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Charles Dickens, Bleak House

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Charles Dickens, Bleak House Charles Dickens, Bleak House "The universe makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid" John Jarndyce uses the quote above to describe the apathy that so many poor and orphaned citizens of England faced in the 19th Century. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, follows the trajectories of a large cast of characters from various social statuses and backgrounds but all of whom are tightly tangled in the infamous case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The case is a symbol of the greed and exuberance demonstrated by the British elite and those in power of the civil court system. The stark contrasts between the wealthy and the destitute are highlighted within the novel. The novel follows the story of Esther Summerson, an orphan who becomes an unwilling participant in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. The story also revolves around the mystery of Esther's identity as several links to wealthy and fashionable aristocrats are quickly established. Esther's closest friends, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, conversely tumble into poverty and destitution as the novel unfolds. The Early Edition Bleak House, along with many others of Dickens’ novels, was originally published in serial installments. There were a total of 20 installments and each one contained 32 pages of text, two illustrations, and 16 pages of advertisements. Dividing the novel into installments was an effective use of marketing. It allowed Dickens to have a wider audience because more people were able to afford it. People could sign up for an installment plan and pay one shilling a month over paying 21 shillings for the novel. Table of Contents Major Themes Characters Biographical Information Links and Resources Videos Image Gallery Information on the illustrator Page Key: [FF] Fun Fact [DQ] Discussion Question [SA] Spoiler Alert Major Themes Government/Legal System Corruption "Never can there come fog too thick, never can there com mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the sight of heaven and earth(14)". The heavy, dirty, suffocating fog that the narrator describes in the opening pages of Bleak House symbolizes the ubiquitous corruption of the government and legal system of Victorian London. Just as there is “fog everywhere,” a murky force seeming to suffocate the city, the High Court of Chancery seems to slowly suck the life out of nearly everyone who has been unfortunate enough to be involved in a suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce; a case that has dragged on for generations. Miss Flite, the oldest living ward of the case, has gone insane from her years of waiting. She keeps caged birds and gives them the names of Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach; all symbolizing the victims of the suit. Richard, one of the newest wards, succumbs to the involvement of the Chancery and becomes so obsessed with the suit that he is unable to find passion for anything else in life. The narrator tells us in chapter 39 that “The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself”(621) as it is perpetually causing delays and creating costs that the parties of the suit can never expect to get back. The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce symbolizes the corrupt legal system that ruined, rather than represented, the people of Victorian London. Echoing the corruption of the Court of Chancery is the parody of the members of Parliament. In chapter 40, the narrator describes the corrupt process of electing a new leader in Government. Like the lawyers of Chancery, the politicians are only concerned with power and personal gain. The narrator of Bleak House even suggests that the leader of Parliament was elected through bribery money given by Sir Leicester Dedlock, a prominent member of the aristocracy. Below: A caricature of William Ballantine, a famous Queen's Council member. Vanity Fair. 1870. (Wikimedia Commons). [DQ]The parody of England’s Parliament, while entertaining, doesn’t seem to help to move the plot along in any way. What point is Dickens trying to make by including this chapter that connects government corruption to the aristocracy? What does this parody add to the meaning of the title, Bleak House? Failures of Fashionable Society: The Blindness of the Aristocracy “Both the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and usage; over-sleeping Rip Van Winkles, who have played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties, whom the Knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!”(20). In the second chapter of Bleak House, Dickens introduces the reader to the Dedlocks who are members of the London aristocracy and the “world of fashion.” Dickens seems to want to establish immediately the stagnancy, decay and ennui of the Dedlock legacy. The narrator tells the reader that the Dedlocks, or the aristocracy they represent, are “wrapped up in too much jeweler's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air ” (20). The members of the aristocracy, or fashionable society, are completely wrapped up in their own trivial existence that they have become completely oblivious to the social problems of Victorian London. And the problem with this is that they are the people that could do something about all these problems as they are they are the people who sit in government offices and influence policy and law. Below: "The Bunch of Lilacs" by James Tissot. 1875. (Wikimedia Commons). [DQ] Throughout the novel, Sir Leicester Dedlock is portrayed as being a truly noble character who is capable of real love; and at the end of the novel, is able to forgive Lady Dedlock for her bringing shame and embarrassment upon his family . If Sir Leicester is symbolic of the aristocracy and can care about something beyond himself, beyond what is fashionable, then what does this reveal about Dickens’s stance on the aristocracy’s ability to change? False Charity “Mrs Pardiggle accordingly rose….Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brick-maker and all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say that she certainly did make, in this, as in everything else, a show that was not conciliatory, of doing charity by wholesale, and of dealing in it to a large extent”(133). Dickens’s pessimistic view of philanthropists is best illustrated by the character of Mrs. Pardiggle. In chapter 8, Mrs. Pardiggle takes Esther and Ada to the home of a poor brick maker on one of her “visiting rounds.” Mrs. Pardiggle barges in uninvited, reads from the bible, and lectures the family about their lifestyle. The brick maker tells Mrs. Pardiggle that he has no intention of making any effort, whatsoever, to change his ways, and Esther comments to the reader that Mrs. Pardiggle’s “mechanical way of taking possession of people”; of treating them as being beneath her, had put an “iron barrier” between she and the brick maker’s family (133). Nonetheless, Mrs. Pardiggle vows to come back again and again until the brick maker and his family are in “regular order.” She seems to fail to see that she has not done anything for these people; that their situation is so dire and their future so bleak that they cannot even fathom the life she says they ought to be living. What they need is not a lecture, but help finding adequate shelter, clothing, food, medical care and most of all a sympathetic friend. Immediately following this scene, Dickens’s gives what appears to be his idea of real charity when Esther comments on an exchange between the brick maker’s wife, Jenny, and a friend of hers when Jenny’s baby dies: “I thought it touching to see these women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another…. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and GOD” (135). Dickens seems to view the work of “philanthropists” such as Mrs. Pardiggle as false charity done only because it is “fashionable” and bolsters one’s own self image. Below: "Over London" by Rail Gustave Doré. 1870. (Wikimedia Commons). [DQ]How is Mrs. Pardiggle’s “charity” work like the work of the lawyers of the Chancery? Neglect and Abandonment of Children and “Telescopic Philanthropy” “He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle’s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby’s lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home- made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him: native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish”(724). One of Dickens’s major concerns about Victorian society was the number of children growing up without any real home or family.
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