Quote 1
I have
a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these
pages, for I know I am not clever.
These words, which form the first sentence
of chapter 3, “A Progress,” are the first
words of Esther’s narrative, the first we hear of her voice. There
are two remarkable elements to this quotation. First, Esther seems
to be aware that she is telling this story in tandem with someone
else. She says that these pages will be “my portion,” suggesting
that she knows that the tale is not entirely hers. Although Esther
never refers to the third-person narrator with whom she shares the
telling of Bleak House, she is aware of him, and
she goes on to tell her story with the understanding that someone
else will flesh out the names, places, and events that she refers
to from her limited, first-person perspective.
Esther says she knows she is “not clever,” but this assertion
alerts us to the fact that she is indeed clever and will tell the
story in a skillful way. Even though the beginning of her narration
does seem to lack the finesse and dramatic touches that characterize
her later chapters, her claim to be “not clever” quickly shows itself
to be false. Esther has an intuitive, compassionate way of interacting
with the world, and as we get to know her, we see that, at times,
she knows more than she lets on. This quotation, rather than telling
us that our narrator isn’t smart, tells us that our narrator perhaps
isn’t fully reliable. We can trust Esther to tell the full story,
but, as we will see as the novel progresses, she will tell us the
story on her own terms, deciding for herself what to reveal and
when to reveal it.
