Wherein the Dickens Chronological Reading Club introduces our eighteenth read, Bleak House.
(Banner Image: “Night,” by Phiz. Image scan by George P. Landow for Victorian Web.)
Hello, friends! Is the measure of a culture its treatment of the least? Is it better to earn one’s money or wait for something to turn up? Are we our brother’s keeper?
But before we venture into the labyrinth, a few quick links:
- Historical Context
- Thematic Considerations
- A Note on the Illustrations
- Reading Schedule
- Additional References
- General Mems for the #DickensClub
- A Look-Ahead to Week One of David Copperfield
- Works Cited
“Bleak House is the work which most powerfully suggests the darkness of London, the close-packedness of London, if you like, where everything is connected to everything else. It is a London world where people are tightly bound together with ties of duty and ties of love and charity. And yet at the same time this London world is so perilous, so cruel and so close to death and disaster all the time, that you fear for the characters in the novel. The rich and the poor, the sick and the well all mingle together, which is one of the themes of the book. It is a serious London, full of mysteries of the past and mysteries of origin. In all respects it conveys a haunted city, half pantomime-half graveyard, and full of ghosts and unseen presences.”
— Peter Ackroyd
Historical Context
The year was 1851. Dickens was, as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has noted, roughly halfway through his career as a novelist. The big event of the year in England was the Great Exhibition, which Dickens praised decorously in public but privately begrudged for bringing the unwashed masses into the city. The big event in the life of Dickens and his family was their relocation to Tavistock House in Bloomsbury, an eighteen-room house protected from the streets by iron gates and immense hedges. Dickens dreaded the songs of the street musicians who paraded outside the house at all hours of the day; when mentally drafting a scene his face would acquire a look of the deepest absorption, and the slightest noise would send a spasm of pain across it. And he needed all his powers of concentration to construct what would be his most intricate novel, an edifice as grand and imposing in its own way as the city whose inner workings he was attempting to depict.
Of the daily composition of Bleak House, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst writes:
“Dickens’s new writing routine at Tavistock House began with breakfast served punctually at 9:30am, always ‘a rasher of bacon and an egg and a cup of tea.’ That was followed by regular hours spent working on Bleak House, usually from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., before he stopped for lunch—or at least his hand stopped; often his mind was left behind in the shadowy world of his novel … After lunch there was usually a long walk, which he needed to calm himself down and also to work up his ideas for the next day’s writing. That was followed by his correspondence, editorial work on Household Words, and evening social engagements: a routine that unfolded while he slowly built up his novel sentence by sentence: a mosaic of fragments in which over time the imaginative cement used to stick the individual pieces together would magically seem to disappear.”
Is it a curious quirk of history, or something more, that Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick was first published only a few months before Dickens began writing what many consider his magnum opus? For Moby-Dick looms over American literature as Bleak House looms over the literature of Britain; it has been called, and not without warrant, the great American novel. What mysterious currents were at work that these two books were being written and published in the same year? It’s possible that both were building on the achievements of Nathaniel Hawthorne, a close friend of Melville’s, whose novel The Scarlet Letter Dickens had recently read. “Certain parts of it,” writes Douglas-Fairhurst, “do seem to have inserted their hooks into his memory,” noting some uncanny resemblances of plot between The Scarlet Letter and the book Dickens was preparing to write.
Thematic Considerations
“Fog Everywhere”: The City as Mystery
But it was of London he now wrote. The city where the Megalosaurus might stalk and which on this November day is suffused with fog … so the fog brings mystery, too, diffusing ‘the romantic side of familiar things’ as the people hurry through the pearly darkness. And yet such a fog was real enough. It was no wraith of Dickens’s invention. One contemporary wrote about ‘the vast city wrapt in a kind of darkness which seems neither to belong to the day or to the night …’ The fogs of London were famous then. White, green, yellow fogs, the exhalation of coal fires and steamboats, factories and breweries; one afternoon, only a few years before, ‘… the mingled smoke and vapour grew thicker and thicker until it was literally pitch-dark. Torches appeared on the streets…’ The city as the mystery. That is at the heart of Bleak House. The city where the familiar becomes foreign, just as the words of the law are ‘foreign’ to those who cannot read.” — Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (p. 645)
In preparation for reading Bleak House, the Dickens co-hosts watched a number of videos revealing the areas depicted in the novel—Chancery Lane, Temple, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Strand—as they appear in the present day. Although this corner of London has changed much since Dickens was writing in 1851 and 1852, I would argue that a basic knowledge of the landscape is essential to a proper understanding and appreciation of the novel.
Fog everywhere…
A cholera outbreak beginning in Whitechapel will eventually makes its way to Whitehall. We are all connected, if we could only see it in the midst of the fog. From Chancery, which sits at the heart of the dense fog in the iconic opening paragraphs, to Krook’s rag and bottle shop (he is aptly nicknamed the “Lord Chancellor”), to the chaos of Mrs Jellyby’s home in the midst of her missions of “telescopic philanthropy,” to the fog of one of our central characters relying on an outcome from Jarndyce and Jarndyce—the tragedy of the obscurity is that we never see those right under our nose. Our own family; the poor crossing sweeper. The Courts may drag on a case for years and years, but to what end, and for whose benefit? Certainly not that of those caught up in the “tangle” (and yes, there is a Mr Tangle) – it is all a “muddle.”
“Muddle” is a word that will come back significantly in Dickens’s next book, Hard Times, from the mouth of the factory worker Stephen Blackpool. In such obscurity, we can only catch glimpses of the larger pattern. We, the reader, are drawn into the mystery; so, too, are all the characters. It is not only an early example of detective fiction, with one of the great literary detectives, Mr Bucket, but, as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst notes, “this is a novel that turns everyone into a detective” (Douglas-Fairhurst 261-62).
But there is also poetry in the obscurity. The marvelous thing about Bleak House is that the images and atmospheric density are dwelt upon with such poetic focus and alliteration. “Fog…fog…fog…fog…fog: it creeps into every sentence, multiplying itself and exhausting synonyms. Occasionally it clears for a few seconds, allowing us to catch a glimpse of ordinary people leading their separate lives, but it soon closes in again” (Douglas-Fairhurst 247).
Your co-hosts have talked interminably about the poetry of the opening passages. Take the second paragraph, for instance, if we were to consider it almost line by line, image by image, with its suffusion of alliteration and atmosphere:
Fog everywhere.
Fog up the river,
where it flows among green aits and meadows;
fog down the river
where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping
and the waterside pollutants
of a great (and dirty) city.
Fog on the Essex marshes,
fog on the Kentish heights.
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs;
fog lying out on the yards
and hovering in the rigging of great ships;
fog drooping on the gunwales
of barges and small boats.
Fog in the eyes and throats
of ancient Greenwich pensioners,
wheezing by the firesides of their wards;
fog in the stem and bowl
of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper,
down in his close cabin;
fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers
of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck.
Chance people on the bridges
peeping over the parapets
into a nether sky of fog,
with fog all round them,
as if they were up in a balloon
and hanging in the misty clouds.
One needs a reader like Tom Hiddleston to do it full justice:
The Problem of Esther
Much of the debate over Bleak House centers on its depiction of its central character. Some critics have seen Esther as a simpering idiot, another “legless angel” in the vein of Agnes Wickfield. Others, while lauding in theory Dickens’s willingness to experiment by writing from the perspective of a woman, have accused him of a kind of literary ventriloquism. Because there are moments when the mask slips and Dickens reverts to his usual style, we’re always at least half-conscious that the Esther chapters are being written not by Esther but by Mr. Charles Dickens of Tavistock House, London.
On the other end of the critical spectrum is Harold Bloom—for whom every book is either the best or the worst that was ever written—who comes exuberantly to Esther’s defense in his book The Western Canon. For him, Bleak House is the cornerstone of Dickens’s fiction, the greatest work of the novelist who most nearly approaches Chaucer and Shakespeare, and Esther is the novel’s “unifying figure,” a character who brings him to tears with each reading, and who, he suggests, more closely resembles her creator than the hero of his previous novel, David Copperfield. “Esther,” he writes, “who cannot stop deprecating herself, is one of the most intelligent characters in the history of the novel and seems to me a much more authentic portrait of essential elements in Dickens’s spirit than David Copperfield ever is.”
This raises another common criticism of Esther, her continual self-reproach, which at least one reader has described as insufferable by design. It’s been suggested that Dickens wrote her this way on purpose, and that one’s enjoyment of the novel depends to a large degree on whether one recognizes that Dickens is having some fun at her expense. Rach had a different perspective, proposing that perhaps Esther’s modest, apologetic and self-abasing nature is a realistic response to her early traumas. Dickens, as he often does in his later novels, is exploring the reality of orphanhood and its psychological effects.
For stout defenders of our heroine, who find Esther’s self-doubts endearingly human rather than irksome, check out the marvelous Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire podcast ep with Dominic Gerrard and Stephen Fry.
Interconnectedness vs. “All-Alone”: What Do We Owe to One Another?
Bleak House is a novel about our connections with one another—some mysterious, lost to time—leveling class distinctions in the face of the great mystery of death. The unlikely character who connects many of the mysteries to be unraveled in the course of the story is Jo, the poor crossing sweeper. Jo is so key to the central theme of the novel that Dickens nearly named it Tom-All-Alone’s, a place for the forgotten of London—the poor, the vagrants, those lacking stability—to find some sort of shelter.
Readers searching for the origins of Jo might recall that earlier in 1851 Henry Mayhew had published his indispensable, encyclopedic London Labour and the London Poor in four volumes, in which he interviewed the pure-finders, sewer scavengers, marine-store owners, street-sellers of salamanders and birds’ nests, and penny concertina-players who made up the working-class population of London. In Mayhew’s hands, London Labour becomes a chronicle of all the ignorance and misery of the city. He speaks with a young man who was forced into gathering and selling birds’ nests after his father’s business went up in flames; another informs him that he had “heer’d of Shakespeare, but didn’t know whether he was alive or dead, and didn’t care.” In a similar vein, Dickens had witnessed at the Guildhall the cross-examination of a poor crossing-sweeper named George Ruby, who gazed in confusion at the gentleman who presented him a Bible for swearing and, when questioned, said “he did not know what a New Testament was; that he could not read; that he had never said his prayers; that he did not know what prayers were; that he did not know what God was; that, though he had heard of the devil, he did not know him; that, in fact, all he knew was how to sweep the crossing.” How this admission must have stung Dickens, the quintessential humanist and philanthropist, champion of literacy and education, his ethic steeped in the same scriptures that urge the well-off to look after the needs of the poor and destitute!
We might recall here the power and resonance of A Christmas Carol, and the image of the wraith-like children, Ignorance and Want, taking shelter under the garments of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Perhaps it was this same impetus that led Dickens to include the following in a speech around this time:
“What avails it to send a Missionary tome, a miserable man or woman living in a foetid Court where every sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and every minute of my life is new mire added to the heap under which I lie degraded…Would he address himself to my hopes of immortality? I am so surrounded by material filth that my Soul can not rise to the contemplation of an immaterial existence” (Ackroyd 641).
A Note on the Illustrations
Bleak House was a pivotal moment in Dickens’s career in another way—it marked the beginning of the end of his collaborations with the illustrator Hablot Browne (“Phiz”), who would illustrate only two further Dickens novels. F. R. Leavis argues that their partnership had reached its natural endpoint because Dickens was no longer writing in the “Hogarthian satiric mode” of early books like Pickwick Papers, when Phiz’s illustrations had so perfectly mirrored his text.
And yet his illustrations for Bleak House are notable for what have come to be known as the “dark plates.” In ten of the novel’s forty illustrations Phiz experimented with a new technique in which he enhanced his old way of doing things—machine-made etchings—with hand-drawn lines from an etching needle to create a darkening effect. “Each of these dark plates,” notes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, “made it appear as if the novel’s characters were emerging from the shadows, or perhaps retreating back into them.”
Of the dark plates Philip V. Allingham writes:
“The artist printed a dark plate in a similar fashion as a conventional engraving, but the plate itself would hold more ink because key areas were either more intensely engraved (with cross-hatching and the roulette) or stopped out with varnish to convey a sense that the scene is transpiring at night or in a darkened room. The intense tonal illustration is thus able to convey a subtle range of moods that a conventional line drawing cannot: in the hands of an accomplished illustrator such as Phiz, the atmospheric dark plate may suggest mystery, melancholy, obscurity, or a combination of these.“
Reading Schedule*
*note: we are giving a trial run to an 8-week schedule, with a summary and discussion wrap-up every other week.
| Week/Dates | Chapters | Notes |
| Weeks 1 & 2: 13-26 June 2023 | 1-16 | Chapters 1-16 constitute the monthly installments I-V, published between March and July, 1852. |
| Weeks 3 & 4: 27 June to 10 July 2023 | 17-32 | Chapters 17-32 constitute the monthly installments VI-X, published between August and December 1852. |
| Weeks 5 & 6: 11-24 July 2023 | 33-49 | Chapters 33-49 constitute the monthly installments XI-XV, published between January and May 1853. |
| Weeks 7 & 8: 25 July to 7 Aug 2023* | 50-67 | Chapters 50-67 constitute the monthly installments XVI-XX (the final month was a double number) published between June and September 1853. *Note: we were initially incorporating an extra week here due to the week-long Dickens Universe conference (Santa Cruz, CA) July 23-29, but due to the late start of Bleak House, we’re keeping it at the scheduled two weeks. Tentatively planning on Sat, 12 August for our Zoom chat on Bleak House. |
Additional References
The eager reader of Dickens seeking a decent Bleak House audiobook will not want for options. The Audible version featuring Miriam Margolyes, who reads both the first-person and third-person narratives, has been critically lauded. Your humble Dickens co-hosts are partial to the Naxos production read by Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher; Barrett has a knack for capturing the voices of the various characters in their own register, which brings the book roaring to vivid life. (We are still hoping that our fellow Dickens Club member, Rob Goll, will tackle an unabridged narration or duet performance!)
There have been two major attempts to bring Dickens’s monster of a book to the small screen. The suitably atmospheric eight-part adaptation from 1985 features Denholm Elliot (as Jarndyce) and Lady Diana Rigg (as Lady Dedlock). The 2005 miniseries written by Andrew Davies and featuring a murderer’s row of British thespians—among them Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Alun Armstrong, Anna Maxwell Martin and Carey Mulligan—received much critical praise and two BAFTAS (Best Drama and Best Actress, for Martin’s portrayal of Esther Summerson). Phil Davis’s scene-stealing portrayal of Smallweed (“shake me up, Judy!”) is a particular favorite. The cinematographer was clearly in love with the faces of Charles Dance and Gillian Anderson, and the chemistry and tension between these two enemies is something to behold.
General Mems for the #DickensClub
Firstly, a very warm welcome to Sarah! We’re so happy you’re joining us for the journey with Bleak House!
Thank you to those who joined in on the Zoom group chat on David Copperfield last weekend! Several of us were chatting after about the wealth of insights our members offer; everything adds to the joy and investment in the reading. SAVE THE DATE: We are tentatively looking at Saturday, 12 August for our next one, on Bleak House! 11am Pacific (US)/2pm Eastern (US)/7pm GMT (London)!
If you’re counting, today is Day 526 (and week 76) in our #DickensClub! This week and next we’ll be beginning Bleak House, our eighteenth read of the group. Please feel free to comment below this post for the first and second week’s chapters, or use the hashtag #DickensClub if you’re commenting on twitter.
No matter where you’re at in the reading process, a huge “thank you” for reading along with us. Heartfelt thanks to our dear Dickens Fellowship, The Dickens Society, and the Charles Dickens Letters Project for retweets, and to all those liking, sharing, and encouraging our Club, including Gina Dalfonzo, Dr. Christian Lehmann and Dr. Pete Orford. Huge “thank you” also to The Circumlocution Office (on twitter also!) for providing such a marvellous online resource for us. And for any more recent members or for those who might be interested in joining: the revised two-and-a-half year reading schedule can be found here. If you’ve been reading along with us but aren’t yet on the Member List, we would love to add you! Please feel free to message Rach here on the site, or on twitter.
And for any more recent members or for those who might be interested in joining: the revised two-and-a-half year reading schedule can be found here. If you’ve been reading along with us but aren’t yet on the Member List, we would love to add you! Please feel free to message Rach here on the site, or on twitter.
A Look-Ahead to Weeks One and Two of Bleak House (13-26 June 2023)
This week and next, we’ll be reading Chapters 1-16, which constitute the monthly installments I-V, published between March and July, 1852. Feel free to comment below for your thoughts, or use the hashtag #DickensClub if you’re commenting on twitter.
If you’d like to read it online, you can find it at a number of sites such as Gutenberg.
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1994.
Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. The Turning Point: 1851—A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World.
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. New York: Dover Publications, 1968.
All the (Dickensian) Year Round 
What a wonderful intro as usual! Thanks so much for these tantalising looks ahead to all the wonderfulness we have in store.
There are a few things I wish to comment upon, but there’s plenty of time for me to gather my thoughts and so I will pop back later in the week with these ‘early’ thoughts
All I wish to note for now is that the Miriam Margolyes audiobook version is phenomenal. Having listened to most of the ‘Audible Dickens Collection’ versions thus far – this one is far and away the best of them.
Her introduction is quite amazing and captures a lot of the challenges of producing audiobooks too.
I believe that if you have an Audible subscription, then the version is included. So even if you prefer a different version for the main listen I’d recommend at least listening to her amazing introduction!
As for myself doing a version… of course I am tempted. I have already started preparing the script and have spoken to one of my duet partners (Amanda) about the collaboration… it will be some time away before we could even contemplate starting.
It may seem foolish to create something that already has so many wonderful versions already! But that quite misses the point. Any telling of a story becomes in itself a unique telling based on the many decisions made by the narrators. But the challenge of rendering the story remains. I cannot read any Dickens without wishing to do an audio version!
I suppose it is like tose mountain climbers who cite their reason for climbing any particular mountain:
“Because it is there!”
Very much looking forward to all the discussion 😀
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Greetings, Inimitables,
Let’s start the mountain-climbing with Rob . . . “because it is there!” And, what a “there” Bleak House is!
Rob, I always gain invaluable understanding from your reflections on producing these great works as audio recordings. Thank you so much.
Boze and Rach, thanks for this masterful introduction to this “mountain” of a novel. Truly masterful.
A few comments vis-a-vis your fine, fine introduction.
1. Hard to believe we are engaging in our 18th read!
2. There are so many ways in which the dark and shadowy world that Dickens portrays might “spontaneously combust,” because the fire of injustice and indignity is raging on so many fronts. So much ignorance and want.
3. Bleak House is “an edifice as grand and imposing in its own way as the city whose inner workings he was attempting to depict.” Excellent–and true–observation! What an achievement!
4. “Fog everywhere…”: Indeed, this “tragedy of obscurity”–not seeing people, places, policies, court proceedings, etc. clearly–seems to cause a kind of stasis in living and being–trapped in the interminable windings, for example, of the Jarndyce versus Jarndyce chancery case. So many lives caught in suspense and animated suspension–unable to move on and create an authentic life.
5. Esther: I will pay close attention to Esther this round. Based on the portrayal of Esther in the 2005 mini-series, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, I think Esther is a magnificent person/character and that her self-denigration is clearly traceable to her aunt’s insisting that she should never have been born and not observing her birthday (among other cruelties). Of course, at such early and formative age, Esther would have internalized this horrifying attitudes.
Well, so much more to reflect on in view of the excellent introduction, but I’ll stop there.
I’m eager to re-experience this grand “edifice,” this mountain, this novel of Dickens’ mature writing.
Blessings,
Daniel
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My lovely Dickens Club co-host is too modest to say so, but I want everyone to know that Rach and I did an equal share of the research on this one – we read The Turning Point aloud to each other over the course of about six weeks – and that the marvellous fog section in this essay is all hers. Hooroar for her and the ancient Greenwich pensioners!
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Boze–a huge hurrah to both you and Rach for your superb introduction into this Mountain of a novel. The background materials, the various writings about London at Mid-century, the comments about the novel’s presentation of the interconnectedness of all things going on in the big city–really ring true and are so helpful for the reader going through the early parts of this hugely important novel.
But I am drawn especially to your statement about Rach’s analysis of Esther:
“Rach had a different perspective, proposing that perhaps Esther’s modest, apologetic and self-abasing nature is a realistic response to her early traumas. Dickens, as he often does in his later novels, is exploring the reality of orphanhood and its psychological effects.”
Two things are going on in this statement: first, there are the origins of Esther’s seeming (and real?) self-abnegation, as they lie in her childhood, and this is so true because early in the novel we see graphically how she is both mistreated and applauded for the kind of person she is. But second, she is THE major example of the ways in which orphanhood, as you (and Rach) put it, have formed Esther’s personality. But more importantly–this last statement applies not only to Esther but to many of the other characters–mostly younger–who we see growing up in this novel. In short, Esther “works” both as the magnificent “reality” of the effects of orphanhood, but also as a kind of in-depth symbol of how the effects of children/adults with parentless pasts form present and future personalities and acts.
Moreover, this orphan-centered idea as it appears in BLEAK HOUSE now begins to take on manifest meaning as it can be studied in the novels before BH and after BH in depth. As we’ve seen so far in our reading, children who are parentless or the victims of absentee parents run rampant throughout Mr. D’s novels. BLEAKHOUSE, then, presents this theme on a much larger and more emphatic scale!
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So excited to get into this meaty novel! I already love the commentary here and on Stationmaster’s post.
First, I came across this interesting site called “Esther’s Narrative” that you might like to explore:
http://esthersnarrative.une.edu.au/
Its description on its Home page reads:
“How would we think about Charles Dickens’s many great novels if we allowed the characters in them to be our guides through their labyrinth of ideas, images, stories, themes, and issues? What would they decide was essential? How would they tell it? What would they think about their roles in the novel? What would they think of what the scholars say about them? Esther’s Narrative is a project that attempts to answer those questions, using the voice of one of Dickens’s most intriguing (and frustrating) characters: Esther Summerson.”
Second, one thing that really jumped out at me this time around (which I’m sure I only noticed because of our unique reading format and schedule) is Caddy Jellyby’s complaint in Chapter 5:
“O! don’t talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where’s Ma’s duty as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it’s much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there’s an end of it!”
It echos Alice Marwood’s retort to her mother, Good Mrs Brown, in Chapter 34 of “Dombey and Son”:
“It sounds unnatural, don’t it? . . . I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then—to pass away the time—whether no one ever owed any duty to me.”
In his article (posted in “Supplement to ‘Bleak House'”) Robert Alan Donovan identifies “The main theme of Bleak House is responsibility”, that is, duty. Who is responsible to/for whom – who has a duty toward whom – how is that responsibility/duty fulfilled or not. Dickens stance is, has always been, that we all are responsible for, have a duty to, each other as individuals, as parents, as children, as siblings, as societies, as governments, etc, etc. Indeed, this theme has been running through Dickens since the very beginning – recall this part of Mr Pickwick’s “oration” to the Pickwick Club in Ch 1:
“He (Mr. Pickwick) would not deny that he was influenced by human passions and human feelings (cheers)—possibly by human weaknesses (loud cries of “No”); but this he would say, that if ever the fire of self-importance broke out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in preference effectually quenched it. The praise of mankind was his swing; philanthropy was his insurance office. (Vehement cheering.)”
We need only consider the stories of Mr Pickwick, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Little Nell, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Ebenezer Scrooge, Florence Dombey, and David Copperfield to see that each of their stories stems from a breakdown or mistaken sense of duty, and that each story is resolved by a renewed sense of duty either in these characters or in those responsible for them, be it an individual or group.
In his wonderful book “The Turning Point: 1851 – A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World”, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst examines events, both historical and personal to Dickens, during the year leading up to the writing of Bleak House. In his final chapter Douglas-Fairhurst sums up his thesis by invoking the thesis of Bleak House itself:
“Recall the question Dickens’s narrator asks [in Ch 16], ‘What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!’ What the events of the previous year had shown Dickens was that there were many possible answers to this question, including commerce, disease, language, friendship, family and love. His own contribution was to suggest an answer that embraced all these and more: stories. For the central idea that animates ‘Bleak House’, its narrative heartbeat, is not just that our individual stories have points of connection. It is that we are all parts of the same story.” (286-287)
As parts of a whole, therefore, we must – that is, it is our duty to – attend to and tend to each other, with proper charity and disinterestedness. Otherwise the whole will become a hole and devour us as Jarndyce and Jarndyce is doing to so many characters in Bleak House.
Looking forward to more of our already wonderful discussion!
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The “Ester’s Narrative” resource is just wonderful. As is this comment 😀
I just knew that the discussion would get very interesting very soon!
I am trying my best to avoid spoilers as a first time reader of Bleak House… but I think I’ve blown it already
I’m just too impatient as a reader, I think… I just gotta know how things turn out faster than I can read my way there
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Oh boy, Rob; you’re getting at the essence of the novel-reading experience–anticipation and expectation. Just gotta know, just gotta know. That’s what drives us in these narratives, probably for the most part. And the “trouble” with Dickens is that there are just too many things, situations, and characters we want to know more about…now!.Stationmaster alludes to this below when he airs his frustration about Dickens’ reluctance to let us know more about the motivations behind Lady Dedlock, Krook, etc. We are motivated to read just to find out these things that interest and intrigue us, that are, in short little or big mysteries! Again, as Stationmaster implies, we have to gather the clues, we become one of the chief detectives in this novel–as readers, attempting to find out. But Dickens the novelist in the guise of the third-person narrator and the first-person narration of Esther withholds, so cannily, information–that will gradually (slowly?) be parceled out as the narrative advances.
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Chris: after having read a few more chapters of BH after my initial perusal of your comments regarding “responsibility,” I began to see more clearly how your ideas pertain so vividly to the characters and events of this novel. Naturally, I thought it would be easy to categorize characters in terms of their being responsible or irresponsible, and maybe put a number of them in some kind of middle ground as being mainly “receivers” of the actions of others rather than being either schemers or helpers. But I’m not finding it so easy after all to fit the people of BLEAK HOUSE into these individual categories. John Jarndyce, for example would seem to fit so completely the category of responsible “giver”–as represented by his taking into his home and making them part of his family–Esther, Ada, and Richard. Yet I’m not convinced he is totally involved with “giving,” as I originally supposed. I at first applauded his act of turning over the management of the household to Esther as an act of “charity” and I loved the fact that Esther so happily–it seems–embraced that role. But the fact that she’s hardly had time to unpack her stuff, when he hands her the keys and basically tells her to “go to it little lady.” I guess I’m wondering about his rationale for “giving” this huge job to Esther with no real understanding of whether she can do it or whether she even might want to do it. Is he taking advantage of her here? Maybe there is a bit of selfish and precipitous behavior on his part of which he will be the main beneficiary.
And then there is the category of the irresponsibles or the schemers, the plotters. Strangely, I’m going to put Skimpole into this segment because on the one hand I don’t trust him and his stated inability to not understand financial transactions, and when he does disparage his creditors, he knows that much of the time his friends and main benefactor will cover for him and pay up the balance of his accounts. And then there is the complete abdication of responsibility for his family. But on the other hand, he does entertain the small family at Bleak House with his songs, his art and his clever personality. One might say that he regales them, and the readers of the novel with his”artistic” traits. I would still categorize him as a taker, but he does have positive characteristics that for me level out the moral disadvantages of his irresponsible character.
But what of the middle ground? Do we put Richard in that category. And perhaps Ada, too. They are both “takers” in that they are living off their “guardian”–John–and they seem to give so little to the family’s well-being, but in these early chapters they don’t seem necessarily irresponsible. Although we can detect in Richard a tendency to procrastinate and not take life as seriously as we would like him to do. But he, like Ada, seems so sweet and likeable that we can’t entirely put them in the category of the irresponsibles…yet.
So I guess what I’m saying, here, Chris, is that in these early stages of the novel, unless the characters are like Talkinhorn and Guppy–two obviously takers and schemers, it’s difficult to assess where responsibilty and irresponsibility begin and end with many of the key personalities in this novel. The main thesis, which you have presented is really quite wonderful and I think presents the ideal to which the novel aspires after, but when it comes to assessing the individual characters in relation to the ideal, sometimes it’s difficult to see where they fit the responsibility thesis.
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Agreed – I think it is part of Dickens’s plan to expose the muddle of the question(s) of who is responsible, how far does it go, how is it shared, when is it best left alone, where is the line between individual responsibility – societal responsibility – state responsibility, IS there a line? He’s making us think, and if that thinking changes how we behave, even if only toward ourselves though hopefully toward others as well, then “Bleak House” is a success!
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It looks like Chris and Lenny have already hit on the very word — RESPONSIBILITY (and DEBT) — that just sang out to me in the opening chapters. And as Lenny wrote above, Skimpole’s “complete abdication of responsibility” makes him the epitome of what is wrong in families, society, and the world: there is an obfuscation, a diffusion, a muddling, a sidestepping of responsibility. The age-old questions: Am I my brother’s keeper? Who is my neighbor? come to the fore here…and if one can’t even take responsibility for one’s own family (Mrs Jellyby; Skimpole; even, in a small way, Mr Turveydrop, who is all adornment and deportment while his son takes responsibility for all the work), then we can be assured that little else in the broader society will be attended to. Skimpole makes light of the desperate situation of the Neckett family – the poor children who have just lost their father, whose trade was in following up with and arresting debtors like Skimpole. But as Jarndyce says – *we* (as individuals, as a society) have made those very people essential; we shouldn’t rejoice at their misfortunes.
Jarndyce, so far, as alluded to above, is the ultimate figure of *benevolent responsibility*. (Again, that figure of the “benevolent benefactor” in the strain of Pickwick, of the Cheeryble brothers, of Mr Brownlow, and the rest.) He is human, and we’ll see how far his own interests might taint the purity of intentions, but he certainly is the one going above and beyond in attending to those less fortunate – beyond his own immediate relations and friends. Is Dickens suggesting that, because of our neglect of even the most basic responsibility (e.g. to family, to one’s own), the real heroes of society are those who take on *more* than their share of responsibility?
I love the alternate title, “Tom All-Alone’s,” and it is the final chapter this week. Those whom society has neglected; the forgotten, the miserable ones. Even here, we are beginning to see the interconnections between the highest in society (the Dedlocks), and the lowest (Jo the crossing sweeper), and the connections will only become more and more evident as the novel goes on.
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I’m going to be repeating a lot of what was said in this introduction and even some stuff from the supplements. I hope I’m not coming across as too repetitive. It’s just that I feel like I should express this stuff in my own words instead of just saying “I agree with so and so.”
Bleak House occupies an interesting place in the Dickens canon. Several critics and Dickens fans, like our new member Jacquelyn, regard it as his best novel. But it really hasn’t become part of our collective consciousness like, say, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol or A Tale of Two Cities. Or if it has, it’s probably more because of the 2005 miniseries.
I can see both sides. There are a lot of great things about Bleak House but it’s rather a demanding read. Most of the first half is just Dickens setting up the characters and the plot dominoes that will fall. Compare the spinetingling first chapter of Barnaby Rudge or the hilarious first chapter of David Copperfield with Bleak House’s first chapter which is almost all description with hardly any story. (Of course, that’s Dickens’s point: the chapter is about the Court of Chancery and the Court of Chancery barely accomplishes anything.) We don’t even meet our main character, if Bleak House can be said to have a main character, until Chapter 3. Dickens also doesn’t give us access to the motivations of several major characters. (Lady Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Krook and Guppy.) We have to ferret out what they’re up to from their actions, which is easier for some of them than others. This isn’t the crowd pleaser that was David Copperfield.
It seems like Dickens wanted to experiment a little when writing Bleak House. At that point in his career, he’d certainly earned the right to do so. I love this quote from the movie, Ratatouille, “to be a great artist, you must try things that might not work.” Dickens was a great artist and in Bleak House, he tried some things that…well, I’m not sure they worked. (For the record, I prefer Bleak House to Martin Chuzzlewit, the last Dickens book I described as experimental.) The two narrators, one of whom gets most of Dickens’s eloquence and the other of whom gets most of his humanity, can both be off putting in their own ways. The third person narrator’s chilly aloofness and blistering sarcasm are great, but they also make him less fun and friendly than the narrative persona Dickens adopts in A Christmas Carol or even the equally scathing and more gleeful one from Oliver Twist. Then there’s Esther, who…deserves her own paragraph.
Esther is the most polarizing character in the book, even among its fans. Some love her. Some hate her. My take is that Esther is a great character but not necessarily a great narrator. Dickens wants/needs to establish her as kind, perceptive, competent and attractive enough to have a creepy stalker, but he also wants/needs to establish her as modest and retiring. Her resulting apologies and disavowals of the other characters’ praise get repetitive after a while and, ironically, make her sound like Uriah Heep. This is a drawback to the novel for me, but I’ll also defend it as making sense for the character. Given her ultra strict upbringing, it makes sense that she’d be paranoid about being proud or vain and would bend over backwards to avoid it.
She’s also terrified of being uncharitable which allows Dickens to write in a fun new satiric mode. Instead of Dickens’s usual explicit condemnations, we get Esther trying to say good things about people for whom she has no respect. This leads to some great zingers. (“She was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel-but she never smiled.” “We had a fine codfish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw.”) Though she does become looser tongued as the book goes on.
While I’m not a huge fan of Esther’s narration, I wouldn’t say that Dickens couldn’t have done a female narrator. A novel narrated by Miss La Creevy would be awesome! On this read, it’s also occurred to me that Esther’s qualities that annoy some readers and strike them as groveling are not exclusive to Dickens’s female characters. Oliver Twist gushes just as much when he’s thanking Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies. The difference is that his rough childhood takes longer to read about than Esther’s, so we empathize with his gratitude more. And John Jarndyce shares Esther’s aversion to praise and thanks and he also avoids saying bad things about others, preferring to say, “the wind’s in the east.” Maybe he really should have been her love interest.
When I was in high school and about to study King Lear for English, my Mom asked an aunt, who’s a fan of Shakespeare, for her take on the play. After considering, she said that it wasn’t one of Shakespeare’s best but it was his most interesting, or one of his most interesting anyway. That’s how I feel about Bleak House. For me, it’s not Dickens’s best, but it is one of his most interesting.
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Yeah, Stationmaster, Esther is going to be the talk of the town, I think, and we readers are all going to weigh in in slightly and maybe even in hugely different ways about her. Definitely, though, she’s going to work as a kind of touchstone for the varieties of reader response that are gonna develop around this major character- in this voluminous novel. But as with you, here, and with Chris and Wellerism above, all the ideas that are developed will give us a kind of composite picture of her–both as a character AND as a narrator.
As for me, I find her quite intriguing and complex AS a character–and I think this particular response to her of mine is due largely in part to her “method” (for lack of a better word) of narration.
As I’ve said before, I’m s sucker for first-person narrations. And when Esther begins to talk, I’m THERE with her, because of that close up and intimate voice. Hey, she’s talking directly to me in a very familiar way and I want to know intimately who she is and what she’s been experiencing. And I think what is so compelling in the instance of this novel is, as you have stated, is that there are TWO narratives (or narrators) so that one works to contrast to or works as a foil to the other.
Esther’s narration, then, is intimate and seems to be speaking to me as though she were in the armchair next to me, maybe as we enjoy a cup of tea together, whereas the Omniscient narrator is more detached, speaking to me as a kind of documentarian giving me an overview of the “other” world around Esther which is filled with a multitude of characters who seem to be going on about life in their daily businesses. Despite this separation, I know they are both in the same novel–narrator and Esther–but the worlds they inhabit are separate by virtue of their different narrative modes and styles.
Naturally, though, I assume these two worlds are going to collide and be assimilated into one another, but there will still be two very different narrative stances going forward. Whether Esther’s narrative will at some point seem more detached or the Omniscient narration will get more intimate, for me it’s too early to tell.
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Lenny, for some reason I am unable to reply to your reply above, so I’m on this comment as a reply to both.
A little mystery is good, as long as the various resolutions are not like the cumbersome explanations of everything at the end of Oliver Twist.
I think I had more eagerness to find out who the masked figure in Barnaby Rudge was than in any of the other reads.
But here we are many years before the appearance of Sherlock Holmes and before the great mystery novels of Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White and The Moonstone) and Dickens is doing something new(?) and good with his stock of words.
I am loving the contrast between the two narrators, though of the two, I much prefer spending time in the company of Esther. The present tense of the omniscient narrator really does enhance a sense of mystery and not knowing what may be just around the corner. Esther’s past tense narration has a gentler feel and provides relief from what can feel quite oppressive from the driving of events in the present.
It is interesting how the use of the historic present *feels* so different in Bleak House contrasted with its use in the memory bursts of David Copperfield.
I have noticed occasionally the slip of the mask that Boze refers to and we are aware of Mr Charles Dickens himself holding Esther’s pen!
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I am strongly in the pro-Esther camp, and it’s largely because I tend to take the conflicts in her inner life—the sarcastic and socially awkward moments that clash with her outward servility, along with the downright neurotic self-deprecation—as intentional, the outcome of the lessons imparted by her godmother which she internalized. “Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. […] Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it.” Some might be ultimately defiant in the face of such abuse; many others will sadly be shaped by it, and that will be quite evident as the story unfolds.
The line that Stationmaster quotes above about the Jellyby meal is one lovely example, but Esther’s moments of “kind snark,” let’s say, may be an attempt at niceness as well as the darker aspects of her personality (like a wicked sense of humor) shining through. In at least one instance, it really is just cutting: “Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr. Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr. Jellyby?” immediately followed by “I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it came into my head.” It’s a hilarious moment of Dickens having his cake as a narrator and eating it too.
I’ll reserve further thoughts for the book discussion proper, but one last striking moment of her intense awareness of persona comes after she’s a little more forward than intended with Mr. Jarndyce. Instead of a simple narrative expression of embarrassment, it’s layered with self-reference: “I said to myself, ‘Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not what I expected of you!’” as though she’s grown accustomed to playing her own disciplinarian.
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FWIW, Rob, as the book goes on, the third person narrator gets to narrate some heartwarming scenes, mainly with the characters of Sgt. George and the Bagnets, and, for that matter, Esther gets to narrate some creepy scenes.
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My mind really does work in mysterious ways sometimes…
For the last couple of hours, I have been trying to work out if I have spotted a deliberate allusion in a small passage from Chapter VI, or whether it is just my over-active fancy seeing things that are not there!
Still, it is perhaps worth sharing to see what you guys think 😊
By this point of the novel Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been shown to be a long and complex case – perhaps a brilliant ‘fog’ metaphor has been employed to highlight this!
Leaving London, our gang are on the way to Bleak House through some lovely countryside as a nice contrast to the foggy city containing the complicated case (All good thus far) But is there a reminder/allusion to distant, long-running conflicts in some of the geography here presented? Hmmm!
Bleak House is located near St Albans in Hertfordshire – a county which would be familiar to Dickens through his friendship with Edward Bulwer Lytton (who, according to Forster, is the chappie largely responsible for the change of Great Expectations’ ending) and visits to see this pal of his at nearby Knebworth House. It is likely indeed that CD may have visited St Albans in his time. But St Albans is also the site of a battle, famous in English History (actually two battles, but the first is generally more significant historically)
I might have missed this observation if it were not for the following passage from Chapter 6:
“At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.”
The mention of the ‘old battle-field’ at Barnet is responsible for prompting this thought.
The Battle of Barnet, fought on Easter Day 1471, was a decisive battle in the Wars of the Roses: a long running dynastic conflict concerning rights of succession of the descendants of Edward III (Shakespeare loved this stuff! Key highlights are dramatized in his Henry VI Part 3)
32 years this War of succession was fought (still not as long as the Hundred Years War concerning the throne of France!): Here I shall allow Wikipedia to come to my assistance 😊
“A war of succession is a war prompted by a succession crisis in which two or more individuals claim the right of successor to a deceased or deposed monarch. The rivals are typically supported by factions within the royal court. Foreign powers sometimes intervene, allying themselves with a faction. This may widen the war into one between those powers.”
Which sounds remarkably similar to a long running dispute about wills and the numerous factions and legal shenanigans in Jarndyce and Jarndyce (perhaps)
So where does St Albans fit into all this? Well: The First Battle of St Albans (22nd May 1455) is considered the beginning of the Wars of the Roses.
So my thought is: does the mention of St Albans and Barnet and old battle-fields introduce an allusion to an historic long-running conflict involving rights of inheritance (of thrones obviously) to remind us of the J & J conflict even though we are traversing idyllic countryside?
I think it does… but this may be because I am a big fan of The Battle of Life in which the battle ground is presented as a metaphor for the struggles in life. It makes me believe that Dickens introduced a little bit of the same effect here just for old-times sake (or because a small proportion of his readers may be just like me and see this slight and seemingly trivial mention as a profound contribution to one of the central features of the novel!)
I’d be interested to hear what you all think 😊
The Battle of Barnet was also notable for the death of the Earl of Warwick (“The Kingmaker”) – who switched allegiances and subsequently died embroiled in battle. (Gosh, I hope none of our gang distance themselves from former allies and suffer because of it!)
Thanks for humouring my strange observations and my unique style of presentation. I may now conclude with some Shakespeare – particularly Warwick’s dying observations from Henry VI Part III
Lo, now my glory smear’d in dust and blood!
My parks, my walks, my manors that I had.
Even now forsake me, and of all my lands
Is nothing left me but my body’s length.
Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must.
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Dickens would certainly have known of the Battle – See Dickens’s “A Child’s History of England” published in Household Words between 1851-1853 and then in 3 volume. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/699/pg699-images.html – and I’m betting it is referenced on purpose, after all nothing in Dickens is by accident!
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This was what I was thinking. Dickens being so fastidious and deliberate with what he wrote. It struck me as a master stroke… and then I worried that I was bigging up nothing… but lo! here is his mention of it from the above:
After a stay of only two days with these worthy supporters, the King marched out to Barnet Common, to give the Earl of Warwick battle. And now it was to be seen, for the last time, whether the King or the King-Maker was to carry the day.
While the battle was yet pending, the fainthearted Duke of Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret messages to his father-in-law, offering his services in mediation with the King. But, the Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejected them, and replied that Clarence was false and perjured, and that he would settle the quarrel by the sword. The battle began at four o’clock in the morning and lasted until ten, and during the greater part of the time it was fought in a thick mist—absurdly supposed to be raised by a magician. The loss of life was very great, for the hatred was strong on both sides. The King-Maker was defeated, and the King triumphed.
“during the greater part of the time it was fought in a thick mist” – how apt is that?!?!
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Rob, this is MARVELOUS! I think, personally, this sounds like a deliberate allusion…I will be thinking of this!
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As usual, there were things I planned on writing in my above comment, but I forgot when I actually wrote it. (And I still have another comment about the specifics of this two weeks’ reading that I haven’t done yet.) Here are things I neglected to mention.
When writing about Esther, I intended to compare her to Agnes Wickfield, a somewhat similar heroine from the last book this group has covered. While Agnes’s humility strikes me as less forced and less potentially annoying (probably she’s supposed to be less of a victim of childhood trauma than Esther and doesn’t have to narrate) than Esther’s, I feel like Dickens does a better job of showing Esther as a heroic character. We see her graciousness to Caddy Jellyby, her reaching out to the younger Jellybys, and her general helpfulness toward the other residents of Bleak House. With Agnes, it felt to me and to some other readers, I think, that we were told more about her kindness than we were shown.
I think one of the reasons Esther’s narration doesn’t consistently work for me is that, unlike David Copperfield, she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would write a memoir like this in the first place. Having read the whole book more than once and knowing the whole story, I understand why Dickens used her as a narrator, but it strikes me that there should be some kind of in-universe reason for her writing this, given her apologetic, uncomfortable tone.
I also wrote about how little happens during the first part of Bleak House, the part about the character who actually live at Bleak House anyway, and how most of it is just setting up the characters, mainly Richard Carstone. But I forgot to write that this slow buildup really does pay off eventually. It’s a demanding read but also a rewarding one, at least if you’re a fan of Dickens’s writing. It’s the kind of book I recommend to people who are already fans of the author, not to the uninitiated.
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All of Dickens’s books are about the state of England, but if you compare Bleak House to David Copperfield, I’d say the emphasis in the latter is more on the drama of individual characters whereas in Bleak House, it’s mainly about England. The image in Chapter 2 of a crow flying over the landscape is kind of what Dickens does. It’s impressive how many characters the book develops from different social classes, from the Dedlocks to the poor brickmakers and Jo. (Of course, a baronet is the lowest rank in nobility, so it’s not that huge, I guess, but still notable.)
I get the impression that the character of John Jarndyce, who kind of reminds me of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, is a portrait of how Dickens saw himself. Certainly, the parts in Chapter 8 and 15 about all the annoying people asking him for money or endorsements feel autobiographical. It seems that at this point in his life, Dickens could understand why Scrooge found the charity collectors so annoying. Stretch a point and you could say that Skimpole shows that Dickens could understand why Scrooge found his childlike party animal of a nephew annoying. Bleak House might be considered Scrooge’s revenge on Dickens.
This may sound like a really random thing to bring up, but there’s a scene from an episode of ABC’s sitcom, The Middle, that reminds me of Mrs. Pardiggle. It has do with an outspoken activist with whom one of the characters, a young woman, has fallen out of love. She says to him, “I think you don’t do all this stuff for the earth. I think you do it for you because you don’t actually care about anyone else’s ideas. You only care about your own ideas and hearing yourself talk.” I think that sums up Mrs. Pardiggle quite well and, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband. (We haven’t meant him yet, but we will. Oh, we will.)
I love Lawrence Boythorn! He’s like the male Betsey Trotwood. (They even both have checkered romantic pasts.) I’d say that I ship them, but that would probably be a bad idea. They’re both so pugnacious that they’d probably end up killing each other.
Here’s a question. How much of Guppy’s interest in Esther is based on physical attraction and how much is based on him suspecting she’s related to Lady Dedlock and wanting to use that to his financial advantage? (Later events make it clear that it’s not anything deeper than either of those things.)
Something unique, for Dickens anyway, that I love about Bleak House is its portrayal of the relationship between Mrs. Roucewell and her son and grandson, how they clearly disagree when it comes to politics but are determined to get along with each other anyway. Dickens is unusually nonpartisan for him in depicting this dynamic. True, there are some jokes at the expense of Mrs. Rouncewell’s idealized view of her employers, but fewer than you’d expect. She’s still very likeable, even admirable.
The main butt of Dickens’s satire in Bleak House is obviously the Court of Chancery, but let’s not overlook his critique (and Esther’s) of the educational system.
“He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by someone studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.”
That part kind of reminds me of Dickens’s depiction of Blimber’s academy in Dombey and Son and of what Sissy Jupe says in Hard Times (our next book) that she thinks she might have learned more if she hadn’t had to study so many different things.
There’s a sad irony in Caddy Jellyby’s story. I’ve heard somewhere that when Dickens’s marriage was collapsing, sometime after Bleak House, one of his daughters sought to escape her dysfunctional family by getting married. Sadly, unlike Caddy, she didn’t particularly love her groom. She just wanted to get out. (I’m not super into biographies, so I could be totally wrong about this. I just vaguely remember reading it.)
Caddy means to praise Mr. Turveydrop when she says that if he knows there’s such a place as Africa, that’s all he knows, but it becomes clear that Dickens means Mr. Turveydrop and Mrs. Jellyby to represent opposite extremes and his ideal parent would be something of a happy medium between them.
Phew! I think that’s all I’ve got for what we’ve read so far.
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I’ve described Lady Dedlock on my blog as Sir Leicester’s trophy wife. Is that unfair? We usually think of a trophy wife as someone a husband marries to show off and Sir Leicester really does love Lady Dedlock. She’s not just a trophy to him. But I do think she’s kind of a trophy wife in the sense that she likely would never have married him if it weren’t for his wealth and status. And when I called her a trophy wife, I was trying to sum up their relationship for the benefit of people who might not be familiar with the story and characters yet.
More on Esther’s narration. One critic, at least, has claimed that the third person narrator is supposed to Esther too; she just uses a different writing style for parts she didn’t witness or experience herself. Can anyone else remember if there’s any textual evidence for this? Esther herself seems to make a distinction between herself and the other narrator from what I remember. (“I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages…”)
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Regarding Esther also being the third person narrator — this idea is so intriguing that I did some research and discovered this idea was first posed by Robert Newsom in his 1977 book, “Dickens on the Romantic Side of Familiar Things: Bleak House and the Novel Tradition”. I’ve just ordered a copy and will get back to you on what Newsom has to say – I’m really curious about where this rabbit hole will lead!
I like Esther. Even though she protests her unimportance and insignificance a bit too much I give her the benefit of the doubt because of her awful upbringing. I imagine it would take a very long time to shake off 14 years’ worth of being conditioned to believe she is unworthy and unwanted. I forgive her over compensating sweetness because I think she isn’t very practiced at how to give and take in normal personal interactions. Her six years at Greenleaf were a good opening, but they were still in a somewhat restricted and formal environment. And she hasn’t yet been at Bleak House long enough to really relax and find her own individual footing. Her true nature does reveal itself every so often however. I love the occasional acerbic comments she makes such as this: “Suppose Mr Pardiggle were to dine with Mr Jellyby, and suppose Mr Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr Pardiggle, would Mr Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr Jellby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it came into my head.” (Ch 8) These comments make her human. They also link her to the third person narrator who has the same acerbic wit – see Ch 12 regarding Hortense: “There is something indefinitely keen and wan about her anatomy; and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head, which could be pleasantly dispensed with – especially when she is in an ill-humour and near knives.”
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That description of Hortense has been an early highlight for me amidst a lot of wonderful writing.
I also liked this of Sir Leicester in the same chapter:
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to society.
so much is communicated through a marvellous economy of words.
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Wow, what a nice batch of things to explore, sir!
I think Guppy’s initial attraction to Esther is physical, but then I think he has suspicions fairly early on that there is also something about her appearance that ignites his curiosity and makes him begin to ponder what he thinks is her likeness to Lady Dedlock. And then, by extension, what action–to his advantage–he might take.
Just as important, I think, is his appearance in both Esther’s and the omniscient narrator’s story in the earlier chapters of the novel. I believe he represents the first “physical” link between the two very different accounts, so that there is a slight convergence between the two narratives in the first stages of BH. In this respect, he operates as the INITIAL rhetorical “go-between” between the two accounts given by two very different narrators.
With regard to the relationship the Dedlock’s have, I’m thinking that it’s too early to make a definitive statement about it. However, It seems to me that he is more invested emotionally in his care for her than she is in her relationship with him. From the get go, it begins to look one-sided. “Trophy wife” would put her on par with Edith in her marriage with Dombey. And that parallel is entirely possible. I’ll just have to see how much the novel develops the dynamics of their relationship.
Like you, I’ve been thinking a lot about the RATIONALE for Esther’s narrative. The quote you give from her, at the very beginning of her entrance into the novel, strikes me a just SO darn ambiguous, and almost as a kind of “tease.” I mean, how in the world are we to take her statement about having “difficulty”…”beginning to write” HER “portion of these pages”? What the heck can this mean? To use a Dickens phrase, it’s a “devilish” way to begin an autobiographical statement that belongs to the larger scheme of this novel. First of all, WHY is it difficult? Is she just shy? Does she feel as though she’s been put upon by some kind of editor to get something out that is more personal and intimate in her reflection about these past events that have affected her? Is this kind of revelation going to elicit trauma, maybe become too psychologically damaging to her psyche?
And why does she say “my portion”? It’s as though there is some kind of negotiation going on that an outside person wants her side of the story. To be sure, this kind of opening is certainly within the tradition of the novel, beginning with DON QUIXOTE where a narrator in the beginning of the novel announces him or herself as the narrator of a part of the story. It could be the main part or just one of many parts. Moreover, In the present realm of Dickens’ work, Esther’s narrative could be seen as a very long and in-depth “interpolated tale.” It is, after all, embedded in the larger scheme of things that will follow.
But I believe there is also the possibility that this is part of Dickens’ “experiment” with the novel form, mixing the two formats to see how well the Present tense “detached” OMNISCIENT narrator will mesh with the Past tense AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL and “personal” narration by one of the main characters in the novel. Ultimately, I love this way in which he has extended himself creatively and I hope to see more of it. Also, I wonder what he thought generally, about how well the novel turned out using this dual narration, and how well his audience initially responded to it….
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Maybe we should say that Sir Leicester is Lady Dedlock’s trophy husband? I think this quote from Ralph Nickleby kind of sums it up. “(he has) money and (she) has beauty and worth. She has youth, (he has) money.” Of course, as you say, we’re going to learn, as the book proceeds, that there’s way more to both characters than that.
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This is definitely a “tease”…! I think My initial impression, based on Esther’s protestations, is that she has trouble making herself the center of anything, and as it can only be told based on her own involvement in the case and characters here, she’ll have to tell about how liked and relied on she was, and she, as I think Cody said above, is as averse to compliments as Mr Jarndyce is…
I’m intrigued by the idea that Esther might have written both portions, and I’m curious about the research Chris is going to do with the Newsom book. Of course, except that Mr Jarndyce is so darn adorable (in my opinion)–and he would not write that way of himself–I think Jarndyce is perhaps another good candidate for the other narrator, and one likely enough to have influence with Esther, to see her qualities of perception and even her literary skill, and encourage them. On this note, for example–though I won’t mention which scene it is, so as to avoid spoilers this early on–we have, later in the book, that haunting passage: “Dead! Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order…” etc. — this is coming from the omniscient narrator, but I love how, in the 2005 miniseries, they give the words to Jarndyce, who is such a kind of Dickens-figure himself, upset at the injustices in the world; imperfect but great-hearted. I think Jarndyce might be a good candidate for our other narrator, but I’d have to think about this again as I return to it with that idea in mind. (And as to the characterization of Jarndyce, perhaps because Jarndyce is written as more eccentric than anything, this would be plausible?) Either way, *someone* has clearly asked Esther to “absent thee from felicity awhile/And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell [this] story.”
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Love the spot of Shakespeare at the end there, Rach 😊
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aww, thanks, Rob! 🎭🎭 I’d hoped you’d approve! 😀
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A very good source exploring primary Esther and through her “Bleak House” is John O. Jordan’s “Supposing ‘Bleak House'” – a relatively quick read (160 pages).
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I feel like I should have mentioned this in my “anti-Dickensian” post. (That title was kind of clickbait BTW. I’d actually say Bleak House is profoundly Dickensian. It just has aspects that seem anti-Dickensian at a first glance.) In books like The Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield, debt collectors are antagonists but with Neckett and his family, Dickens asks us to see things from their perspective.
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This novel really has provided so many interesting avenues of inquiry and discussion already. I look forward to more as we move through the next sections.
I absolutely love the two narrative perspectives. I find it hard at the moment, considering how far I have read a novel that is completely new to me, to see HOW Esther could be the omniscient narrator too, but I shall continue to contemplate this fascinating idea as I read more.
Esther and her doll: this warmed me to Esther immediately at the very start of her narrative – can’t exactly say why, but I found it a brilliant touch!
It reminded me of Dora Spenlow and her conversations with Jip. Both indicate a young lady who has no-one else to confide in (We certainly know that Jane Murdstone is a terrible choice for a ‘confidential friend’)
So Dolly and Jip in both cases are entrusted with the secret thoughts and feelings of their mistresses. There is something deep here that I can’t readily explain, though I am aware of its influence.
Secrets and Trust. These seem to be key things in this novel even at this early juncture.
Like Edith Granger’s haughty pride, Lady Dedlock’s *being almost frozen in a graceful presentation of person despite the suffering of relentless boredom* act as a mask/veneer concealing secrets within.
just a couple of thoughts there… perhaps not fully expanded, but we have time enough for that, methinks 😀
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I’d like to say that Esther (sadly) leaving Dolly behind and Dora never leaving Jip behind shows that the former is more capable of maturity, but I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing Dolly or Jip.
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I have been trying to understand *why* Esther buries her doll, but I think this is very much part of it. the doll perhaps represents her as she was as the lonely young girl living with her aunt – burying the doll signifies a readiness to move forward and become a different version of herself.
Likewise Dora and Jip are so closely bound together that they even die at the same time. And earlier, Dora could not bear the thought of having a dog other than Jip.
Interesting and clever touches I think 😊
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I’m with you, Rob, in that I can’t conceive how Esther might have been the omniscient narrator. As I get more deeply into the novel, there are just so many details that, in “reality,” Esther wouldn’t know about. For example, in chapter 10, Tulkinghorn, and Snagsby venture to Krook’s to investigate the whereabouts of Nemo, as he is the primary “suspect” for writing the document Lady Dedlock has reacted so suspiciously to. When they arrive at Krook’s, they find Nemo dead and, while surveying the scene, the lawyer takes some of Nemo’s papers. AND, still…a bit later, in Chapter 11, after Nemo is interred, the narrator writes how Jo feelingly sweeps the entry into the cemetery where Nemo is buried. In these instances, there is such an abundance of precise and closely narrated detail, that I can’t fathom how the “real” Esther, who is writing her own very self-contained and limited story, could have known about.
But to briefly continue with the same progression of events–in Chapter 16, we see Lady Dedlock, in disguise as Hortense, asking Jo to lead her to the graveyard where Nemo has been buried. Again the detail is so exact and peculiar, that it seems impossible that this aspect of the novel could have been written by Esther.
And (as I fudge a bit here) I have seen later how the novel branches out further into other strange territories, other subplots containing other characters that Esther would have little or no knowledge of. In all of these instances, the omniscient narrator illustrates a wide scope of knowledge about the huge background of legal information and scheming complexities that seem totally different from Esther’s more domestic and caring participation in the events that she narrates.
As I’ve hinted at earlier, the omniscient narrator tends to be more of a documentarian who narrates events with detachment and with some moral discourse and humorous and not so humorous irony, whereas Esther narrates with a good deal of emotion and compassion, developing a very close attachment to her subjects and subject matter.
Thus, I’ve gotta go with the idea of two very different narrators whose disparate narratives intertwine and operate as foils to one another.
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These are all great reasons. I’m sure there will be more moving through that constitute things and events that do not touch Esther sufficiently for her to present them as the omniscient narrator does.
Also the temporality of the two narratives makes my head hurt a little in this regard.
While the present tense narration and Esther’s past tense narration seem to flow concurrently along the same timeline it is hard to see how a later understanding by Esther of all the events and legal understanding would be presented as a narrative in the historic present.
And then there is the beginning of Chapter 7 when Esther is directly referenced by the other narrator thus:
‘While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling—drip, drip, drip—by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, the Ghost’s Walk.’
So far Esther is not aware of the other narrator (I am not suspecting she will be either)
I do love how the two styles contrast with each other and yet work so well together in the unfolding of the events.
One of my favourite discoveries recently is the study guide web resource ‘Shmoop’ which has jolly good chapter summaries and analyses – presented in a jargon free/ student friendly style ( very perfect for someone like me who is anxious not to miss the important stuff)
I mention this here because, as well as being quite humorous about the tone and thrust of the 3rd person narrator in the chapter summaries as to who is narrating the chapter…
examples such as:
*Right away the gloves come off with the third-person narrator. It’s November in London, cold and miserable, and there’s chimney soot all over the place. (Chapter 1)
*Still the third-person narrator. Still nothing but harsh and snide words, but this time it’s all about Sir and Lady Dedlock. (2)
*(Sneery McMockerson is back as narrator.) (7)
*(Third-person narrator is back! Quick, everyone practice raising your eyebrow ironically.) (10)
etc…
This was said with reference to our omniscient narrator:
‘Remember how in Tulkinghorn’s office, the ceiling is painted with an image of an angry, contemptuous-looking guy pointing his finger down at something? Well, the novel doesn’t really explain what this is all about, but Shmoop is thinking it’s a pretty good image to keep in mind when thinking about the third-person narrator. This disembodied voice always sounds like it’s coming down to us from way up on high, looking out over the horrible, idiotic, pathetic, and evil people who inhabit the world of the novel.’
This would be ‘Allegory’ (interesting name!) in Roman attire mentioned first in Chapter 10:
‘and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache—as would seem to be Allegory’s object always, more or less.’
I will be keeping my eye out for ‘Allegory’ in later chapters and for ‘hidden meanings with moral or political significance’
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Rob, I love the comparison between Esther and Dora. Of course, as their novels develop, they turn out to be quite different persons in that Esther is an efficient housekeeper whereas Dora isn’t. Yet, the doll / dog play shows how they both exhibit and will continue to illustrate the very “feeling” sides of their personalities.
Moreover, the Lady Dedlock/Edith likeness is so true in that they both demonstrate how women in the 19th century can become so “locked in” by their very existence as beautiful females and their expectations as wives of so-called great men in their elegant societies. So much more to be said regarding these issues, I think.
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I’ll be coming back to these points as we move through the next section as I feel that there is more that will be relatable between the two novels thus neighboured to each other… and my feeling is that Florence Dombey may join in my observations too – along with thoughts about Agnes Wickfield and Caddy Jellyby.
In some way we need Dickens’ ‘domestic angel’ characters to help to fully define each other as a type
(Maybe even Ruth Pinch will join in to help! 😊)
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Gosh, this whole conversation has been just ASTOUNDING…I’ll really have to pick/choose/summarize for the wrap-up! It is a gold mine…it’ll be hard to do justice to everyone’s thoughts.
Right now, I was just starting to work on the chapter summaries, and already just got caught up again in that astounding opening chapter. Not only the evocative description of the “implacable November weather” and the FOG — the Lord High Chancellor being at the heart of the fog — but the very descriptions of Chancery itself. So often in Dickens, the PLACE is an echo or an illustration of the interior reality. It is “dim”; the fog has little means of getting out; the stained glass windows “admit no light of day”. Members of Chancery are “tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities,” and the whole thing is compared to a “game”: “walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might”. As to the conversation above (about the authorship of the omniscient narrative portions), I can certainly imagine Jarndyce writing THIS.
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Yep, the opening chapter is a stunner and seems to underwrite the entire novel. The imagery is so precise and at the same time so evocative of so much to come.
But to get, again, to the “writer” of the omniscient narration: I’m wondering why we NEED to find a name for or a specific character–who might be the creator. Can’t the narrator just be anonymous?
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Yes, absolutely, Lenny! I think the idea that it might be a specific character is more just intriguing bc Esther suggests at the opening that it was someone’s request/idea, and not that she was naturally inclined to write her “portion”…which seems to leave the idea open to the *other* narrator, perhaps in the style of The Old Curiosity Shop, whose narrator so disappears after the beginning that we might forget it was a specific character involved: Master Humphrey — whose name, I believe, is never mentioned in the Shop at all…? It is fun to think about…but agreed, not *necessary*
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