Tea, crumpets, and a side of Esther (The Novel, vol. 2)

At one point, so very long ago, near the beginning of my affair with Bleak House, Esther's narrative was to the novel what an oasis is to a desert traveler. Her narrative, an easier read than the third-person narrative, was unassuming, honest, and often humorous. It was easier to follow the progress of the plot, to identify with the characters, and to generally CARE about them.

But, at some later point, I began to grow tired of Esther. I am not exactly sure when this was, though I have suspicions that it coincided with the drastically reduced pace at which I finished Bleak House. Esther seems to me the voice of the Victorian model women, with a "proper" (for the mindset at the time! Don't get the wrong idea...) sense of place and obligation. In short, she's a domestic goddess, and is even crystallized as such with nicknames like Dame Durden and Little Woman. This didn't really bother me at first - and in fact, it was never her seemingly stereotyped role that changed my opinion of her. Moreso, it was that she never transcended that role; she never really changed, actually, and I became bored with her. Her narrative, in my opinion, detracts a bit from the social consciousness and call to awareness promoted by the rest of the novel. It is like a bubble (possibly indicating that the home provides a buffer from the horrors and misgivings and injustices of the outside world?); and she draws her character descriptions with softer lines, glossing over or haphazardly joking about the faults of others, and thus creating for the readers characters whom also look like as Victorian moralistic idols. This is most visible with regards to Jarndyce, Ada, and Caddy.

In class, we talked briefly about Dickens's penchant for the melodramatic, and I think the saccharine, contrived ending he crafts for Esther is the final nail that ultimately supplants her living, breathing persona from last month with an idealized statue of a human. Her total self-effacing, selfless persona is all-too-moralistic and unbelievable. Some depth is added when her face is permanently altered by smallpox - the reader begins to see inside Esther's head, witnessing her doubts and seeing a semblance of a crack in her perfection heretofore. But (and I hate to be so dully pragmatic) this physical fault makes her happy ending with Woodcourt even more unrealistic. This, combined with the tragic endings met by the beautiful Lady Dedlock and the destitute Jo, is a not-too-thinly-veiled morality lesson from Dickens: be selfless and giving, and fulfill your role, and not even smallpox will ruin your life; exterior beauty is no replacement for inner goodness; and for God's sake, people, help the poor.

However, I've come to realize that I must ask myself the question, What is Esther's role? And of equal importance, How does she herself envision her role? It is a consequence of fiction that all characters are contrived by their authors, so I don't feel that Dickens's portrait of Esther is really a fault in any way, if one keeps in mind his purpose for creating the character in the first place. As a character in the novel, Esther takes on a journalistic objectivism critical to the development of Jarndyce, Ada, Richard, etc. in the reader's eye. It is her style and her personality that result in her humble detachment (combined, perhaps, with Victorian morals and ideals). Her brief stops on her negative experiences, however, are crucial to her development, and in fact, perhaps add more depth than I initially credited her. Is her humility and benevolence a reaction to the altering tragedies she has faced in her life? Is she repressing some dark inner thoughts, and if so, why? Because of the Victorian model, because of her carrying the burden of observer, because the memories are too difficult to bear, or because Dickens wants us only to see the sweetness in her? Considering these possibilities, it is easier to believe Esther as a narrator, because she is a more believable as a person.