earticle

영어

Examining the representation of Bucket, this paper aims to prove that Dickens’s Bleak House produces a different narrative of crime from that in Newgate novels and in detective fiction. Bucket, like the detective in detective novels, reassures the class hierarchy by containing the subversiveness of crime discourse in the Newgate fiction. Bucket’s representation is, however, different from that of aristocratic amateur detectives and of incompetent and shallow-minded police in detective fiction. Bucket is represented as a police who reveals competence in detection, class-neutrality, and family value. Through the representation of Bucket, Bleak House produces more progressive discourse of class than detective novels. Taking a broad view of the development of nineteenth-century British crime fiction, this paper argues that the detective narrative in Bleak House is a transitional type of crime narrative between Newgate novel and detective fiction.