Critical Response #1 - Brittney Cato

One of the things I found extremely interesting, is the Victorian worldview of itself as well as others. In Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, he describes the Court of Chancery as “not a large world…it is a very little speck…it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air” (17). In this quotes, Dickens explains how this Court of Chancery and the people within it and around it see it as they only thing. While he doesn’t condemn it, it seems as if he explains how it is detrimental to this tiny world’s environment. Keeping this description in mind, I found certain articles in Household Words to be especially interesting. I read three articles in particular, and each of them revealed the sense of blindness and ignorance to the outside world as described in Bleak House.

In an article entitled “Going to Africa,” the speaker touches on the distance others place between themselves and other worlds. The speaker explains how “everyone applauds [his voyage to Africa] but no one…will go” (Household Words, Vol. XIX, 316). This way of acknowledging but not experiencing is the type of growth that Dickens deems unhealthy for the Court of Chancery, and the same type of distance that echoes the Pardiggle and Jellyby idea of philanthropy.

After reading the first article, I was interested in reading more, and found two more articles entitled” On the West African Coast” and “Japan.” In “Japan,” the speaker articulates to the reader how “there is a general air of resemblance between social life in Japan and social life in the Western Kingdoms,” (237) but at the same time, contradicts the statement through its description of the differences between the two societies. It picks apart the Japanese traditions and dismisses it as an equal before it can ever acknowledge it as one. I found the same dismissal of “larger worlds” (Bleak House 17)  in “On the West African Coast.” The speaker describes his slave who is from the west African coast, and attempts to justify that “he really has no idea of either cleanliness or decency as we understand those virtues in England” (Household Words, Vol XIX, 510). Considering what I’ve learned so far about sanitation in England, as well as the way in which the speaker speaks about his African slave, I found this article to take on the voice of the Pardiggle and Jellyby mothers. Without making any assumption or jumps in regards to how Dickens felt about other worlds, I couldn’t help but see the connection of the critiques of the Court of Chancery and philanthropy and how they applied to some of the articles in Household Words.