To discuss the part that children and families play in Dickens’ later novels is to discuss the novels virtually in their entirety. In fact, I believe it is a difficult task to discuss them in any other way, as this is such a strong theme in all Dickens’ novels. Dickens himself was a man who considered his life in terms of his family and was affected by his relationship to his parents, siblings, spouse and children to such an extent that it cannot be helped he transfer this to his work. In each novel he creates families of all kinds to allow himself to explore his own feelings. He creates families full of love, security and contentment as well as families with problems – ‘ideal’ families, families harbouring dark and dangerous secrets, characters who gravitate towards each other to create their own ‘family’ bonds and families who will never be resolved to each other. In all of these I think Dickens was playing with his own relationships and how he saw himself in context within the lives of those around him. He uses orphan children like Oliver Twist and Esther Summerson who are taken on by kind benefactors and given a life they truly deserve full of love, respect and education – a life he feels he was in some way entitled to rather than being sent off to the blacking factory by his parents. This is something he never got over and said himself,

“I felt as if my heart were rent. I prayed, when I went to bed that night, to be lifted out of the humiliation and neglect in which I was. I never suffered so much before.” (Kaplan 1988:43)

He uses groups of people thrown together not necessarily good for each other, such as Fagin’s gang, to explore what may have become of himself in this same situation. He uses husbands and wives estranged from each other by secrets and sadness, such as the Dedlock’s, to help him deal with his own marital problems, and marriages full of love and happiness, such as the Meagles’, to show him what a life he could have had if he had chosen better. ‘The family’ was the only thing that mattered at the time Dickens wrote these novels and to Dickens himself it defined his life. When speaking about his ever-growing brood of children he said:

“I am constantly reversing the Kings in the Fairy Tales, and importuning the Gods not to trouble themselves: being quite satisfied with what I have. But they are so generous when they do take a fancy to one!” (Kaplan 1988:158)

The novels I will be discussing in this context are Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Both of these novels have a strong sense of family, particularly in the sense of ‘children and parents’, and both have some unusual and interesting ideas of what families are about. Dickens stretches the idea of children and parents from a simple genetic relationship to an emotional tie between one person and another regardless of how they are related or indeed, whether they are at all.

Of course, the main theme in Bleak House is concerned with the absurdity and corruption of an archaic justice system. The main characters are grouped together in little ‘pockets’ or families of their own, occasionally breaking off to form new groups. Even the Court of Chancery itself has an air of the wise parent always knowing what is best for the inexperienced and ignorant child. The main character, Esther Summerson, has the classic Dickens background of beginning the story an orphan who is treated cruelly by the aunt who raises her. She has no family of her own and is not allowed to feel she has any place in one. She is finally rejected by this surrogate parent and sent to make her own way in the world. Luckily she finds herself being taken on as housekeeper and companion to the kind-hearted John Jarndyce along with cousins Ada and Richard who are to be Jarndyce’s wards. This new group of people who are thrown together quickly become a family with Jarndyce as father and Ada and Richard his children. Esther’s role here is more complicated as Jarndyce is also a much-needed father figure to her, but she eventually graduates from daughter to prospective wife and mistress of the house. She takes on the idea of this new role in Jarndyce’s life very easily, I felt almost a little uncomfortable with the ease she transferred from thinking of him as a father figure to thinking of herself as his wife. Here she speaks of him as her guardian but also knowing that he is her future husband:

“I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married someone else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done!” (Dickens 1853:692)

I have to admit I was relieved that this never came about, and she was given the opportunity to make her own family with Allan Woodcourt instead. For me, this had echoes of Dickens own feelings towards his own wife’s sisters, particularly Mary Hogarth, who lived as a sister with Catherine and him after their marriage but gradually became Dickens’ idealistic sister-wife. Dickens was so close to his sister-in-law and idolizes her so much that biographer Fred Kaplan wrote:

“The faultless Mary had been a better mother, a better sister, and a better Catherine, an alternate Catherine, a completion of Catherine, adding insight, sympathy, and intelligent understanding.” (Kaplan 1988:94)

This highlights the problems occurring in Dickens’ own family life and how he dealt with his feelings towards these problems in his work. The girl in this quote could be many of Dickens heroines including Esther, however, I think it could almost exactly be describing Amy Dorrit who, like Esther, finds love in someone who can also be described as a father figure – Arthur Clennam. He meets Amy as his mother’s servant and takes pity on her and her situation. All the way through the novel their relationship appears based on pity and a parent-child fondness, he evens refers to her regularly as a child. However, it is the destiny of the story that the two of them shall marry and Amy takes on the role of his wife and carer almost too easily, but for me more comfortably than a Jarndyce-Summerson union would have been. Clennam evens admits the age-gap between himself and Amy and how this has affected the way in which he has regarded her until he realises he loves her.

“He had been accustomed to call her his child, and his dear child, and to invite her confidence by dwelling upon the difference in their respective ages”. (Dickens 1857:699)

Both of these novels are also interested in the inner workings of families and the tensions and complexities that people on the outside of the family group quite often have no idea about. The most obvious example of this is the Dedlock story running through Bleak House. On the outside Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock appear to be the model of an aristocratic family, excepting they have no children of their own, their marriage is assumed to be rock-solid and very proper. Of course, Lady Dedlock has a secret of her own that not even her husband knows and she guards this with her life. Maternal instinct for her only child eventually gets the better of her and she has to tell Esther the truth. For Lady Dedlock the mother-daughter bond is too strong to deny even at the expense of her reputation, her standing and ultimately her life. In her own words:

“To bless and receive me it is far too late. I must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will. From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.” (Dickens 1853:579)

Little Dorrit is positively overflowing with dysfunctional families. All but the Meagles’ have issues of some sort and even these good people have seen sorrow as we learn one of their twin daughters has died in childhood. As a result of this they have a tendency to keep the living twin locked in childhood. They refer to her always as ‘Pet’ and have to try very hard to acknowledge her adulthood and subsequent marriage. These, however, are small problems compared to the complexities of the title family. The Dorrit’s are complicated indeed. We begin with a mother, a father, and two children. Quickly we are left with a widower and his three children, the first two eager to make their own way in the world without their father, while the third takes on the role of mother to them all. They live in Marshalsea, a debtor’s prison which in itself is a family of it’s own with Mr Dorrit it’s father. Amy, however, transcends the daughter role. She has the intuition and sensitivity of a guardian angel, the sensibility and practicality of a mother and the childish sweetness of a young girl. She is all things to all people.

“It is enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest.” (Dickens 1857:80)

When the Dorrit family come good, however, and find themselves rich, powerful and on the other side of the Marshalsea wall there is no need for her to be all these things and so she finds herself unsuitable for everybody who used to need her attention and care so much. No longer is her mother-sister-carer persona required, she is simply needed to be a daughter and, sadly, she cannot fulfil this. She is Dickens ideal woman and so he sees fit to deliver her to a life companion who will require her skills as wife, mother, friend and carer, someone she can attend to and be appreciated by at last.

“In her devotion to her father and her motherlessness, the main character embodies one of Dickens earliest fantasies. In Amy Dorrit he combines his various favourite female archetypes, the daughter who loves her father beyond any possible means of betrayal, the “little” woman who’s moral sentiments are intuitive, and the sister to some chosen man to whom she will also become a wife. Mary and Georgina are his touchstones. In Amy Dorrit, he provides the fictional model for the ‘one friend and companion I have never made’.” (Kaplan 1988:343)

Within this family group we cannot forget Maggie either who calls Amy ‘Little Mother’, looking to her for the love and affection of an elder sister but in her simplicity also recognising the unrewarded part she plays in the lives of her family.

The other major family group in this novel is the Clennam’s. They are a family in the biological sense only. Arthur and his mother have nothing in common, they have nothing but suspicion and resentment towards each other. They are a family containing no love or affection of any sort. Even the relationship described between Arthur’s parents was not a loving one, but a marriage of convenience, constructed to disguise the disgrace of Arthur’s real mother. Mrs Clennam’s feeling of coldness towards Arthur is no secret and the devastating effect this has on their family dynamic is obvious. Included in this family group is Jeramiah Flintwinch, Mrs Clennam’s lifetime servant and partner in the secrets she holds about her family. Not only does he have a pivotal role in the story but his character is also used to reinforce the emotionless and damaging relationship between Mrs Clennam and her son. She has more respect and affection for this conniving and cruel man than she has ever had for her husband or for Arthur.

The main themes in both these novels take place in front of a backdrop of families of all sorts interweaving with each other and with our main characters, breaking off and forming new families, or just proving one point or another about families in general. An example of this in Bleak House is the Jellabys. They are a large sprawling family comprising a self-interested mother, who loves her charity work and nothing else, her long-suffering husband who is a shadow of a man and her large brood of children headed by the neglected Caddy. Esther takes Caddy under her wing and she is able to make her own family with Prince Turveydrop and his overbearing but kind father who makes Caddy feel more like a daughter than she ever has before. Caddy is also able to help her own father here too by giving him a place to visit for some peace. I think Dickens gives us happy endings for these two characters, Caddy and her father, as he intended us to see the problems the Jellaby’s experience but not to dislike them particularly and so, instead of tragedy or disgrace befalling them they are given a more open, accepting conclusion.

When discussing Bleak House families we cannot ignore the idyllic family life of the Bagnets with their contented, capable mother, their devoted father and their three happy bouncing children, all shown in stark relief against the lonely life of their friend Mr George who lives alone, except for his strange quiet assistant in the Shooting Gallery that he owns. This family, I believe, are included in the novel to balance out the neurosis and discontent of so many of the families elsewhere.

There is also the interesting character of Skimpole who, although he has a family of his own, considers himself a child and uses this as an excuse for bad debts and general irresponsibility. He considers those people he calls his friends as adults and assumes they will make allowances for his foolishness as he is a child and they the parent. Skimpole does not really belong in any of the ‘family’ groups. Even with his own family he has an irresponsible detachment as if it is not for him to worry about. He does see himself as everyone’s child though, and it is the obligation of his friends, such as John Jarndyce, to play parent and bale him out when he needs it. He spends his time in the Jarndyce family group but still remains on the peripheral of it, almost as if he is incapable of belonging anywhere where he would need to take up a role in the adult world.

The character I found interesting in a similar way to this in Little Dorrit is Tattycoram. She appears as the ubiquitous Dickens orphan who has been taken on by the Meagles to try and improve her station in life. However, unlike those orphans before her she is not grateful for this interest the Meagles have taken in her and decides, after becoming obsessively jealous of Mr and Mrs Meagles devotion to their daughter Pet, she will run away and live with Miss Wade. She has the promise of another lonely girl like herself that they will be a family to each other but she soon discovers this is not going to be the case and makes her way back, against her own pride, to the bosom of the Meagles. This in some way reinforces the idea that a ‘true’ family is based on love, devotion and honesty. It could be argued also that the Meagles represent ‘correct’ Victorian family values of kindly Mother, wise and devoted Father and well-mannered, content Children and the return of Tattycoram into this family is a message that this is the only way that really works for happiness.

“Father and Mother Meagles never deserved their names better, than when they took the headstrong foundling-girl into their protection again.” (Dickens 1857:773)

The backdrop of families goes layers deep in both novels. We have the Pardiggles, the Bayham Badgers, the Snagsbys and the Smallweeds in Bleak House and the Merdles, Flora Casby and her extended family including both her father and aunt-in-law, as well as the Plornishs and the rest of Bleeding Heart Yard in Little Dorrit. What Dickens has achieved is a kaleidoscope of human nature all interacting with each other under the umbrella of nineteenth century family values. These families carry the story to greater or lesser extents and are, generally speaking, not vital to it, but what they do is enrich it and give the reader a real sense of what ‘family’ meant at this time in history. A lesser author would have written these stories without all the extra characters and their ensuing intricacies and achieved good, well-told tales, but Dickens wanted so much more than that. He wanted to create worlds, living, breathing places where his characters live as if the plot and their part in it is their destiny and not just a story someone has thought of and written down. These are rich tapestries of lives, which cannot be achieved without the background knowledge of how each character has grown up, developed and found their own way in the family, which surrounds them.

Reference List.

Dickens C. (1852-1853) Bleak House, Penguin Classics (Edition 1996)

Dickens C. (1855-1857) Little Dorrit, Penguin Classics (Edition 1998)

Kaplan F. (1988) Dickens – A Biography, John Hopkins University Press (Edition1988)