Bleak House: The Anti-Dickensian Dickens Book?

(“In an Atmosphere of Booriobooble-Gha,” by Fred Barnard. Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham for Victorian Web.)

By the Adaptation Stationmaster

Note: Like my previous post, David Copperfield and the Search for the Perfect Parent, this one will mention scenes and plot points that this group won’t be reading for several weeks. This time though, it will only be discussing a couple of supporting characters, not main ones. Still, those who don’t want a first time reading experience spoiled should sit this one out. I wanted to post it early because the final paragraph discusses aspects of Bleak House that many will be understandably offended by and I wanted to state my position on them right away.

One of the things that make Bleak House fascinating is how some of its messages seem to be the opposite of what Charles Dickens would ordinarily preach.

Take the character of Harold Skimpole. Preferably far away!

Dickens typically portrayed children, like Oliver Twist, Tiny Tim and Paul Dombey Jr, as innocent victims and as role models for adults. He held up the simply joy they took in their lives as preferable to the cold calculation of “mature” businessman such as Scrooge or Paul Dombey Sr. Dickens’s ideal adults were jovial childlike beings like Fezziwig. Hard Times would probably be his ultimate statement on the subject. But in Bleak House, Dickens gave us Harold Skimpole, an adult who “had always been a mere child in point of weights and measures and had never known anything about them (except that they disgusted him),” one whose seemingly only aspiration is to relax and enjoy the beauties of nature-and whom the book condemns.

When he is introduced, Skimpole is described as looking more “a damaged young man than a well preserved old one.” He has no worries about wasting time or money (or so he claims.) When he or his family need cash, as they often do, he cheerfully sponges it off the friends whom he charms with his easygoing ways. When an officer comes to arrest him for nonpayment of debts, rather than being ashamed, Skimpole casually asks him if he doesn’t feel guilty. “Then you didn’t think, at all events, to this effect. ‘Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine; loves to hear the wind blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature’s great cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only birthright?’ You thought nothing to this effect?”

Skimpole himself apparently doesn’t think at all about how the tradesmen he doesn’t pay are supposed to make ends meet. He proves to be a child in the worst way. Not only does he do no work to solve his own problems, but he has no interest in the problems of others. He views everyone, from the slaves on the American plantations to his debt collectors’ children to the people standing in front of him, as existing for his entertainment. He seems totally oblivious to the fact that they’re real human beings who experience real suffering. Actually, describing him as oblivious or innocent may be giving him too much credit. When Esther Summerson, the book’s heroine, has found out about what is arguably Skimpole’s lowest act, she declares that it passes “the usual bounds of his childish innocence.” In response, a character more experienced than her in the ways of the world says, “Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as they can be in all concerning money, look well after your own money for they are dead certain to collar it if they can.”

Dickens gives us only a brief sketch of Skimpole’s family but it’s a pretty devastating one. We’re told that “his sons had run away at various times.” Clearly, they were the lucky ones. His three daughters, Arethusa, Laura and Kitty, love their father and his immature ways and seem genuinely unaware of how he lets them suffer for them. His wife is all too aware of it but is trapped in a hopeless situation. The Skimpoles aren’t the only dysfunctional family in the book though. They’re not even the only one with a messy house. There are also the Jellybys, which brings us to Bleak House‘s other seemingly anti-Dickensian message.

Much of Dickens’s satire was aimed against people, like Mr. Bumble or Scrooge, who dehumanized the poor and wouldn’t lift a finger to help them. Mrs. Jellyby, on the other hand, strongly believes in “the Brotherhood of Humanity” and “has devoted herself to the public.” She makes an interesting foil to Wackford Squeers from Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. Most of the humor that came from his character had to do with how he doted on his wife and children but was cruel and exploitative to others. Mrs. Jellyby, for the moment anyway; she goes through phases, has dedicated her life to helping people in Africa but has no concern whatsoever for her family. Her house has gone to rack and ruin. She doesn’t make sure her servants do their jobs. Her wild children have never even heard a familiar bedtime story and she never notices her husband’s misery or cares much about it. Her eyes “see nothing nearer than Africa.”

We first see Mrs. Jellyby through the eyes of her guests. She does nothing to make sure they’re comfortable, that they have water for washing up or well-cooked food to eat. In fact, one of the first things she does is try to make Esther feel guilty about never thinking of Africa. When Esther starts to say something negative about the continent’s climate, Mrs. Jellyby launches into some canned talking points. “You may go into Holborn without precaution and be run over. You may go into Holborn with precaution and never be run over. Just so with Africa.” She talks at Esther rather than to her. Dickens’s belief in charity had brought him into contact with other charitable people by this point in his life and their company seems to have left him feeling somewhat cynical and didillusioned. (It may be significant that John Jarndyce, a character who seems to be a representation of Dickens himself, starts out with mixed feelings about Harold Skimpole and Mrs. Jellyby, feelings which grow more consistently negative as the novel proceeds.)

Growing up with Mrs. Jellyby for a mother has made her oldest child, Caddy, hate the very mention of Africa. Rather than continue to slave away as her mother’s secretary or marry the philanthropist Mrs. Jellyby would have preferred for a son-in-law, who would doubtless have also used her as a secretary, she chooses to marry her true love, a dancing master’s son. Mrs. Jellyby considers this despicably selfish and hedonistic of her, but she doesn’t get angry. “Can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose between me and the great African continent?” In a heartbreaking scene, Caddy confesses to Esther that she wishes her mother really would get angry with her since that would at least mean she cared.

I don’t blame anyone for being offended by Dickens’s message that wives should devote themselves only to their husbands and children. (When Caddy gets engaged, her father even tells her never to have a mission in life.) Neither do I blame anyone for criticizing Dickens for implying that the English should only worry about the poor people in their own communities, like the homeless crossing sweeper boy, Jo, rather than those in other countries. Those are both valid things at which to take offense. But I would encourage them not to simply dismiss this part of Bleak House‘s message as mere bigotry. As John Ruskin says, “Dickens’s caricature, though often gross, was never mistaken.” If Dickens could reasonably have been described as favoring the poor of his own country over others, the opposite error he was condemning also exists. It takes a lot of admirable work to help people in need from far away, but sometimes it can be even harder to help the people right in front of us since they lack the glamor of distance. Every genuinely altruistic, good-hearted philanthropist runs the risk of being like Mrs. Jellyby. (You could argue genuinely good people are most vulnerable to self-righteousness.) Happily, I don’t know anyone who’s quite as bad on that score as she is, but then again, I don’t know anyone as bad as Scrooge either.