The Lawyer and the Leech

Among the many themes coursing through Dickens' Bleak House and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the theme of the forbidden love affair takes center stage in both novels.

The Scarlet Letter opens with Hester Prynne, holding an infant at her bosom, standing on a pedestal before the villagers and magistrates who question her regarding the father of her illegitimate child. She refuses to answer such a question and goes on to live a secluded life with her baby girl, Pearl, so that she may pay penance for her 'sin'. However, despite removing herself from the public eye, she is never free from scrutiny, especially from the watchful eyes of her ruthless husband, Roger Chillingworth. The person who shares her 'crime' of adultery is also never far away, and ridden with guilt and remorse, his secret slowly consumes him.

The instigator of wounds in Arthur Dimmesdale, the Puritan preacher who struggles with his love for Hester and his duty towards his faith and community, is Hester's lawful husband, Roger Chillingworth, who claims that he is a physician familiar with herbal remedies. Instead of curing the preacher, who complains of heart troubles, he sets out to do the opposite. As he is aware of his wife's secret, he leaks the information to the preacher by and by in a subtle manner, so that the preacher, naive and unsuspecting, begins to trust his physician and blame himself for his weakness. Eventually, the physician has so much control over his patient that, like a parasite, he gnaws at his flesh and his soul, bringing the pastor to his tragic end.

In Bleak House, Lady Dedlock, who has bottled up a similar secret of her own for many years, finds herself threatened with the risk of exposure, when she recognizes a letter written in the hand of the man she once loved, and then catches a glimpse of their child, whose existence was previously withheld from her.

Here it is the lawyer Tulkinghorn who functions as the leech. Insisting that his only concern is to protect his client, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Lady Dedlock's husband, he makes it knows to the Lady that he will stick to his word at "whatever the cost maybe to others." Once he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, he taunts Lady Dedlock psychologically and emotionally, which wrecks deeper havoc than anything physical would have done.

Though Lady Dedlock, outwardly, wears the icy reserve she has trained herself to wear for so long, inside she is full of turmoil. Only when we see my Lady in her private chambers do we realize the extent of the pain she carries within her. In the innermost corners of the house she finds a private space enough to betray a little of the emotions she keeps at bay. There she is kind to Rosa, her maid, bestowing a motherly tenderness towards that young girl. And when she is finally left to retire for the night, she is driven frantic with worry, her hair and clothes left in disarray.

But Tulkinghorn is the only other person who is a match for her. He watches her every move and sees the flutter of panic in her eyes that would be undiscernible to anyone else, even her husband. Just as she behaves calm and collected on the outside, Tulkinghorn acts as if her secret matters little to him while becoming just as obsessed with it himself. It affords him an opportunity to manipulate her according to his whims, so that she will be supple under his commands.

Both Tulkinghorn and Chillingorth are driven by a ruthless greed for power. They thrive from controlling their victims, from overpowering them, and seeing them destroyed. They are persons who dismiss the idea of personal freedom and human choice. They are self-intersted individuals, the most perverted of villains, who employ weapons of such emotional magnitude.

While Chillingworth is driven to do so primarily out of a need for revenge, Tulkinghorn's motives are not so clear. Though Chillingworth does not want Hester anymore and believes she is punished enough, he still resents her for protecting the identity of her lover so fiercely. Thus, he sets to give just deserts to Dimmesdale so that Hester will never be able to unite with him. Tulkinghorn, on the other hand, has no interests in Lady Dedlock, other than the fact that she is the wife of a powerful aristocrat, who happens to be his client. He is well aware that Sir Leicester adores his wife. I believe that Tulkinghorn resents Lady Dedlock for her power. She is "not of a great family," but has managed to marry well and carry out her duties as a Lady befitting her new station. She instills both fear and respect in other people. She is admired by high Society for her beauty and her conduct. She can dismiss her irate maid Hortense and just as soon welcome another maid, Rosa, who admires her for her kindness, all at her will. Nothing angers Tulkinghorn more than knowing that Lady Dedlock has worked so hard to mask the enormity of her past. And so, he vows to destroy her, admitting that "the power and force of this woman are astonishing!"(Chapter 41).

Though both Chillingworth and Tulkinghorn are bent on destroying their victims' reputations, Chillingworth succeeds in calling Religion into question, while Tulkinghorn's deeds are focused on the boundaries of a woman's power. Between Tulkinghorn and Lady Dedlock lies a battle of the sexes: when the Lady tries to break free fron the chains that bind her, the male, a lawyer, representing the confines of 19th century Society, is determined to bring her down. Unlike Hester Prynne, who shuns the public and meekly pays penance for her sins, Lady Dedlock is at the center of high society, and tries to bravely retain her power and her dignity until the very end. It is important to note that despite differences in their conducts, there are visceral ties that bind the two women: their daughters, born out of the same sin, are a living testament to their mothers' spirits, courage, intelligence, and endurance.