Esther Summerson: Looking Twice

Abstract

Marian Halcombe is considered one of fiction’s first female detectives. Although Bleak House, which predates The Woman in White by seven years, has been called the first detective novel, Esther Summerson has not been placed in Marian’s company. Instead, in a novel in which many characters including Richard, Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock, and especially Inspector Bucket, are seeking knowledge, Esther appears reluctant to know anything. Her “mode,” writes Gordon Hirsch, “is the repression of active curiosity, desire, and hostility.”1 In particular, notes Audrey Jaffe, she “block[s] curiosity about her mother.”2 Esther makes it difficult for critics to credit her in the investigation and resolution of the novel’s mysteries. When, at the end of the eighteenth installment (Chap. 59), she finds her mother’s dead body, we can thank the omniscient narrator, Tulkinghorn, Inspector Bucket, Lady Dedlock herself, even the illiterate Jo for helping us to understand what has occurred. Indeed, we may comprehend before Esther who is busy reminding herself that “she had not the least idea what it meant,” that there was some connection she “could not follow,” that she “saw but did not comprehend,” that her “understanding for all this was gone.”3 KeywordsGiant KillerGenetic InheritanceYoung LadyDark ComplexionDinner PartyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.