Bleak House: Difference between revisions

▲Much criticism of ''Bleak House'' focuses on its unique narrative structure: it is told both by an unidentified, third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson. The third-person narrator speaks in the present tense, ranging widely across geographic and social space (from the aristocratic Dedlock estate to the desperately poor Tom-All-Alone's in London), and gives full rein to Dickens's desire to satirise the English chancery system – though this narrator's perceptiveness has limits, stopping at the outside to describe characters' appearances and behaviour without any pretence of grasping or revealing their inner lives. Esther Summerson tells her own story in the past tense (like David in ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]'' or Pip in ''[[Great Expectations]]''), and her narrative voice is characterised by modesty, consciousness of her own limits, and willingness to disclose to us her own thoughts and feelings. These two narrative strands never quite intersect, though they do run in parallel. Nabokov, after describing the ways Esther's voice changes as the novel progresses, concluded that letting Esther tell part of the story was Dickens's "main mistake" in planning the novel<ref>Nabokov, Vladimir, "Bleak House," ''Lectures on Literature''. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. pp. 100–102.</ref> Alex Zwerdling, a scholar from Berkeley, after observing that "critics have not been kind to Esther," nevertheless thought Dickens's use of Esther's narrative "one of the triumphs of his art".<ref>Alex Zwerdling. "Esther Summerson Rehabilitated" ''PMLA'', Vol. 88, No. 3 (May 1973), pp. 429–439</ref>