Thursday, April 5, 2012

Esther and Lucy


In the novel Villette our main character is Lucy Snowe, a quiet under spoken character who seems to rely on other characters to tell her own story for her. I think that the opposite can be said for Esther Summerson in Bleak House because she is out spoken, she typically says everything she is thinking and usually if she doesn’t it’s because it doesn’t matter, it’s easier to get to know Esther as a character unlike with Lucy who you have to read in to everything that she says more to find out how she is feeling. They do have many qualities the same though, they are both very intelligent women which they prove through their narrative and Lucy’s ability to teach, they are also both very hard working in everything that they do, such as Esther with her housekeeping, she seems sometimes like a mother in that way.

Another similarity between the two is they are both orphans, or so we are led to believe for half of Bleak House. They are raised by god parents until something happens and they go away. Lucy travels to the school and Esther travels to Bleak House where they find their futures or seem to find their futures. They meet the people that they want to spend their lives with even if it includes losing that same person.

Behind their hard work they are both very passionate people, this is harder to find in Lucy for a while because she isn’t as open in her narrative about herself as Esther is. But we see this passion in both of them when they are doing the things that they love. When Esther is helping the children, or Ada, or Richard she is so passionate about it it fills her narrative.

The last similarity that I find between the two is something that was discussed in class. These two gain their power from the things that are given to them. Lucy is given a school that had to be built by M. Paul and everything was made just for her and she gets her power from this. And Esther got her power her control over her life from Jarndyce with the house that was made with everything that she wanted, everything that she adored was in this house. These two things gave these women power and that power had to come from men the men that they were passionate about.

2 comments:

  1. You’re right about the two narrators from Bleak House and Villette being similar. You wouldn’t think of it since both have very different feel to them. I thought your point about the narrative styles being different in the way that we perceive the characters. With Esther, it feels like the readers are much more privileged to her thoughts and that she is more straight forward about things than Lucy. At the same time though, both are alike because they both manipulate their narratives to reveal things when they want to. I’m thinking about Lucy and the “nun,” and Esther and Mr. Woodcut.

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  2. I still find it so curious that M. Paul and Jarndyce have similar impulses about the heroines of our novels. The big difference, of course, is that Jarndyce is doing it so that Esther can marry Dr. W, but still. It's such an unusual yet touching gesture for both male characters.

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