Bleak House

Summary

Bleak House is built around Jarndyce and Jarndyce, an endless lawsuit over a disputed will in the Court of Chancery, and around a secret that links a great lady to an orphan girl. Dickens tells it in two voices: an unnamed narrator in the present tense who surveys London's fog, the lawcourts, fashionable society and the slum called Tom-all-Alone's, and Esther Summerson, who writes her own story modestly in the past tense. Esther, raised by a severe godmother who tells her she was her mother's disgrace, is taken in by the kindly John Jarndyce as companion to his young cousins Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, wards in the suit, and the three live with him at Bleak House near St. Albans. Esther becomes its housekeeper, and Ada and Richard fall in love. Meanwhile at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire, Lady Dedlock, the cold, beautiful wife of Sir Leicester Dedlock, faints at the sight of handwriting on a legal paper. The family lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn traces it to a law-writer called Nemo, who has just died of an overdose of opium in a room above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop. Jo, a ragged crossing-sweeper whom Nemo had befriended, shows a veiled lady the pauper burial ground where Nemo lies. The law clerk Mr. Guppy also pursues the secret. Krook, who hoards papers and calls himself the Lord Chancellor, is found burned to ashes in his shop, a death Dickens presents as spontaneous combustion. Jo, sick with fever, is taken in at Bleak House; Esther's maid Charley catches the disease, and Esther, nursing her, falls ill and is left scarred. Lady Dedlock then reveals to Esther that she is her mother and Nemo, Captain Hawdon, was her father. Richard, convinced the suit will make him rich, drifts from medicine to law to the army and falls into the hands of the lawyer Vholes; he marries Ada secretly. Jarndyce asks Esther to marry him, and she accepts out of gratitude, though she loves the young surgeon Allan Woodcourt. Tulkinghorn tells Lady Dedlock he will expose her, and is found shot dead. The ex-soldier Mr. George is arrested, but Inspector Bucket proves the killer is Hortense, Lady Dedlock's dismissed French maid. Lady Dedlock flees; Sir Leicester, struck by a stroke, forgives her, and Bucket and Esther track her through snow to London, where she is found dead at the gate of the burial ground. A later will is discovered, but when the case ends the whole estate has been consumed in costs; Richard dies. Jarndyce releases Esther to marry Woodcourt and gives them a second Bleak House in Yorkshire. The novel appeared in twenty monthly parts from March 1852 to September 1853, with illustrations by Phiz.

Plot or Argument

• In Chancery and in Fashion (Chapters I-II)

  The fog-bound Court of Chancery, the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce and its ruined suitors, then the Dedlocks' world of fashion, where Lady Dedlock asks who copied a legal document.

• Esther's progress (Chapters III-VI)

  Esther's lonely childhood with her godmother, her schooling, her meeting with Ada and Richard at the Lord Chancellor's, a night at Mrs. Jellyby's chaotic house, an encounter with Miss Flite and Krook, and arrival at Bleak House, where Harold Skimpole charms and borrows.

• Nemo, Jo and the veiled lady (Chapters VII-XVI)

  Tulkinghorn finds the law-writer dead of opium at Krook's; the inquest and Jo's testimony; Jo leads a lady in a servant's dress to the burial ground; the Bell Yard household of Neckett's orphans and the ruined Gridley; Tom-all-Alone's.

• Guppy, Krook and the Smallweeds (Chapters XVII-XXXIII)

  Guppy's investigations and proposal to Esther; Mr. Bucket of the Detective; the moneylending Smallweeds and Mr. George's shooting gallery; Jo's fever at Bleak House; Esther's illness; the night Krook is found burned away in his shop.

• Mother and daughter (Chapters XXXIV-XLIV)

  Esther recovers with a scarred face; at Chesney Wold Lady Dedlock reveals herself as her mother; Richard is drawn deeper into the suit by Vholes; Jo dies in George's gallery; Jarndyce writes to Esther asking her to be mistress of Bleak House, and she accepts.

• Tulkinghorn's death and Bucket's inquiry (Chapters XLV-LIV)

  Tulkinghorn threatens Lady Dedlock and is found shot; Mr. George is arrested; Bucket gathers evidence and, in the Dedlocks' library, reveals the murderer as Hortense.

• Flight and pursuit (Chapters LV-LIX)

  Lady Dedlock leaves Chesney Wold; Sir Leicester, struck down, forgives her; Bucket and Esther follow her trail through a winter night to the brickmakers' cottage and back to London, where Esther finds her mother dead at the burial-ground gate.

• The end of the suit and Esther's close (Chapters LX-LXVII)

  A newer will turns up among Krook's papers, but the case ends with the estate absorbed in costs; Richard dies reconciled with Jarndyce; Jarndyce gives Esther to Woodcourt; Esther closes her narrative seven years later.

Characters

• Esther Summerson, narrator and protagonist

  An orphan of unknown birth who becomes housekeeper of Bleak House, unselfish and observant, and in the end Lady Dedlock's daughter discovered.

• John Jarndyce, guardian

  The generous master of Bleak House, a party to the suit who refuses to have anything to do with it and blames the east wind when troubled.

• Lady Honoria Dedlock, mother

  The proud wife of Sir Leicester, hiding her past love for Captain Hawdon and the child she believed died at birth.

• Sir Leicester Dedlock, baronet

  An old-fashioned, honorable country gentleman devoted to his wife and to his family's dignity.

• Mr. Tulkinghorn, family lawyer

  The Dedlocks' close, silent solicitor, who collects other people's secrets.

• Richard Carstone, ward in Chancery

  A charming, unsettled young man whose hopes of the suit destroy him.

• Ada Clare, ward in Chancery

  Esther's beloved friend, who marries Richard and stays loyal to him.

• Allan Woodcourt, surgeon

  A young doctor who serves the poor, survives a shipwreck abroad, and marries Esther.

• Jo, crossing-sweeper

  An illiterate street boy who knows nothing, is always told to move on, and remembers the kindness of the law-writer.

• Inspector Bucket, detective

  A genial, all-seeing officer of the Detective police who solves Tulkinghorn's murder.

• Krook, rag-and-bottle dealer

  An illiterate hoarder of legal papers, nicknamed the Lord Chancellor, who dies in his shop.

• Harold Skimpole, sponger

  A charming dilettante who claims to be a mere child in the world and lives on other people's money.

• Mr. George, ex-trooper

  A big, honest former soldier who runs a shooting gallery and is wrongly arrested for murder.

• Miss Flite, suitor in Chancery

  A little old woman who attends court daily expecting a judgment, keeping caged birds she will free on the day of judgment.

Lessons

• The fog of Chancery

  Dickens opens in fog and mud and makes the Court of Chancery its center, a court where a will case has run so long that no one remembers its meaning. The suit poisons everyone who hopes in it, from Miss Flite and Gridley to Richard. Jarndyce's refusal to touch it is the novel's model of freedom.

  • How does the fog in Chapter I prepare readers for the Court of Chancery?
  • Why does John Jarndyce warn Richard against trusting in the suit?
  • What finally ends Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and what is left of the estate?

• Duty close at hand

  Mrs. Jellyby neglects her children for an African mission at Borrioboola-Gha, and Mrs. Pardiggle forces tracts on brickmakers who cannot use them. Esther instead looks after whoever is in front of her: Caddy, Charley, Jo, Ada. Dickens contrasts charity at a distance with charity in one's own house and street.

  • What does Esther notice about Mrs. Jellyby's house on her first night in London?
  • Why do the brickmakers resent Mrs. Pardiggle's visit?
  • Is Dickens against missions abroad, or against neglect at home? Find evidence.

• Jo and the question of who is responsible

  Jo is told everywhere to move on, and no institution takes responsibility for him. The fever he carries from Tom-all-Alone's reaches Bleak House itself. His death, with Woodcourt teaching him the Lord's Prayer, ends with the narrator turning directly to the nation's rulers and its Christians.

  • What does Jo know, and what has no one taught him?
  • How does the sickness from Tom-all-Alone's show that rich and poor are bound together?
  • Why does the narrator address the Queen, the lords and the clergy at Jo's death?

• Esther's humility and worth

  Esther begins by saying she is not clever, and her godmother has taught her she should never have been born. Through her own narrative readers see a woman who is wise, brave and greatly loved, whose scarred face does not lessen her worth. Dickens shows that a true self-estimate is not the same as low self-regard.

  • Why does Esther keep reporting other people's praise of her while insisting she does not deserve it?
  • How does Esther respond to losing her looks after her illness?
  • Was Jarndyce right to release Esther from her promise to marry him?

Context

Bleak House is set in an indefinite recent past in London, Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire. The Court of Chancery, which handled wills, trusts and property, was notorious for delay; Dickens's preface says a real suit had run since before 1800 and swallowed more than seventy thousand pounds in costs. Reform of Chancery procedure was under way in the early 1850s. The novel also reflects Victorian concern with sanitation and fever in crowded city slums, and introduces one of the first police detectives in English fiction, modelled in part on Inspector Charles Field of the Metropolitan Police Detective Department.

Composition

Dickens wrote the novel at Tavistock House in London and issued it in twenty monthly parts, the last a double number, from March 1852 to September 1853, with forty illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz); it was published in one volume in 1853. Dickens drew on his own youthful work as a solicitor's clerk and court reporter. In his preface he defends his use of spontaneous combustion for Krook's death against objections by G. H. Lewes, citing reported cases, and says he has purposely dwelt on the romantic side of familiar things.

Reception

The novel sold well in parts, though some contemporary critics thought it gloomy and overcrowded with characters. Later critics, including G. K. Chesterton, placed it among Dickens's finest works for its design and its double narration, and its Chancery suit has become a byword for interminable litigation. It has been adapted for television several times, notably by the BBC in 1985 and 2005.

Comparisons

• oliver-twist

  Jo the crossing-sweeper is a later, darker version of the workhouse orphan: where Oliver is rescued by a benefactor and an inheritance, Jo dies with no one able to claim him.

• great-expectations

  Richard Carstone's hopes of the Chancery suit and Pip's hopes of a mysterious fortune both corrode a young man's sense of duty; Esther and Joe Gargery stand as the faithful foils.

• hard-times

  Written the year after Bleak House, Hard Times turns from the lawcourts to the factory town and its schools, but keeps the same quarrel with systems that forget the persons they govern.

• the-moonstone

  Inspector Bucket and Collins's Sergeant Cuff are two founding detectives of English fiction, both drawn from the new Detective police of the 1840s and 1850s.

• middlemarch

  Two great Victorian panoramas with a doctor at the moral center, Woodcourt and Lydgate, and with a buried past (Lady Dedlock's, Bulstrode's) that a lawyer or a blackmailer brings to light.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The fog and mud of Chapter I, and where fog, mud and weather return through the book.
• Who narrates each chapter: Esther's chapters are titled Esther's Narrative more than once, and the other voice speaks in the present tense.
• Handwriting and papers: the law-writer's copy that makes Lady Dedlock faint, Krook's hoard, the letters Guppy seeks, the will that ends the suit.
• Every time Jo is told to move on, and who finally shows him kindness.
• Miss Flite's caged birds and their names, and what becomes of them at the end.

Key terms and names

Court of Chancery

The English court of equity, headed by the Lord Chancellor, which dealt with wills, trusts and property and was infamous for delay; it is the setting of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Ward in Chancery

A minor placed under the court's protection; Ada and Richard are wards in the suit, which is how they come under Jarndyce's care.

Tom-all-Alone's

A ruined London slum street, property tied up in the suit, where Jo sleeps and from which fever spreads.

Telescopic philanthropy

Dickens's title for Mrs. Jellyby's devotion to a distant African project while her own house and children go to ruin.

Law-writer

A copyist paid by the page to write out legal documents by hand; Nemo's handwriting starts the mystery.

Spontaneous combustion

A supposed bursting into flame of the human body from within, which Dickens uses for Krook's death and defends in his preface.

The Growlery

Jarndyce's little room at Bleak House where he retreats when he is out of humor, blaming the wind in the east.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How do Esther, Ada and Richard come to live at Bleak House?
2. Comprehension What makes Lady Dedlock faint in Chapter II, and what does Tulkinghorn do about it?
3. Comprehension How does Inspector Bucket prove that Mr. George did not kill Tulkinghorn?
4. Interpretation Why does Dickens use two narrators, and how does Esther's voice differ from the present-tense narrator's?
5. Interpretation What does the fever's path from Tom-all-Alone's to Esther suggest about the connections between classes?
6. Interpretation Is Harold Skimpole's claim to be a mere child an excuse, an honest confession, or something else?
7. Big Question When an institution like Chancery does harm through delay, who is responsible: the judges, the lawyers, the suitors, or the public?
8. Big Question Does a child bear any guilt for the circumstances of her birth, and how should others treat her?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 6:9-13 (Scripture)

  Jo dies repeating the Lord's Prayer after Woodcourt in Chapter XLVII; the boy who knows nothing learns at the last to say Our Father.

• John 8:1-11 (Scripture)

  In Chapter III Esther is reading this passage aloud when her godmother cuts her off with a stern warning from Mark 13 and collapses; Christ's mercy to the accused woman is the answer the novel gives to the godmother's severity.

• Luke 10:29-37 (Scripture)

  The question of who is my neighbour runs through the book, from Mrs. Jellyby's distant charities to Esther and Woodcourt caring for Jo.

• Augustine, City of God IV.4 (Great Conversation)

  Augustine asks what kingdoms are without justice; Dickens asks the same of a court whose procedures have lost sight of justice to the persons before it.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Institutions that serve their own procedures rather than persons spread harm the way fog and fever spread, touching rich and poor alike; therefore only personal responsibility and charity, like Esther's and Woodcourt's, can make a home in such a world, and public institutions must be reformed.

Rhetorical device: apostrophe. At Jo's death in Chapter XLVII the narrator turns from the story to address the Queen, the lords, the clergy and all Christian men and women directly.

Debate: Resolved: that John Jarndyce was wise to refuse any part in the suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Memory Work

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 pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.

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.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Compare Esther Summerson and Lady Dedlock as mother and daughter: how does each respond to the secret of Esther's birth, and what does each choice cost?

Comparison with Oliver Twist: Compare Jo in Bleak House with Oliver in Oliver Twist: why does Dickens rescue one boy and let the other die?

Medical Lens

Bleak House is one of the richest Victorian novels for the history of medicine. Its hero, Allan Woodcourt, is a poor but dedicated surgeon who has served as a ship's doctor and treats the destitute; a surgeon also gives evidence at Nemo's inquest that he died of an overdose of opium and had been buying it for some time. The fever that spreads from the slum of Tom-all-Alone's through Jo to Charley and Esther reflects the sanitary debates of the late 1840s and early 1850s, when reformers such as Edwin Chadwick tied city filth to epidemic disease and the Public Health Act of 1848 was passed; Dickens was an active supporter of sanitary reform. Esther's disease is never named, but its contagion, blindness for a time and facial scarring are usually read as smallpox. Krook's death is presented as spontaneous human combustion, which Dickens defends in his preface against G. H. Lewes by citing older medical reports; it is not accepted by modern medicine and functions in the novel as a symbol of Chancery consuming itself. Miss Flite's and Gridley's fixation on the suit and Richard's slow decline show obsessive litigation as a ruin of mind and body. Richard briefly trains in medicine under Mr. Bayham Badger before abandoning it.

• Chapters X-XI

  Nemo found dead in his room at Krook's; the surgeon's opinion of an opium overdose; the inquest at the Sol's Arms.

  Opium Laudanum Physicians Doctors
• Chapters XVI and XLVI

  Descriptions of Tom-all-Alone's as a source of fever that spreads to every class of society.

  Public Health Sanitation Fever Infection
• Chapters XXXI and XXXV

  Esther nurses Charley through the fever, falls ill herself, loses her sight for a time, and recovers with a changed face.

  Fever Infection Nursing Caregiving Disability Deformity
• Chapter XXXII, The Appointed Time; Preface

  Guppy and Weevle discover the greasy soot and remains of Krook; Dickens's prefatory defence of spontaneous combustion.

  Death Dying
• Chapter XLVII, Jo's Will

  Woodcourt attends the dying Jo in George's shooting gallery.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying
• Chapters XIV, XXXV and LX

  Miss Flite's daily attendance at court, Gridley's collapse, and Richard's wasting under the strain of the suit.

  Obsession Monomania

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Make a two-column chart of the chapters narrated by Esther and by the present-tense narrator, and note what each voice can see that the other cannot.

• Fiction

  Write one day in Jo's life as he would tell it, from waking in Tom-all-Alone's to being told to move on.

• Essay

  Is Inspector Bucket a hero? Weigh his kindness to Esther and Sir Leicester against his methods with Jo and Mr. George.

Further Reading

• Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens

  Dickens's next great institutional novel, on the debtors' prison and the Circumlocution Office.

• Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin

  Modern biography covering the Tavistock House years when Bleak House was written.

• Charles Dickens, G. K. Chesterton

  Chesterton's 1906 study, an appreciative Christian reading of Dickens.

• The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis, Stephen Halliday

  History of London sanitation and its public-health background.