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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—No-One's Here:
Dickens uses the motif of the presence of "no-one" in several places in Bleak House. One important example of this is "Nemo," the name Captain Hawdon takes when living in London. The reader first runs into this renamed character in Chapter 5, when Esther sees a sign in the window of Krook's "rag and bone" shop:
announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and dispatch:
Address to Nemo, care of Mr Krook within.
In a novel like Bleak House where legal documentation and records are so important, the idea that a "respectable man" would be working out of a shop like Krook's under an obvious pseudonym like "Nemo" seems strange. It is strange, as the reader soon sees, but as everything else in Krook's window is just as odd, Esther doesn't investigate further.
Having hinted at the importance of this "Nemo" to pique readers' curiosity, Dickens returns to discussing him shortly after. When Mr. Tulkinghorn hears this name for the first time in Chapter 10, Dickens provides exposition for the reader in an uncharacteristically obvious way. Evidently, Dickens thinks it's important that the audience understands the Latin meaning of the name:
‘What do you call him? Nemo?’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night, at eight o’clock; brought in on the Thursday morning, at half after nine.’
‘Nemo!’ repeats Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘Nemo is Latin for no one.’
In recusing himself from society after his previous mistakes and taking the name "Nemo," Captain Hawdon has literally made himself "no-one." This abandonment of his name has strong and unpredictable effects on those around him, which echo through Bleak House. When she climbs into Hawdon's grave to commit suicide, Lady Dedlock symbolically also dies alone, as she's with "no-one." His daughter Esther mostly doesn't use her real last name, so for the most part in Bleak House, the name "Summerson" also refers to "no-one."
Other characters embody aspects of "no-one," too. Jo, the orphan street-sweeper, doesn't have a last name; indeed, he only has one syllable of a first name and doesn't know the rest. Although Dickens portrays Jo as a character with a lot of nuance and heart, in his death he becomes like all the other nameless street urchins of London, who die "thus around us, every day." Because he's one of so many poor children, he's also "no-one."
Related Themes:
Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—No-One's Here:
Dickens uses the motif of the presence of "no-one" in several places in Bleak House. One important example of this is "Nemo," the name Captain Hawdon takes when living in London. The reader first runs into this renamed character in Chapter 5, when Esther sees a sign in the window of Krook's "rag and bone" shop:
announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and dispatch:
Address to Nemo, care of Mr Krook within.
In a novel like Bleak House where legal documentation and records are so important, the idea that a "respectable man" would be working out of a shop like Krook's under an obvious pseudonym like "Nemo" seems strange. It is strange, as the reader soon sees, but as everything else in Krook's window is just as odd, Esther doesn't investigate further.
Having hinted at the importance of this "Nemo" to pique readers' curiosity, Dickens returns to discussing him shortly after. When Mr. Tulkinghorn hears this name for the first time in Chapter 10, Dickens provides exposition for the reader in an uncharacteristically obvious way. Evidently, Dickens thinks it's important that the audience understands the Latin meaning of the name:
‘What do you call him? Nemo?’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night, at eight o’clock; brought in on the Thursday morning, at half after nine.’
‘Nemo!’ repeats Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘Nemo is Latin for no one.’
In recusing himself from society after his previous mistakes and taking the name "Nemo," Captain Hawdon has literally made himself "no-one." This abandonment of his name has strong and unpredictable effects on those around him, which echo through Bleak House. When she climbs into Hawdon's grave to commit suicide, Lady Dedlock symbolically also dies alone, as she's with "no-one." His daughter Esther mostly doesn't use her real last name, so for the most part in Bleak House, the name "Summerson" also refers to "no-one."
Other characters embody aspects of "no-one," too. Jo, the orphan street-sweeper, doesn't have a last name; indeed, he only has one syllable of a first name and doesn't know the rest. Although Dickens portrays Jo as a character with a lot of nuance and heart, in his death he becomes like all the other nameless street urchins of London, who die "thus around us, every day." Because he's one of so many poor children, he's also "no-one."
Related Themes:
Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Neglected Children:
Neglected children appear as a motif throughout Bleak House, appealing to the reader's sense of pathos and making for some of the novel's most touching and politically relevant scenes. For example, when the orphan Jo is taken to court in Chapter 11, Dickens's narrator takes up the stilted diction of a child as he "recounts" his circumstances to the officers of the law:
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for him. – He don’t find no fault with it. Spell it? No. He can’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both.
Jo is so poor and neglected, "no father, no mother, no friends" that he doesn't have anything to his name—not even his full name. He doesn't know what "home" is when being questioned by the lawyer: he only knows the implement of his work (a broom) and how to use it, though he can't remember who taught him that. This is almost farcically pathetic; Dickens really lays it on thick.
Jo's work is to sweep the streets around Chancery, where a huge amount of money changes hands. He relies on the charity of others to survive, but in Bleak House the only charity that's extended goes elsewhere. Jo's plight appeals to the reader's sense of pathos, supporting Dickens's larger argument that the British poor, especially destitute children, have been shamefully abandoned by the legal system and the British government.
Jo lives in a horrible slum that, the reader later learns, is known as "Tom-All-Alone's." This puts him in the worst position of any of the children in this novel, but he's not the only neglected minor. The Jellyby children are left to injure themselves and starve as their mother and father lack any interest in their welfare. Mr. Neckett's orphaned children, although their landlady doesn't charge them rent, rely on their 13-year-old sister, in pathetically too-big "woman's" clothes, to provide for them. Even Esther herself is shunted around from place to place and told it would have been better if she were "never born." Happy children are a rarity in Bleak House, and Dickens judiciously employs descriptions of the misery of unhappy ones to scaffold the novel's social commentary.
Related Themes:
Chapter 30
Explanation and Analysis—Miss Wisk:
In Chapter 30, Dickens satirizes the Victorian image of the campaigner for women's rights as being unpleasant, self-righteous, and uninformed. Describing Miss Wisk in Chapter 30, Esther notes that:
Miss Wisk’s mission, my guardian said, was to show the world that woman’s mission was man’s mission; and that the only genuine mission, of both man and woman, was to be always moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.
Mr. Jarndyce tells Esther that Miss Wisk believes a "man's mission" and a "woman's mission" are the same thing. Jarndyce then immediately turns this (seemingly quite sensible) idea around, explaining that Wisk also thinks that the only mission anyone should have is to always be making "declaratory resolutions" in public. "Making resolutions" isn't the same as doing anything, of course, although Jarndyce seems to take it seriously.
This useless campaigning sounds an awful lot like some of the lawyers of Chancery who argue rather than acting, and also like Mrs. Jellyby, whose "charity" towards others means that she neglects her own family. Miss Wisk might be dedicated to her own version of equality for women, but she's still an inhabitant of Chancery Lane, and is apparently as ineffectual as everyone else there.
Dickens goes on in this passage to poke fun at the "meanness" of the "domestic mission" (homemaking). Wisk believes that the idea that a woman belongs in the home is a ridiculous one, but explains it so exaggeratedly that she makes even this rational notion seem unrealistic:
Such a mean mission as the domestic mission, was the very last thing to be endured among them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat down to breakfast, that the idea of woman’s mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man.
The idea that women should have lives outside the home is of course quite sound. Nonetheless, because Miss Wisk speaks with "great indignation," seems pompous and self-righteous, and exaggeratedly calls "Man" a "Tyrant," her ideas seem silly and her arguments useless. As if to emphasize the fact that the reader shouldn't sympathize with her, all of the descriptive language Dickens is using here is contentious and abrasive. In the narrator's satirical voice, Miss Wisk becomes associated with the words "mean,""narrow,""slander," and "tyrant," even when she applies such language to others.
Related Themes:
Chapter 31
Explanation and Analysis—Punishing Diseases:
The deadly and disfiguring disease of smallpox—a true threat to everyone in the Victorian era, but especially the urban poor—appears as a motif in Bleak House, appealing to the reader's sense of pathos. For example, in Chapter 47 Jo dies of the disease, and his death is discussed as one small moment in a sea of tragedy that affects many impoverished children:
The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead! Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.
The "light" that comes upon the "dark benighted way" of London in this passage signals the moment of Jo's death. Dickens gives the word "light" a double meaning, as it also illuminates the unfairness of Jo's situation. Historically, disfiguring disease was sometimes viewed as a punishment from God for immoral behavior. In Bleak House, however, smallpox primarily infects and kills innocent children, appealing to the reader's sense of pathos as it strikes Esther, Charley, and Jo. The narrator explicitly calls on people who should care about these things (the King and the aristocracy, the clergy) before invoking everyone else with "compassion in their hearts" to think about this problem.
This is a direct appeal to pathos, as Dickens literally invokes compassion and asks the reader to sympathize with Jo's plight. It's also a political statement, as the narrator angrily directs the reader's attention to the children "dying thus around us, every day." The narrator implies that Dickens's characters only represent a tiny portion of the real masses afflicted by illness and poverty in Victorian England. Like poverty, Dickens implies, smallpox is unfair, indiscriminate, and deadly. Esther, Charley, and Jo have done nothing to deserve its ravages, but suffer immensely from it.
Even when Esther thinks she's dying of smallpox in Chapter 31, she remains such a good person that she only wants to give love and affection to Charley, who gave her the illness:
I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able, on the first morning, to get to the window, and speak to my darling.
The passage both invokes pathos for Esther's situation and links her environment to Jo's. As the "night melts into day" and she loses her vision, she's placed in a situation reminiscent of Jo's in Tom-All-Alone's, where day cannot be distinguished from night at all. Symbolically linking these two places reinforces the idea that the "punishment" of smallpox is also a "punishment" for poverty. The fact that smallpox only affects very relatable and appealing characters in Bleak House makes the reader feel the unfairness of this "punishment" intensely.
Related Themes:
Chapter 32
Explanation and Analysis—Spontaneous Combustion:
This novel contains the highly unusual motif of spontaneous combustion, an improbable event that happens to the shopkeeper Mr. Krook about two-thirds of the way through. In Chapter 32, the narrator ties together his death, an allusion to the classical theory of bodily "humours," and the ever-present theme of the Chancery's uselessness in the following way:
Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that Court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all Lord Chancellors in all Courts, and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done [...] it is the same death eternally – inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only – Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.
Dickens uses this bizarre method of killing off a character to dramatize the consequences of the law's slowness and inefficiency. Krook (who is nicknamed the "Lord Chancellor," and his rag-and-bone shop the "Court of Chancery") apparently dies because the "corrupted humors" of his body couldn't be contained and he exploded.
The "humours" Dickens mentions refer to a classical theory about the personality. The Greeks thought that a person contained four different kinds of fluid, which existed in different quantities within the body and which, if imbalanced, caused personality problems. Krook's humors are "corrupted" because of his close relationship to Chancery. They cause his death, and also signal its cause to his colleagues when they find what's left of him. Dickens states here that all Chancellors (and indeed, all lawyers) will suffer the same "inborn, inbred" fate. Evil deeds, it seems, will literally make a person explode with badness.
The event that prompts the investigation of Krook's rooms after he combusts is one of Dickens's most grisly scenes. The fluids of Krook's "humours" take disgusting physical form. As they look for him, Mr. Snagsby and Mr. Guppy smell burning flesh, observe that they are in a "horrible house," and see a "little thick nauseous pool" of liquid dripping from the ceiling, and "pouring out" through the window. This liquid is from Krook's exploded corpse. What drips through the window and onto Mr. Guppy is the debris of the "corrupted humours" of Krook's "vicious body." The vileness of someone's character is an unpleasant thing to find dripping upon oneself, and Guppy understandably threatens to "cut his hand off" if he can't wash himself clean.
Related Themes:
Chapter 47
Explanation and Analysis—Punishing Diseases:
The deadly and disfiguring disease of smallpox—a true threat to everyone in the Victorian era, but especially the urban poor—appears as a motif in Bleak House, appealing to the reader's sense of pathos. For example, in Chapter 47 Jo dies of the disease, and his death is discussed as one small moment in a sea of tragedy that affects many impoverished children:
The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead! Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.
The "light" that comes upon the "dark benighted way" of London in this passage signals the moment of Jo's death. Dickens gives the word "light" a double meaning, as it also illuminates the unfairness of Jo's situation. Historically, disfiguring disease was sometimes viewed as a punishment from God for immoral behavior. In Bleak House, however, smallpox primarily infects and kills innocent children, appealing to the reader's sense of pathos as it strikes Esther, Charley, and Jo. The narrator explicitly calls on people who should care about these things (the King and the aristocracy, the clergy) before invoking everyone else with "compassion in their hearts" to think about this problem.
This is a direct appeal to pathos, as Dickens literally invokes compassion and asks the reader to sympathize with Jo's plight. It's also a political statement, as the narrator angrily directs the reader's attention to the children "dying thus around us, every day." The narrator implies that Dickens's characters only represent a tiny portion of the real masses afflicted by illness and poverty in Victorian England. Like poverty, Dickens implies, smallpox is unfair, indiscriminate, and deadly. Esther, Charley, and Jo have done nothing to deserve its ravages, but suffer immensely from it.
Even when Esther thinks she's dying of smallpox in Chapter 31, she remains such a good person that she only wants to give love and affection to Charley, who gave her the illness:
I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able, on the first morning, to get to the window, and speak to my darling.
The passage both invokes pathos for Esther's situation and links her environment to Jo's. As the "night melts into day" and she loses her vision, she's placed in a situation reminiscent of Jo's in Tom-All-Alone's, where day cannot be distinguished from night at all. Symbolically linking these two places reinforces the idea that the "punishment" of smallpox is also a "punishment" for poverty. The fact that smallpox only affects very relatable and appealing characters in Bleak House makes the reader feel the unfairness of this "punishment" intensely.
Related Themes:
Chapter 55
Explanation and Analysis—Suicide:
The topic of suicide comes up as a motif with great regularity in Bleak House. Just before Lady Dedlock decides to flee into the night and expose herself to the elements, she has the following "overwhelming" feeling in Chapter 55:
Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her, that from this pursuer, living or dead – obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed, – there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away, like a leaf before a mighty wind.
Lady Dedlock is "overwhelmed" by emotions at this point; people have been worried she'll kill herself before, but she actually does it this time. This, like the other suicides in this novel, is the result of years of pent-up frustration, sadness, and fear. The recurrence of the theme of suicide goes hand-in-hand with the novel's narrative of despair, as there is apparently "no escape but death." The uncertainty that negative situations will ever be resolved links Lady Dedlock's "dread, remorse, and misery" with the endless cycles of legal torpor surrounding Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Her fear is eventually so strong that it "hunts" her, removing all her self reliance and leaving her utterly abject.
There are other suicides, too, also linked to the novel's legal worlds, but these don't happen in the real time of the plot. Other characters reference them periodically, and they always have a relationship to legal troubles. For example, Tom Jarndyce, the brother of Mr. Jarndyce, dies because he "in desperation blew his brains out in a coffee shop in Chancery Lane." A friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn's, the reader is told, also "walked leisurely home to the Temple and hanged himself." Through this motif, Dickens seems to imply, grimly, that suicide might be the only way out of the maze of Chancery's legal woes and Victorian social restrictions.
Related Themes:
