Miss Flite is a secondary character in Dickens's great novel, Bleak House, first published in serial form between March 1852 and September 1853. Her first appearance is in Chapter 3, when, as Esther writes, "a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet, and carrying a reticule, came curtsying and smiling up to us, with an air of great ceremony." She wants to meet Ada and Richard, wards in the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, as she once was, and their companion, Esther.
She has a bird-like quality about her, evident in her name, in her person (we get to see her in Phiz's wonderful etching), in the birds she keeps caged in her garret, and in her role as messenger of doom. Richard, despite the softening influence of Esther and Ada, becomes obsessed with the case and finally dies after it is settled--or rather just plain old terminated, because the entire estate has been "absorbed in costs."
Dickens never says, Miss Flite is like a bird (in which case, in every passage she appears in, she would provide an excellent example of a simile). This not dramatic enough for Dickens's purposes. Instead, she is a wonderful example of metaphor. Figuratively, she is a bird.
She has a bird-like quality about her, evident in her name, in her person (we get to see her in Phiz's wonderful etching), in the birds she keeps caged in her garret, and in her role as messenger of doom. Richard, despite the softening influence of Esther and Ada, becomes obsessed with the case and finally dies after it is settled--or rather just plain old terminated, because the entire estate has been "absorbed in costs."
Dickens never says, Miss Flite is like a bird (in which case, in every passage she appears in, she would provide an excellent example of a simile). This not dramatic enough for Dickens's purposes. Instead, she is a wonderful example of metaphor. Figuratively, she is a bird.
Miss Flite with the wards of Jarndyce & Jarndyce.
