The child in the fog : rethinking childhood in bleak house and the mill on the floss.

• Main Author: Thiong, Lionel J.W.
• Other Authors: Tamara Silvia Wagner
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48887
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The prevalence of fog is highly characteristic of the Victorian era. Other than being redolent of pollution by the Industrial Revolution, fog connotes obscurity and darkness. More specifically, it metaphorically gestures towards deeper meaning behind physical representations, such as those of childhood. Physical representations of children are a fascinating subject for nineteenth century writers, thus triggering the sentimentalising of childhood, and by extension, the birth of the Victorian child cult. With reference to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, this study endeavours to offer a fresh perspective on childhood. In featuring children enshrouded in fog and darkness, Dickens and Eliot’s novels prompt an investigation beyond palpable portrayals of the Victorian child as wretched, neglected and flawed. Hence, by focusing on the intangibility rather than the palpability of childhood, this paper highlights the perpetual existence of childhood in the form of memory and nostalgia. This insinuates that childhood is imperishable. In other words, an “inner child” exists in adults. In unfolding the existence of the “inner child”, this paper will also demonstrate the usefulness of the “inner child” in elucidating the dual narrative structure of Bleak House and the significance of nostalgia in The Mill on the Floss.