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The Nature of Self-Damaging Women in Charles Dickens’ Novel Bleak House
Louai Talat Yousef Abu Lebdeh
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2014.04.001
Irbid National University, Irbid, Jordan
This study intends to explore and analysis the portrayal of self-damaging behavior, which encapsulates two female characters: Lady Dedlock and Mademoiselle Hortense in one of the most famous novels of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1984). An evaluation of these two female characters shows and reflects that their self-damaging behavior emerges from low self esteem, which results from a number of reasons. The self-damaging behavior introduced by these women involves: self-imposed isolation, women madness, purposive accidents, physical self-abuse, and most consequently, conscious pursuit of destructive relationships with men. Although Dickens clearly means no maliciousness to women in his works, the great Victorian marital upheaval of June, 1858, is illustrative of Dickens’s ambivalent attitude towards women, especially towards strong women.
self-damaging, destructive relationships, victimization, isolation, deformities
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