Connectedness and the double narrative in Charles Dickens's "Bleak House" - an apparent contradiction (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: English grade: 65 / USA letter, University of Warwick (-), course: The English 19th Century Novel, language: English, abstract: [...] The aim of the present paper is to show that the dual narrative does not undercut the idea of connectedness despite its divisive appearance. Some subtasks will pave the way for this conclusion. I will first give some examples of how major elements of the no vel are interlinked. Chancery will prove as the emblem of the corruption that has spread far beyond the doors of the law courts and touches upon all the social classes. Tom-all-Alone's and the aristocracy, poor and rich, have secrete links, some created vo luntarily, some created less voluntarily. Second, I will characterise the two narrators separately, with Esther being analysed both in her narrating function and in her role as a character of Bleak House. The analysis of the effect of combining the two tellers will lead to a result different from that of a mere glance at the of surface of the structure. I will show how the narrators' accounts are juxtaposed and thereby reinforce each other, and how their unification yields what Graham Storey calls a "third dimension", an overlapping of two different view points causing a deeper perception of the Bleak House world (20). However, I will also show a negative interpretation of the relationship between the two narrators by following Patricia Ingham's essay on deixis in Bleak House. Finally, all the relationships will hint at a system within which the holders of the ties are kept: "Dickens wanted [...] the reader to perceive the world of Bleak House in terms of surface disconnection and isolation, and underlying unity [...] Bleak House stands or falls as a portrayal as a system" (Hawthorn 63). My thesis is that Bleak House teaches the reader how to combine apparently loose and disconnected elements and look at them as a system. This task posed and carried out by the plot of the novel is simultaneously mirrored in its form. The double narration sends the reader on a quest to find Esther and the 3rd person narrator as two sides of one coin, independent in terms of their nature, but relating to a common situation.