Novel 1 (Bleak House)
''They [Richard and Ada] brought a chair on either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me, instead of one another; they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. ''
—Esther, Page 211, Chapter 13 (Penguin Edition)
''My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I k now would do far better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three-fourths of their troubles.''
—Mr. Tulkinghorn, Chapter 41, Page 658 (Penguin Edition)
Even within the opening chapters of Dickens’ Bleak House, the third-person narrator(s) suggest the family unit as a microcosm for England. Just as depictions of London render the city as foggy, filthy and therefore non-functioning, nearly all of the nuclear (and perhaps, pseudo-nuclear) families are in some way broken and in need of mending. Given the interestingly situated gender and sexuality structures in the novel, this portrayal of family life as comparable to (or even equal with) a healthy government and nationalist/imperialist stance is complicated and often contradictory. When Dickens purports this allegorical relationship between family and state, it seems that he would then also privilege the heterosexual romance as a device with which to both drive the plot forward and seek conflict resolution. In the world of Bleak House, a typical male/female romance resulting in marriage suggests a happier future in which a ''healthy'' nuclear family may symbollically restore both the state of the home and the state of the nation. Interestingly, Dickens avoids this heteronormative narrative and divulges a landscape that prioritizes both female and male homosociality (and sometimes homoeroticism) as the relationships that must be maintained for the benefit of future generations and a more sanitary, honest London.
The presence of female homosociality comes primarily in the form of Esther’s relationships to other women. Even as early on as her relationship with her toy ‘dolly’, her friendships with women are privileged over any heterosexual plot. When the opportunities for active heterosexual participation arrive, Esther often rejects them and finds solace in her female companions. In the early scene in which the shock of Mr. Guppy’s marriage proposal drives Esther to tears, she runs off to her room, seeking ''the dear old doll, long buried in the garden'' to alleviate her frustration and confusion with her own entrance into a traditional heterosexual plot (114). Similarly, when Esther receives the proposal from Jarndyce, she escapes to her bedroom, kisses Ada, who, for the first time since Esther’s disfiguration, is now allowed to watch her dress. At the end of one Chapter, Esther finally reveals that another male (the young surgeon)was a dinner guest; she avoids mentioning him earlier in the chapter as not to distract the reader from the Esther/Ada narrative with a superfluous heterosexual plotline.
While Esther enjoys homosocial bonds with any number of women in the text (Caddy and Charlie, among others), it is in her relationship to Ada that homoerotic potential is most prominently figured. Immediately upon becoming friends, the two women use words such as ''my pet'' and ''my dear'' to describe one another, never omitting words such as ''pretty'' and ''beautiful'' to publicly reference their physical attractiveness. Esther is the first to admit the nearly ridiculously early point in the friendship at which point the two feel comfortable expressing the physical and emotional affection for one another and openly acknowledges physical attractiveness as a prominent fulcrum upon which their friendship is balanced. Figured most evidently in the first citation above, Esther basks in the idea of Ada being in love with her. In her enjoyment of Ada’s affection, Esther re-imagines the notion of an erotic triangle; now it is the singular male, not singular female, functions merely to facilitate homo(social/erotic) encounters between two women.
posted by PatrickMcKelvey @ 9:30 AM
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