Ellena's response to Judith Wilt

Ellena Johnstone, A response to: ‘Confusion and Consciousness in Dickens’s Esther’ by Judith Wilt

In her article Judith Wilt explores Esther’s narrative alongside its first-person counterparts in David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Given the usual negativity towards Dickens’s representations of women, Wilt is refreshingly positive about his attempt. She feels that ‘Dickens’ Esther Summerson shows him a new kind of horizon’ which ensured he was ‘committed to the wider anxieties of the Self-Other relationship, which are the female’s lot in the world.’ It might have been interesting to hear a little more about these ‘wider anxieties’ and how this new perspective influenced his depiction of women in the novel, but Wilt moves on a little too swiftly and, if a criticism can be brought against her, it is that she makes a great quantity of intriguing points but does not afford enough time to explore each fully. She does, however, make some interesting and original points. Particularly noteworthy is her observation that Esther’s narrative task is very different to that of David and Pip. She even controversially suggests Dickens’ rendering of Esther surpasses his male first person narratives in terms of credibility, writing that:

‘Since her purpose is the full telling of a story larger than herself and her own past, to an audience wider than herself and her own present or future, her feats of memory, her insights into to other minds, her happy presence at the crucial scenes of so many other lives are more credible than David’s or Pip’s.’

Another key point in her essay concerned Esther’s modesty and how criticism has found it tiresome and pretentious; she quotes John Forster calling her narrative technique a ‘too conscious unconsciousness.’ Wilt believes Esther is uncomfortable about crediting her own virtues as a result of her upbringing and the insistence of her Aunt that she is nothing and worthless. This theme of nothingness and blankness pervades the novel, and Wilt cites Lady Deadlock’s constant boredom as a consequence of ‘a catastrophic personal blankness’ in her life brought about by the absence of her lover and child.

It was also fascinating to hear her take on of the idea that Esther’s marriage to Woodcourt is a reward for her loyalty to her Guardian, which some members of the seminar found troubling. She claims that it is ‘confused loyalty’ that moves Esther to accept her Guardian’s proposal in the first place, and that Esther realises, even cherishes the fact that, she will be entering into a sexless marriage. The latter point is, however much it rings true of the novel, mere speculation as nowhere in the text does Dickens’ actually suggest that the marriage will be confined to a platonic level, but it is interesting to think about none-the-less.

Essentially, Wilt makes some engaging points in her article but the reader would perhaps get more out of the essay if she selected a few key ideas and developed them more thoroughly. It is a minor point though; the article is on the whole accessible, well-written, original and definitely worth reading.