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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Chapters XVI and XLVI

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

• 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.

• Chapter XXXII, The Appointed Time; Preface

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

• Chapter XLVII, Jo's Will

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

• 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.