White Flag

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Bleak House

Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate/BBC

"I will go down with this ship
and I won't put my hands up and surrender.
There will be no white flag above my door:
I'm in love … and always will be."

- "White Flag", by Dido

Sometimes Esther dreams of Mr. Woodcourt's shipwreck: the splintering wood, the crashing waves, the endless heat-crazed days waiting on the raft, the bitter taste of seawater on his tongue. She wonders how many of the rumors about him are true, whether he really gave up his last drops of rum to clean out a fellow sailor's wound, or stopped the others from literally eating the last man who died. She would not put it past Mr. Woodcourt to be brave or selfless. She only wishes she could be half so brave.

After all, how much courage should it take to marry Mr. Jarndyce? How much courage does it take to bring some happiness to the man to whom she owes everything?

That is what she tells herself by day. By night, she dreams that she is drowning, that the sea is closing in over her head, that it will drag her down and swallow her whole. She dreams that far above her, in the last sunbeam shining through the water, a dark-eyed young man in a blue uniform is reaching out for her, and that he might save her – if she could only take his hand.

What frightens her most is that in her dreams, she chooses to drown.