The political iconography of modern nations is inherently connected to the French Revolution that displaced the king's body with the feminized image of the Nation as the sacred center of power. As a result of the French Revolution, female allegories of the nation became increasingly popular. They were used in numerous linguistic and visual representations of the nation, which was portrayed as the moral alternative to old European regimes. (1) Bleak House was written when the British ancien regime remained in power despite the rapid industrialization of the country, and through the female allegory of Esther Summerson's "progress" it uncovers the incongruity between the outdated aristocratic state and the middle-class idea of a nation. As a result of her moral progress, Esther overcomes the stigma of her illegitimate birth and turns into the "queen" of those middle-class virtues Dickens defines as the desired national norm. Esther's journey exemplifies the middle-class idea of self-improvement, the ability to overcome vanity, egotism, and passion through reason. This ability for self-improvement is opposed to the aristocratic essentialism, the idea that legitimacy is determined by heredity instead of personal merits. The national norm exemplified by Esther represents the ideal "middle" middle-class position, which excludes any excesses as characteristically anti-national; it is based on the balance between duty and personal happiness, self-respect and self-sacrifice, intuition and reason. On the other hand, the aristocratic state and its law are depicted in the novel as elitist, inefficient, irrational, and morally unsound.
