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Abstract
In this thesis, I am chasing the mothers in Bleak House and Daniel Deronda. As I engage in this search for the mystery mothers, Lady Dedlock and the Princess Halm-Eberstein, I am interested primarily in the ways in which that very searchand the discovery that followsstructures these two massive Victorian narratives. The narratives of Bleak House and Daniel Deronda invest their missing mothers with an incredible amount of meaning, meaning that cannot be maintained once the searchers actually confront these maternal characters. I argue that these mothers introduce a profound instability into their respective textsan instability that accounts for the strangely unsettled concluding chapters of Bleak House and Daniel Deronda. These two characters have an explosive impact on their respective texts; my intent is to trace that impact.