Is there a choice?

Charles Dickens used his novels a springboard to draw attention to the unfavorable conditions of the lower class in Victorian society. He used Bleak House as a medium to highlight the corruption of Chancery and the social injustices that were happening in the Victorian Era.  Dickens portrayal of the orphan children as well as the lower class as nothing more than a disease to Victorian society goes a long way in revealing the notion of disconnect in society.  The upper class didn’t bother themselves with the lower class as well as the orphans; they had a mindset of “it is your choice to live that life.” As have discussed in class this is not necessarily the case.  I would make a case that Dickens was trying to bring awareness to the fact that not everything is a choice in life.  

Nevertheless, Dickens creates the notion that the upper class does have choice, for instance, Nemo. I would say that he chose to live the life of a homeless person. He, buy choices that he made caused him to live in the slums of “The Tom-all-alones.”  He was we can safely assume, a man of wealth and importance since he was Lady Dedlock lover.  A safe assumption since by her portrayal we know that she wasn’t a woman who would choose beneath her station.  Nemo is a character that signifies the idea the rich are born with choices, and what Dickens is saying in his representation of his poor characters is that people don’t always have a choice.  If we take a look at Jo we see a child that has been thrown into a world of not his own making.  He is orphaned and is forced to learn to survive in the best way that he knows how.  He because of a choice he was not allowed to make is not educated.  He walks the streets of London not know what anything says or means. Given the choice we as readers and human beings would know that he most certainly would choose to live a life of wealth.  Jo is seen by the upper class a symbol of a flawed society. One that cannot remedy the social disconnects that money and status has created. 

Naturally, Victorian society associates the idea of disease with the poor of London since it is something that they can’t seem to get away from.  It is the lower class as well as the orphans, which represent a failure to purge a “cancer”, so to speak from the what the upper class like to think of a perfect way of life.  The lower class highlights the dark and unstable aspect of what the Victorians associate it as a person with a terminal illness. It is something to ignore and don’t want to face.  It is frightening to them the idea of not having a healthy happy society.  The poor I would argue are a blemish to the Utopian ideal the Victorians have on their way of life.  

Lady Dedlock "Ghosts"

Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of history of the Dedlocks in chapter seven with his illustration of the interaction between Lady Dedlock and Sir Leicester.  I would argue they don’t truly love each other and are only married for societal reasons.  For example Lady Dedlock is not portrayed as a loving character.  We know this since she has shown us through her actions and constant complaining of how bored she is.  Giving us the impression she doesn’t care about anything or anyone around her.

Lady Dedlock is a woman who looks down at everyone including her husband even though she has a few “Ghosts” in her closet.  I would argue that it is her constant fear of her secret getting out that requires her to distance herself from the world, which includes her husband.  Lady Dedlock’s endless worrying about her secret being revealed and subsequently causing her world to shatter causes her to later act very strangely. She rejects propriety and as we later learn finds herself needing to visit the grave of her lost lover.  This simple act challenges the idea that she is completely above everyone else. Dickens allows us a glimpse of a softer even vulnerable side to a woman who so far has only been cold and standoffish. We as readers could suppose that her heartless demeaner is the result of the hurt she felt at the loss of her love.    

Dickens does and interesting thing with this character for the reason that he draws attention to the notion that society is quick to accept the indiscretions of the lower class suggesting that they are poor and don’t know any better.  Unlike the upper class such a Lady Dedlock who believes herself above it all and cannot allow anyone to know what she had done.  She is of the upper class which society holds to different standard, she should know better.  Lady Dedlock is better than that.

The chapter I chose to read was from the book, Masked Atheism Catholicism and the Secular Victorian Home written by Maria La Monaca. The chapter out of the book in which I read was chapter two titled “Sick Souls.” La Monaca discusses Catholicism and Protestant views on confession. In this chapter she is referencing Charlotte Bronte and Lady Georgiana Fullerton. What she discusses is the “juxtaposition” (68) between the two artists and how they view idolatry, or erotic “creature worship” (68) and how it affects the way society feels it affects the home. La Monaca also highlights the punishment and consequences associated with this belief.
She suggests that both Bronte and Fullerton assert in their writings that one’s guilty conscience was the most passionate form of punishment for sins committed. She goes on to say that Protestant Victorians didn’t understand auricular confession; it was a feared and misunderstood sacrament. Anyone who practices Catholicism knows it is a very important religious rite in the Roman Catholic Church.  Catholics are taught that in order to absolve your sins you had to go and confess them to your priest. This confidentiality is what La Monaca says Protestants feared would “infiltrate” (71) the Church of England. La Monaca points out the controversy of confession and how it added to the anxiety of Victorian paradigms on femininity, marriage and domesticity.  She says opponents of confession believed that this ritual was a way for priests to weaken and destroy the ties daughters had with their fathers and husbands with their wives.  The reason behind this notion was that people didn’t know exactly what was happening behind those closed doors. This brought to mind a picture of a woman revealing her deepest darkest secrets, which Protestants saw as a way of humiliation. They felt these secrets should be only discussed between a man and wife and fathers with their daughters. This in turn, brings in the morality issue, which of course the Protestants felt the ritual challenged.  They felt, according to La Monaca, that since women were discussing deep dark secrets, this could only lead to conversations on sexuality, which led to sexual transgressions, “whether in thought or in deed”(72).  Protestants viewed the confession as way for a priest to plant questionable ideas in the minds of the penitent. 
La Monaca goes on to discuss what she called, “Secret Desires of the “Sick Soul.  This portion of the chapter highlights the notion of confession focusing on the victimized female. Suggesting that only a female can be victimized because she is weak and since the male is considered the stronger of the sexes he cannot be subjected to the same treatment. She also discusses the meaning of virtue and what that meant to young Victorian women. La Monaca tells us of the moral training these women endured in order to understand importance of self-monitoring.  This idea was important since confessing your sins to someone other than your father and husband was not acceptable. 
La Monaca suggest that this creates a type of pressure within a person that cause them to react to the idea of self monitoring or confessing in a negative way.  As a result the person will become obsessed with the idea of confessing and can sometimes take it to far referencing Elizabeth Missing Sewell’s experience as a child.  She says that Elizabeth’s self-examination caused her become what we would call today OCD, with her need to confess.  She suggests that Fullerton’s novel proposes the belief that Victorian woman craved auricular confession.  They saw it as a “convenient, and completely secret, respite from the afflictions of the “sick soul” (75), in other words it seemed easier to confess to someone who didn’t know you and you didn’t know them.
La Monaca goes on to highlight Fullerton’s Ellen Middleton saying she was a victim of unconfessed sin. She says that if Ellen had confessed her sin of murder she would not have been subject to heartbreak.  She suggests that since Ellen finally did confess on her deathbed she reconciled her sins and was able to die peacefully.  Therefore, Ellen was unable to comply with the Protestant ideals governing opinions of confessing to a loved one.  Ellen was unable to confess to Edward Middleton that she killed his sister out of fear of losing him, leaving her open to manipulation from Henry Lovell.  
Bronte and Fullerton both wrote about fictional character experiences with confession in their novels but they had different ideas as to what that meant to their characters. In Charlotte Bronte’s novel Villette, Lucy has her own experience with confession. La Monaca tells us that in this novel confession is seen as a comfort to women. Bronte unlike Fullerton gives the perception in her novel that confession is a representation of Christ, not a substitution to God. As a result, this goes against the Protestant’s belief that Catholicism is a form of idolatry. Bronte according to La Monaca is using confession as way to validate her heroine because it brings her together her “fragmented self,”(77).  La Monaca suggests that Lucy finds salvation in her love for M. Paul Emmanuel, bringing up the point that confession is a representation of Lucy’s Catholicism in that it acknowledges and understands female desire.  This however, is in contrast to the ideal of Protestantism.  Bronte uses Lucy according to La Monaca to highlight the idea that confession is not subject to only the father/parents or husband.  She says that Lucy was able to confess her sins out love.  And unlike Ellen, who was unable to reach ultimate happiness, Lucy through her confession was able to attain it, even though if it was for a brief time.
La Monaca points out that although Lucy’s “sins” had been forgiven she received absolution in much different manner than Ellen Middleton. Even though Ellen’s desires to confess were natural, they disrupted the social order in which La Monaca says destroyed both self and others. According to Protestant belief, although this desire was natural, it must be restricted in order to have a close relationship with God.  Simply stated women could only confess to their parents/husbands, unlike in Villette. Lucy didn’t have a close relationship with God compared to that of Ellen.  
Finally, La Monaca says that what brings all the elements in this chapter together are, the “acknowledgement of the fragility and precariousness of the middle-class British home”(94). She says that both writers discuss home, as being fragile but that confession “shores” up the home not threatens it.  She emphasizes that confession no matter the format is a necessity for the wellness of the soul.  

Nicknames

Some questions were raised in my mind when reading, and that was why were many of the people who live in the slum are referenced by a nickname?  What is Dickens saying about this?  What is the meaning behind the names of the people living in "Tom-all-Alones?" Let's take a look first of all at the name of the slum "Tom-all-Alones." This name signifies that people who live in the slum are all alone.  We know this because people get sick and don't have any family to take care of them so when they die, they are all alone.  

People are given a nickname for many reasons and one of them is the obvious and that is out of love, endearment and friendliness.  Another is because they are hiding or exclude themselves.  Dickens highlights an important idea with the nicknaming of his characters in that the slum is also has a nickname.  What this tells us is that the slum is excluded in the same way the residents have excluded themselves.  The "Tom-all-Alones" have been excluded by society with the development of the slum.  

A nickname changes or takes a person's identity and this is what Dickens was saying about the change in name. The name given to you is your identity it is who you are.  Dickens is telling us that the Tom-all-Alones have been stripped of that privilege by society, giving us the idea that they are not worthy of an identity.

Orphans of Bleak House

The orphaned children of Bleak House portrayed throughout this portion of the reading as nothing more than abused and neglected children.  Dickens uses the metaphor of English society as an absent parent as way for us as the reader to understand the abuse and abandonment of its children.  Bleak House is full of orphaned and brave children not to mention bad parenting. We can begin with, for example, the orphan Jo.  Jo tells us the lodger was very “good” to him.   Although he is shown rare acts of kindness, I can’t help but see that this poor child belongs nowhere.  People are constantly telling him to move on; I could not feel compassion for him.  Here is a boy who has lost his parents as well as the only person who even came close to being a parent and the people of London show now regard t for his well being.  England or shall I say society has shoved into what I say into a life of abuse and neglect by living in the streets.  Jo’s life on the streets is one of harsh conditions as well as not safe.  Dickens portrays him as boy who seems himself as animal living on very little food along with no real shelter.  Dickens use of Jo to highlight the treatment of the children in London society and provides us with an understanding of how children were not viewed as ward of the state and should be taken care of, but rather a sad reminder of the socioeconomic issues plaguing England at the time.

Another example of courageous and orphaned children are the Necketts.  These children are prime illustration of how society has failed.  Their mother died after the birth of the youngest and later the father passes.  I found this chapter very disturbing in terms of how these children were forced to live after losing their parents.  The eldest Charley having being forced to find work at age 13 and forced to take less than what was given normally because her father was a “follerer."  This poor child has had to become a woman.  Her younger brother Tom is also a victim of society since he is forced to become a babysitter for the baby.  When asked what she does, Charley answers with pride that she does laundry to provide for her family.  Dickens is doing something interesting with this in that he seems to be resisting the idea society has about its children.  He is saying there are not little savages lurking in dark alleys waiting to accost someone.  Nor are they a drain on society itself, but productive and resourceful members of a population turning its back on them.  These children were failed by the social injustice that was plaguing England in the Victorian Era. 

Weather and Bleak House

Just coming off reading Hemingway in my major authors course I could not help but notice the weather in this first reading of the novel. Anyone who has read Hemingway knows how important it was to his scenes, since he used minimal words to describe what was happening. He used it to set the mood as well as the tone. He also used it to predict what was going to happen. Dickens uses the fog from the very beginning of the story as way of giving us an idea of what London was like at the time, or even how he felt about it.

From the second paragraph he uses fog numerous times not only to set up the scene but as way to portray what society was like at the time. It seems to me that he uses it as way of saying society of the time was being weighed down with all the issues happening during this time.

We are thrown into a lawsuit right from the get go, as we all know they aren't very pleasant. And so Dickens uses the fog as a metaphor to highlight the Lord Chancellor. By him using fog, I can easily imagine a dark and gloomy person as well as big dirty building looming in the background. He even says "at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in High Court of Chancery"(14).

Hemingway used the rain to as way to highlight the destruction of war. Not only did Hemingway use it as way to get us to envision what was happening outside of his characters but he also used it as a way to show what his characters were feeling and thinking. Dickens like Hemingway uses the fog to make what is going on in the Chancery seems dark and depressing. Dickens uses this imagery in the first part of the novel to show is how he felt about the injustice of the court system in London. I couldn't help but think Dickens saw it as corrupt and maybe even a waste of time. I get this idea with his choice of words like "murky" and then going on to associate it with Lord Chancellor's court or the Chancellor himself.

Dickinson and Hemingway both use the bad weather to signify not only mood of their characters but also as the way to highlight the plot of their story. As I have mentioned weather plays an important role in moving the story and forward in this first couple of pages. Dickens has put into our heads the importance of the Chancery and how it will play into the tone for not only the story, but its giving us insight to the feelings of the characters.

I did it

Oh my goodness! It worked.