Housekeepers: Bleak House

Abstract

The title given to this first of two chapters about Dickens will come as no surprise to any student of Dickens criticism. So much writing has poured forth about the domestic fairies of his pantheon that it may seem that there is little more to add. Even in 1853, the very year of Bleak House’s publication, an anonymous reviewer in Bentley’s Miscellany commented on Esther Summerson’s change of fiancé (sounding very like a late twentieth-century feminist): ‘We do not know whether most to marvel at him who transfers, or her who is transferred from one to another, like a bale of goods.’¹