‘WHAT CONNEXION CAN THERE BE?’ THE FREUDIAN AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL UNCANNY IN DICKENS’S BLEAK HOUSE

Abstract

This dissertation explores the interconnection between the psychoanalytical and environmental uncanny in the mother-and-daughter plot of Bleak House. The underlying theoretical framework mainly focuses on the uncanny as theorised by Sigmund Freud (1919) and, in environmental terms, by Amitav Ghosh (2016), and also considers some notions helpful to situate this concept within the broader picture of psychoanalytical and environmental studies. The dissertation is divided in four chapters: the first introduces the uncanny, and applies it to some events of Dickens’s life, and to the environmental condition of mid-nineteenth-century England. It is given a brief trajectory of the Freudian uncanny during recent decades, and its position within the Structural Model of the Psyche. The environmental uncanny is studied in relation to Franco Moretti’s fillers, descriptions of the everyday life which aim to pervade the narrative of a pattern of regularity. Their interplay is an essential condition to understand environmental agency. Lastly, the environmental and Freudian uncanny are compared. The second chapter compares Lady Dedlock and Esther Summerson in the respective introductory chapters. This chapter is built around André Green’s ‘Dead Mother complex’, the environmental characterisation of Lady Dedlock and Chesney Wold, Esther’s childhood memories and the perception of her surroundings. The third chapter offers some insights on the role of environmental agency, arising from pollution and miasma theory, in Esther’s disfiguration, and focuses on the uncanny significance of the mother-and-daughter reunion, most importantly by comparing Esther’s scarred and unfamiliar face to the Lady’s familiar one. The fourth chapter analyses the role of moon and coldness in shaping Lady Dedlock’s (un)maternal attitude, and in Esther’s climatic quest for her mother.