Bleak House

If Dickens was on facebook, my relationship with him would be “It’s Complicated.” After a decade of reading his books I feel like I’ve developed an appreciation and love for his work. I read and enjoyed Christmas Carol and Tale of Two Cities, but I really didn't like Oliver Twist. Great Expectations and David Copperfield were the turning point for me. I adored both of those books and I think because of that, my hopes for Bleak House were incredibly high.

I was extremely excited about Bleak House, it’s often called Dicken’s masterpiece. Even the name is gothic and mysterious and it has Dicken’s only female narrator. But I should have remembered that Dicken’s work was originally printed in monthly installments in the paper show more and he was paid by the word. This beast clocks in at more than 1,000 pages.

I made a major mistake when I read Bleak House. I was reading Moby Dick and Cloud Atlas at the same time. Both of those books are a lot to process on their own without adding in the wordy Mr. Dickens and his 702 characters and their crazy names! If I’d focused only on Bleak House and I think I would have enjoyed it more. The plot is so convoluted and I felt like I was trying to keep everyone straight for the whole first half of the book. The plot grew on me once I had a chance to get to know a few of the characters.

Like all good Dickens novels there is a huge cast with intertwining story lines. There are orphans and rich people, lawyers and lords. It’s hard to jump right into these books because you really have to get to know everyone first. It takes such a long time to figure out who everyone is and really get into the story.

The whole book revolves around a complicated court case called Jarndyce v Jarndyce that has stretched on for decades. There has been no resolution; people have gone broke and committed suicide over the case after hanging their hopes on its outcome and hoping they would inherit the massive fortune.

Half of the book focuses on the wealthy Lady Deadlock and her elderly husband. She lives an unhappy life, filled with secrets, in the old mansion called Chesney Wold. We bounce back and forth between an omniscient narrator who tells her story and the character of Esther, who narrates in the first person.

The book’s second plot line involves Ada and Richard, cousins who are both wards of the case. Their fates and fortunes are unknown until the case is resolved. Esther is a young woman who has been raised by her aunt. A man named John Jarndyce decides to take Ada and Richard into his home and he hires Esther as a companion for Ada.

All of that and I haven’t even touched on half the characters! There’s the mysterious Nemo, manipulative Tulkinghorn, the Jellyby family with their distracted mother and sweet daughter Caddy, Lady Deadlock’s crazy maid Hortense, Mr. Snagsby, combustible Krook, loyal George, wonderful Allan Woodcourt, Esther’s maid Charley, Inspector Bucket and more! Obviously I wasn't kidding when I said this novel had an overload of characters and subplots.

SPOILERS

At first I had some serious issues with the main characters. Esther was just a bit too nice and accommodating. She sounds a bit like Jane Eyre whenever we read chapters that she’s narrating, but she doesn’t have the same spunk or view of self-worth. I wanted her to stand up for herself or decide to pursue something that she loved. The moments I liked her best were the ones where she held someone else (like Mr. Skimpole) accountable for their actions.

Richard was just hopeless, why wouldn’t he give up the case! It was so distressing to watch him waste away as he threw his money towards the case. I wanted so badly for him to understand that his life was with Ada and she was worth so much more than the case.

Mr. Skimpole was captain creepy pants with his “I’m just a child” nonsense and I wanted to smack him in the face. People like that are just the worst. I love how Dickens can create such wonderful villains, sometimes they are evil because they are weak and devious, instead of being outright bad people. Mr. Guppy was another odd one. He believed he fell in love at first sight, but it was really just a shallow infatuation that brought out his stalker qualities.

The entire Jarndyce v Jarndyce fortune was eaten up by court costs just as they finally figured out who the money was going to go to. I couldn’t believe it when that happened! I was shocked when Esther got smallpox too. There were all these major plot points that caught me off guard and I really liked that.

I thought Esther was going to end up with her guardian until the very last moment and I was pissed! I am so glad it didn’t turn out that way or I might have hated it.

Oh yeah, someone dies of spontaneous combustion… seriously. I was a bit surprised by that.

SPOILERS OVER

BOTTOM LINE: I think this is one that will undoubtedly benefit on a reread. After I got through the first third I really enjoyed it, but it was much tougher than most of the Dicken’s I’ve read up to this point. If you’re thinking about dipping into his work, don’t start here. I would recommend reading Great Expectations or David Copperfield and seeing if they work for you.

Dickens builds wonderful stories and gives readers some of the best characters (both good and bad) that they’ll ever encounter. I know that I’ll continue to work through his catalogue and I’ll reread this one in a few years.

SIDE NOTE: I would highly recommend the 2005 BBC miniseries of Bleak House. I watched it after finishing the novel and it was excellent. show less

This is right up there with Tristram Shandy as a witty, engaging commentary on British society. And of course, Dickens is the master of characterization. Many of his side characters will stay with me longer than the protagonists. The story itself is complex and sad in some places but it was a great experience. Miriam Margolyes is a fabulous narrator.

I enjoyed this very long Dickens novel that weaves together multiple stories and has more characters than you can possibly remember. This novel has it all - mystery, lawsuits, love triangles, blackmail, death, crazy people, spontaneous combustion, pre-marital sex . . . you name it. This makes the book both fun and long/confusing. I had to pay attention to every single character introduced, because they all end up being important. As I've found to often be the case with Dickens, I found the peripheral characters to be more interesting than the main characters. I actually didn't like Esther, who narrates half of the book, much at all. She had a goody two shoes attitude that I just couldn't stand or believe.

Central to this book is a show more lawsuit about a dispute over the estate left in a will. I found the harsh commentary on law to be both amusing and interesting and I think it really bulked up the book in a good way.

Overall, I felt like I did with other Dickens I've read - I liked the plot and characters and some of Dickens' writing is just beautiful, but it was just a bit too long and diffuse for it to really be a favorite. show less

I really enjoyed this. You might say that Dickens had two different approaches to the novel: there's the bildungsroman that focuses on a single character, told in the first person, like David Copperfield (1849-50) or Great Expectations (1860-61). Or there's the "vast sweep of London" novel, taking in numerous strands and characters, like A Tale of Two Cities (1859) or Our Mutual Friend (1864-65). Bleak House is both, alternating between sections told in the first-person past tense by Esther Summerson (Dickens's only female narrator) and those told in the third-person present by an omnipotent narrator. (Anyone who thinks Victorian novels were stodgy in their formats has clearly never actually paid attention to them. Take that, show more modernists!)

Each of these would be a good novel on its own. Esther is a great Dickens protagonist, Dickens bringing his usual attention to detail when it comes to the development of the self. There are some great jokes (I love the one about the kid who fell down the stairs). The other half is one of Dickens's best crafted sweep-of-London novels, I think, with so many disparate parts that all revolve around a central point even when it doesn't seem like it. There are lots of great characters: the Jellabys, Vholes (if you made the law comprehensible, men like him would be out of work!), Sir Leicester, many more.

I'd be curious to see sometime if I'm right, but I actually think you could read each of these strands as its own novel and it would work fine, a book called Esther Summerson and another called something like In Chancery or Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Dickens has done great work (well, and bad) in both of these forms, but here he's wedded them together. I think it works really well, thanks to the divergent styles. Dickens is always interested in how people are shaped by societal forces, and Bleak House gives us both a novel of a person and a novel of societal forces at once, letting Dickens explore that balance to its fullest effect. Esther wouldn't be Esther without all the machinations around Jarndyce and Jarndyce, but if her sections were told like all the others, I think she might get lost in the novel. This isn't my favorite Dickens (that's probably still Great Expectations), but it's definitely up there. show less

This book has completely changes my opinion of Dickens. Like so many I studied Great Expectations at school and it was a dreary job. Imagine my delight to find in Bleak House a wonderfully compelling story where your expectations of characters are overturned and the story has wonderful plot twists. It's a really engaging read, or in this case listen.

Miriam Morgolyes does an exquisite job of narration, giving each character their own distinct voice; I really have no idea how she does it.

The books winds together many seemingly disparate stories into one: Ester and her mysterious birth, the grand family of the Dedlocks, the famous case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, the apparently childlike Mr Skimpole, the lawyers and their clerks, the show more wonderfully genteelly batty Miss Flite and the trooper and his friends.

I found Ester, one of the principal narrators, quite amusing, since she is the pattern of a demure useful moral victorian lady. It leaves me wondering if this was Dickens' ideal of feminine virtue. However, I think she was set up as such to be a contrast to the mystery of her birth; the sins of the parents not being visited upon that of the child in this case. I can see however that she could be, for some at least, a rather annoying prissy little woman.

There are some truly touching scenes which Dickens deals with sensitivity and tenderness, particularly in relation to the very poor Joe. This is in marked contrast to his treatment of the lawyers, for whom one can presume Dickens lost no love. He is scathing in his condemnation of the waste of time and money, their cynical manipulation of people and circumstances for their own ends. It is clear that he feels that the Court of Chancery was the last place an honest person should go for justice, the case of Mr Gridley is clearly an example of how it ruined ordinary people.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and had to race through the final third of the book, desperate to find out what happened next. Highly recommended, even if you think you don't like Dickens. show less

Did I read this book? I suppose I did. Mostly it felt like I was just whining while in its vicinity.

I don’t care what anyone says about Bleak House. Defend it all you want. I’ve experienced the damned thing. It fucking sucks. Part of my disdain for it, I admit, may be baked into the fact that I had to read it at an absolutely brutal pace (2 weeks for this monster, along with four other classes’ worth of reading each night). But even despite that, reading Bleak House felt like genuine physical torture. Opening this book each night, I felt a sickness wash over me, a nausea that gripped my very bones.

I do not particularly want to delve into all the reasons I hated this book, as I’ve already spent so much of my preciously short life show more with its ragged, ponderous prose pressed up to my weary eyeballs. Suffice it to say that combining two years’ worth of serialised chapters into a novel is a recipe for utter disaster. There are no stakes until probably about 500 pages in. There is no impetus at all for the story to be told. Digressions are plentiful are never enjoyable. Side characters constantly reappear, seemingly with the sole purpose to grate on the reader’s patience—Dickens has an especial fondness for Skimpole that leads to his constant cropping up despite never being integral to the story in any way. And even the prose isn’t terribly impressive. Dickens vacillates between maudlin sentimentality and cynical disdain; he takes perverse pleasure in telling, telling, telling (rarely showing); he uses characters in the same way a better novelist would use setting—they’re inanimate automatons motivated solely by the fact that there must be words on the page, not because they have any inner spark which leads to a compelling story. Bleak House is, essentially, the worst, most overpopulated soap opera you’ve ever seen, transplanted onto nearly 1,000 pages and told in the most self-important, circular way imaginable. The reader does not explore this world or these characters; she is strapped to a chair while they are force-fed to her until she vomits.

And don’t you dare try to excuse this shit based on its age; I’ve read far older books that were far more entertaining and better written. Even some of Dickens’ contemporaries were contemptuous of disgustingly long slogs like Bleak House, with Henry James referring to serialised multi-plot volumes like this as “large, loose, baggy monsters.” This is what happens when an author is allowed to run unsupervised through the world he has created—unbearable confusion and narrative chaos.

Excuse my while I thank the gods that I never have to think about this horrid thing ever again. show less

The review will follow, but first, an illuminating interlude:

All:
God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2

Shakespeare was, of course, not really against all lawyers per se. Nor, despite appearances to the contrary, was Dickens. Bleak House, based on Dickens's experience as a law clerk and on litigation concerning the copyright of his early books, is often considered his greatest novel. Much of the plot of the book is concerned with the Chancery show more case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and how it impacts all the characters involved in the book. I enjoyed the book immensely, but not without a few caveats, which I will get to.

Recently, I read in a (South African) newspaper that one of our local literary doyennes said on a panel that 'children need to stop reading Charles Dickens'. My first thought was, well, that must be out of context. Yes, there are problems with Dickens, especially socio-political ones, but one cannot deny that, at his best, he was a great writer. I for one read him as a child and, though I only understood him as a child, I still loved his ability to weave a story. Now, although I have put away some childish things, I still admit to a deep, abiding passion for Dickens, who is more than merely a great plotter. Bleak House has again proved to me that beyond a doubt.

I will not get into the story much - it is much too labyrinthine to summarise adequately, and as it is also a bit of a mystery, I would not want to give away some of the plot. Rather, I will mention a few of the characters that I found particularly interesting, and some incidents which elucidate Dickens's methods. Dickens writes the story in alternating chapters of anonymous third person narration and first person narration. The third person narration is more terse and to the point, but it also has lively imagery and telling moments of detail. Here, for instance, is the famous opening of the book:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

The terseness beautifully captures both the hidebound, rule-governed atmosphere of the Chancery court, and the dismal quality of the weather. The Megalosaurus - a humorous touch! - also indicates the 'dinosaurs' one finds in the courts.

The first person narration is from the point of view of one Esther Summerson. Dickens is often accused of being unable to write realistic female characters: they are either angels or devils. Esther is certainly on the side of the angels, but she is more complicated than that. Her narration is usually straightforward and candid, but at times she can even be a bit unreliable. Here is the opening of her first paragraph:

I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my doll, when we were alone together, 'Now Dolly, I am not clever, you know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!'

Esther protests too much, methinks. Through the course of the story, we will see that she is quite shrewd.

Dickens beautifully ties together these two narratives, introducing such memorable characters as Richard Carstone and Ada, the 'wards in Jarndyce', mad Miss Flite, who haunts the Chancery courts, and Harold Skimpole. Ah, Harold Skimpole! What a character! Supposedly based on Leigh Hunt, Harold is 'a child' in the matters of money, human relationships and society - or so he claims. He is quite charming, in his way, but he mercilessly sponges off all the characters who are of a noble persuasion. And then there is John Jarndyce, whom Nabokov called 'the best and kindest man ever to appear in a novel'. He is such an endearing, humane character, that he puts the lie to suggestions that Dickens can only write grotesque caricatures.

I do not usually show much emotion when reading books - I tend to think that tears can be evidence of cheap emotional exploitation - but this book really touched a deep chord in my heart, and I admit to sometimes wiping away an errant drop of salty moisture. Dickens is not saying that the law is inherently bad - on the contrary, he has some very humane legal characters in his fiction. Rather, he shows how the impersonal, mechanical application of the law, without consideration of human frailty, can lead to a grinding down of people and their hopes.

I will miss the friends with whom Mr Dickens has acquainted me. Lovely is the thought that, in the days to come, in the years that wait, I will be able to revisit this brave company of souls.

Oh, and I didn't even mention the Spontaneous Human Combustion! show less