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Matt's Reviews > Bleak House
Bleak House
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“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.
- 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.
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Lorna
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rated it 5 stars
Apr 15, 2021 09:48AM
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Thanks, Lorna!