Phantasmagorical Narration in Bleak House

Abstract

While Collins presents us with texts in which women have difficulties narrating their stories resulting in the ghostly effects of the return from the dead of those muted voices, Bleak House suggests what might be the effect of storytelling that cannot be contained neatly in one person. The double narration introduces the ghostly production of the voice; the voice is no longer one, but is doubled. The double narration thus becomes the locus of haunting in that the ghostly pro-duction of the double narrative entails death and resurrection as each narrator stops and begins his or her portion of the narrative.