The Narrator of Bleak House

Abstract

BERT G HORNBACK (Bellarmine College) Sigmund Freud didn't like Bleak House, because he appreciated neither Esther Summerson as a character nor her story-telling. Curiously -- surprisingly -- he found her unbelievable. One might wonder whether he would have found her so if Dickens had told her story, rather than require Esther to tell that story herself. Or what if Dickens had let Esther -- like David Copperfield, in his novel -- tell the whole story of Bleak House rather than just her ''portion'' of it. Esther's ''portion'' of the novel would seem to be a part of the whole defined by the omniscient narrator, a number of chapters entitled ''Esther's Narrative'' included in the novel called Bleak House. By comparison with the omniscient narrator's story, Esther's is simple, and with one notable exception she makes no pretense at the kind of comprehensive view upon which the omniscient narrator insists. Her story -- like her understanding -- is limited. In the manuscript of the novel, Esther's first chapter originally begins, ''I have a great deal of difficulty beginning to write for because I know anybody knows I am not I am not clever.'' That she is writing but a ''portion'' of a larger story is inserted interlinearly, first as ''these pages'' and then as ''my portion of these pages''; an additional insertion identifying ''these pages'' as ''all the story of Bleak House'' is struck out. Esther writes her story as a part of the larger story called Bleak House. And though it is her story, she feels incompetent to tell it well -- or at least claims to feel such. The omniscient narrator -- conventionally male, I think -- certainly has no such reservation about his authority. And yet they are complementary as narrators -- and perhaps even more than complementary. The focus of this essay is on the way Dickens creates the relation between the two narratives which, together, are called Bleak House. In examining this relation I will look briefly at the way Dickens's omniscient narrators treat various characters in this and in later novels, and then at David Copperfield as narrator. At one point in Bleak House the omniscient narrator becomes two of the novel's characters. The narrative doesn't simply move inside their heads; rather, the convention of their narrative experience, reported, is overtaken by the narrator's immediate experience of the scene which otherwise would have been theirs. Tony Jobling and young Guppy are exploring Mr. Krook's rag and bottle shop: p.3 ''What's the matter with the cat?'' says Mr. Guppy. ''Look at her!'' ''Mad, I think....'' They advance slowly....The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground, before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light. Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper ... and here is -- is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood ... or is it coal? O Horror, he is here! And this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him. Help, help, help! Come into this house for Heaven's sake! (511; ch. 32) In a similar manner the narrator of Our Mutual Friend dissolves himself into Lizzie Hexam's consciousness, momentarily, when her father dies: Father, was that you calling me? Father? I thought I heard you call me twice before! Words never to be answered, those, upon the earthside of the grave. The wind sweeps jeeringly over Father....Then, in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you, thus baptised unto Death....Why not speak, Father?...Speak, Father. Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left to you! (221-22; ch. 13) What begins here as Lizzie's consciousness assumed by the narrative voice quickly turns, and the narrative is only borrowing Lizzie, rhetorically: the curious perspective is not hers at all. Perhaps this method of narration is more a momentary invasion of the world of the story than a dissolution of the narrative voice or a simple assumption of a character's perspective. Both the manner and the effect are more like the didactic narrative comments to be found in The Old Curiosity Shop and Great Expectations than the stream of consciousness techniques employed by later novelists. In the scenes just quoted the narrative mixes a sympathetic understanding of the characters' situations with comments upon those situations. The narrative doesn't give voice to the characters' thoughts, but instead assumes their places, thinks and speaks for them. A clearer but much less complex example of such invasion in Our Mutual Friend can be found in the wonderful response of the railway signals to Bella Wilfer's passing: p.4 O boofer lady, fascinating boofer lady! If I were but legally executor of Johnny's will! If I had but the right to pay your legacy and take your receipt! -- Something to this purpose surely mingled with the blast of the train as it cleared the stations, all knowingly shutting up their green eyes and opening their red ones when they prepared to let the boofer lady pass. (594; ch. 38) Earlier, the narrator has played a similar trick on the Analytical Chemist, the Veneerings' ''fifth retainer,'' who seems to say ''Come down and be poisoned, ye unhappy children of men'' rather than ''Dinner is served'' (51; ch. 2). The narrator-as-puppet-master invades the under-butler's identity as a ventriloquist might, making him speak out of character: ''Chablis, sir? -- you wouldn't if you knew what it's made of'' (52; ch. 2). 1 The most flagrant example of such invasive narration occurs in the latter chapters of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when Dick Datchery appears in the novel. His disguise is obvious as disguise: his wig is so large and full that his hat doesn't fit. But as much of the critical response to the novel demonstrates, as readers we are inattentive both to narrative voice and to thematic directions. We are more comfortable with guessing-game whodunnits than we are with complex understandings. Datchery's disguise does of course beg the question; but for the most part we have spent our energy doing futile detective work, and arguing that the man in the absurd white wig must be some other character in the novel, come to spy on Jasper: Edwin himself, Helena Landless, Mr. Grewgious, Tartar, etc. Given Datchery's unlikeness to any of the other characters, the content he finds in observing others observing Jasper, his curious insistence on having come to Cloisterham to die, and his first name -- Dick -- I am led to assume that Datchery is Dickens's stand-in, the narrator invading the novel as one of its putative characters and watching Jasper's evil prove itself. 2 Datchery's closest relations are David Copperfield, who is finally more an observer than an actor in his novel, and the omniscient narrator in Bleak House, who is Dickens's most critical observer of this world. David is not Dickens, of course, and not a stand-in for Dickens; and David's role as observer is different from Datchery's, since David narrator is learning this world by recollecting it, and learning by judging it carefully how to keep himself safe -- and safely -- within it. But if the autobiography that David narrator writes is an exemplary life -- as, for example, Wordsworth's Prelude, published at the same time, claims his life to be -- then David's learning how to understand this world, his ''experience and observation'' of it, serve as an edited and editorial guide for us much as Datchery's watching does in Edwin Drood. As characters, David narrator and Dick Datchery both offer us examples of how 1 Mr. Bucket is interpreted similarly by the omniscient narrator in Bleak House:''Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated cousin to whom it airily says. 'You are a swell about town, and you know me, I know you''' (772; ch. 53). Again: ''Mr. Bucket coughs, and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as though he would respectfully observe, ''I do assure you, you're a pretty creetur. I've seen hundreds worse-looking at your time of life, I have indeed'' (772-73; ch. 53). 2 For a more extended argument of this point, see my essay, ''And thus ... everything comes to an end,'' in ''The Hero of My Life'': Essays on Dickens (1981), pp. 143-55. Also, W.W. Robson, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood: The Solution,'' Times Literary Supplement: 11 Nov. 1983, p. 1246. p.5 to look at life. Because we divide Bleak House into two parts -- as Esther tells us to, and as the ''Esther's Narrative'' chapter titles tell us we must -- I probably shouldn't propose the omniscient narrator's portion of the novel as itself an example of invasive narration. The omniscient narrator invades Tony Jobling's and Mr. Guppy's discovery of Mr. Krook's combustion; otherwise he is editorial, opinionated, intrusive, critical, but not invasive of his own narrative. He is perhaps more importunate, more insistent on his own omniscience, than any other narrator in English fiction, but he is just an omniscient narrator. But suppose we superimpose the narrative structure of Bleak House upon that of its immediate predecessor among Dickens's novels, and look at the structural and thematic parallels such superimposition discloses to us. What we discover, I think, is a new way to understand Esther, her narrative, and the ''other'' portion of Bleak House which supposedly she didn't write. Both David's novel and Esther's story are autobiographies. Their common ground begins with their both being raised by guardians. Mr. Murdstone is a Christian, as is Miss Barbary. Miss Betsey