Responsibility and Its Displacement: A Reflection on Bleak House

by Daniel M.

“Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them.”

― René Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes

The King Inimitable has us all mired in mystery, and even muddled by the motivations of various characters!

As Rob compassionately observes, we are “entitled to feel a little overwhelmed by the mystery of it all.”

I feel the depth, breadth, and height of Dickens’ astonishing world-building, helping us all to reflect more deeply on the worlds (both inner and outer) that we inhabit.

You all have done an extraordinary job of exploring the “mystery of it all,” and I would like to offer one more thought/perspective: a tendency I might term “displacement”—so cogently portrayed by Dickens. We have recently witnessed the death of one who, we might say, represents the victim of societal “displacement”: Jo, the poor crossing-sweeper, utterly ignored by a society who would prefer not to take responsibility for him–telling him “move on,” but where?–yet he keeps showing up as one of the many connecting-points in the novel.

“Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.”

-Bleak House, Chapter 47

As I reflect on the pervasive theme of personal and collective responsibility for our individual and social lives that Dickens depicts, I see how deftly Dickens shows us the human capacity to displace our responsibility—to focus, even single-mindedly, on influences and realities beyond our control. It might be described as a kind of psychological “scapegoating”—assigning our aspirations, frustrations, and various energies to something outside of us that we cannot control. The “Chancery” of our lives.

It seems that the Jarndyce versus Jarndyce case and the convolutions of the Chancery are the central displacement in Bleak House: If only the case would be resolved . . . .

How many characters in Bleak House have hitched their star to this never-ending, consuming legal process—this consummate displacement?

We, any of us, can so easily become obsessively involved with something outside ourselves over which we have so little control—like the Chancery and its proceedings, or a philanthropic mission that would extend anywhere but to those right around us—expending precious time and energy that are never to be recovered.

John Jarndyce prophetically sounds the alarm and seeks to caution susceptible souls about the dangers of the case and preoccupation with it. Of displacement of our real lives.

Still, the “displacement” of our lives, assuming a substitute reality (“Chancery”), lurks for everyone.

The displacement can be wealth, fame, power, prestige, a “telescopic philanthropy”. Whatever glitters.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. analyzed this “displacement” phenomenon so exquisitely in American life and politics:

“In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.”

Spiritual and psychological slavery, precipitated by displacement of one’s legitimate and proper concerns and taking up obsessively the concerns of a system or other outside force such as Chancery, seems to be a huge and pervasive theme in Bleak House. And in our own lives.