to explore the tensions and differences between being English and being from the Continent. However, becoming aware of her Englishness doesn’t come from standing aloof from her Labassecourian counterparts. Instead, “growing understanding of them tends to confirm and activate British Protestant values” (Buzard 247). Lucy understands that Britishness is a culture and not how everybody should live. Being aware of this helps her realize the behavior that British people ought to live up to in order to define themselves as Britons. Buzard claims that there are two different types of licenses that create conflict in Villette. The first is the license of unrestraint, which is negative, and the second is of diplomatic immunity, which “shields the emissary from the laws of the foreign country in which he resides” (250). In order to obtain the second license, Britons would have to restrict the first license. The next move that Buzard makes is to claim that Villette cannot be simply read in an ethnographic manner. The reason for this is that Bronte sets up London to be as alienating as Labassecour. Lucy cannot find a home in Britain which embodies the same type of Britishness as she does. The only way to form a British identity is to leave Britain and live in “an imperial project that is not Britain’s” (253). Departure and displacement become necessary to create a vital national identity. It is in a foreign land that Bretton’s heart has “come to glow with English fire as well as his hearth” (261). He and Polly suggest that Britons embody their national identities while having to embody the local identity as well. This strengthens the idea of national identity within them. However, Lucy recognizes that cultural identity can only be created and maintained through the act of playing some sort of role. They have to act “British” or act “French,” act “Protestant” or act “Catholic” whatever those codes my be. There is no permanent state, but everything is “open to negotiation and alteration” (267). Everything little thing has significance to how culture is created which is why, Buzard notices, that the novel charges even the trivial details with importance. This allows the reader to see the Labassecourian culture as a separate entity, locally contained. 

Buzard equates John Graham Bretton with Great Britain and Polly Home with the figurative “home” of the British. Polly becomes the emblem of the home that can be found in all countries because Britishness can be universally applicable. John Bretton embodies the English born who uphold British standards without succumbing to French or Catholic influences. His decision to marry Polly rather than her cousin Ginevra Fanshawa demonstrates Bretton’s Saxon strengths while highlighting Ginevra’s lack of British identity. Buzard comments that Lucy was given the chance to fall into this story of British identity. She had feeling for Bretton, but rather than fall for the embodiment of Britain, Lucy suppresses her feelings. Buzard believes that this is because Lucy must move past the National tale that Graham and Polly embody in order to push the boundaries of British identity to “assume the form of ‘another culture’” to bring back a British culture “that is theirs” (276). This is what Buzard ultimately believes is the purpose of Villette.