Mary Russell’s Bleak House
15
There are similarities in their appearance insomuch as their shared
disfigurement. Esther contracts a disease (likely smallpox) during the course of
the novel that scars her to the point where her beauty is said to have gone.
Russell also undergoes extensive scarring from the childhood car wreck that
took her family and in saving Holmes’s life. This prevents her from wearing
anything but a high neckline. During the course of the novels, both women are
injured protecting smaller, weaker characters (the child Jo in the case of Esther
and the child-like Margery Childe in Russell’s case). These injuries highlight the
characters’ altruism and the toll this takes on their bodies. This is a far cry from
the super-human detective found in many other mysteries and has special
relevance given that they are both young, single women.
For Russell, her further investigation into the deaths of women associated
with the Temple leaves her (temporarily) a heroin-addicted wreck who “left the
remnants of [her] youth in one of [the house’s] deserted qellars” (281). When
Esther looks at herself in the mirror after her illness and says, “It was all gone
now” (572), she is not just talking about her looks but her youth and hopes of
marrying Woodcourt, the man she loves.
Instead, Esther settles for engagement to her generous but much older
guardian Jamdyce. The dull and ultimately failed May-December marriage of
the Dedlocks gives us an idea of what Dickens thought of a marriage across
generations. When Esther is freed from the promise to marry her middle-aged
guardian, she makes a natural match in the younger Woodcourt.
Regiment's commentary on the extreme of a May-December romance is
quite the opposite. Russell marries Holmes to the probable consternation of
feminists. (This is possibly the case for the general public as well given King’s
defensive FAQ response about the age difference on her website and her
description of it as “kinky” in the interview with Reynolds.) Esther has similarly
contradictory qualities “that feminist critics . . . have found . . . fascinating”
(Bradbury xiv). Esther likely agrees to marry her guardian out of a sense of
obligation not attraction. Russell’s genuine attraction to a man 30-plus years her
senior who was once her guardian for all intents and purposes is somewhat
disconcerting and Electra-like. King herself married an older man when she was
a young woman, but it is highly doubtful the gap was so large, and he had no
part in her early tutelage and care as an adolescent.
If the marriage between Russell and Holmes is read through the lens of
Bleak House, it can be seen as a “folding in” of characters. Bleak House's
daunting number of minor characters is something that must be dealt with in a
contemporary detective fiction because each serves a psychological purpose.
Mrs. Bucket is her husband’s partner in solving mysteries and assists him in
solving the murder. Russell’s role via comparison, therefore, may take on
marriage to Holmes to psychologically “role in” the character and more equal
partner of wife, legitimizing the Russell/Holmes liaison and intellectual
partnership in both society’s eyes and the reader’s.