On The Creative Skill Of Bleak House

In the past, critics didn't realize the achievement of Bleak House, one of the greatest fictions of Charles Dickens. In recent years, more and more people took attention to this work, so much so that it gradually went beyond to those more popular works, such as David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. The reason for such phenomenon must be a lot of valuable factors in the novel. In this paper, we try to analyze how Bleak House embodies Dickens's series of artistic skill.I. The application of two narratorsThere are two story clues in Bleak House which narrated by two narrators. One is a first-person narrator who tells the story of Lady Deadlock to relate and introduces the social circumstance. Another imitates the tone of the heroine Esther to tell her own story as well as her friends'. Such a division of labor between the two narrators is very reasonable.On one hand, it is only a third-person narrator that can carry on the introduction of the characters and the social circumstance in which they are living. And he also has a freedom to order all the characters as he will, so that they can service the plot well. At the same time, the author has power to convey his own views about morals, religion, political...etc., so the author could involve into the work very well.On the other hand, the character narrator who deals with the part of plot related to personal emotion could plant the emotion into real earth, without committing any sentimentalism fault, which would be difficult to be avoided if it were stated by the third-person narrator. II. The depth can be found in the character's mentalityIn the criticism history, Dickens's flat and unilateral figures were being defused all the time. However, undoubtedly, the so-called "personality" can be found in Dickens's first-person narrated works.As a character, Esther---the hostess of Bleak House, as well as other heroines has difficulties to earn positive appraise from critics. As described by her own words, she has a strong view on virtue and vice and ability to make judgment, a plenty of sympathy and self-sacrifice spirit and takes pleasure in helping others. She is humble and agreeable, without be sinned by bad habits held by those fashionable rebellious girls. She has all of the virtue in the Victoria ages. Such a perfect woman seemed to be doubtless boring.However, Esther's double identity in the book makes things different. She is not only a character, but also a first-person narrator. Her narrative style can be described as understatement. This makes us try to dig into her statement to find the real personality and mental motive that might be intentionally hidden by her. This illegitimate child suffers a lot from her birth. As a result of that fact, she decides to earn other's admission through the path of virtue and kindness. Seen from this point, Bleak House became a personal struggling history of Esther.III. The poetic language: The detail description and symbolical imagesThe features of Dickens's language contain two outstanding aspects, one is figurative and delicate statement, the other is the usage of symbolized images.Dickens is special sensitive and favor to the detail. He would keep halting among some details which would be insignificant in some ordinary people's eyes when he deals with both scenic description and plot narration. This infers one of his writing tendency, that he would pull off the narration for the sake of description.Bleak House isn't the only one that intentionally applies the symbolized images in Dickens's works. However the images of fog, beasts and birds, ships are so systematized images that they are very special and can take an important position in Dickens's thoroughly creation.The concentrated symbolization skill, and the sumptuous and embellished detail description, the two kinds of language art which may seem to be contrary at the first sight, combine together in this novel, make the article contracts and relax alternately with a rhythmical feeling.IV. The writing style of humor and satire Another outstanding aspect in Dickens's fictional creation is inheritance of the humor and irony tradition of British novel style. The ironic humor was performing a function to resist the tendency of sentimentalism from the beginning of his literature creating.Though Bleak House is called'a gloomy work', there are still a great many comedic factors in this novel. The truth is that, his earlier fictions contain more fanny humor, while the later ones tend to satire. He uses more black humor to convey the ironic meaning.Although there more satire and less funny factor in Bleak House, we still cannot say that the humorous style disappears completely. The most vivid and interesting humor factors are still can be found in some comedic character.Dickens is good at discovering the odd behaviors of human, and able to imitate them like a camera. His humorous irony comes from the detection to those funny points belong to both human and himself. It isn't inflexible morals animadversion at all. ConclusionBe one of the greatest works of Dickens, Bleak House epitomizes his various creative skills. In the meantime, it marks a trail of effort made by this novelist through which he tracked the way to transcend himself. Perhaps, it isn't the highest point the author had ever arrived at, but we can't deny its special status in Dickens's writing.