Bleak House - The Dear Old Doll

I'm not a psychologist. So why am I trying to analyse Esther's burial of her doll?

There's this matrix that goes.....

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence

I.m at the conscious incompetence stage but am foolishly rushing in to this instead of maintaining an angelic stand-off.

Here goes.

Esther is reaching puberty when she buries her doll. The obvious conclusion is that she is putting childhood behind her as she leaves her first home to start at a new school.
Or
The doll could be a projection of herself, and she sees this as a symbolic suicide. She had no self-esteem, thought it was her fault that she received no love from anyone, and had been told by her aunt that it would have been better if she had never been born.
Or

How about we see the doll as a mother figure? Kids starting boarding school leave their mother behind and forge new relationships, putting their childhood behind them in this rite of passage.

There is also the possibility that they hate their mothers for this betrayal, and want them dead.
So..
                  Did Esther hate her mother and wish her dead?
                  Did she even see the doll as her mother?

Photographed by Mary Harrsch at The Enchanted World of Dolls, South Dakota

Esther definitely portrays the doll as a steadfast and mature help.

Dolly was beautiful.she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at me—or not so much at me, I think, as at nothing—while I busily stitched away and told her every one of my secrets.

For Dolly, think Lady Deadbeat. Beautiful, remote and no bloody use? Whilst saying how much she loved her doll, and how she told her everything, Esther can still see that Dolly is staring away at nothing. Kill her!!!!!!!!!!!

Dolls are usually substitute babies. Esther doesn't overtly treat Dolly as a baby, in spite of the fact that she typically spends her life at the service of others, and is called so many names, none of them particularly motherly I must admit  (Mrs Shipton, Old Woman, Dame Durden) that 'my own name became quite lost among them'. Maybe the burial of Dolly is a proleptic device on Dickens' part, foreshadowing her loss of identity in the service of others. It's not until after the small pox that she experiences a sort of resurrection, and finds that people love her for herself.
 I know I should develop what those nicknames signify, old age? barrenness? foster children? but I'm trying to stop using the word 'should' and I'm embarrassed by my conscious incompetence. Also, I'm a wee bit bored with Dolly.
My conclusion is that she was saying goodbye to childhood.
THE END.

Bleak House - The Mothers

Mothers who didn't read Doctor Spock, or see Star Trek

In no particular order, except as I think of them. (Which is, in fact, a particular order)

Mrs Jelliby
A woman with a mission! Campaigning for Africa while her own little jelly babies are falling down stairs, wandering after sheep or being enslaved by a prodigious amount of letter writing.

There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise: the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all."

However, I would quite like to live in a house like that. As long as I wasn't Caddy.

Mrs Deadbeat otherwise known as Lady Honoria Dedlock
I never really took to her. Proud, bored, faints over some  handwriting, reveals herself to her daughter, says they must never meet again (what would the neighbours say) runs all over the place, only to die by her lover's grave. By the time we hear she thought her daughter was dead it was too late for me to love her. And her poor husband!

Mrs Pardiggle
A woman of 'rapacious benevolence', so generous with her children's money. Sticks like a limpet to the undeserving poor once she's stopped knocking everything over. Those kids are so going to turn on her one day.

Missing Mums

Mummy Dedlock (again)
Mrs Rouncewell, although it's not her fault
Mrs Squod (don't know if it's her fault or not)
Mrs Smallweed, but her family probably drove her to suicide
Jo's mum
Mrs Necket who would have been so proud of her family

Yummy Mummies

Mrs Bagnett

Formidable with an umbrella. She makes up for saddling her children with preposterous names by being good and kind and organised and Victorian (when she's not running around sorting out the Captain)

No one else, but Mrs Bucket would have been a great mum. We need more little Buckets in the world.

Other Mothers

Mrs Woodcourt. Snob, scheming, but she must have done something right to produce a hero.

Some of the children become mothers. Caddy is a good one. Charley would be great. 

The Big Daddy of all Mummies

ESSSSSSSSSSSTHERRRRRRRRRRRR

Esther had a faithful doll, who was always there for her. (That's what faithfulness means!). 

 It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and say, "Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!" and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted.

She buries Dolly in the garden, and spends the rest of her life modelling herself on the dear old doll in expiation for the matricide, Quiet, unassuming, there for everyone. TBH she does speak out on several occasions, when she thinks it will help, but she always remains Dickens' perfect female. I think.

P.S. OH and I saw Miriam Margolyes presenting her excellent 'Dickens' Women at Hull Truck Theatre. Wish I had read this book first. Esther must have got a look in.

Bleak House - there be spoilers.

Well, there's fog in London, fog in Chancery, and this sets the scene for mayhem, murder and mystery. Will Richard get his inheritance? Will Esther and Ada get it together? Who will call in the NSPPC (oh, it didn't exist then, unlike the RSPCA) to rescue the orphans and the Jelliby babies? And spontaneous combustion? What the Dickens!

This book doesn't exactly race along. You can't race in the fog. Just enjoy the beautiful language and all the little sub-stories about all the little sub-characters.
Most of the children are abused in this story. Even the lovely Bagnets call their children Woolwich, Quebec and Malta. I suppose the Nightingales did the same with Florence and Parthenope. And just look at the Beckhams.

The children

Esther is psychologically damaged (not sure if Dickens thinks so) as she's had no love in the early life and told

Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.

She spends the rest of her life trying to be worthy of living, by becoming a little Dame Durden. Thank goodness she gets to have a romp on the carpet with the love of her life, Allan Ada. I mustn't be too cynical though.There's a fairy tale ending, (for her at least) and she continues doing what she wants to do, caring for all around her in her new Bleak House. Pity she doesn't name her children, but maybe one would have been Bleak and the other would have been House.

Caddy - tea caddy? golf caddy? When was golf invented? - is just a tool to her atrocious mother, Mrs Jelliby. Her dad's useless, and she escapes to her Prince Charming Turveydrop, where she seems happy only she is lumbered with the worst father-in-law in literature, and her baby is born deaf and blind. I think her husband goes lame too! I just love Caddy.

Charley. I love her even more. Little mother to her brother and sister she locks them in their room to keep them safe while she goes out to earn some pennies. Is that why she has a masculine name? Because she's the bread winner? She has big round eyes, and I could eat her.

The award for best death bed scene in literature (not that I've read them all) goes to Jo. Toughie 'knows nothink' and is moved on and on and on. (Naughty Bucket. Black mark for this, but I'll forgive you as you are so entertaining). Jo doesn't even know the Our Father, but is happy to go along with the words when he is dying as they are 'wery good'.

And just as I am crying my eyes out over the death of one of the kindest and most innocent characters in the book Dickens turns on me and all of his hundreds of shilling-a-month readers thus:

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.

Well that's enough for today, as I feel the tears a-coming on again. More to follow.