The Selfless Esther
Bleak House is a novel of interconnections. As its readers, we are asked to imagine a sprawl of nodes, hubs, and hinges between which worlds are made and unmade. Caroline Levine even argues that âBleak House uses networks to reconceptualize characterâ, casting narrative persons âless as powerful or symbolic agents in their own right than as moments in which complex and invisible social forces crossâ. These defining âmomentsâ are precisely of the kind that motivate philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour to speak of âactantsâ rather than âactorsâ. In an effort to overcome the ingrained hierarchy between subjects and objects (which is really a purification of âhumansâ and ânonhumansâ), Latour maintains that âthe two cannot be had separately, but are always bound up with each other in a network of relationsâ. Whatâs more, âactantsâ, whether human or no, âmust not be conceived as free-standing entities that then enter into relations with each other. Only in these relations do they become actants; they âemergeâ within the networks that exist between themâ[1].
So Bleak House is also a novel of self-constructions. Consider how Estherâs identity is bound to her place in a network: âI thought, all at once, if my guardian had married someone else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form, that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them down in their basket againâ. Indeed, for despite having been raised âlike some of the princesses in the fairy storiesâ who altogether lack âworldly experience or practical knowledgeâ, the Esther we know clearly emerges within the domestic matrix the keys realize. Though first âquite lost in the magnitude of [her] trustâ, Esther quickly finds herself transformed into âa methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little personâ, who, with real zest, takes to remembering the contents of âeach little store-room drawer and cupboardâ. You see, the keys make a difference; they are âactantsâ, connecting Esther to Bleak House, her station, and the world beyond. We could say the keys afford access, a particular mode of being toward things â amid Bleak Houseâs garrets and cellars we find our âlittle old womanâ, our âDame Durdenâ.
But this is only half the story. Perhaps more interesting is the way the keys translate Bleak House. Esther likens the manor âone of those delightfully irregular housesâ with a âbountiful provision of little halls and passages, of unexpected places and rooms and a back-stairs where you could hear the horses being rubbed downâ. The keys disclose an economy of nooks brimming with âjams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and china, and a great many other thingsâ. Esther writes of the houseâs âhospitable jingleâ, of its snug little rick-yard, its dear little farm-yard. About Bleak House all is of the same quaint variety, a âperfect neatnessâ exemplified in the whitest linen stored up with rose-leaves and lavender. What Esther gives us, then, is no outsiderâs description, but fragments of an intimate knowledge, a kind of poetry of the house [2]. The bunches of keys open Bleak House, both literally and figuratively.
[1] Taken from Peter-Paul Verbeekâs What Things Do, pg. 149-150.
[2] âFor instance, in the house itself, in the family sitting-room, a dreamer of refuges dreams of a hut, of a nest, or of nooks and corners in which he would like to hide away, like an animal in its hole. In this way, he lives in a region that is beyond human images. If a phenomenologist could succeed in living the primitiveness of such images, he would locate elsewhere, perhaps, the problems that touch upon the poetry of the houseâ (The Poetics of Space 50).













