ENGL 510: The City in the 19th Century

Fault and misfortune—agency and chance—keep creeping up in Bleak House.  Esther’s story starts with this theme; she is considered a disgrace by her aunt at no fault of her own.  After her aunt’s death, when Rachael emotionlessly sends Esther away, Esther says, “I felt so miserable and self-reproachful, that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!”  Rachael responds, “’No, Esther! . . . It is your misfortune!’” (35-36).  With this theme in mind, and at risk of abusing my topic from last week, I can’t help but return to Jo during his final days.

I have said already that it is Jo’s sympathy (and the sympathy of the poor for the poor in general) that causes his downfall.  After my reading for this week, I might add that his sympathy causes him to avoid assistance from others.  He does not wish to be at fault for the injury of any other that might occur as a result of their sympathy for him—he does not wish to share his misfortune. In chapter 46, Allan Woodcourt finds Joe passing through Tom-all-Alone’s after his sudden disappearance.  The narrator says that Jo “is so intent on getting along unseen, that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back” (713).  Of course, Joe’s isolation is, as he claims, partly due to his fear of Detective Bucket.  Still, in his dying condition, his unwillingness to appeal to Woodcourt for help, reveals an independence perhaps born from a fear of being a burden.  Jo’s incredible misfortune is only his fault to the extent that it may have been caused by his generosity in trying to help others—the last of his agency is used up in resisting the help of others in order to avoid being a burden.

Jo’s shock at finding that Esther has fallen ill after trying to help him further reveals his self-isolation.  After being accused of ungratefulness, Jo “excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos” (717).  Even though Jo was taken by force from Esther’s care, he seems to assert his resistance to fault—he does not resist his own misfortune of which he is already certain at this point in the story.  He prefers self-destruction to his being at fault for Esther’s harm.  It seems he can exercise control in his life and remain blameless only through his removal from the world.

As Woodcourt talks to Jo about prayer, one of his final reflections questions whether anyone can truly be in control of their fate.  He says that he has seen “genlmen” who come to pray in Tom-all-Alone’s, but he professes that he knows nothing about prayer.  He says they “all mostly sounded to be a talking to theirselves, or a passing blame on the t’others, and not a talkin to us” (733).  His understanding of prayer as talking to oneself draws a clear distinction between the hopes of the relatively well-off and the hopelessness of the poor.  Jo can imagine no power that might come to his rescue at his request.  He simply understands the life that has happened to him, and tries to act well in that life.  Those who can pray and imagine that their prayer will have some effect must be those who have, at least on occasion, had a prayer answered.  They have not been kicked in the teeth quite so much that they imagine their agency to be so limited as Jo understands his own.

Their remove from Jo’s naturalistic perspective is forcefully asserted by Dickens in the following chapter—Tulkinghorn, who seems to know all, cannot prepare for his death.  Only pages prior to being shot, Tulkinghorn seems supremely in control of his own fate as well as the fate of others.  He is killed at home, in the place where he most certainly feels safest.  But, all seems as usual to him as he heads home.  Dickens takes pains to show (and show again) that there is no sign that might warn Tulkinghorn: “Don’t go home!”