Alternative Literacies and Language in Bleak House and Great Expectations

abstract:The role of literacy in nineteenth-century culture is essential to understanding the conflicts in Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853) and Great Expectations (1860). In these novels, the material objects of literacy, such as papers and documents, often function as plot devices while simultaneously highlighting the divide between literate and illiterate characters. This article defines literacy not only as the ability to read but also as induction and investment into the social order; its argument is that these novels undermine the assumption that literacy is intrinsically linked to discourses of truth and authority. It also examines how characters in both novels continually confront the limits of literacy and find themselves relying on alternate systems of knowledge, which this article terms alternative literacies, to resist the ruling class. In doing so, it does not intend to fetishize illiteracy but instead to examine how literacy must intersect with other qualities in order to improve a character's life.