In fact the idea of the upsurges in Europe penetrating England is forewarned in the appearance of the French serving woman, Hortense. She is described by Esther as ‘some woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of terror’. (BH 368) Her passion is dangerous and serves as a warning that such foreign zest could easily penetrate the back streets of England, particularly if the condition of England is not addressed immediately. Carlyle persistent caution was not unheeded by Dickens. The shortcomings of those in charge could easily provoke ‘many a deed of violence and blooshed’ especially if men continued to ‘calmly look at the evil before such dangers force it…upon their attention’. (Oddie, 1972: 12) Hortense is capable of showing her force, and achieveing her aim, and although Dickens doesn’t explore her characeter extensively, one can sense that her angered point of view, but more importantly her action could easily influence those in similar circumstances.
Despite their almost inherited disease lower class experience is one of survival. Their perception of the world, shaped by their experience, has been one in which they have learnt the hunted, hounded persistently to ‘move on’. (BH 300) In regard to the detective, Jo considers Bucket to be ‘in all manner of places, all at wunst’. (BH 717) It is no small wonder that the lower classes do not actively resist this pressure, especially when characters such as Jo are made to feel guilty for what they rarely understand. When Mrs Paradiggle invades the brickmaker’s house she acts as ‘if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a station house’. (BH 132) One should remember that they are not criminals. In actual fact Jo is a hard working ‘crossing sweeper’. He is neither idle nor ungrateful, and yet he ‘and his order’ are hunted down like a morally and physically diseased animals, and in the case of Jo he is told to ‘hook it [that] nobody wants you here’ (BH 717) and ultimately made to ‘move on’ from the only place he knows – his home.
That Jo has a good heart and a conscience is apparent in his persistent ‘miserable sobs’ (BH 717) and need to apoligise for the disease he unintentionally carried to the safe side of his world. One may ask whether the political superiors should not be thankful that such lowly characters have not developed their point of view to the extent that they can recognised their ill treatment and their entitlement to basic human rights. The Westminster Review (1850) is fact cuttingly marvelled at ‘how there could be so much tame submission, and the thoughtful to be little anxious lest this tameness…should come to an end’. (Morris, 1991: 95) However, as a result of this failure Jo often percieves the world as harsh and unwelcoming. It is not that he is ungrateful for the help that is offered him, but his trust begins to falter as a result of living in constant fear. This particularly poignant in his cautionary behaviour in regards to the help offered by Doctor Woodcourt, from whom he ‘curves, ducks..dives and scours away’. (BH 714) Help comes few and far between, and often it can lead to the lower orders being implicated in situations they neither understand of wish to be a part of.
That this caution of outside help can turn into dangerous, deliberate distrust and even hatred of outsiders is apparent in the brickmakers. The scorn of patronising and ultimatley useless help offered by the missionaries almost gives the lower classes a common and shared perspective on the world around them, and ultimately unites them. Jenny and Liz, after the loss of the former’s child, so ‘coarse and shabby and beaten [are] so united’ and ‘to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another; how the heart of each other was softened by the hard trials of their lives’. (BH 135). The relationships between them offer support and encouragement demonstrating a capacity for loyalty and inter-dependence. Their common, and ultimately private suffering provokes Esther to comment that ‘the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and to God’. (BH 135)
Here they purposefully isolate themselves, and their refusal to be civil belies a hatred for a system that has failed them. The brickmaker, though he moves from the door to let Esther and the others leave their home, clearly feels uncomfortable that he demonstrated such a small, but helpful, gesture. Unlike the two women who are softened, albeit shocked, by the compassion shown by Esther and Ada, the men’s hearts have hardened. The brickmaker, after the loss of his child has become immune to heartache, or at least has learnt the futility of emotional displays, as he stands ‘at the door…with dry eyes, but quiet’. (BH 134) This silence is also displayed in the reaction of the second brickmaker, who ‘smoked his pope with an air of defiance’. (BH 134) Their silence is dangerous, and their point of view is moulded by the heart wrenching experiences they undertake almost daily. Their perspectives have developed into the potential for threatening concerted action. The same is so for Gridley and Miss Flit. ‘Touchingly and awfully drawn together’, during Gridley’s last moments, ‘he and little mad woman were side by side, and, as it were, alone. She sat on a chair holding his hand and [nobody] went close to them’ (chapter 24).
At times in the novel this caution not to approach them appears wise, particularly at other times they are capable of biting. Certainly the lower classes are portrayed as metaphorical animals, ‘the blinded oxen, over goaded, over driven, never guided, run into wrong places are beaten at; and plunge, red-eyed, and foaming at stone walls…very like Jo and his order; very very like’. (BH 258) ‘Jo and his order’ are so treated like animals that their life can only consist of ‘animal satisfaction’. The way is which they view and appreciate things is a result of the way that they have been treated. In a touching moment Jo and a dog stand listening to the music in the square that evokes much the same feelings within both of them. They are the two sides of one personality, and as the narrator warns, ‘turn that dog’s descendents wild, like Jo, and in a a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark – but not their bite’ (BH 259) This bite it seems is considered to have its origins from ‘the north of England [from which Chesney Wold’s parasite – Volumnia fears there is a general conspiracy] to obtain her rouge pot and pearl necklace’. (BH 457)
Her pathetic concern might in some ways be justified as the lower orders in Bleak House can also move up the social ladder. The Ironmaster, who from a boy constructed ‘steam engines out of saucepans’ is also considered to be moving in that ‘Wat Tyler direction’, evoking the leader of the 1381 Peasant’s Revolt. (BH 107). Sir Leicester Dedlock blatantly lives in constant fear of the so-called ‘flood-gates opening’ and allowing a repeat performance. He regards the ‘farther north’ (BH 951) oucewell ‘as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turning out by tourchlight, two or three nights in the week, for unlawful purposes’. (BH 452) Ruskin stated that Dickens’s hero was ‘essentially the ironmaster’ (Brown, 1982: 38), and it certainly seems that that the point of view of these lower middle-class characters has so developed that they are able to reach away from severilty and subjection towards wealth and attainment. The portrayal of Mr Rouncewell’s success, embodied in the great power that lies behind the steam of his early toy engines, offers the largest threat against the rich. In part that threat is political. His aim of standing as a candidate can only bring forth little screams from Volummia. Their financial security equips them with a strength rarely seen amongst those of the urban slums. They can afford to educate themselves, establish a status and an enterprise in the modern market place that ultimately holds no place for the stagnant aristocracy.
However, whilst on the one hand giving voice to the lower classes in Bleak House, Dickens, albeit unconsciously takes it away with the other. Complaints are made by the brickmakers in particular that if anyone actually lowered themselves to talk to them they did so as if they were ‘babby’s’. (BH 132) In many ways however, there actually lingers within the first person narration a coercive and patronising voice. Dickens possibly would not have considered portraying the lower orders in any other way. The English poor are more like children than rebels, and anything harm they do cause is unconscious and unintentional. That Jo apoligises for spreading the fever means that he is was completely unconscious of the consequences of his actions until he is informed of them. He is fundamentally good at heart, and like many of Dickens’s lower-class characters, is portrayed as a child who is socially vulnerable and in need of protection (Brown, p67). Their potential strength, hence despite Jo being called the ‘Tough Subject’, is as a result almost intentionally curtailed. By no means, as Orwell stated was Dickens a revolutionary writer. (Storey, 14) Alternatively to the pitiful ousted and hunted victim, the lower classes become in many ways mere comical and pathetic characters who would never intentionally disrupt what is essentially a corrupt system in need of reform but not destruction. General George, for example, regardless of his military background would rather defend the state rather than attack it. His constant formal salutes strip him of any real strength that he could otherwise have. Dickens was by no means a Chartist, and the point of view of the lower classes is seen through the eyes of characters who are in need of help rather than taking it for themselves.
The good working class character is expected to be politically apathetic, ‘cap-tweaking, foot shuffling and reassuringly unrevolutionary’ (Brown, 1982: 48). They are to know their God given place in society and accept it gracefully. For example Jo’s goodness ultimately comes from his innocence, that he ‘never was in other trouble at all…- sept not knowin’ nothink and starwation’ (BH 725). Everything depends ‘on good behaviour’ (BH 725) and any attempt to change their position is considered intolerable. Despite his hardshipPhil Squod, is also tamed by the system as the text only allows his a ‘smoky gunpowder visage’. (BH 732) It is a tragic irony that Jo’s eventual rest is at the firing shop, also where Hortense trained to use her gun. Although George reassures Jo that he should not ‘be alarmed if you hear shots; they be aimed at the target ant not at you’ (BH 725) one still feels that Jo and his order could easily be the target if they everso much as stepped out of line. In this sense the place of his death becomes not only a place of sanctuary but also a place of subtle oppression.
What the poor seem to really need is not only protection but also guidance, otherwise they are ‘liable to an injury to themselves and to innocent others if they unwisely attempt to find their own way’. (Brown, 1982: 49). They are stripped of their dignity. The brick makers for instance are portrayed as wife beaters and drunkards without any structure to their lives whatsoever. Although their actions are far from condonable, their attempts to find work by moving to London or their constant subjection to interfering do gooders like Mrs Paradiggle are far from explored. Their portrayal is only a half glimpse at the reality of their position and their point of view is never fully confessed.
In fact in their experience they can only half glimpse at the world that surrounds them, ultimately because they can not understand it. This world is made up of words, and as Jo ‘stands staring up at the great letters on the whitewashed front’ of General George’s quarters, they sadly ‘have no meaning in his eyes’ (BH 722). This lack of understanding isolates them and blocks them from the world of interprtation. Their place in the world is ultimately suppressed. Jo, ‘is not of the same order of thing, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place’ (BH 724). The Methodist Magazine stated that ‘as all the letters make one word, and all the words make one book, - and the use of letters, syllables, words and sentences cannot be rihtly understood and valued if taken separately from the whole, -no more can we rightly understand and value the works of God when we see not their relation to the whole.’(Morris, 1991: 82) In fact even their ability to express any religious convictions is detained because they have never even heard God’s Words, except through the the hypocritic and forceful Chadbands of the world. The heartbreaking scence of Jo’s death sees him ‘a groping – a groping’ with the Lord’s Prayer. (BH 733) One must be remember that this is not God’s punishment, however but the failure of human institutions to have faith and emphany with their fellow men. In many ways the novel seems to state that such failings have caused Jo to feel isolated from religion, thus the crass on top of St Paul’s Cathedral ‘so golden, so high up [becomes seemingly] so far out of his reach’. (BH 315)
That this literary isloation is frustrating is personfied in the character of Krook, who ‘in visible smoke from his mouth [looks] as if he were on fire within’. (bh) His point of view, enternally raging, is thwarted because whilst he ‘knows most of the letters separately…he cannot put them together’. That he refuses any help with this obstacle suggests, like others, that he is almost over protective in his need to survive alone. He distrusts those around him as he fears that he would be taught incorrectly. (BH 237) Point of view in Krook seems to be one of self-willed isolation and a sheer unwillingness to become intergrated. Dicken’s stated in his preface that he had ‘purposefully dwelt upon on the romantic side of familiar things’. (BH 7) Yet there is nothing romatic about the spontaneous combustion of Krook if one considers its social and political implications.
Far from showing the potential to spontaneously combust is Esther. The illigitimate were considered socially inferior, and had to equally struggle to establish their identity and intergrate their point of view into the exclusive social scence. For Esther, her aunt cuts that ‘it would have been far better, little Esther…that you had never been born’ (BH 30) Her blood is considered inferior and the guilt that pervades her life is pitifully paramount, even at times causing her to omit her inner most feelings from her narrative. Despite her treatment Esther becomes an almost willing victim, accepting her duty to the world calmly. Her point of view is almost enviromentally friendly. There is not the same threatening heat stealing forth from her. In many ways, despite her being given the first person narration, ‘we do not…look at Esther, we look through her’. (Price, p.139)
Her hopeful intergration in society, however is not easily achieved for other local class characters. In many ways the social world of Bleak House is dissected so as to lay bare ‘how civilisation and barbarism walked this boastful island together’. (BH, 180) One is made aware of how dangerous it is to ignore the point of view and ultimately the experiences of the lower classes. The upper crust of society are made to realise that their social inferiors are part of the same system for whom they are equally responsible. As Esther states, one should learn ‘the art of adapting [their] mind to minds very differently situated, and [thus address] them from suitable points of view’. However, one may well ask whether the novel actually adheres to such good advice? Lower class opinions emerge in Bleak House as no more than a social tract, in which they are denied indivduality and merely become symbols (Hillis-Miller, p.69) for the ‘social gangrene’ that infects society (Oddie, 1972: 146). Their carefully controlled (and ultimately suppressed) characterisations become merely demonstrations against the stagnant and diseased nature of society. Thus whilst the novel on the one hand campaigns against their lack of intergration into society, it fails them on the other by only illustrating their social significance; whilst the only remedy seems to be to willfully accept like Esther and eventually Jo, or endure while the greater hands of charity play catch up. However, considered as one united point of view their social significance is not without its danger. By isolating their ability to express themselves, either through blinding them with extreme poverty, illiteracy, and incompetent do-gooders whose only achievement is to interpret the lower orders as mere lost sheep, rather than as equal human beings, has served to create a class of distrustful wounded ‘animals’ that have a ‘Watt Tylerish’ potential. Whilst the social remedy in the persona of Esther and Doctor Woodcourt ironically ‘move on’ from where they are really needed, (Brown, 1982: 83) one is left at the conclusion of Bleak House listening to the ‘east wind’ blowing wildly around Tom-All-Alones.
Word Count: 3,698
Bibliography
Set Texts
Dickens, C., Bleak House ed. by Nicola Bradbury (1996, [1853] Penguin Classics: London)
Secondary Sources
Barickman, R et al., Corrupt Relations Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Collins, and the Victorian Sexual System (1982, Columbia University Press, New York)
Brown, J M., Dickens: Novelist and the Market Place (1982, Barnes and Noble Books, Totowa, New Jersey)
Fielding, K.J., Charles Dickens (1965 [1958] Logmans: London)
Harvey, W.J., Chance and Design in Bleak House in Dickens: A Collection of Critical Essays (1987 [1967], Prentice Hall/International: UK)
Lucas, J., Past and Present: Bleak House and A Child’s History of England in Dickens Refigured: Bodies, desires and other histories ed by John Schad ( ----, Manchester University Press, Manchester)
Miller, J.H., Dickens’s Bleak House in Charles Dickens ed. by Steven Conner (1996, Longman: London)
Morris, P., Dickens Class Consciousness: A Marginal View (1991, Macmillian Press Ltd, Hampshire)
Oddie, W., Dickens and Carlyle: The Questio of Influence (1972, The Centenary Press, London)
Sadrin, A., Parentage and Inheritance in the novels of Charles Dickens (1994, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Sanders, A., Charles Dickens: Resurrectionist (1982, Macmillian Press Ltd: London)
Smith, G., Charles Dickens A Literary Life (1996, Macmillian Press: Hampshire)
Storey, G., Dickens: Bleak House Landmarks PR 4556.S8
Tambling, J. (ed.)., New Casebooks: Bleak House Contmporary Critical Essays (1988, Macmillian Press Ltd, Hampshire)
