"I Always Protest Against Being Referred to the Bees"

In Bleak House (1852–1853) and Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865), Charles Dickens draws analogies between human beings and bees, which function as an important means to address social and moral problems of Victorian society. This article shows how references to bees expose the hedonistic version of psychological egoism represented by Skimpole's drone philosophy in Bleak House and how Dickens attacks the evils of insatiable greed underlying the ideology of the middle-class "economic man" implied by the worker-bee analogy in Our Mutual Friend . I argue that the Mandevillian tension between private interests and public benefits underlies Dickens's allegorical representation of bees

Animal and Plant Science Education · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Psychology · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought