Bleak House [with Biographical Introduction]

by Charles Dickens

Widely considered one of Dickens most superb and complete novels, "Bleak House" has a complex plot that contains one of his most elaborate attacks on a flaw of the chancery system. The kind John Jarndyce is tied up in litigation that only his wards Richard and Ada care to discuss. He then becomes guardian of Esther, an orphaned young woman who comprises a part of the experimental narration of the novel. A series of events take the vast array of comic and tragic characters from the slums of London to the mansions of noblemen, involving some in treachery and others in discovery. Dickens blends the perfect balance of comedy and social satire in a story that contains mystery, tragedy, murder, redemption, and enduring love.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Victorian, British Literature

323 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1853

About the author

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so this is the 1853 version of The Wire. But with less gay sex. And no swearing. And very few mentions of drugs. And only one black person, I think, maybe not even one. And of course it's in London, not Baltimore. But other than that, it's the same.

Pound for pound, this is Dickens' best novel, and of course, that is saying a great deal. I've nearly read all of them so you may take my word. Have I ever written a review which was anything less than 101% reliable, honest and straightforward? Well, there you are then.

Bleak House gives some people a leetle problem insofar as you have half of it narrated by Esther (Goody Three Shoes, too good for just two) Summerson, who you ache to have a few bad things happen to, because she trills, she sings, she sees the best in everyone, tra la la, tweedly dee dee. This does get on some people's nerves. But I downloaded a dvd called Dickens Girls Gone Wild last week and let me tell you there's a whole other side to Esther Summerson - given the right surroundings (I think it was Malta, and the sangria was flowing) she could be good company.

However. Bleak House as a whole does no more than take it upon itself to explain how society works. And it's utterly gobsmacking. There are a lot of words in Bleak House's 890 pages but gobsmacking is not one of them. It's a word that was invented to describe Dickens novels.

[Emily May · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very clever book because the main issue with it is exactly the point Dickens is making: it is so long and dragged out.

Bleak House is quite the achievement. It's a 900+ page monster made up a thousand different subplots with a large cast of characters. It also fanned the flames that led to a huge overhaul of the legal system in England. Buried beneath and entwined with the many subplots is the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce - Dickens's parody of the Chancery Court system (because the case is dragged out over many years).

I like Dickens, and I can appreciate what Bleak House does, but I'm sorry to say I won't be joining the ranks who consider this their favourite. His best work objectively? Maybe. Who even knows what that means? But definitely not my favourite. That would be Great Expectations-- a novel that just rips my heart out and stomps all over it.

I really do understand that this is the whole point, but so many chapters and events in this book were extended needlessly, padded out with waffle and meanderings that seemed to have nothing to do with the novel at large. That's very clever and all - given that this is a critique of a court system that extends everything needlessly and gets nothing done - but it's a bit of a chore to read. It's a shorter book than Les Misérables, The Count of Monte Cristo and War and Peace, but it truly doesn't feel like it.

The characters, too, were not as memorable as many of Dickens others. Having read it, I can now see why the Bleak House characters are not household names like Miss Havisham or Bill Sykes. I found them bland in comparison. I also think it was a mistake to have the simpering "I'm so modest and unintelligent" Esther Summerson as a narrator (Dickens's only female narrator). It's unfortunate because I think Dickens usually excels at first person narration, but Esther's constant need to reiterate her modesty and lack of intelligence is frustrating.

If I were rating this book based on how well it achieved what it set out to do, it would be an easy five stars. If you believe classics are not there for enjoyment but for self-flagellation, this is an easy five stars. Dickens successfully wrote a long and slow book to show how the legal system is so long and slow. Some of the subplots and character dramas were interesting; many were not.

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[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shivering in unheated gaslit quarters (Mrs. Winklebottom, my plump and inquisitive landlady, treats the heat as very dear, and my radiator, which clanks and hisses like the chained ghost of a boa constrictor when it is active, had not yet commenced this stern and snowy morning), I threw down the volume I had been endeavoring to study; certainly I am not clever, neither am I intrepid nor duly digligent, as after several pages I found the cramped and tiny print an intolerable strain on my strabismic eyes. Straightening my bonnet, I passed outdoors into the frigid, sooty streets, where shoppers bustled by in a frenzy, now rushing into the 99-cent store, bedecked with PVC Santa Claus banners, now into Nelson's Xmas Shoppe, in search of glistening ornaments. Bowing my head perversely against busy crowds and fierce wind, I stepped into a subway, which conveyed me to a winding street down which I hurried until I reached a peculiar establishment, the shingle for which had been battered by the strain of city winters, by pollution, and no doubt by the small mischievious hands of vandals, who had modified the sign with their colorful signatures and illustrations, but upon which could still be read - with some effort - Amperthump & Hagglestern, Booksellers.

I entered to a sound of tinkling bells affixed to the heavy door, the hinges of which creaked as I propelled myself through its narrow passage. Proceeding forward, I heard a sullen voice squeak, "Check yer bag, miss?" and glanced up to see an urchin, nearly lost amidst piles of remaindered volumes, beckoning with one grubby hand while clutching a wrinkled comic in the other; I refused, smiling gently, and passed into the densely cluttered shop, where I was intercepted by Mr. Amperthump, the proprietor, a gentleman of about three and forty, whose thick-rimmed spectacles and corpulent physique recall two of a tragic trinity of dead singers, who upon seeing me took my cold hands in his ink-stained ones and kissed them. "How can I assist, my dear?" he boomed so loudly that a little one-eyed spaniel started from its slumber, and the urchins shelving books glared up at their master with undisguised annoyance.

Drawing out my small copy of Bleak House, which I had obtained from the Queens Public Library -- supported, to wonderous effect, by the subsciption of tax dollars, and no doubt supplemented by charitable impulses of certain gentleladies -- and endeavored to explain, as simply as I could, that I desired an edition of the same narrative writ larger and in more mercifully legible print. However Mr. Amperthump appeared distressed and could not remain silent long, flinging my book away. "NO!" he cried. "You are too young and pretty" (at this I blushed and tried to protest, for I am not pretty, in fact I am plain) "to be reading this antiquated rot! Here, instead, is the latest experimental fiction from Rajistan D. McGingerloop." At this he placed in my hands a queer volume, unlike any I had seen before. "Throughout his controversial career McGingerloop has exploded one by one conventions of the novel... in this latest work he has done away with pages!" And indeed, when I examined the book I discovered he was quite right, and that the book I held was a brick of paper, and could not be opened, having as he indicated, no pages at all. I thanked Mr. Amperthump for his solicitude, at which point he pressed that I try Petunia al Gonzalez-Mjobebe's story of a love affair between an Iranian transexual and a Chinese android, a meditation, Mr. Amperthump assured me, on globalization and identity, but also, he said, a suspenseful legal thriller in its own right, albeit one subverting the conventions of that genre - quite, he added, subversively. Finally I was given to understand that in addition to Mr. Amperthump's conviction that I should not be reading Dickens, he had none in stock, and finally I gave my thanks for all his kindness and passed out again into the filthy snow and gloom.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which house in Charles Dickens's novel is "Bleak House"?

It surely cannot be the house which bears its name; a large airy house, which we first visit in the company of the young wards of Jarndyce, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, and their companion Esther. Ironically, this "Bleak House" is anything but bleak. It is a pleasant place of light and laughter. Mr. Jarndyce imprints his positive outlook on life, never allowing the lawsuit to have any negative influence. Indeed, when he first took on the house from a relative, Tom Jarndyce, he says,

"the place [had become] dilapidated, the wing whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.”

Neither can it be another house, which is to bear its name far later in the novel. So does the title perhaps refer to "Tom-All-Alone's", originally owned by Tom Jarndyce, but now a decrepit edifice inhabited by poor unfortunates who have nowhere else to go, sleeping crammed on top of each other? Tom-All-Alone's certainly represents the worst of society's injustices. Or could it be the immensely grand, laybrinthine mansion, "Chesney Wold", owned by Lord and Lady Dedlock? That is a magnificent abode, complete with its ominously suggestive "Ghost Walk"; much admired, much respected, but devoid of happiness. It embodies a bleakness of spirit; those living in it live a lie, and mourn the past. Or is it more likely to be one of the smaller neglected dwellings, such as that of Krook the rag-and-bone merchant, whose house is packed to the brim with junk and paper - or his neighbour, the mad Miss Flite, herself once a ward of Jarndyce, now reduced to living with her caged birds,

"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach."

Or the house inhabited by Mrs Jellyby; yet another neglected house near to falling down, as she furthers her missionary zeal, leaving her daughter Caddy to cope as best she can with the crumbling household? Her self-righteous friend Mrs. Pardiggle's house, is also a candidate,

"The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him."

And the hovel lived in by Jenny and her brickmaker husband, is surely a contender; that meagre hut visited with an ostentatious show of charity by the abominable Mrs. Pardiggle with her "rapacious benevolence (if I may use the expression)"? There is no shortage of candidates for a "Bleak House" in this behemoth novel - but it is by far from clear which house is meant.

Dickens has given us a surprisingly short title, but it is as well disguised as the sixty-two word long title for the novel we now call, "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" or even simply, "Martin Chuzzlewit..." in which throughout the novel we think it is called after one character, but on consideration, it is more likely to be about another. Dickens loved his mysteries, and this is his greatest completed mystery novel. Even the characters are in disguise. One has called himself "Nemo" - "no-one" - and another has taken great pains to obfuscate her history; yet another has never known his own name. In some cases the disguise is not by intention; one of the main characters genuinely does not know who she actually is, and thinks she is someone else.

But before this review becomes as baffling as some of the nascent strands in this novel (never fear, with Dickens everything is tied up nicely by the end), perhaps I should set the scene properly.

Bleak House was Charles Dickens's ninth novel, written when he was between 40 and 41 years of age. Whilst writing it Dickens's wife Kate gave birth to their tenth child, Edward, or "Plorn". A few months later Dickens himself went on tour throughout England with his amateur acting troupe. He then became seriously ill with a recurrence of a childhood kidney complaint, and was bedridden for six days, but still had 17 chapters to write. He went to Boulogne, France to recover, and celebrated finishing Bleak House by holding a banquet in Boulogne, for his publishers Bradbury and Evans, his close friend, the writer Wilkie Collins, and several others.

Each part of the serial was illustrated by his favourite illustrator and great friend Hablot Knight Brown, or "Phiz", with remarkable skill. His illustrations take great care to convey the dark brooding mood of the novel, or the quirkiness of the characters. They even cleverly manage to convey the novel's theme of disguise. Esther's face, for instance, is rarely shown. She is usually turned away from the viewer's eye.

This novel is often considered Dickens's finest work although it is not by any means his most popular. His working title for Bleak House was actually "Tom-All-Alone's", which seems to indicate that of all the many themes in this book, the paramount one in his mind was his hatred of the London slums. Dickens loathed both the despicable conditions there, and the governmental practices which allowed them to exist. He tirelessly campaigned for their improvement. But the action itself is intended to illustrate the evils caused by long, drawn-out suits in the Courts of Chancery. Much of it was based on fact, as Dickens had observed the inner workings of the courts as a reporter in his youth. In Bleak House he observes bitterly,

"The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble."

This, then, is the crux of the story, but it is wrapped in a magnificently complex tale of mystery and intrigue. In fact there are about five major stories all interwoven in Bleak House, and it would be difficult to say which the main story is. Each is connected to the case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, and the destructive ramifications of two conflicting and contesting wills echo down the generations, and across all strata of society. It is a breathtaking accomplishment to plot, develop and tell such a complex story in such a riveting way. For it has to be borne in mind that this, like his preceding novels, was only accessible to Dickens's readers in small chunks of three or four chapters at a time, once a month, stretched over a year and a half: March 1852 to September 1853.

Yet his readers were gripped, entranced, demanding; able to remember the myriads of characters from one episode to the next. Perhaps this is why Dickens gave his characters such memorable tags: Jo, the crossing-sweeper, who "don't know nothink", subject to grinding poverty and ignorance, forever being "moved on"; the languid "My Lady" Dedlock, fashionably fatigued, forever full of ennui and "bored with life, bored with myself", Miss Flite, who "expects a judgment shortly", John Jarndyce, to be avoided if "the wind is in the east" and he is in his "growlery", Harold Skimpole, protesting he is "but a child" in matters of money.

The Smallweeds are a grotesque family of caricatures. The miserly money-lender Grandfather Smallweed is a very old man confined to a chair, where he is probably sitting on a large sum of money. His wife is living in fear of him, and permanently panicked by any mention of money. She starts up and talks nonsense until Grandfather Smallweed throws his cushion at her, silencing her but reducing himself to a bundle of clothes, whereupon we get his catchphrase, "Shake me up, Judy!" There is the lawyer Tulkinghorn; the man of secrets, "a great reservoir of confidences", or the lesser lawyer Vholes, the "evil genius". There are many short quips such as these, carefully planted by Dickens, to jog our memories should we need them.

Perhaps the easiest story to follow is that of Esther Summerson, a nobody whose "mother was her disgrace". She was a poor child, with a sense of being guilty for having been born, feeling that her birthday "was the most melancholy ... in the whole year". She was offered an education and a home by the benefactor John Jarndyce. Dickens invites us to view her story as key, by alterating passages of the novel, making some chapters by an omisicient narrator, and some by Esther. Unfortunately for a modern audience, we quickly lose sympathy with Esther, who seems to protest her gaucheness and ineptitude rather too much. Perhaps after all it is telling that she is Dickens's only female narrator.

In the narrative she makes it very clear how unworthy she is, how unattractive and dull compared with her peers. She also makes it abundantly clear that anyone reading her words knows that everyone in Bleak House argues with her about this, always complimenting her kindness, virtue, wisdom, hard work and her strong sense of gratitude and duty. It is tempting to view this as an ironic depiction of Esther, were we not now to know that a modest, self-effacing woman such as this, was what Dickens himself admired - or at least professed in public to admire. The character of Esther was thought to be based on Georgina Hogarth, his wife's youngest sister, who had joined his household in 1845, and was taking over more and more of the running of the house. She was apparently a self-sacrificing sort of person, who immersed herself in household duties and was dedicated to the welfare of others.

Many other characters in Bleak House were also, as was so often the case, based on people Dickens knew, and sometimes they were famous with his readers too. For instance Harold Skimpole, that dissembling, conniving hypocrite, lover of Art, Music, culture and everything that was fine and tasteful, was a thinly veiled portrait of Leigh Hunt, an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer, who continually sponged off his friends, Shelley and Byron. Dickens himself admitted this,

"I suppose he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words! ... It is an absolute reproduction of a real man".

Mrs. Jellyby was based on Caroline Chisholm, who had started out as an evangelical philanthropist in Sydney, Australia, and then moved to England in 1846. Over the next six years Caroline assisted 11,000 people to settle in Australia. Dickens admired her greatly, and supported her schemes to assist the poor who wished to emigrate. However, he was appalled by how unkempt her own children were, and by the general neglect he saw in her household, hence his portrayal of Mrs. Jellyby.

Another character, Laurence Boythorn, who was continually at odds with Sir Leicester Dedlock over land rights, was based on Dickens's friend, Walter Savage Landor. He also was an English writer and poet; critically acclaimed but not very popular. His headstrong nature, hot-headed temperament, and complete contempt for authority, landed him in a great deal of trouble over the years. His writing was often libellous, and he was repeatedly involved in legal disputes with his neighbours. And yet Landor was described as, "the kindest and gentlest of men".

Perhaps the most poignant character is Jo the crossing sweeper. He has, "No father, no mother, no friends", yet is essential to the plot, and clearly has a lot of innate intelligence. Perhaps Dickens took especial care with this portrayal, as according to Dickens's sixth son, Alfred, Jo was based on a small boy, a crossing sweeper outside Dickens's own house. Dickens took a great interest in the lad, gave him his meals and sent him to school at night. When he reached the age of seventeen, Dickens fitted him out and paid his passage to the colony of New South Wales, where he did very well, writing back to his benefactor three years later.

If Jo is the character likeliest to tug at the heartstrings, Inspector Bucket may be the one to admire most; the one who seems before his time, presaging much of the detective fiction we enjoy today. The character of the astute Inspector Bucket, uncomfortable unless he gives "Sir Leicester Dedlock - Baronet", his full title every time, is the first ever portrayal of a detective in English fiction, as he,

"stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age...there is nothing remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing".

Dickens based him on the real-life Inspector Charles Frederick Field, about whom he had already written three articles in "Household Words".

Lady Dedlock's maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, is one of Dickens's most powerful females; a prototype of Madame Defarge in "A Tale of Two Cities", full of passion, outrage, and talk of blood. She was modelled on a real-life Swiss lady's maid, Maria Manning, who, along with her husband were convicted of the murder of Maria's lover, Patrick O'Connor, in a case which became known as "The Bermondsey Horror." All Dickens's contemporary readers would have been familiar with the case.

Amusingly, one character is named after a real person - though she is not a human being at all but a cat! Krook's cat "Lady Jane", is named after Lady Jane Grey who reigned as Queen of England for a mere nine days in 1533. (She was forced to abdicate, imprisoned, and eventually beheaded.)

Although the theme of greed and corruption within the law is bitingly serious, and a passionately held belief by Dickens, and although the mysteries pile one on top of another throughout the book, Dickens provides plenty of comic characters to lighten the mood and pepper his stories. As well as those mentioned, there is the twittery Volumnia Dedlock, a poor relation of Sir Leicester Dedlock, described as "a young lady (of sixty)...rouged and necklaced". And we have the junior lawyer Mr. Guppy, almost too clever for his own good, presented in a ridiculous light, although actually having a sound and loyal moral core. He is one of my personal favourites.

There is also Mr. Turveydrop, the owner of a dance academy, and a "model of deportment ... He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear." Esther comments, "As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes." His hardworking, dancing master son "Prince" (named after the Prince Regent) is another humorous portrayal, as is Caddy Jellyby. Albeit a drudge and slave for her philanthropic mother, we are first intoduced to Caddy as a comical crosspatch with inky fingers. The tiny tot Peepy Jellyby is a delight, and Caddy's father too, is almost pathetically comical, finding consolation in leaning his head on walls; any wall seeming to suffice.

We do get a slightly different view of the other characters through Esther's eyes, which makes for interesting reading. Harold Skimpole, for instance is, I think, only shown within her purview. But with the comic episodes it matters not whose eyes we are viewing them through; we just enjoy their exuberance as a contrast to the simpering sentiments of Esther, "Dame Durden", "Old Woman", "Little Woman", "Mrs. Shipton" "Mother Hubbard", or any of the other appellations coined by the inhabitants of Bleak House. She herself is irritatingly wont to call Ada "my dear", "my darling", "my pet", or "my love", rarely using her actual name, even in reported speech. My, how tastes do change.

So which house do I personally think "Bleak House" refers to? It could well be Chesney Wold, which by the end has itself become a kind of tomb for the ghosts,

"no flag flying now by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it",

But given all the metaphors in the novel, I am bound to conside the title itself as a metaphor.

In most of his works, Dickens imbues buildings, particuarly old houses, with their own personality. Each become a character in its own right. Bleak House, in my view, is a metaphor for the High Court of Chancery.

So would it be too fanciful of me to suggest that the main character in this novel in the Law itself? Read it and see what you think. You don't need to take 18 months, as Dickens's public had to. But it may be a good idea to not race through this book, if you want to follow all the mysteries. Perhaps you may wish to explore the contrasting themes of antiquity and tradition represented by Sir Leicester Dedlock, set against the ever encroaching Industrial Age; an age of progress, represented by the housekeeper's grandson, the iron-master's son, Watt (such an appropriate first name!) Rouncewell. Or perhaps the theme of being trapped, being a prisoner, being caged calls to you. There are a host of examples within. Or the theme of unhappy families; bad child-rearing is shown time and time again in all its many guises, with equally devastating effects for rich and poor alike. Nearly all the lives of these characters seem to be unfulfilled, and have been blighted by coincidences or misunderstandings. They are people trapped by their circumstances.

You may find that you enjoy spotting the codes, or the continuing motifs of paper, birds, disguised faces, fire, and so on; not to mention getting the most out of Bleak House's masterly complexity and thrilling atmosphere. You may love the richness of the language and description. Or you may, in the end, become addicted to the mystery element and read it strictly for the story itself. There are many interwoven plots in this novel and altogether there are ten deaths as it proceeds; all of them tragic in different ways, and most of them key characters. One is due to a hot topic in scientific debate, so contentious that Dickens felt the need to defend it in his preface. In February 1853, just over halfway through this novel, he became involved in a public controversy about the issue of spontaneouse combustion. George Henry Lewes had argued that the phenomenon was a scientific impossibility, but Dickens maintained that it could happen.

I do not tell the story, it would be well nigh impossible anyway in this space, but I do encourage you to read this masterpiece.

A labyrinth of grandeur...an old family of echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and departs.

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is a lawsuit justice, when it goes on and on ....and on, seemingly in perpetuity ? In Bleak House located in the countryside outside of London, that is the center of the story, years pass too many to count, the lawyers are happy the employed judges likewise ; the litigants not... money is sucked dry from their bodies...like vampires whose fangs are biting hard, the flesh weakens and the victims blood flows , ( cash ) evaporates and soon nothing is left but the corpses... the gorged lawyers are full until the next too trusting suckers walk by . In the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce the quite unimportant truth be told, little known except to those who are very sadly...
involved in the Court of Chancery, notorious well renowned for its slow pace ZZZ... The court clerks, audiences or should I say spectators, and even the attorneys are amused, laughter frequently heard, not a surprise this British institution no longer exists... Esther Summerson is a typical orphan in another Charles Dickens book raised by a cold woman, (and others previously of the same type) that calls herself the child's godmother, Miss Barbary, with a mysterious background too somehow connected to the young girl but how... Often telling the unloved Esther it would have been better for all , if she had never lived. Nevertheless this enigma which the few people in contact with Summerson, maybe that name is really hers , none will discuss with the teenager. The unfriendly lady keeps the puzzle a puzzle, from the past... she won't reveal who the Miss is, the old woman Barbary can keep a dark secret. Sent to a girls boarding school later, Esther bills are paid by an extraordinary kindly gentleman John Jarndyce, yes the man unwillingly entangled in the detestable lawsuit ( like many others) started by his uncle, ironically deceased still he inherited the case. Soon the courts give custody to him his two distant cousins, orphans, there are many in Victorian England, set circa the 1830's before the railroads made travel easy. Richard Carstone an amiable but lazy boy and the beautiful loyal Ada Clare, they are also distant relatives. Bleak House Mr. Jarndyce home is not empty any more, to this rather gloomy place arrives another ward of the court Esther, their guardian is the bright spot, strangely she has somehow a relationship to the suit also. The three become quick friends all around 17. Richard and Ada fall in love, Esther is their best friend. Sir Leicester Dedlock, the arrogant Baronet (get the symbolism) is a party in the suit, his haughty wife Honoria, pretty and intimidating but there is something not quite clear there. The family lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn, has unseen power over the proud aristocrats, he is a very capable man yet somewhat soft spoken and very quiet for his noisy profession...
...but what is it ? And the Inspector Mr. Bucket of the London police he never seems to sleep... hovering over everyone, especially the notorious underworld criminals of...
the entire city, solving crimes...One of Dickens best novels and I've read ten so far..The opening scene a description of London's famous bad weather is priceless, nobody could have done it better...

[B0nnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak House. How can it be over? I hold this incredible book in my hand and can’t believe I have finished it. The 965 page, 2 inch thick, tiny-typed tome may seem a bit intimidating. Relax, you can read it in a day - that is, if you read one page per minute for 16 hours. And you might just find yourself doing that.


Bleak House is more Twilight Zone than Masterpiece Theatre. However there is enough spirit of both to satisfy everyone. And indeed it should - it has it all - unforgettable characters, intrigue, plot within plot, ruined love, enormous themes, complications, and description - and what description! it goes so far, a lesser writer would be lost forever trying to find their way back. Above all, it has that brilliant, constant satirical voice of Dickens. That is the thing lost in TV, film and radio adaptations of his work. One merely gets a hint of it in the best of these.

The plot, the characters, the very fog that we encounter in the introduction, are all connected to one main thread: a lawsuit, the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. It involves an inheritance with several wills, and it cannot be decided which one is legitimate. The case is before the Courts of Chancery and has dragged on for generations.

Someone stands to gain a lot of money and property, but the long entanglement of the law has made it a curse. While greed and madness consume certain characters (sometimes literally), there are also those who know how pointless and destructive it is to live under such hope.

Bleak House is another reminder what an important influence Dickens was on Dostoyevsky, who understood his power very well.

Bleak House is alternatively narrated by the orphan Esther Summerson, and an omniscient third person. Dickens's sophisticated juggling of narrative invents a style that really can't be defined, just like the novel itself. Is it a thriller, a romance, magic realism, a murder mystery? Yes and no. Is it a treatise on poverty, domestic violence, false charity, obsession? Again, yes and no. All is mixed into the fog - along with that forty foot long Megalosaurus that Dickens summons in the opening paragraph – and emerges as one of the best novels ever written.

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered the masterful Dickensian novels with this reading. I don't seem to have seen an adaptation for television or cinema of this vast soap opera (in a good sense). Its original publication spanned a year and a half, in monthly deliveries, from March 1852 to September 1853. Suppose many of its characters today can put off a little, even a well-meaning reader. In that case, we must not forget that in 1852, one eagerly awaited the next month's bundle and (probably) reread those already published. The novel's construction is original: chapters told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, ironic towards legal and political powers, alternate with those of the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson. Because this is a novel about an interminable trial in the Chancery, which has lasted for decades, Esther is concerned by the prosecution, which bears her guardian's name, Jarndyce. Still, she will not discover the full extent of her involvement, which is linked to her origins, until the novel's end. I enjoyed losing myself in the maze of these interwoven stories, accompanied by characters so striking (sometimes annoying) as Dickens knew how to characterize them.

[Paul Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A biting critique of the court system and the legal profession by the Victorian master of social commentary

Many of the characters of BLEAK HOUSE – including most notably but certainly not limited to John Jarndyce, and his wards Richard Carstone and Ada Clare – are legatees in some version of a will left by a previous scion of the wealthy Jarndyce family. The problem is that there was several versions of the will left behind at various times, in various places, and with varying degrees of approbation and legal authenticity. The interminable multi-generational dispute over which will holds sway and who will be the ultimate wealthy winner of the legal sweepstakes that is Jarndyce v Jarndyce is the core driver of the plot that sustains Dickens brilliant satire and social critique of the law, the legal system, and the legal profession.

But readers looking for themes and social commentary in other areas will find plenty of other cuts of meat to chew on in BLEAK HOUSE – a scathing criticism of the outrageous hypocrisy of organized religion and those who would claim to be organizers for so-called charitable causes; the desperate plight of the impoverished lower class in mid-city London; the struggle (nay, call it an embittered and hostile war) between progressive middle class entrepreneurs who welcomed the burgeoning Industrial Revolution and the traditionalist upper class who feared anything but the most rigid adherence to the status quo; and more.

Despite the presence of a catalogue of characters who clearly fall on the “bad guy” side of the virtue accounting ledger – Tulkinghorn, Krook, Skimpole, Mrs Pardiggle and Jellyby, Chadband, and more – most readers, on reflection will probably come to the conclusion that the main villains of the piece are more thematic in nature – the institution of Chancery court; the legal profession; hypocritical religion and institutional philanthropy’s gathering of charitable contributions; government insensitivity and the treatment of the poor, to note the most obvious examples.

Many readers may be unaware that Dickens’ brilliance broke new literary ground in two different ways.

First, his use of two different narrative styles – an omniscient, invisible narrator who spoke in the present tense, and Esther Summerson, a first person narrator speaking in the past tense who, as a matter of obvious necessity, was restricted to presenting her own view of events subject to her own emotions and opinions. This alternating style of narration was entirely unprecedented in Victorian literature and allowed for the interpretation of the same event from multiple perspectives.

The second (and I personally am eternally grateful for this) is the use of a detective as a front of stage leading character in the investigation of a murder mystery. Our enjoyment of Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie’s work is attributable to their standing on the proverbial shoulders of Charles Dickens, the giant.

Your personal opinion may vary, but I reckon BLEAK HOUSE ultimately to be a tragedy in which the personal affairs of many of the protagonists are, at least in the short term, resolved. But I think many of these resolutions are unsatisfactory and, well, (you guessed it!) bleak! And that death count, my goodness. BLEAK HOUSE, like Shakespeare’s HAMLET, leaves the proverbial stage fairly littered at the close of the curtain with the detritus of corpses who met their demise by an astonishing number of ways and in a bewildering variety of circumstances. (Our reading group reckoned the final tally to be, of course, lucky 13!!)

Whether you agree with my assessment and think of BLEAK HOUSE as tragedy or consider it to be a gritty example of a multi-generation family drama, I hope you’ll agree with me that BLEAK HOUSE is absolutely brilliant and one of the finest examples of classic English literature that you could ever hope to find. If you’re a potential newcomer to Dickens, take your time and don’t give up. Reading, understanding, absorbing, and enjoying Dickens is an acquired taste and a patiently acquired skill. The rewards are well worth the effort.

Paul Weiss

[Piyangie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What attracted me to Bleak House was the Chancery Court suit of Jarndyce V Jarndyce. Having always had an interest in stories with a legal touch to them, it was natural for me to be drawn to the book. Besides, having learned that this book inspired a judicial reform movement which led to some actual legal reforms in later years and knowing the power of Dickens' satire and being curious to learn what in the story that truly inspired such a movement, I was most interested in reading it.

True to my understanding, the main part of the story is dedicated to the Chancery Court suit, which has been running for years without a foreseeable ending. Dickens, ever being the reformer, mocks the Chancery justice system that causes delays till the cases are passed from generation to generation.

The Lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a Will, and the trusts under a Will—or it was, once. It’s about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about Costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.

This powerful satirical criticism of the system very much impressed me. I have always enjoyed the satire in Dickens's works, but if he ever used that tool to his greatest advantage, it was definitely in this work.

In addition to the main theme, there are several subplots. All the subplots are connected to the main theme or its characters. However, some of the subplots have their own story as well. These subplots touch on different themes. Poverty is one, especially the plight of poor children who are abandoned or orphaned. It was heart-wrenching to read the subplot touching on Jo, a poor orphaned (or abandoned) child who lives a miserable life far more suited to an animal than a human. The compassion with which Dickens tells the story of Jo brought me to tears many a time. Love and Duty are another. This theme is only secondary to the Chancery suit and occupies a major part of the story through the stories and characters of Esther, John Jarndyce, Ada, and Allen Woodcourt. Philanthropy is also another theme, and here both real philanthropy and pretensions are brought to light. John Jarndyce represents the true and real philanthropist who disinterestedly acts for the benefit of others. And some other characters make a show of it. I truly felt that these pretentious philanthropists were representing the British government of the time. Dickens was a social reformer and raised his voice through his pen to lash out at the government for its inadequate measures to improve the lives and living conditions of the poor. All these themes, coupled with the mystery, bring intrigue, colour, and variety to the book. Reading the book was like reading many different stories.

In Bleak House , Dickens uses a wide array of characters ranging from the aristocrats to the poor living in slums. In my reading life, I doubt if I have ever come across so many characters in one book. Although I have read reviews where it is commented that it was hard to follow so many characters, I didn't have any difficulty keeping track of them. Perhaps it may be due to my reading the book very slowly. The use of different characters and a large number of them kept the story alive and moving. No reading minute felt boring. Many of the characters held my interest, but I liked John Jarndyce, Esther (our heroine, surprisingly new in a Dickens novel), and Allen Woodcourt the most. And my sympathy was freely won by Jo, Lady Deadlock, Ada, and a little grudgingly by Richard.

One of the major writing tools of Dickens is his use of satire. In Bleak House, this tool is amply directed at every quarter. However, in addition to the satirical, philosophical, and matter-of-fact Dickens we usually meet, I also met a sensitive, sympathetic, and compassionate Dickens in Bleak House. His prose is beautiful and the style is elegant, so that even the too verbose parts were read with pleasure.

True to the title, the story is bleak, although there are a few happy endings. But no matter how "bleak" the nature of the story was, it was a treat to read it. I truly enjoyed the read. Its diversity in themes, characters, and settings took me through a very pleasant and memorable journey. I have read that Bleak House is considered to be the best work of Dickens. While I may have my own opinion about that point, I can see why it's being said so.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

[Guille · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charles, tenemos que hablar.

Fue un poco por presión social que me acerque a ti, deslumbrado por tu fama de gran escritor. Al principio todo parecía ir bien, eras ameno, ingenioso, tenías tu pizquita de sarcasmo... pero yo necesito algo más, Charles.

No eres tú, soy yo. No quiero lo mismo que tú y terminaremos haciéndonos daño. Mejor nos damos unos años, o lustros o decenios, lo que haga falta, para pensar lo nuestro, sin prisas, sin ataduras, leyendo a otros autores, escribiendo para otros lectores, y quizás llegue ese día en que recordemos con cariño todos estos momentos que hemos pasado juntos.

Lo intenté, Charles, bien lo sabes, empecé la relación con Grandes esperanzas y hasta me dejé llevar hasta esta tu Casa desolada. 900 páginas de casa, Charles. Pero me puede tu moralismo, tu maniqueísmo simplista, la gran desconfianza que como lector siempre me has tenido: te pasas de explícito, Charles, subrayas todo tres veces y, de verdad, no hace falta, eres lo suficientemente claro la primera vez que dices las cosas.

Tú no me necesitas, siempre has sido muy tuyo, muy transparente, quizás demasiado. En estas relaciones nunca viene mal un poco de misterio y a ti se te ve a la legua, Charles, a ti y a todos tus amigotes, tan de una pieza la mayoría de ellos. Y no es que no me haya divertido esa visión infantil del talludito simplicísimus Skimpole (con lo que siempre hay de transgresor en esas criaturas cándidas), o la mirada siempre presta a turbarse con la menor corriente de aire, sobre todo si es de levante, del depresivo Jarndyce, con la perspectiva aristocrática del rentista-no-he-dado-un-palo-al-agua-en-mi-vida Dedlock que aguanta con resignación y paternalismo a esos seres de especies claramente inferiores nacidos para servirle, o la moralísima y controladora pata Pardiggle y sus horrorosos patitos… En fin, para qué seguir, no es solo diversión lo que busco, Charles.

Te mereces a alguien mejor que yo, alguien que desee dar el siguiente paso hacia otro de tus libros, yo me veo incapaz. Estoy seguro de que te irá bien, tú te lo mereces todo. Adiós, Charles.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Who happens to be in the Lord Chancellor’s court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors…? There is the registrar below the Judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning; for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause at hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers, invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on…”
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House

One of the chief criticisms of the Anglo-American legal system is that it is slow. In civil cases especially – where a speedy trial is not guaranteed – the wheels of justice can move at a glacial pace. As an attorney, I can attest to this from firsthand experience. Certain actions can take years to even approach trial, much less ultimate resolution of the appellate process. In that span, lawyers come and go, witnesses die or disappear, memories wither, petty fights become drawn-out battles, and money – so much money! – just goes whirling down the drain.

There is nothing especially entertaining about this process. To the contrary, it is relatively disheartening to see the search for truth lost in a fog of discovery conflicts, pretrial motions, and endless depositions.

Thus, it should tell you something important about Charles Dickens’s Bleak House that the animating event is an infamous estate case that has been stagnating in chancery for decades.

That case – known as Jarndyce and Jarndyce – is a probate matter concerning a large estate that is shrinking daily due to attorneys’ fees, and is so tangled that no two lawyers can speak for more than a minute without disagreeing as to its purpose. In short, the testator (a.k.a. the rich, dead guy) has left numerous wills, leaving it to his heirs (and their lawyers) to determine the true document. If you are looking for a trenchant deconstruction of British civil procedure in the 19th century, your search is over.

(During a brief period moonlighting as an adjunct professor, I actually used Jarndyce and Jarndyce in my wills, trusts, and estates class, imparting practical pointers on how to avoid just this situation. Hint: thoroughly dispose of all prior wills).

Like many Dickens novels, Bleak House defies brief summarization. After all, it was a serial publication and Dickens had a lot of mouths to feed. The result is sprawling, ambitious, messy, and as convoluted as Jarndyce and Jarndyce itself.

The central figure of Bleak House is that Dickens staple: the orphan. The parentless child here is Esther, an insufferably bland protagonist that made me want to gouge out my eyes with the sheer banality of her existence.

Okay, that came across a little strong. Still, in an 800-page doorstopper, there needs to be some sort of center of gravity. As I’ll explain in a moment, Esther does not fit that description.

In any event, Esther is sent to live with Mr. John Jarndyce, who owns the wonderfully named manor, Bleak House. She is joined there by cousins Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, both potential heirs to the Jarndyce estate.

Esther quickly becomes the head of the household, and the saccharine nature of her existence is revealed. Though the identity of her parents is one of the novel’s central – and I would argue, transparent – mysteries, we are strongly led to believe that Esther descended from heaven on a cotton candy cloud. She is perfect in every way, except in the way that makes fictional characters into believable – or interesting – human beings. She lives only to serve others, and under her benevolent gaze, cousins Richard and Ada fall in love. If this is too Appalachian for you, don’t worry, because Richard also falls in love with Jarndyce and Jarndyce, nurturing a health-sapping obsession with obtaining the estate’s riches.

Dickens – truly acting like a man being paid by the word – spins out storylines with reckless abandon. In order to corral them all, he employs a critically lauded structure, featuring two parallel narrative tracks. One track is delivered in the first person by Esther, while the second is told in the third-person by an omniscient narrator. While these two tracks never quite intersect, or form into a satisfying whole, I certainly enjoyed my reprieve from Esther and her happy martyrdom.

While Jarndyce and Jarndyce is the tale’s spine, a great deal of time is also devoted to various love stories. Besides Ada and Richard’s hillbilly attraction, there are various men vying for Esther, that ultimate paragon of beauty, innocence, and sacrifice. One of these is William Guppy, a law clerk. Another is Dr. Allan Woodcourt, whose lack of any human frailty makes him a good match. Finally, there is John Jarndyce himself, who falls in love with his young ward. This might be creepy were Dickens’s world not so uniformly sexless. There is never any indication of passion or lust, just idealized, put-your-partner-on-a-pedestal “love.” Sex is nothing more than sitting in a room together, staring into each other’s eyes. I have often marveled at how Dickens – hewing to the conventions of his time – creates worlds that are simultaneously absolutely real and absolutely false. His descriptions of London, its fog and grit, are vivid and tactile, while his descriptions of human interactions – especially in the realm of romance – seem culled from a child’s collection of fairy tales.

As if dueling love stories were not subplot enough, there is also the aforementioned secret of Esther’s parentage, which seems to drag on for hundreds of pages, well after even a half-awake reader (such as myself) has solved the riddle.

Heaping complications atop complications, Dickens even throws in a late-inning murder. This allows him the opportunity to introduce English literature's first detective character, Inspector Bucket. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Inspector Bucket is both dogged and clever.

I will admit that I have not come close to reading every Dickens novel, though it is a goal of mine. Still, he seems to be working from a familiar bag of tricks, including the bland orphan-hero, the questionable attorneys, the dizzying digressions, and a character who has been left at the altar and is now ossified by the grief of that moment.

Obviously, those tricks did not all work with me. Nevertheless, there is much to commend here.

Despite my lack of interest in the major characters, I was absolutely charmed by the secondary cast, many of whom are lively, quirky, wonderfully realized, and incredibly named. Long after I set this aside, I imagine I will be able to recall Mr. Skimpole, who manages to convince people to pay his debts by proclaiming a child’s inability to understand money. I also liked Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr. Vholes, the two cunning attorneys with sharp minds and black hearts. These cameo roles serve their purpose, enlivening certain scenes so that Dickens’s headliners can continue moralizing at length.

While it’s tough to end a serial, I also appreciated (and was a bit surprised) that Dickens did not try to tie everything up with big red bows. Some characters die, others end up unhappy. The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce is resolved in the manner that is to be expected. Esther is eventually beamed back up to her spaceship, having successfully conned everyone into believing that she was a human girl. If not wholly satisfying, it is satisfying enough.

With that said, it’s time to circle back to Esther.

I realize I am sort of piling on at this point. Yet, I don’t feel that bad, mainly because Esther is not a real person, nor could she ever be confused for one. To me, she’s a plaster saint. This non-dimensionality undercut my appreciation for Dickens’s brilliance. There were moments when Bleak House started to come together, and it was like viewing a vast and wonderful solar system, with beautiful stars and planets. Unfortunately, instead of orbiting a sun, all those stars and planets orbited a big black hole named Esther. The only complicating question in an uncomplicated character is what’s more irritating: her endless charity, goodness, and selflessness, or the fact that all the other characters continually tell her how charitable, good, and selfless she is.

I have a love-hate thing going with Charles Dickens. On the one hand, I like that he is accessible, that he works on such a broad canvas, and that he is formally daring. On the other hand, I feel like I have to separate a lot of chaff to get to the wheat.

I will acknowledge that I probably could have brought more patience to this literary endeavor. If I had read it at a different time, I might have enjoyed it more, and focused less on its flaws. With that said, I stand by my criticisms. Bleak House resembles a sprawling English country house, added onto over the decades. There are many wings and a lot of rooms. Some of them are grand, some are average, and some are populated with Esther and her cloying, ostentatious humility.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nomen Est Omen, in the world according to Dickens!

But don’t take it literally, especially not when reading the title of Bleak House. For Dickens also requires you to read between the lines, and letters, just like in an acrostic poem:

BLEAK HOUSE
Lovely characters
Elegant prose
Agonising cliffhangers
Knowledgeable descriptions

Humorous plot
Outrageous social conditions
Unusual dual narrative
Suits in Chancery
Everlasting favourite

Yes, Christmas is approaching, it’s Dickens time. I spent it in Chancery this year. And what can I say? Bravo Dickens? No, I stole that Thackeray phrase for David Copperfield last year already! Bravissimo, you fulfilled every single one of my great expectations, as did Great Expectations? Yes, ...

I will just say a simple: “Thank you, Sir!”

I have spent delightful hours in the company of good and bad, funny and passionate, silly and intelligent characters, brought to life in inimitable prose. Where else can I laugh and cry and bite my nails at the same time, while bowing to the elegance of the sentences that follow each other like pearls on one of Lady Dedlock’s more expensive necklaces? Where else can I hate and feel compassion, and wonder at the immense difference between my contemporary world and the London society of Dickens’ times,- and yet recognise it anyway, for being almost identical? For could not Dickens’ short comment on the state of British politics have been heading a newspaper article in 2016, just as well:

“England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in, and there being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no Government.”

Following my reading itinerary, from start to finish, I realise how much I grew to love the many characters, all different, but equally at home in the Bleak House chocolate box, some nutty, some sweet, some rather plain, others exotic. In the end, they all lived up to my expectations, from the very first encounter with the complicated lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which gives the novel its unique flavour:

"In which (I would say) every difficulty, every contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that court, is represented over and over again?"

And what a range of characters I met, circling around the two stable elements of Mr John Jarndyce and Miss Esther Summerson, a young woman who shares the narration of the story with an omniscient voice, so that the narrative is swapping back and forth between her personal experience and impersonal overarching description.

Some characters, like Skimpole, get away with sponging ruthlessly on others because of their presumed innocence:

"All he asked of society was, to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more."

It is not as innocent as that of course, as the story will tell!

Many characters have reason to be frustrated, and Bleak House inspired me to rename my workroom as well, in honour of John Jarndyce’s favourite place:

"This, you must know, is the Growlery, When I am out of humour I come and growl here. [...] The Growlery is the best-used room in the house."

There is no one like Dickens to introduce the reader to a love story in the making, simply by changing the tone used to add a small piece of information at the end of a long chapter on something completely unrelated:

"I have forgotten to mention - at least I have not mentioned - that Mr Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr Badger's. Or, that Mr Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or, that he came."

Another favourite feature in Dickens’ novels is the punny sense of humour that appears over and over again, and shows off both his talent for and his pleasure at playing with words for their own sake, as well as his mastery when it comes to giving all his characters their own stage time, beautifully shown in the following short lesson in mental geometry and verbal comedy:

"But I trusted to things coming round."
That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their 'coming' round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world's 'coming' triangular!
"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square", says Mr Jobling."

Sociologists must love Dickens too. There is more than just a little irony in the sermon that Mrs Snagsby takes to be literal truth, directly applicable to her faulty perception of reality. What a comedy show! A victim of her own imagination and jealousy, Mrs Snagsby interprets preacher Chadband's words as a revelation of her husband’s infidelity, which leads to her total collapse during a sermon, completely inexplicable to the rest of the assembled community:

"Finally,becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the staircase like a grand piano."

Meanwhile, Mr Snagsby, "trampled and crushed in the pianoforte removal", hides in the drawing-room. What a marriage!

The linguistic pleasure of reading Dickens should not be underestimated either. His vocabulary is diverse, rich, and sophisticated, but he does not shy away from repeating the same word over and over again, if he thinks it has a comical effect and suits the story line. He was clearly on a mission to ridicule the habit of having missions, when he introduced a whole society of different do-gooders who were absorbed in their own commitments and oblivious of the existence of anything outside their narrow field of vision:

"One other singularity was, that nobody with a mission - except Mr Quale, whose mission, I think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission - cared at all for anybody's mission.""

As always, Dickens has a special place in his heart for his minor characters, and fills them with so much intensity that they could easily lead the whole plot. A favourite example is the Bagnet marriage. Mr Bagnet, knowing that his wife is a better judge of situations than he is himself, and worth more than her weight in gold, has a habit of letting her express "his" ideas whenever he is consulted about anything, for it is important to him that the appearance of marital authority is maintained:

"Old girl", murmurs Mr Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."

And then there is sweet, crazy Ms Flite, who sums up the tragedy of her family in a few lines of incredible suggestive power, showing the effect of long law suits on the dynamics of generations of people living in suspense and frustration:

"First, our father was drawn - slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years, he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt, without a kind word or kind look for anyone. [...] He was drawn to debtor's prison. There he died. Then our brother was drawn - swiftly - to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what!"

Ms Flite herself is also completely guided by Jarndyce and Jarndyce in every aspect of her life. She follows the suit in Chancery almost like a contemporary woman would watch the interminable episodes of EastEnders, always expecting a "judgment", despite knowing that the ultimate purpose of the show is to keep the actors and producers busy, and the spectators in excitement. She cries when the show finally wraps up and she sets free her birds, named after the passions that constituted the essence of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

That’s it for now? No wait, there is more!

Dickens is also a master of special effects, almost cinematic in nature:

"Everybody starts. For a gun is fired nearby.
"Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia, with her little withered scream.
"A rat," says My Lady. "And they have shot him."
Enter Mr Tulkinghorn, ..."

And this shot turns out to be one of foreboding, for nothing happens without purpose and connection in Dickens’ world, and the story turns into a murder mystery. The man whose specialty was using secrets to control others finds his end with a bullet in his cold heart. What a good thing that Hercule Poirot has a worthy predecessor in Mr Bucket, who has the immeasurable advantage of being married to Miss Marple.

That’s it, now, finally? No! I can’t leave Dickens to tie up loose ends and make his surviving characters lead the lives they deserve, without mentioning the little boy who broke my heart:

"Jo is brought in. He is not one of Mrs Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Boorioboola-Gha; [...]; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, only in soul a heathen."

The description of how that illiterate, starving child’s heart stopped beating is one of the most touching moments in the whole story, along with the haughty, elegant Sir Leicester’s love and anxiety over his disappeared wife. In Dickens’ world, pity is to be found in very different places!

That all?

Nope! But I will be quiet now anyway …

Just stealing a phrase from Oliver Twist, and applying it to Dickens’ novels rather than food:

“Please, Sir, I want some more!”

[Margaret M - (having a challenging time and on GR as much as I can) · Rating 4 out of 5]

So what the dickens is all this bleakness about? If not about the weather, atmospheric and dreary - and playing its part from the opening pages, then it must be about the prolonged court case, played out through the book, of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. Perhaps it is the story of the two central female characters Esther and Lady Dedlock. Or maybe it is the timeless themes that run through all Dickens novels; the corruptive nature of power, redemption for the wicked, sacrifice of the good, and the undeniable force of class differences and wealth.

Well dear reader the bleakness comes from all of it. The emotions and drama that runs through all the individual plots and themes just spills out into the pages. The atmosphere and ever present sense of tragedy and sadness that cloaks a lot of the characters, most of whom hold a dark secret or they want to expose it. Whilst the book creates a sense of hopefulness, as a Dickens novel, you know lady ‘fate’ will have her way and it’s tragedy for someone.

Jarndyce v Jarndyce is a probate case, involving the Jarndyce family who challenge each other in court clocking up legal fees that might one day outweigh the value of the estate. Nevertheless, it is greed and fortune that can turn the eye blind to the inevitable.

Alongside this legal thread, are the stories of Esther, orphaned and cared for by her Godmother, and Lady Dedlock who possesses a melancholic air and who must at all costs hide her past transgressions to save her reputation and that of her husband Sir Leicester Dedlock. However, both lives become entwined as Esther finds herself a ward of Jarndyce and letters reveal some of the details of Lady Dedlocks secrets which fall into the hands of the notorious Tulkinghorn.

The story is long yet full of intrigue as we read our way through the deceptions, greed, revelations, loves and losses.

Review and Comments

What I loved about this book was the characterisation. Dickens is one of the best at developing his characters to the point the reader can identify with each one, their traits, their flaws and purpose. The Plot and the exposés were probably easy to work out part way through once the enquiries started into Esther, but what you could not foresee is how we arrive at the ending.

Whilst the writing in some of these great novels may not flow easily for the reader, I find the writing, descriptions, choice of words, and story telling superb. If you sit back and reflect on what you have just read, you can appreciate the sheer brilliance of Dickens. Because “A word in earnest is as good as a speech”

In some cases, Dickens conveys the emotions in other cases he hints at them. In some instances, he will reveal the plot and motive in other cases, he will leave it up to the reader to uncover the message, the connection, and the intention. Dickens is the master of suggestion - with perfectly timed comments, and subtle statements that come back later in the book and prove to be significant to the story.

I found the disreputable and dishonest characters more fascinating than Esther, a central character, who felt too good, too safe, and more like the poor but angelic little girl. I felt she lacked grit and real substance and felt too good to be true. I enjoy a bit more spice. Although intriguing the story was not sufficiently complex to warrant a book of this length. So it will feel a bit long, unless you just want to savour Dickens writing.

Excellent and although not my favourite Dickens novel, it is a timeless classic written by the master of character development who captures the immutable truth about human nature - perfectly. An author who writes beautifully, and can mix tragedy with love, honesty with deception but most of all an author who creates the drama and will leave you wanting to read more of his books.

Dickens is so good at penetrating your thoughts, that you find yourself reflecting on his stories, the plot, themes and messages a while after reading. Very memorable, often bleak but timeless.

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Bleak House has had a redeeming effect for me. Before this marvel took place Dickens evoked for me either depressing black and white films in a small and boxy TV watched during oppressive times, or reading what seemed endless pages in a still largely incomprehensible language. Dickens meant then a pain on both counts.

In this GR group read I have enjoyed Bleak House tremendously.

In the group discussion many issues have been brought up by the members. First and foremost the critique on the social aspects has been put on the tray, but also the treatment of women and/or children, the critique of the Empire and of the Legal profession and institutions, the interplay between the two narrators, he humour, the richness in literary and historical references, the musings on ethics, etc. All this makes for a very rich analysis.

For me this book is certainly a reread. And apart from all the aspects above, what have struck me most, because it has surprised me, were the very rich plot and the way it was constructed. That is why, if I read Bleak House again, I will do so while drawing a diagram that, similarly to those charting engineering processes, would plot the plot.

Using an Excel sheet as my basis, the graph I have in mind would be a two dimensional chart, with the X or horizontal axis extending up to the 67 chapters of the book, while on the vertical or Y axis I would mark out three different bands. These bands would correspond to what I see as the main threads of the story. I am thinking of:

1. The Chancery, with all the Legal aspects. In this story line belong the Court itself, and the legal offices such as Kenge and Carboy and Mr. Tulkinghorn’s. The characters related to these legal aspects would belong to this band.

2. Esther, with her upbringing and Godmother. And here belong major characters such as John Jarndyce and the two Wards, Ada and Richard.

3. Chesney Wold, with the Dedlocks, Mrs Rouncewell and Rosa, etc.

Each chapter would be plotted according to its number and to the story band to which it belongs, and so it would be drawn as a square. To each chapter-square I would give one of two colors, depending on who is narrating it. When Esther is telling the story I would color the square pink, and when it is the Narrator, it would be blue. For the early chapters, Band #2 would be mostly pink, while the other two would be mostly blue; but as the novel advanced, I think the pink would begin to invade other band stories and vice-versa.

In each chapter-square I would include little cells, each one corresponding to one character as they first appear in the story. As the chapters advanced and the characters reappeared, I would draw connecting lines for those reappearing cells which would trace clearly how those character-cells started to move from story-band to story-band.

I wish I could draw the graph I have in mind in HTML format for this GR box. But to give you an idea, I think it would look like a combination of the following graphs:




and this:




Then I would also mark when some episodes or stories within the stories, were presented. To these I would give the shape of a sort of elongated bubble or ellipse and they would be superposed on the chapter boxes, since they would not quite belong, nor not-belong, to the three story lines above. In this ellipse category I place the episodes involving the Jellybys, the Badgers, the Turveydrops, etc.

Some of the characters, even if they first appear in the context of one of the bands, eventually move from one story to another a great deal. In the end they do not really belong to any one of them in particular. These characters I conceive as major connectors in the plot. I would then mark them with bold big dots linked by lines and would eventually look like a connecting grid. I call these the Connexions, and Jo, Mr. Guppy, Mr. Smallweed, amongst others, belong to this category. Mr. Guppy, one of my favourite characters, has a major “connexion” function although he is succeeded in his ability to precipitate the plot by the most determinant of the connecters, Mr. Bucket. As The Detective, his role is precisely that of connecting everything and thereby reach or propitiate the conclusion.

There is another group of characters who have a lighter connexion function, because they do not really advance the plot, but help in pulling it together and make it more cohesive. To this class I place Miss Flint and may be Charlotte (Charley) Neckett. As we draw further to the right of the X-axis, the connecting lines linking the pivotal characters become increasingly busy and tangled as they extend over more and more boxes. The connecting nodes would become something like:






By the end, as we approach the final chapters, all the story bands would have conflated into Esther, and the graph would become something like this one in which the central heart stands for the All-Loving-Esther.






And Charles Dickens planned all this without a Computer.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible - blows away any other Dickens that I have read (although it has been a couple of years). Now, there are issues with it: it FEELS long in a way that some great long books don't, which I think is due to the varying narrative stakes of the subplots; Esther Summerson, though delightfully written, is perhaps the most consistently GOOD character in the history of literature - you root for her but it is the rooting of a manipulated reader; and the absurdity of the coincidences is just downright staggering.

But, it's a huge achievement on 5 fronts.

1. On the line level, it's gorgeous. Dickens was on a roll for 800 pages. I am often guilty of skimming through landscape descriptions but not here.

2. The plot should seem Byzantine, but there are confluences of subplots and A plot that are massively satisfying, the love stuff is mostly juicy and good, there is a 70 page sequence toward the end that is so suspenseful that you'll read it in 2 seconds, and it is varied enough in voice that you mostly sail along with it. (A lot of the criticism I've read focuses on the alternating 1st and 3rd person - I really dug that and thought it was an accomplishment.)

3. I think a great book needs to have at least one completely unique scene that just sears itself into memory (e.g. the flood sequence in the Makioka Sisters). This book has it - the spontaneous combustion section is as good and creepy as anything.

4. The most important part for me; This is (even beyond Gaddis) the most generous book with tertiary characters that I have EVER read. 40-50 characters deep, and they are all unique, and well drawn, and quirky, and hilarious. A few favorites are Detective Bucket, who is a mixture of Gene Parmesan and Marlowe; the woman who loves her two ex-husbands more than her current husband; Mr Chadband, a preacher who "runs on train oil"; and the foppish Mr. Turveydrop. Throw in the exceptionally likable main supporting characters and it's a helluva cast.

5. it's really, really, really funny.

Bleak House is, I think, not quite as good as East of Eden, but it slots in with it nicely. It's epic, familially inclined, socially critical, has some great evil characters, and, as far as I have read, is an accomplishment beyond the rest of the author's oeuvre. Recommended, if you can spare it the time and the occasional eyeroll.

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do we still read Dickens in the 21st century? What does he have to offer to our times? Most readers turn to his novels for their brilliant social criticism, the universal humor and comedy that is human existence, and Dickens' reformist temper. When we come to Dickens we expect to learn, have a laugh, and maybe a good cry, too.

Many critics consider Bleak House his best work. I've been recommended this book numerous times ever since I fell in love with Great Expectations and cried over A Tale of Two Cities. Many reviewers and friends whom I trust have given this book a 5 star rating. Let's just say, my expectations were high. Maybe too high. Luckily, Bleak House isn't bleak at all, it's quite cheerful in places and full of hope and light. However, it's probably a good 300 pages too long. I hate to be the one who was to say it but Bleak House has no business being 1,000+ pages long.

I understand that it was published in a serialised format in 20 chapters over the course of one and a half years – and I acknowledge that the length might have worked better that way, but when you read Bleak House over the course of two weeks (like I did, and most modern readers will) it is bound to end up dragging and being quite boring and redundant in places.

Bleak House centres around the long-running case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Dickens’s fictional, but possible, case had begun as a simple dispute between two parties over a will, but has, at the novel's beginning, already pulled in countless defendants and remains unresolved after more than a generation. Dickens focuses on exposing the abuses of early 19th century England#s corrupt and outmoded Court of Chancery. Over the years this court had spawned a thousand useless regulations and procedures requiring so many documents and so many different types of legal personnel for every case, that the Court moved at snail's pace, if at all.

With jurisdiction over civil matters directly influencing people's personal lives, like disputes over wills, trusts, land law, and infant guardianship, Dickens found the Court of Chancery#s corrupt machinery a necessary target for moral outrage, and wrote the novel in part to attack it. Bleak House shows what happens when these systems (government, businesses, families etc.) reach the point of enriching or supporting the people who run them instead of the individual people they are supposed to serve.

Personally, I didn't find the court case at the centre of the book to be all that interesting. What makes Bleak House worthwhile are the variety of people that inhabit the novel. For example, one of the first fictional police detectives, Inspector Bucket. With his charm, his ostensibly humble demeanor, his understanding and sympathy for humanity, his doggedness, and his incisive intelligence, Bucket has been a fan-favorite from the start.

One of the most iconic scenes in the novel, and maybe all of Western literature, is the spontaneous combustion of Mr. Krook. Krook is an illiterate, grasping old man who attempts to profit from buying collections of old legal documents in the hopes he can find something he can sell or blackmail people with. Completely devoid of the milk of human kindness, dry and inhuman, Krook bursts into flame and burns down to a puddle of wax and ash that leaves black smears on the windowsills. Subjected to lots of discussion and outrage when first published, that scene is still being discussed by scholars and literature students up to this day. I just found it hilarious!

Similarly, another infamous literary character stems from Bleak House: Mrs. Jellyby – best known for letting her home fall apart, her husband and her children living unattended in squalor while she devotes all her efforts to raising funds to settle Europeans in African Borrioboola-Gha to civilize the natives. Dickens's humor shines through when it comes to her character. I don't think his intent was to shit on charity work, but rather arguing against neglecting your family while you do it. Written in a Victorian framework in which the women was supposed to be the main caretaker of the house and children, Mrs. Jellyby and her sole focus on her work and her individual purpose can be read as quite subversive from a modern standpoint, even though Dickens doesn't portray her favorably.

Bleak House is narrated by two voices, a third person narrator who speaks in the present tense, in a voice by turns melancholy, sardonic, and prophetic, and Esther Summerson. Esther is a sweet, caring, hardworking, self-effacing young woman. Naturally, I couldn't stand her. She joins the ranks of virginal and innocent Dickensian women that are nothing but male fantasy. Some may find her sticky-sweet, but I find her hypocritical, she often insists that she is humble and untalented, but then insists on being praised by everyone for her kindness and humility. Funnily enough, Nabokov seems to agree that Esther should've never narrated parts of this novel. Woo hoo!

What's brilliant about Bleak House is that it shows how different people react whilst waiting for closure – in their case: a final verdict in a court case that never seems to come.

Some people seethe continually with anger, like Mr. Gridley, the man from Shropshire. His case began 20 years ago as a simple dispute over a few hundred English pounds, with costs now mounted to many times the amount of the original suit. He just stays angry all the time, jumping up every day to petition the court and haunting lawyers' offices.

Some people go mad, like poor little Miss Flite, a woman from a working family who can no longer even remember the cause of her legal dispute. She lives in a garret and attends the court every day with a bag full of worthless documents, always expecting a judgment "very soon."

Many more people put their lives on hold, thinking life will be great and all problems solved when the lawsuit is finally won, like Richard Carstone, John Jarndyce’s ward. A likable young man, Richard was born into the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit. He thinks he will inherit a lot of money when the case is settled, and therefore has trouble concentrating on taking up any pursuit that will prepare him to look after himself.  A likable young man, Richard was born into the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit. He thinks he will inherit a lot of money when the case is settled, and therefore has trouble concentrating on taking up any pursuit that will prepare him to look after himself. He tries being a physician, a lawyer, and finally, a soldier, but none will do. He throws his ambitions to the wind, so he can spend more time and borrowed money trying to forward his suit.

But we also meet characters who refuse to be the victims of the justice system. John Jarndyce, the owner of the literal Bleak House, is the loving "fairy godfather" of the book, who refuses to become embroiled in the lawsuit. He draws on his other, independent means in every way he can to aid the people who have been hurt by it. He adopts three young people who were wards of the court because they were orphans of Jarndyce families involved in the suit. He offers affection and kindness to everyone within his circle and refuses to define the world based on the terms of the nightmare lawsuit.

The young physician Alan Woodcourt, whom Esther loves and admires, also does his part to offer succor to the suffering wherever he may. Other strong characters, like Mrs. Bagnet, the ex-soldier’s wife, and Mr. George, the shooting gallery owner, try to help the downtrodden.

As Bleak House poignantly shows, the damage wrought by bad systems is inhumane and far-reaching. But as much as possible, this novel suggests, life and love should not be put on hold until that day when reform is accomplished and justice is finally served. And so Dickens shows his readers: Illuminated by love, John Jarndyce's Bleak House is not bleak at all.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Dickens binge carries on relentlessly. It's like I'm stuck in the Victorian era... and am loving it! An absorbing tale that harshly, but fairly satirises the Law; alongside the lives, the times and the adventures of the Wards of Jarndyce; yet again a myriad cast of fully realised characters across the classes. 8 out of 12.

2009 read

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book so much. An absolutely amazing read.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not gonna lie – as I have struggled to read I am also struggling to find the words to write reviews. Sometimes I am having luck and writing some reviews I am pleased with, but mainly I am just delayed in finding the time and motivation to put my review on the page. For this I apologize as I love communicating with my Goodreads friend through reviews. I currently have three books I have finished – one over a week ago – that I have yet to write a review for. So, nothing like chipping away at them the best I can!

Bleak House is a tough one to review anyway – even if I was not having reader/reviewer block. So, for this I am going to do one of my favorite form of reviews when I just need to brainstorm my thoughts. The famous “Bullet Point Review”. Prepare for stream of consciousness!

• I listened to this one. It had one reader. I think this would have benefited from multiple readers as I had a hard time distinguishing when it was Esther speaking. Normally I don’t prefer multiple readers, but I think it would have helped here.
• Spark Notes: Once again, a savior! I spent a lot of time on Spark Notes with this one. Every chapter. Sometimes it helped – many times I encountered the “Did I just read that?” issue.
• Despite any complications, I did enjoy this book. Not my favorite big book. Not my favorite Dickens. But, definitely decent.
• One thing I think that helps to put this into perspective is that this was the “mini-series” of Dickens’ time. He released this in installments; thinking of the story as installments instead of one, huge imposing tome helps. Also, it helps when thinking about the fact that it was broken down into smaller parts, so it had to have mini-climaxes throughout to keep people coming back for more.

I read this with my Completist Book Club on Goodreads. Maybe now that I am done, I can review the discussing and improve my understanding and overall experience with my fellow club members!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE: On my second reading of Bleak House, I found myself just as caught up in the story, just as involved with the characters, and just as amazed at Dickens’ ability to weave a world that one can only be sorrowful to leave behind in the end. I closed the book the second time with tears standing in my eyes and with a strong conviction that if you could only have The Bible, Shakespeare and Dickens in your library, you would have the whole of humanity at your fingertips.

**************************
It always feels a bit presumptive when I am trying to review the masters of the novel, a Dickens, Hardy, or Eliot. What can someone like myself contribute, that might matter, to the appreciation of a masterpiece like Bleak House. And yet, I want to effuse about it, I want to praise it, I want to say how completely effective it is and how strangely relevant to our society if you merely put the characters in cars instead of horse-drawn conveyances. I want to tell everyone that within its pages you will find the human condition has changed less than the progress we have made might indicate. At their hearts people are in want of love and understanding, food and warmth, that they are greedy or kind or confused or evil in the same way regardless of the era of their birth.

One of the major characters, Esther, might be painted a bit too perfect and faultless, too sweet and grateful and considerate; but I find myself quite happy with her and wanting to believe that there might exist people who at least strive to be this good. John Jarndyce is one of the finest characters in fiction--a man who does good wherever he can and expects nothing in return, including thanks. And what can one say of Harold Skimpole? He is despicable because he never takes any responsibility for his actions and lives the life of a leech by cloaking himself in the guise of a child. He is a universally harmful person, at whom one chuckles in the beginning, but loathes by the end. A host of fascinating characters (Lady Dedlock, George the Trooper, and Inspector Bucket all shine) people this novel and keep the suspense and interest alive throughout. Because this is Dickens, you can be sure there are villains aplenty, innocents in danger of being squashed by society, and poverty of a level that is appalling. If there is anything Dickens understands it is class division and the inability of the ordinary man to lift himself out of the gutter once life has flung him there.

Then there is the condemnation of the legal system and the sad injustice that is built into its operations. The suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce that is at the heart of the novel exposes in how little measure the legal system exists for the good or benefit of those who find themselves in its grasp. How sad, we are told, to wrap your life up in any expectation of justice or relief from the courts, what a waste of time for anyone but the lawyers who alone seem to profit from the venture.

Dickens knows his craft and provides just the right mix of sentiment, humor and mystery. In turn, I laughed aloud, cried a bit and neglected chores to get to the end of a chapter and the possible nugget of information that might help to solve one of the myriad mysteries presented. He plays with words and images and I could not help noting that the least “bleak” house of all was John Jarndyce’s home that officially carried the name.

Every time I read a true classic, I have to stop and kick myself for having been so long getting around to it. There is a reason these stories have lasted through centuries. There is a reason they do not fade into oblivion along with so many of their fellows. They spoke to the audience they were written for, and, they speak just as eloquently to the audience that finds them today. If I live long enough, I hope to be able to say I have read every Dickens novel. At least now I can say I have read Bleak House, and it was an experience worth having.

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this 25 years ago. Notes as I reread.

— Bleak House on the whole is astonishing. Is it conventionally Victorian? Oh yes, but there are pages and pages here of drop-dead writing.

— It reminds me, in its deft use of characters high and low, of the novels of Martin Amis — particularly Money, London Fields and The Information. Both writers also possess a keen grasp of the slang of their respective periods. Whereas Amis can be sparing in dialogue, Dickens is voluble almost to a fault.

— Surprising how readable the novel is after 171 years.

— Mr Skimpole is a sponge; Mr Jarndyce knows it but allows this drain on his resources since he finds Skimpole amusing. Later, we understand Skimpole’s con and how well it pays him. That he’s a child, doesn’t understand money— well, the fellow “doth protest too much, methinks.” These endless self-justifications become tiresome.

— Dickens use of patterning is often a pleasure. If it ever seems careworn though, I think it’s because he was writing this novel in serial to be published over a period of more than two years. So he’s creating mnemonic devices for his readers.

— Henry de Montherlant's famous saying "happiness writes white" seems undermined by Dickens's capacity to make happiness — and kindness — fairly sing on the page. Consider Mr Jarndyce, who is a doer of good works, and Miss Esther Summerson, whose very name radiates delight. But when Dickens pushes this pedal too hard — as he does in the scene between Mrs. Rouncewell and her son George — the result can be cloying.

— Preacher Chadband is vile with his halting oratory of pious hooey. Poor Jo, the little orphan, is blamed for being a victim, hounded for witnessing a key piece of the book’s core scandal.

"All this time, Jo . . . feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate . . . Though it may be, Jo, that . . . if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid — it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet!" (p. 414)

Thus we move toward redemption. But not for Jo! His death from neglect is hideous.

Later, Jo, in a fever, is rescued by Miss Summerson, who puts him up at Bleak House, only to find he has mysteriously disappeared come morning.

——Young Richard Carstone is such a pigheaded twit. He can't be told anything. He must make his own mistakes— by taking Jarndyce & Jarndyce seriously — and he must suffer. Sad to watch, like an addict toward the end, pushed on his course by the despicable Vholes. The speaker here is Richard:

“‘Mr Vholes! If any man had told me, when I first went to John Jarndyce's house, that he was anything but the disinterested friend he seemed — that he was what he has gradually turned out to be — I could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world! Whereas, now, I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; that every new delay, and every new disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand.'” (p. 626)

Truly, no good deed goes unpunished!

—Interesting, for all its concern about the dysfunction of Chancery, there’s almost no mention of how the great 19th century families (Dedlock et al.) made their fortunes. There is Mrs Jellyby’s colonialist monomania for Borrioboola-Gha, Africa. Then on page 699 a passing reference is made to a “large Indiaman” trading vessel. (See Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a kind of fictional corrective.) But empire feels very much like the elephant in the room.

— Mr Bucket is a detective and the soul of discretion. The last third of the novel is effected through him. He’s the narrative glue tying virtually all the characters together. Indeed, he seems almost oracular toward the close, which is suspenseful.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, I mean, how could you not love a book that reduces politics to Boodle vs Noodle and kills off a minor character via spontaneous combustion? Besides that, there is a scalding satire of the legal profession, several badly kept secrets bubbling into murderous tension, and a panoply of lovable and despicable minor characters, each with their own manner of speaking and acting. Dickens would have been a fabulous filmmaker as his camera’s eye is always peeking behind doors or over walls giving the reader a truly immersive experience, or so I felt. I loved the writing, the action, the everything in this marvelous book.

One of the better passages about politics is where Lord Boodle complains to Sir Leicester Dedlock that the new government "would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the Leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces”. Brilliant!

The art with which Dickens weaves the stories together and again the incredible portraits and names of the myriad of characters just made this pure entertainment end-to-end. Here is a fantastic article I found about the book: https://literariness.org/2021/01/23/a...

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my younger, more innocent days I had no patience for the long-drawn affair of a Dickens novel. When I read Bleak House for the first time I devoured the first 200 pages and felt suddenly so full that the prospect of another 680 pages made me nauseous in anticipation. Each subsequent chapter went down painfully as though I were trying to swallow mud. I did manage to finish the book, however, and vowed thereupon never to read another Dickens novel again. The strange thing is, though, I digested the book—slowly and over the course of nineteen years, assimilating its girth as would, I imagine, the stomach of a whale. And before I knew it, the boredom had gradually crystallized and turned into the memory of pleasure. What? Am I nostalgic to the point of taking pleasure in the pains of yesteryear? Am I a retro-active masochist? No Ulysse, you are perfectly normal. You didn’t know it then, but what you read was a masterpiece. A novel essentially about waiting. Waiting for the fog to lift. Waiting for the sun to rise. Waiting for the rain to cease. Waiting for the streets to fill with people waiting for people to arrive. Waiting for the execution of a will. Waiting for an illness to subside. Waiting for your family’s forgiveness. Waiting for marriage. Waiting for death. Waiting for birth. Waiting, waiting, waiting. And you, Ulysse, you were waiting for the book to end. Bleak House that novel of endless deferment. Right from the start we are stuck in the mud. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth. Dogs, indistinguishable in mire, horses scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Mud accumulating at compound interest. Here we are trapped in a big mud machine whose sole purpose is to get us inside its wheels, so that they will keep turning while we run around in circles and accumulate interest mud. And become mud ourselves. Words, so many words, too many words caught in the wheels of a story splashing over us, covering us in mud. One wants to get away—but one can’t run in mud. Mud-words stick to the soles of one’s feet. Everything has taken on the slowness of a nightmare. Oh fascinating slowness! Nothing really happens. A lot of people die, but somehow death seems tributary to the plot, which like a muddy river flows implacably on towards nothing. And yet, you get a feeling of satisfaction when you have reached the last sentence and shut the book with a thud (for me Dickens can only be read in hardcover—he requires that final thud. And, another thing, make sure you chose an edition with a typeface you like, for you’ll be spending a lot of time looking at that typeface). When I was twenty-two the feeling I had on finishing the book was one of relief. I had finally gotten myself out of the mud, rid myself of Dickens and his glutinous sentences. The young me hated waiting. The young me wanted thrills—to live life to the fullest. Bleak House continually frustrated my need for immediate pleasure. I wanted to grab this loose baggy monster by the scruff of the neck and shake it, just like one might want to grab Vholes, Kenge and Tulkinghorn by the scruff of the neck and shake them. This time around my thoughts went more along these lines: yes, life is a succession of waiting for things to happen, which more often than not do not happen, but instead of doing nothing while waiting I might as well look around the room I am waiting in, which may happen to be the whole wide universe. And the people I am waiting with, I should pay attention to them too and observe the way they dress and sit and say certain things and the way their hands talk and the way the sunlight plays in their hair and listen to their stories and laugh with them and empathize with them and perform little acts of kindness that will make their lives a little lighter, and mine too. And waiting, well, isn’t waiting just another word for living? For isn’t the ultimate thing we are waiting for simply the end of all waiting? The end of waiting, the end of living. So while we’re waiting why not pick up a copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens (hard cover, please) and ever so patiently and passionately and with the mud of his words in our mouths wind our thoughts through the labyrinth of waiting he wrote for us all to enjoy?

[Ines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here I am, after months I managed to finish this immense masterpiece, I say it immediately,it was very hard.... not for its length but for the complexity of the contents. I didn’t care to read the story lightly, just to understand the plot of this intricate narration... but within the limits of the possible and the time (little) available, I wanted to guess the thousand motivations that prompted Dickens to make talk and move his characters in this or other way.
The plot of the book revolves around a court case, the Jarndyce against Jarndyce, a very complicated situation of a thousand under stories and judicial fragmentations that will see contrasted at the end 3 characters ;John Jarndyce, owner of a Bleak house, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, two cousins under guardianship and direct beneficiaries of the Jarndyce inheritance...

you wil say, all right here? No, because Dickens, great expert in creating meticulously and from the distant linked stories between them, opens the novel with the presentation of Esther... a little strange girl, who will also lives at Bleak House with the two cousins.
From here starts a cascade of events, stories and a thousand narrative fragments where many characters will be presented: Lady Honoria Dedlock, neighbor of Bleak House, whose story is kind of crazy (SPOILER) Eventually it will be discovered that she is the mother of Esther, born from an extra-marital relationship and given from birth to live under guardianship with a nurse and a housekeeper, far from her origin's family....

Sir Laicester’s attorney, (this last one Sir is Honoria' s husband), who will be deceived or deceived to discover stories both at the husband's request and Honoria's, the mysteries related to the Will and various affidavit that pop up to disrupt the situations, but especially the plot!!
You will be struck by mysteries, murders but above all, by very sad conditions that will affect our characters...
The disease of Esther, struck by smallpox, which leaves her disfigured.... but redeemed by the tenderness of little Charley, a little girl who had saved from poverty and life on the street and put into service as a little lady-in-waiting and room helper.... But above all, Esther will find peace in her heart when Honoria reveals that she is her mother.
You find yourselves gazing at the madness that will strike Richard in order to obtain all the inheritance, which then at the end of the book will occur, but leaving the two cousins holding only air in their hands, since all the money were eaten by the expenses for the cause....
What can I say about all this magnificence read? That is very complex, that my time reduced to playing against the subtle ties between the characters, which are many, so I have sometimes found myself confused and deceived in believing and confusing between them...
The ruthless attack that Dickens makes against the English judicial system is without reticence, judges and lawyers described almost always as "half-men" good only to swell pockets of money to proceed and postpone sentences just to reread or insert codicils or irrelevant documents in the judicial process.

What conspired most was Dickens' ability to tell us of this humanity bent by the pains of life, each characters move for their purposes and interests but always having in their heart a present and fundamental morality for the events that will occur in the plot; it is not first that most of them have a soul now corrupted and bent by the vices of life... but their goals are always carried forward by a clear motivation, that will also move the events of this beautiful history. The psychology of these people is well described, clear and insightful of their being, this for me is the genius of Dickens, who in half a sentence tells you and defines you everything there is to know about a character and nothing else!! The end of the story is a joy of redemption and grace.....

Richard and John will acknowledge their ignoble behaviors and ask each other for mercy, Esther will have the chance to dissolve an engagement and marry Woodcourt, her true beloved not the protected and chosen by Jarndyce.
Lady Dedlock after discovering her daughter, will ask forgiveness for all the evil committed and truths kept from her husband, Sir Leicester.
What magnificence, what beauty!!!




Eccomi, dopo mesi sono riuscita a finire questo immenso capolavoro, lo dico subito, ho faticato molto.... non per la sua lunghezza ma per la complessità dei contenuti. Non mi interessava leggere la storia in modo leggero, giusto per capire la trama d questa intricatissima storia....ma nel limite del possibile e del tempo (poco) a disposizione, volevo intuire le mille motivazioni che hanno spinto Dickens a far parlare e a muovere i suoi personaggi in questo o in altro modo.
La trama del libro gira tutto intorno ad una causa giudiziaria, la Jarndyce contro Jarndyce, una situazione complicatissima di mille sotto storie e frammentazioni giudiziarie che vedrà contrapposti alla fin fine 3 personaggi ;John Jarndyce, propietario di Casa desolata, e Richard Carstone e Ada Clare, due cugini sotto tutela e beneficiari in linea diretta dell' eredità Jarndyce...
voi direte, bene tutto qui? E no, perchè Dickens, grandissimo sapiente nel creare minuziosamente e dalla lontana storie concatenate tra di loro, apre il romanzo con la presentazione di Esther... una giovinetta un pò strana, che andrà a vivere anche lei a casa desolata insieme ai due cugini.
Da qui parte una cascata di eventi, storie e mille frammentazioni narrative dove pian piano verranno presentati tantissimi personaggi: Honoria Dedlock, vicina di tenuta di Bleak House, la cui storia è pazzesca (SPOILER) alla fine si scoprirà che è la madre di Esther, nata da una relazione extra coniugale e data sin dalla nascita a vivere sotto tutela con una balia e una governante, lontana dalla sua famiglia di origine...
L'avvocato di Sir Laicester, quest'ultimo è marito di Honoria, che si lascerà trarre in inganno o sotto raggiro per scoprire storie sia sotto richiesta del marito che di Honoria, ovvero i misteri legati al testamento e vari affidavit che spuntano fuori sparigliando le carte, ma soprattutto la trama!!
Verrete colpiti dai misterie omicidi ma soprattutto da condizioni tristissime che colpiranno i nostri personaggi...
La malattia di Esther, colpita da vaiolo, che la lascia sfigurata..... ma redenta dalla tenerezza della piccola Charley, una bimba che aveva salvata dalla povertà e vita d strada e messa sotto servizio come piccola dama di compagnia e aiutante di camera....ma soprattutto Esther troverà pace nel cuore quando Honoria svelerà di essere sua mamma.
Vi ritrovete a sgranare gli occhi nel leggere la pazzia che colpirà Richard per riuscire ad ottenere tutta la eredità, cosa che poi alla fine del libro si verificherà, ma lasciando i due fratelli con in mano unicamente aria, visto che tutti i soldi sono stati mangiati dalla spese per la causa....
Cosa posso dire di tutta questa magnificenza letta? Che è complessissima, che il mio tempo risicato a giocato a sfavore nel capire bene i sottili legami tra i vari personaggi, che sono tantissimi, quindi mi sono a volte ritrovata confusa e tratta in inganno nel credere e confonderli tra di loro...
L'attacco spietato che Dickens muove nei confronti del sistema giudiziario inglese è senza reticenza, giudici ed avvocati descritti quasi sempre come "mezzuomini", buoni solo a gonfiarsi le tasche di soldi per far procedere e slittare le sentenze o giusto per rileggere o inserire codicilli documenti irrilevanti nell' iter giudiziario.
Ciò che piu' mi ha colplito è la capacità di Dickens nel raccontarci questa umanità piegata dai dolori della vita, ogni personaggio si muove per i suoi scopi ed interessi ma sempre avendo nel cuore una moralità presente e fondamentale per gli eventi che si verificheranno nella trama; non è primario che la maggior parte di loro abbia un 'anima ormai corrotta e piegata dai vizi della vita... ma i loro scopi vengono sempre portati avanti da una motivazione chiara, che muoveranno quindi anche le vicende e gli avvenimenti di questa bellissima storia. La psicologia di queste persone è ben descritta, chiara e lapalissiana del loro essere, questo per me è il genio di Dickens, che in mezza frase ti dice e ti definisce tutto quel che c'è da sapere su un personaggio e nient'altro!!
Il finale della storia è una gioia di redenzione e grazia.....Richard e John riconosceranno i loro comportamenti ignobili e si chiederanno pietà a vicenda, Esther avrà possibilità di sciogliere un fidanzamento e convolare a nozze con Woodcourt, il suo vero amato non il protetto e scelto da Jarndyce.
Lady Dedlock dopo aver scoperto la figlia , chiederà perdono di tutto il male commesso e le verità tenute nascoste al marito, Sir Leicester.
Che magnificenza, che bellezza!!!

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bleak House was Charles Dickens’ 1853 novel that documents the tragi-comic events surrounding the chancery court case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce.

Told with an unusual blend of shifting perspectives, the first being a first person narrative and the second an omniscient, present tense narrator, Dickens describes a London where justice is turned upside down and personal values are intertwined with the doleful legal system.

** - Many of you know that I am a Tennessee attorney and let me just say that 160 years later, this kind of thing still happens. An estate is completely consumed by attorney fees. Not always the fault of the lawyers either: in a case a few years ago, one beneficiary said while pointing to another "I don't give a damn if I never get a dime, as long as HE doesn't get a thing!"

As with most of Dickens novels, Bleak House features an extraordinary cast and the author’s ability to convey a character is his genius. A good book.

** 2018 - This time of year is ripe for reading Dickens. I'm working on an estate right now where the parties, all family members, cannot agree that the sun came up this morning. One of his better books, this one deserves a re-read sometime.

[Annelies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like the weather today in Belgium (it's dark and cold and snowy). I thought all Charles Dickens books where like this weather. I thought it met my feelings. But after reading I see this is not at all a dark and ' bleak' book. It's a book about human feelings, their interactions, about hope and tenderness, friendship, love. Of course there are some bleak components: people die, there's murder, poverty ... but there's a light of humanity beyond this all.

The underlying factor that binds all in the book is the neverending court case about the Jarndyce versus Jarndyce legacy. A whole story is woven around it. It's a complicated story that appears everywhere and rules the whole story. All peoples handlings are directed by it. And the story it reveals is a masterpiece.

So when the wheater or your feelings are bleak, there will always be this masterpiece.

[Violet wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the fascinating things about Dickens is that his characters, no matter how old we're told they are, are essentially children. As a rule, only those who represent institutions are convincing as adults and the adult world is a hostile world of institutions and clockwork industry. Dickens characters don't really grow up in the course of his novels; rather, they find other children to play with. You might say this is both the attraction and the flaw of his novels. It's most apparent as a flaw in his favourite character - the angelic child woman. It's interesting that his most successful (though probably not his most entertaining) novel in my opinion, Great Expectations, has a cast of pretty unlikeable women. What it does have is a character who develops, who becomes an adult, a rarity in Dickens whose characters tend to begin good or bad and end the same. Esther in Bleak House suffers a life-changing experience but it doesn't change her in the slightest. His characters tend to repeat themselves like programmed automatons as if they wake up to the same day every morning.

It was also interesting to start Tolstoy after finishing Bleak House (for the third time: one reading too many!) It immediately became clear to me that Tolstoy is the better novelist. And yet Dickens had all the gifts to rival Tolstoy. Both nurtured distorting ideas about women. Tolstoy's of a puritanical and misogynist nature. What he does in his novels though is oppose and so transcend these ideas. Dickens most irritating trait is his sentimentality towards girls. He doesn't oppose this in his novels. It's possible his decision to serialise his novels was responsible. As if he felt he had to keep reminding the reader of his primary character's qualities. Both Anna and Levin are much more complete human beings than any character Dickens created. That said, it's always a joy to be swept up into the high winds of vitality, comedy and memorable characters Dickens so brilliantly provides.

[Jan-Maat]

One of the pleasures of reading a few books of an author's work is to see the parallels and changing style. Here in this huge late Dickens slice of life social commentary is combined with comic grotesques. Political commentary is given depth with sentimentality. The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, a gigantic legal cog wheel whose teeth catch up one smaller wheel after another. All of society seems to be caught up from the street sweeper to the noble Baronet in a single huge mechanism driven by avarice rather than Christian charity.

Agape is the counter force in the novel, but sadly it appears to require sacrifices. The obligatory deaths of children, mothers and fathers for me don't stand up on repeated reading. You can see how Dickens produces his effect. You can see him get the organ grinder ready, watch the monkey put on his sad suit and take out a little violin, a barrow load of freshly peeled onions is on standby on the page, waiting for that last gasp as an innocent soul dies with a sigh and goes off to meet its maker. I found it so overwrought on re-reading that it became comic. This misses the point. My reading experience is not similar to the original reader. They consumed the novel in monthly instalments over two years. One can imagine each one read aloud by the paterfamilias, the materfamilias pausing in her needlework, the children doubly determined to say their prayers at bedtime - just in case - as another death occurs. It is theatre in your living room.

As an aside this sentimentality is very interesting. A few decades before Bleak House average life expectancy in Liverpool was fifteen years and in Manchester maybe as high as eighteen years if you were working class. The 1848 cholera epidemic saw over fifty thousand people dying with diarrhoea and vomiting, yet a couple of years later Dickens is giving us very individual deaths and perhaps unrealistically clean deaths.

Rereading it struck me how long Bleak House is and how much could be stripped away. But again the point is the reading experience. The length and indulgence in the minor character is the fun of the book. In fact it is the minor characters who are fun. The major characters are the heart of the narrative are resolutely not comic.

"We are not rich in the bank" says our heroine Esther (a name that should alert us to the theme of self sacrifice) towards the close of the book. Yet this seems in the context of the novel to be not true. Although not as wealthy as the Dedlocks, money is never an issue for John Jarndyce and his wards. They don't pause to travel by post coach - an expensive way of getting about, money is available to purchase property, money is never a matter of concern. However for many other characters money and the need to earn it or horde it is a constant issue. Something that Dickens does well in an understated way is make clear just how central every shilling can be and how precarious life gets. The comfortable life is the thin skin floating atop a pot of economic misery. Avarice is not simply a sin, it is a basic survival mechanism that distinguishes the unpleasant Smallweeds and Vholes from the ill fated Gridleys and Necketts.

Something that you can see here that comes to fruition in A Tale of Two Cities is the notion of Saxon, Norman and Hortense. Sir Dedlock represent the Norman elite, proud, conservative but perhaps, like the carriages assembled in the novel's funeral cortege, empty. His virtue is chivalric and harkens back to an earlier age. By contrast the younger Rouncewell son has a Saxon face and represents a newer, modern educated and industrialising Britain, a bucolic place of full employment. Dickens' descriptions of the mill town and Rouncewell's industrial town are strikingly cheerful and pleasant. Not something you'd expect after reading Hard Times. No dark, satanic mills here. London by contrast comes across in this book as Cobbett's "Great Wen".

But it is Hortense who is the surprise in the book. Despite the romantic elements in the story and proposals of marriage she is the one truly passionate character. Although present in only a few pages her passion drives a good chunk of the story. Her refusal to be bought off with a few coins will be echoed a few years later in A Tale of Two Cities. There is so much power in that one figure that I can't help but imagine her as embodying Dickens. The violence of her passion and its powerful effect on the narrative pull the story towards her.

At the other extreme from Hortense are the trinity of self-effacing characters who are the centre of the book, Esther Summerson, John Jarndyce and Lady Dedlock. Their love is self denying and at various point and with varying degrees of success they manage to sacrifice their own happiness for the the good of others. Esther seems to be a perfect "Angel in the House". Each part of the trinity embodies Agape, even at the cost in Lady Dedlock's case of that honour uniquely feminine that should be preserved for the aftermath of legal nuptials, if one may be so bold as to suggest such a delicate matter on a family website.

This then takes us to a central concern of the novel - good and bad charity. The good charity of our trinity, is dignified, individualised and with one possible exception, helpful. By contrast charity is for Mrs Pardiggle a continuation of politics by other means. Mrs Pardiggle's aggressive charity which seeks to police the poor seems particularly resonant. Perhaps rather like the poor themselves, it has always been with us. Even more extremely painted is the quixotic Mrs Jellyby. Her African colonisation scheme aims to 'educate' the Africans in plantation work and provide English settlers with employment as overseers ends not just with the local King wanting to sell the survivors for rum but also, since she is not an Angel in the House, the bankruptcy of her husband.

If Esther is the ideal woman then Mrs Jellyby is her opposite. In Mrs Jellyby charity is actually shown as destructive to her 'proper' role as housekeeper. Mrs Jellyby's activities are really very interesting because here we have a woman entirely focused on political activity, quasi-Imperial colonisation and poverty relief - but Dickens uses this as a source of humour. For him this is fundamentally ridiculous activity for a woman to undertake. Votes for Women is the last crazy cause she embarks upon. I wonder if John Stuart Mill was a fan of Dickens, or for that matter what did Mrs Gaskell make of this?

The central message is a Christian one. The hypocritical Christianity of Chadband or the judgemental faith of Miss Barbary are presented to us only to be disapproved of by the author. In the face of a legalistic and judgemental world in which avarice is a means of survival only the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity offer a more palatable alternative and more importantly an alternative that Dickens doesn't poke fun at.

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say that Goodreads has opened me up to many books that I probably never would have read. Through groups and friends I keep finding books old and new to read and enjoy. Some more so than others.

When I started Bleak House in one of my groups reads I had a feeling that I wouldn't understand a lot of what was going on in the book. And I found out through the same group that there was a mini series about the book. I rushed right onto Amazon Prime and watched the whole thing. Let me tell you this helped me so very much in understanding some of the things in the book. I'm not that smart so certain things or way things are written go right over my head. This is a beautiful book, but I needed a little help.

Upon watching the show I could see some of the things taking shape in the book over the course of a few weeks. No, the show is not exactly the same, but it's almost damn near because hello . . . it's a tome and they made a mini series instead of one movie that cuts half the crap out of a book.

Gillian Anderson played Lady Dedlock perfectly in the show, but that is just my opinion. Lady Dedlock is married to Sir Leicester, he is many years older than her but he is very good to her. Even when he finds out some secrets he was going to stand by her side. This part of the book was very bleak and sad. But those were the days when you couldn't have what you wanted in life. You had to let things you loved go.



My favorite characters in the book are:

Esther,



Ada,



and Mr. Jarndyce.



These were three very caring people. They were fun and nice in the book and in the show. Mr. Jarndyce took in Miss Ada Clare, Richard Carstone and Esther Summerson and he was very good to them.



Richard was a little flighty to me. He couldn't settle on anything and then he got all wrapped up in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce court case that had been going on since the beginning of time. If the case was ever settled it could help Ada and Richard forever. Or so they thought. Ada and Richard fell in love and they were so sweet to see. But it was hard to watch Richard put himself through so much and getting sicker and sicker.

There are a lot of hard things in the book and they will make you cry. Or maybe it's just me since I cry when I read a lot of books or watch shows.

There are evil people in this book. There are killings, lies, hopelessness, disease, death, sadness - but it's not all Bleak. There are some really happy times. The ending it so very happy and it was so wonderful to see some good things happen to these people that went through so much.

There are also some funny characters and other fun times. Don't think this is just a bleak, dreadful story.

There are revelations made that were happy and sad. I can't give away the spoiler. In any case it made me cry.



But through it all Mr. Jarndyce was wonderful to the three people he took in among other things. And in the end I was so glad to see Esther happy with Mr. Woodcourt. So many things she had to go through when she was young, all of the bad things said about her and revelations she found out were just sad. But even through all of that she was a kind person. She did as many good things as she possibly could. I loved her.



If you were ever wanting to read this book I would suggest going ahead and take your time. Watch the show like I did if you need to understand what they are talking about at times. I would never have come to love the people I did in the book if I never gave it or the show a chance.

MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it.
Bleak House ~~~ Charles Dickens



Bleak House is a book I’ve wanted to tackle for quite some time. I’d long heard that it was Dickens’ masterpiece. My friend, Ted, gave me the kick I needed to finely read this during my annual Dickens’ December read.

While not my favorite Dickens, I do agree it is indeed his masterpiece.



Others have summarized Bleak House here in their reviews. Instead, I’ll focus on my impressions of Bleak House, and my love of Dickens.

Usually, I can read a full length Dickens in a week or less. Not so with Bleak House ~~ this read turned out to be a challenge ~~ in the best possible way.

First published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853, and is, as I stated, considered to be Dickens’ finest novel, containing vast, complex and engaging arrays of characters and sub-plots. Just as I was beginning to wonder how Dickens would ever tie all these sub-plots up, he began to unknot all of them and miraculously drew them together.

At the heart of the novel is the Chancery court case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce ~~ it was deemed by many at the time as an attack on the British court system. Narrated in part by the orphaned Esther, and in part by an unidentified, third-person narrator with a plot that fuses two love stories with a mystery, social satire and morality issues ~~ Bleak House is a dense and complex read, that perfectly showcases Dickens’ brilliance.



I went into this read with fresh eyes, knowing very little of the plot. I'm so glad that was the case here since I had no opinions regarding Bleak House.

First off ~~ don’t let the dour title Bleak House fool you. Like all Dickens’ work, Bleak House sparkles with humor, action, wit, tenderness, a spectrum of characters and settings well-individuated and dazzling in their contrast. The action is deliberately set up, developed through a series of suspenseful complications, and fully resolved.

I discovered while reading Bleak House Dickens’ genius is that, when you read him as an adult, he persuades you to reconsider your own first impressions ~~ even as he reminds you how exactly he himself created those impressions.

Structurally, Bleak House is perfect ~~ every chapter, every character is essential. I was amazed by the cast of characters ~~ innumerable even for Dickens ~~ it was difficult keeping track of so many closely related, yet distinct, personalities. Midway through the book, the reader is still meeting new characters. However, there’s not one character that’s superfluous. Bleak House is enormous in scale, but economical in design ~~ pull out one thread, the whole unravels.

Don't believe me? Try removing any character, and see what happens. Jenny? Jenny’s nameless husband? Jobling? Smallweed JR? Mrs. Snagsby? Every minor character is instrumental in advancing the plot. Each of them starts inquiries that prove fatal; bringing major characters to the right locations at the right time; taking actions that cast suspicions on major characters ~~ all in a way that palpably and irreversibly changes the course of events.

Bleak House is brilliantly plotted. Mysteries mushroom everywhere. Each mystery is developed, tangled with the others, and satisfactorily resolved.



There is always a moral lesson to be learned with Dickens. So, what is the lesson of Bleak House? Dickens' advice here seems clear ~~ steer clear of the system. To engage with it at all is to court ruin. This is the fate that engulfs every character in Bleak House who engages with the lawsuit ~~ they are snapped up by the crushing jaws of the system. Those who steer clear ~~ those who have the means to live without waiting for their share in the legacy ~~ are those that survive.

My final thoughts ~~ Dickens fans or fans of good literature should not miss reading Bleak House, ~~ it has lost none of its power 170 years later. People are found and lost, hope crushed and regained, alliances formed and dissolved. What more could you ask for when reading Dickens?