"Wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!" The Happiness Lacking in Dickens's Happy Ending for Women

It was surprising when Michie claimed that Dickens's female characters are traditionally not complicated, for it seems that there are several complicated female characters in Bleak House. Although she goes on to say that Esther is quite complicated, it seems like Lady Dedlock, coincidentally being Esther's mother, is also a complicated female character. When she admits to Esther that she is her mother, and that she must remain on "the dark road [she has] trodden for so many years," she also makes another admission that allows us to see more deeply into the soul of Lady Dedlock, the woman whom to society seems like the perfect trophy wife that always seems to be bored and haughty. She says in answering Esther's question about whether she surely wishes to remain alone, "I am resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me, almost as awfully as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house; but my course through it is the same. I have but one: I can have but one" (451).
It is strange that she uses the word "outbidden" in this context. How exactly has she "outbidden folly with folly" or "insolence with insolence?" There is definately a reference to her past, and how she has dealt with reactions from society, and more importantly from her sister. When she says "outbidden," is she talking about exceeding her folly with more folly? Or does she mean that she has exceeded other people's folly in her actions? Or, is she perhaps claiming that she rises above or surpasses people's expectations and counters their perceptions of her by doing things like marrying into a wealthy family? If she is making the claim that she has made mistakes in her past, and then made even worse mistakes and continues to constantly outdo herself, then is this not an indication of her making a bigger mistake now? If her folly was having a child out of wedlock, then does she outbid that folly by abandoning that child and refusing to publicly acknowledge her? That certainly seems to be the case, since Esther is one of the narrators of Bleak House, and is liked by Dickens, and meant to be liked by the readers of Bleak House, for she will eventually become a force of social change. Although Lady Dedlock's refusal to publicly acknowledge Esther may have some benefits for Esther, like not having the public brand her as a bastard child, we still get the sense that Lady Dedlock is wrong for not wanting any relationship with her daughter.
Lady Dedlock then goes on to say "I have but one: I can have but one." Here, she seems to be alluding to having only one choice. That one choice is that she must not have a relationship with Esther, and she must continue to be secretive about her past. Lady Dedlock is a complicated female figure. She struggles with having to reconcile, or refuse to reconcile, her past with her present. She claims that she is a "wretched and dishonouring creature," but has to portray herself to the public as a proud and indifferent being. She must keep the secret of her being the mother of Esther, but must live with the guilt and the pain that her child lives, but she cannot ever care for her. She must be quite strong to be able to do all of these things simultaneously, and she has been successful at doing most of these things prior to finding out that Esther is her daughter. But in all of her complications, Lady Dedlock says she has but one choice. This admission reminds me of an "Appeal to Fallen Women" and "Homes for Homeless Women." In these works by Dickens, he seems to allude to the idea that women who are "fallen" only have one choice: to get married and forget about their pasts. Dicken's seems to make it seem like this transition will be easy for the women, and will help them to achieve the happiness they were born to have. Lady Dedlock, however, seems far from attaining any happiness in her current state. Although she has achieved all that Dickens would hope that fallen women would achieve in his letter and article, she is still miserable. But why would such a complicated character merely conform to society's standards of what makes a woman happy and what a woman ought to do with her life, espcially if she is not happy? Lady Dedlock's case goes against Dickens's idealistic views on what marriage does for women, and how people should live. Perhaps women are not born to be happy, and it seems like marriage is not a means of achieving happiness, at least for the fallen woman in Dickens's novel.
Lady Dedlock's extremism in trying to cover up her shame makes her a very complicated character. Her extremism causes her to walk along the path of shame and secrecy alone, causes her misery, and also causes her to go to great lengths to conform to societal expectations on how women should live. But in her extremism, and in her being adamant on keeping her secret and continuing to maintain the Dedlock name and honor, she reveals not only the pressures of nineteenth cetury society on women, but also the need for social change. One of Dickens's overarching themes in this novel is the need for social reform. Women like Lady Dedlock should not have to be separated from their children, and should not have to live a certain way because society says they should. If Dickens truly believes that women, even fallen women, were born to be happy, and shows us that Lady Dedlock is not happy in her situation, then there must be a need to reform society's constraints on women, their freedom, and their happiness. This change might even need to extent to the products of the mistakes of fallen women, namely, people like Esther. Esther makes the claim that she "should not be punished for birth" (455), and being separated from her mother, or knowing that having any relation with her mother if she should ever want one, is impossible, obviously upsets her. So, Dickens's call for social reform would be for the benefit of these women, and the benefit of their children who are innocent of the sins of their fathers, or mothers, as Esther is.