"When I kissed her cheek" : theatrics of sexuality and the framed gaze in Esther's narration of Bleak House
- UNCW Author/Contributor (non-UNCW co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Kimberle L. Brown (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW )
- Web Site: http://library.uncw.edu/
- Advisor
- Katherine Montwieler
Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to explore a sexual subtext in Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak
House. In Esther’s narrative, dramatic vignettes expose female characters expressing the
simultaneous possibilities of innocent, intense friendship and lesbian encounter. The blushing,
tearing, kissing, and hyperbolic use of pet names combined with rhythmic delays, repetitions,
and exclamatory punctuation work to flaunt a persuasion to embrace sensibility that channels
characters to act toward social good.
The gaze, magnified through a narrative frame technique, heralds these duplicitous
scenes. At the same time that Dickens creates a new way of looking at the text, a special framed
gaze, a multiple, crisscrossed gaze, he also deploys a theatrical voice, exclusive to Esther, that is
shaped by conventions of the theatre in the narrative, and which simulates the excitement of live
theatre as an imitation of recurrent rhythmic patterns of sexual experience. Synaesthesia blends
the visual and aural, as Dickens invites a gendered role-reversal. Female readers through
Esther’s narration view the world through the eyes of men with all of the privilege and power the
part endows. Dickens uses this excitement and transgender boundary crossing to construct a
path of sensibility through the bleakness of the novel to lead characters toward social action.
"When I kissed her cheek" : theatrics of sexuality and the framed gaze in Esther's narration of Bleak House
PDF (Portable Document Format)
110 KB
Created on 1/1/2009
Views: 4797
Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- A Thesis Submitted to the University of North Carolina Wilmington in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
- Language: English
- Date: 2009
- Keywords
- Dickens Charles 1812-1870 Bleak house--Criticism and interpretation, Sex in literature
- Subjects
- Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Bleak house -- Criticism and interpretation
- Sex in literature