This paper examined how Esther Summerson, Dickens’s ideal good mother, can be understood as a woman who has maternal agency and identity both as a character and as a narrator, and how she contrasts with other maternal characters in the novel, both major and minor. While more transgressive mothers, such as Lady Dedlock, Mrs. Jellyby and even Krook’s cat, are doomed to death, ineffectiveness and madness, Esther moves from a frozen, “unsexualized” state into a space of life and sexual possibility. In addition, Esther has agency and identity as a narrator since she shares the narration with a third-person male narrator. Esther becomes the one who speaks rather than the one who is spoken of, and her maternal, nurturing voice provides a balm for the often harsh, judgmental voice of the male narrator. As the narrator’s patriarchal voice dies away at the end, it is Esther’s maternal voice that survives.

This thesis examines how Dickens positions education between self-help and philanthropy in "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit." The first chapter examines Dickens’s own education as well as his education-related charitable activities to provide context for the following analysis of "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit." The second chapter focuses on education in "Bleak House" as a locus both for Dickens’s critique of the government’s irresponsible failure to educate the poor and for Dickens’s depiction of social responsibility motivating individuals to teach others. Finally, the third chapter considers the role of education in "Little Dorrit" by studying Amy Dorrit as an exemplar and teacher of social responsibility who stands in contrast to the prevailing irresponsibility that characterizes her family and “Society.”

This paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to prop up and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale-types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as incuriosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity. / text

This work argues that the dynamics of the oral and of the literate consciousness play a vital role in the characterization of Bleak House. Through an application of Walter Ong's synthesis of orality/literacy research, Krook's residual orality is seen to play a greater role in his characterization than his more frequently discussed spontaneous combustion. Also, the role orality and literacy plays in understanding Dickens's satire of "philanthropic shams" is analyzed. This study concludes that an awareness of orality and literacy gives the reader of Bleak House a consistent framework for evaluating the moral quality of its characters and for understanding the broader social message underlying Dickens's topical satire.

Dedicated to recording, portraying, and indicting the social inequities that he witnessed in nineteenth century Victorian England, one of Charles Dickens' many concerns was the roles assigned to women both in the public and private spheres. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the narratives of Amy Dorrit and Miss Wade in Dickens' Little Dorrit and Esther Summerson in Bleak House to explore the ways in which each woman conforms to, subverts, or rejects her socially prescribed roles as she seeks to create her own identity while simultaneously complying to the duties and roles assigned her. This study focuses on the oral and written narratives of these women exploring their words, stories, and symbolic imagery. It also contextualizes their narratives while answering the critical question: How does individual identity emerge amid rigorously circumscribed social roles? / Graduation date: 1995

My collection of short stories is set in the fictional town of Lockswood Gap, Tennessee, and centers around the lives of four women. Through various points of view and story lengths, I interweave several story lines to span over a time period of about twenty years. Themes of change and regret are prevalent in these stories, as each of these four women must make, or refuse to make, choices that will impact their lives. I modeled my collection after Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, using individual short stories that share the same group of characters to tell a novel-length story. The ten stories included in my thesis will comprise about threeourths of the novel, and I will add several more to it following my graduation.

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The representation of Chancery court in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) emphasises the inaccessibility of this institution to members of the laity. Dickens’ critique of Chancery chimes with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological description of law as a formalistic social field defined by practices of exclusion. Dickens’ Chancery is however further inaccessible since it departs from Dickens’ laypeople’s horizons of expectation as a bureaucratic organisation characterised by its structural dispersion and the generation of great quantities of writing. This thesis therefore scrutinises Dickens’ treatment of Chancery in light of media-theoretical and geocritical, as well as sociological, frameworks and perspectives. This essay demonstrates that Dickens’ account of the institution of Chancery as conceptually inaccessible amounts to what I term a non-world heuristic. I contend that Dickens’ take on law anticipates what Fredric Jameson famously theorises as the dizzying “global world system” of late capitalism; the non-world heuristic of Bleak House—which combats disorientation in the social domain of law—may thus be understood as an early example of what Jameson terms an “aesthetic of cognitive mapping.” The non-world heuristic, this thesis proposes, likely has a role to play also in fictional attempts to cognitively map the global world system. I theorise the non-world heuristic in light of the discourse on accessibility in possible-worlds theory and the Kantian sublime, finding that the sublime non-world of Chancery is made accessible as inaccessible and that this dynamic is integral to Dickens’ aesthetic both as a maker of cognitive maps and as a realist novelist.

The following study is interested in informal education in three of Charles Dickens's novels: A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860). While substantial scholarly attention has been paid to Dickens's interest in formal education, for example his educational reform efforts, his fictional depictions of schools and schooling, and his "student" and "teacher" characters, my project considers the fictional moments in which Dickens depicts education happening outside traditional "school" settings. I argue against claims that Dickens was exclusively interested in critiquing pedagogical practices; rather, Dickens offers informal solutions to Victorian attempts at establishing a state-run educational system. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences. / Master of Arts / In his novels Hard Times, Dombey and Son, and Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens famously criticizes common Victorian educational practices by depicting unfair and cruel treatment in school and classroom settings. However, Dickens's portrayals of excellent educational settings is often overlooked. My thesis argues that examples of Dickens's successful teachers occur most frequently in his portrayals of informal education. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860), ghosts, friends, mothers, dancing-masters, and dubious neighbors become the best teachers to needy students. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences.

The nineteenth century was a time of rapid change, brought about by increasing industrial development and changing patterns of thought and belief. Dickens's attitude to industrialism was ambivalent. He was not averse to progress, but feared that the ills of society would remain overshadowed. This dissertation explores representations of loss in Bleak House and examines some of the challenges the subject presents. The first chapter concentrates on examples of the wide range of losses with which Dickens deals in the novel to create the cumulative impression of individuals and a nation existing in a state of chaos and decay. Chapter Two focuses on the loss of physical life and the state of death-in-life. Chapter Three deals with the narrative techniques which Dickens uses to represent loss in the novel. / English Studies / M.A.