Bleak House

Synopsis

Jarndyce and Jarndyce is an interminable probate case in the Court of Chancery concerning two or more wills and their beneficiaries. Lady Honoria Dedlock, the beneficiary of one of the wills, lives with her husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock, at his estate at Chesney Wold. While listening to the reading by Mr Tulkinghorn, the family solicitor, of an affidavit, Lady Dedlock recognises the handwriting on the copy. The sight affects her so much she almost faints, which Mr Tulkinghorn notices and investigates. He traces the copyist, a pauper known only as "Nemo", in London. Nemo has recently died, and the only person to identify him is a street-sweeper, a poor homeless boy named Jo, who lives in a particularly grim and poverty-stricken part of the city known as Tom-All-Alone's.

Esther Summerson is raised by the harsh Miss Barbary, who tells her, "Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers." After Miss Barbary dies, John Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian and assigns "Conversation" Kenge, a Chancery lawyer, to take charge of her future. After attending school for six years, Esther moves in with Jarndyce at his home, Bleak House. Jarndyce simultaneously assumes custody of two other wards, his cousins Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. They are beneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; their guardian is a beneficiary under another will, and the two wills conflict.

Richard and Ada soon fall in love, but though Jarndyce does not oppose the match, he stipulates that Richard must first choose a profession. Richard first tries a career in medicine, and Esther meets Allan Woodcourt, a physician, at the house of Richard's tutor. When Richard mentions the prospect of gaining from the resolution of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jarndyce beseeches him never to put faith in what he calls "the family curse." Richard decides to change his career to law, then later switches again and spends the remainder of his funds to buy a commission as a military officer.

Lady Dedlock—disguised as her maid, Mademoiselle Hortense—pays Jo to take her to Nemo's grave. Meanwhile, Mr Tulkinghorn is concerned Lady Dedlock has a secret which could threaten the interests of Sir Leicester and watches her constantly, even enlisting the real Hortense to spy on her. He also enlists Inspector Bucket to run Jo out of town, to eliminate anything that might connect Nemo to the Dedlocks. Esther sees Lady Dedlock at church and later talks with her at Chesney Wold.

Characters

Although not a character, Jarndyce and Jarndyce is a vital part of the novel. It is believed to have been inspired by a number of real-life Chancery cases involving wills, including those of Thellusson v Woodford, Charles Day and William Jennens, and of Charlotte Smith's father-in-law, Richard Smith.

Major characters

Esther Summerson is the heroine. She is Dickens's only female narrator. Esther is raised as an orphan by her godmother Miss Barbary, who is in fact her aunt. She does not know her parents' identity. Miss Barbary holds macabre vigils on Esther's birthday each year, telling her that her birth is no cause for celebration, because the girl is her mother's "disgrace". Because of her cruel upbringing she is self-effacing, self-deprecating and grateful for every trifle. The discovery of her true identity provides much of the drama in the book. Finally it is revealed that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Nemo, later learned to be Captain Hawdon.

Honoria, Lady Dedlock is the haughty and beautiful mistress of Chesney Wold. The revelation of her past drives much of the plot. Before her marriage, Lady Dedlock had an affair with another man and bore his child. Her sister had told her at the time of the birth that the infant was stillborn. Years later, however, Lady Dedlock discovers that the child was born alive and is Esther Summerson. Because Lady Dedlock's reaction to the affidavit suggests that she harbours a secret predating her marriage, she has attracted the curiosity of Mr Tulkinghorn who feels bound by his ties to his client, Sir Leicester, to pry out this secret. At the end of the novel, Lady Dedlock dies, disgraced in her own mind and convinced that her husband could never forgive what she imagines to be her own moral failings.

John Jarndyce is an unwilling party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, guardian of Richard, Ada, and Esther, and owner of Bleak House. Vladimir Nabokov called him "one of the best and kindest human beings ever described in a novel". A wealthy man, he helps most of the other characters, motivated by a combination of goodness and guilt at the mischief and human misery caused by Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which he calls "the family curse". At first, it seems possible that he is Esther's father, but he makes clear he is her guardian shortly after she comes to live under his roof, explaining the letter he received asking him to take on that role a few years earlier. He falls in love with Esther and wishes to marry her, but he gives her up because she is in love with Mr Woodcourt.

Richard Carstone is a ward of Chancery in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Straightforward and likeable but irresponsible and inconstant, Richard falls under the spell of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. At the end of the book, just after Jarndyce and Jarndyce ends, he dies, worn out by his imprudence in trusting to the outcome of a Chancery suit.

Minor characters

Mr Gridley (the "Man from Shropshire") is a farmer and involuntary party to a suit in Chancery (based on a real case, according to Dickens's preface), who repeatedly seeks in vain to gain the attention of the Lord Chancellor. He threatens Mr Tulkinghorn and then is put under arrest by Inspector Bucket, but dies, his health broken by his Chancery ordeal. The character is based on the true case of Thomas Cook of Onecote, Leek, which was brought to Dickens's attention in 1849 by his solicitor Mr W. Challinor of Leek.

Nemo (Latin for "nobody") is the alias of Captain James Hawdon, a former officer in the British Army under whom Mr George once served. Nemo is a law-writer who makes fair copies of legal documents for Snagsby and lodges at Krook's rag and bottle shop, eventually dying of an opium overdose. He is later found to be Lady Dedlock's former lover, and the father of Esther Summerson.

Mrs Snagsby is Mr Snagsby's highly suspicious and curious wife, who has a "vinegary" personality and incorrectly suspects Mr Snagsby of keeping many secrets from her: she suspects he is Jo's father.

Guster is the Snagsbys' maidservant, prone to fits of "crying and moaning".

Neckett is a debt collector – called "Coavinses" by debtor Harold Skimpole because he works for that business firm.

Charley is Neckett's daughter, hired by John Jarndyce to be a maid to Esther. Called "Little Coavinses" by Skimpole.

Tom is Neckett's young son.

Emma is Neckett's baby daughter.

Mrs Jellyby is Caddy's mother, a "telescopic philanthropist" obsessed with an obscure African tribe but having little regard for the notion of charity beginning at home. It is thought Dickens wrote this character as a criticism of female activists such as Caroline Chisholm.

Mr Jellyby is Mrs Jellyby's long-suffering husband.

Analysis and criticism

Narrative structure

Much criticism of Bleak House focuses on its unique narrative structure: it is told both by a third-person omniscient narrator and a first-person narrator (Esther Summerson). The omniscient narrator speaks in the present tense and is a dispassionate observer. Esther Summerson tells her own story in the past tense (like David in David Copperfield or Pip in Great Expectations), and her narrative voice is characterised by modesty, consciousness of her own limits, and willingness to disclose to us her own thoughts and feelings. These two narrative strands never quite intersect, though they do run in parallel. Nabokov felt that letting Esther tell part of the story was Dickens's "main mistake" in planning the novel. Alex Zwerdling, a scholar from Berkeley, after observing that "critics have not been kind to Esther", nevertheless thought Dickens's use of Esther's narrative "one of the triumphs of his art".

Feminine modesty

Esther's portion of the narrative is perceived by some scholars as an interesting case study of the Victorian ideal of feminine modesty. She introduces herself thus: "I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever" (chap. 3). This claim is almost immediately belied by the astute moral judgement and satiric observation that characterise her pages. In the same introductory chapter, she writes: "It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of my life! But my little body will soon fall into the background now" (chap. 3). This does not turn out to be true.

Satire

For most readers and scholars, the central concern of Bleak House is its indictment of the English Chancery court system. Chancery or equity courts were one half of the English civil justice system, existing side-by-side with law courts. Chancery courts heard actions having to do with wills and estates, or with the uses of private property. By the mid-nineteenth century, English law reformers had long criticised the delays of Chancery litigation, and Dickens found the subject a tempting target. He already had taken a shot at law-courts and that side of the legal profession in his 1837 novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club or The Pickwick Papers. Scholars, such as the English legal historian Sir William Searle Holdsworth, in his 1928 series of lectures, have made a plausible case for treating Dickens's novels, and Bleak House in particular, as primary sources illuminating the history of English law.

Spontaneous combustion

Dickens said in the preface to the book edition of Bleak House that he had "purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things". And some remarkable things do happen: One character, Krook, smells of brimstone and eventually dies of spontaneous human combustion. This was highly controversial. The nineteenth century saw the increasing triumph of the scientific worldview. Scientifically inclined writers, as well as physicians and scientists, rejected spontaneous human combustion as legend or superstition. When the instalment of Bleak House containing Krook's demise appeared, the literary critic George Henry Lewes accused Dickens of "giving currency to a vulgar error". Dickens vigorously defended the reality of spontaneous human combustion and cited many documented cases, as well as his own memories of coroners' inquests that he had attended when he had been a reporter. In the preface of the book edition of Bleak House, Dickens wrote: "I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received."

Critical reputation

George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton are among those literary critics and writers who consider Bleak House to be the best novel that Dickens wrote. As Chesterton put it: "Bleak House is not certainly Dickens's best book; but perhaps it is his best novel". Harold Bloom, in his book The Western Canon, considers Bleak House to be Dickens's greatest novel. Daniel Burt, in his book The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, ranks Bleak House number 12.

Locations of Bleak House

The house named Bleak House in Broadstairs is not the original. Dickens stayed with his family at this house (then called Fort House) for at least one month every summer from 1839 until 1851. There is no evidence that it formed the basis of the fictional Bleak House, particularly as it is so far from the fictional location. The house is on top of the cliff on Fort Road and was renamed Bleak House after his death, in his honour. It is the only four storey grade II listed mansion in Broadstairs. Dickens put the fictional Bleak House in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where he wrote some of the book. An 18th-century house in Folly Lane, St Albans, has been identified as a possible inspiration for the titular house in the story since the time of the book's publication and was known as Bleak House for many years.

Adaptations

In the late nineteenth century, actress Fanny Janauschek acted in a stage version of Bleak House in which she played both Lady Dedlock and her maid Hortense. The two characters never appear on stage at the same time. In 1876 John Pringle Burnett's play, Jo found success in London with his wife, Jennie Lee playing Jo, the crossing-sweeper. In 1893, Jane Coombs acted in a version of Bleak House.

A 1901 short film, The Death of Poor Joe, is the oldest known surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character (Jo in Bleak House).

In the silent film era, Bleak House was filmed in 1920 and 1922. The latter version featured Sybil Thorndike as Lady Dedlock.

In 1928, a short film made in the UK in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process starred Bransby Williams as Grandfather Smallweed.

In 1998, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of five hour-long episodes, starring Michael Kitchen as John Jarndyce.

The BBC has produced three television adaptations of Bleak House. The first serial, Bleak House, was broadcast in 1959 in eleven half-hour episodes. The serial survives. The second Bleak House, starring Diana Rigg and Denholm Elliott, aired in 1985 as an eight-part series. In 2005, the third Bleak House was broadcast in fifteen episodes starring Anna Maxwell Martin, Gillian Anderson, Denis Lawson, Charles Dance, and Carey Mulligan. It won a Peabody Award that same year because it "created 'appointment viewing,' soap-style, for a series that greatly rewarded its many extra viewers."

References in music

Charles Jefferys wrote the words for and Charles William Glover wrote the music for songs called "Ada Clare" and "Farewell to the Old House", which are inspired by the novel.

Anthony Phillips included a piece entitled "Bleak House" on his 1979 progressive rock release, Sides. The form of the lyrics roughly follows the narrative of Esther Summerson, and is written in her voice.

Original publication

Like most Dickens novels, Bleak House was published in 20 monthly instalments, each containing 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Phiz (the last two being published together as a double issue). Each cost one shilling, except for the final double issue, which cost two shillings.

Critical editions

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ed. Nicola Bradbury (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996)

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ed. George Ford and Sylvere Monod (W.W. Norton, 1966)