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August 24, 2008
the moral evaluation of literary characters
I'm on p. 521 of Dickens' Bleak House--hardly past half-way--but so far Mrs Jelleby is proving to be a bad person. Like many of my friends (like me, in fact) she spends most of her days reading and writing messages regarding what she calls a "public project"--in her case, the settlement of poor British families on the left bank of the River Niger at the ridiculously named location of Borrioboola-Gha. Meanwhile, her own small children are filthy, her clothes are disgraceful, her household is bankrupt, her neglected husband is (as we would say) clinically depressed, and she is casually cruel to her adolescent daughter Caddy. Caddy finds a man who pays some attention to her, but Mrs Jellyby is completely uninterested in the wedding and marriage:
- "Now if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details [sc. the wedding] might grieve me very much. ... But can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose between me and the great African continent? ..."
"I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"
"O, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs Jellyby, "to ask such questions, after what I have said of the preoccupation of my mind."
"And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent, and wish us well?" said Caddy.
"You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind," said Mrs Jellyby, "and a degenerate child, when you might have devoted yourself to a great public measure. But the step is taken, and I have engaged a boy [to replace Caddy as her secretary], and there is no more to be said. No, pray, Caddy," said Mrs Jellyby--for Caddy was kissing her--"don't delay me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!"
Mrs Jellyby's friends dominate the wedding breakfast and are "all devoted to public projects only." They have no interest in Caddy or even in one another's social schemes; each is entirely self-centered.
Within the imaginary world of Bleak House, Mrs Jellyby is bad, and her moral flaws should provoke some reflection in the rest of us--especially those of us who spend too much time sending emails about distant projects. The evident alternative is Esther Summerson, a model housekeeper who cares lovingly for her friends and relatives and refuses to interfere with distant strangers' lives on the ground "that I was inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very differently situated ...; that I had much to learn, myself, before I could teach others ..."
Fair enough, but we could also ask why Dickens decided to depict Mrs Jellyby instead of a different kind of person, for instance, a man who was so consumed with social reform that he neglected his spouse, a woman who successfully balanced public and private responsibilities, or a woman, like Dorothea Brooke, who yearned for a public role but instead devoted her life to the private service of men. Both the intention and the likely consequences of Dickens' portrait are to suppress the public role of women.
The general point I'd like to propose is this: the moral assessment of literary characters (lately returned to respectability by theorists like Amanda Anderson) requires two stages of analysis. First one decides whether a character is good or bad--or partly both--within the world of a fiction. And then one asks whether the author was right to choose to create that character instead of others.
August 24, 2008 3:50 PM | category: none