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Biblical Allusion in the Opening Numbers of Three of Charles Dickens’s Serialized Novels
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Biblical Allusion in the Opening Numbers of Three of Charles Dickens’s Serialized Novels
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Journal Article
Biblical Allusion in the Opening Numbers of Three of Charles Dickens’s Serialized Novels
2023
Overview
The criticism of the Court of Chancery in Bleak House and of utilitarian educational theories in Hard Times set up these novels’ moral stance in opposition to idolatrous practices, similar to Little Dorrit’s delineation of institutional neglect of responsibilities and individuals’ craze for speculation. In Miss Flite’s eyes, the Chancellor being separated by curtains means that he is as unapproachable to her as is the Ark of the Covenant, containing God’s law in the form of the Ten Commandments, to ordinary Jewish people. To this straightforward analogy between the sacredness of the powers that be (supposedly representing the divine power) can be added the narrator’s twist that the Chancellor’s seat, which would not normally draw attention to itself, becomes identified with the Mercy Seat in Exodus 26.33–34 (indicating the presence of God in the most holy place), which covers the Ark of the Covenant–an ironic allusion since there is no mercy to be found in Chancery. [...]readers are invited to see that the opening chapters in Bleak House use biblical allusions to introduce the novel’s theme of social critique and to establish the conflicts between Chancery and its suitors.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
