Chapters 8-10: Esther’s new names; who is a better mother; Nemo; narrators.

While reading the selection for this week I took a lot of notes and these are the most interesting of them.

P. 90. “This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame Durden, and so many other names of that sort, that my own name soon became quite lost among them.” What do you think about this? Are they appropriate, degrading, anything? From the foot note we learn that these names refer to ‘folklore mother figures’. She is a mother like figure in this book but is it all she is? What do you think about her name being lost? Is she loosing her identity now that she will no longer be called by her real name but by one of these nicknames?

From all the women we see in this selection, who is a better mother? Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle are like the anti-heroes, the bad mothers, bad women. Esther is portrayed as the opposite of that, the hero. She is the embodiment of Dickens’ version of what a woman/mother should be like. What about Jenny? What about the woman that came to comfort Jenny? Which side, do you think they belong on? Are they good mothers, bad mothers, somewhere in between, etc? Personally I think that Jenny, even though she is poor and her home and family are not in a good condition, is considered to be a good mother by Dickens. At the very least I think she is a better mother than Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle. I think that Dickens is showing us a scale of what kinds of mothers exist. Mrs. Jellyby completely ignores her family and her kids, its like she carries them for nine months and once they are out they are on their own. Mrs. Pardiggle is a bit more involved with the kids but still ignores their desires, its as if she only sees to their basic needs and the rest of her time, energy and everything including the children’s allowances, are devoted to the causes. I think Jenny should be somewhere higher on the ladder than the previous two but I do not think Dickens intended her to be as good as Esther. Isn’t it curious that the only woman that does not have kids is the best mother?

Who do you thing Nemo really is? Who killed Nemo? Why is he even called Nemo (no one)? Remember some chapters ago Lady Dedlock saw legal papers with his hand writing and fainted? What kind of history do they have? Mr. Guppy recognized a painting of a younger Lady Dedlock when he visited her house. Could the painting have reminded him of Esther? Could Nemo and Lady Dedlock be Esther’s biological parents?

As to the question of which narrator I liked better my answer is Esther. She talks to us like her equals, the same way she talked to her doll. The Dickensian narrator, on the other hand, talks down to us. I understand him trying to make a point, but saying something once or twice is enough for me to understand what someone is trying to say. He tells us the same thing, by restating the question, ten times or more. As if he thinks that if he does not say something over and over, and over, and over again, we are so dense that, we will not understand.

Good Luck,

ILONA

My Blog Post for Chapter 8-9?-and maybe 10? = ]

Hiiii guys, fyi this blog post is early, it is meant for this Tuesday coming up but I had a thought so instead of waiting I am posting it now because I have my ipod and no paper so I am doing this via ipod touch.

Chapter 8 for me primarily (not really sure about anyone else) put in my mind more question about what is Esther's point when it comes to the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case and family. Besides Esther being happy about her role as a sort of "housewife" kind of girl, (not saying that she is married, just pointing out that she enjoys the demands of keeping up a house and keeping track of Ada & Richard. Who by far seemly fall in love with each other in chapter 9. BTW(by the way) they are cousins (side note in case anyone missed that detail from previous chapters.)

But I digress, and return my focus back to Esther and her connection to Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Esther has a very unusual relation to Mr. Jarndyce as we discussed in class. This connection was more or less about how Esther feels for Mr. Jarndyce (she can relate to him and how he feels about expressing feelings in general.) Even though we discussed that Mr. Jarndyce is "mysterious and doesn't share information about his self, I feel that-that is a relation in which Esther knows well. This personality disorder might not just be a coincidence that both Esther and Mr. Jarndyce share.

This made me think further than Esther and Mr. Jarndyce having a professional relationship. From what I recall when reading, Esther had found out about a 'will' through Mr. Jarndyce and Mr. Jarndyce happens to be a very peculiar character. Who I believe would not tell just anyone any information. I am not saying that Esther and Mr. Jarndyce are in love or anything of a romantic nature. The fact that Mr. Jarndyce wants Esther to call him "Guardian" leaves a lot to be desired and I guess would be probably something that we should account for and pay attention to. We have to wait and see how their relationship either grows into something meaningful to the story or is just my personal thoughts.

*Also which is a side note we are introduced to another crazy mother character, Mrs. Pardiggle who cares not about her own children (just like another familiar crazy mother Mrs. Jellyby) who also enjoys charity and caring about charitable affairs rather than her own children.

Night Bloggers = ]

The Character of Bleak House

Dickens is famous for his characters. From A Christmas Carol's Scrooge to Bucket (the detective who later polices the pages of Bleak House), many people who have never read Dickens recognize his characters. Dickens creates such vivid descriptions of places that they, too, almost seem like characters. Are they? In this post, I'll ponder whether or not Bleak House, the place, should actually be considered a character in the novel.

We first meet it in the following description: "It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places, with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them" (62). The point here is that a house is really just a collection of individual rooms and that, sometimes, the connections between them(like unexpected passageways and staircases) are not obvious at first. In many ways this is like a serialized novel -- it is a collection of individual parts and you have to do the work of making manifest those connections. The house is like a maze in which the furnishings are "old-fashioned rather than old" and "agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness" (63). Dickens's point here seems to be that at first glance Bleak House is, potentially, an mismatched mess but because of the good spirit of the home and its owner, John Jarndyce, it is a pleasing chaos. There is even a fire already burning in Esther's room.

So maybe Bleak House is some kind of microcosm of the city -- a winding, irregular place made up of countless, odd places (the many rooms) and random objects (a "Native-Hinoo chair", a picture of the death of Captain Cook) . The challenge is to make connections. Is Esther, given the housekeeping keys, the Mayor of this city? And does she have what it takes to keep the chaos and all its irregular parts in harmony?

Why might it be important that Dickens, given his social reform agenda, makes a connection between peoples' characters and the characters of the places in which they live? What is the relationship between environment and character? Where else do you see Dickens exploring that in the first two installments?

You Made It! So Now What?

If you are reading this, then you successfully followed the prompts and joined our class blog. In this space, we will try to resist the novel's invitation to think about everything at once. We will focus here on the individual characters who inhabit the world of Bleak House and the sometimes curious connections between them. Every week 1-2 students will be in charge of "posting" (that's what I'm doing now) about a particular character central to the installment(s) we are reading that week. You can write about any aspect of that character's representation that you wish; we just want to stay character-focused since it is as easy to lose touch with people in this novel as it is in a real city. Students who are not posting that week will have to comment on one of the posts.
As a trial run, this week I'd like for you to comment on this post by writing a sentence or two about what you are finding difficult about "getting into" Bleak House. If you are commenting after a few people have written, you can feel free to comment on their comments -- indeed, you can commiserate if you find the same thing difficult, or you can offer a solution to their troubles. It is perfectly acceptable in the blog world to talk specifically to one another (just be respectful). As we try to make connections between characters in the text, we will also try to make connections to one another here in the blogosphere.