Notes on Bleak House

"I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth."

-From the Preface to the 1853

complete edition

As this remark shows, Bleak House was at publication Dickens's most daring work- exposing the court to the public gaze was no task to be taken lightly. BLEAK HOUSE is staunch with satire but riveting with emotion. What makes BLEAK HOUSE so unique?

DOUBLE NARRATION

The book is in the third person and the first person. Our third-person narrator is omniscient, and the kind Dickens was most comfortable with; our first person narrator is Esther Summerson, a complex character who, like many Dickensian heroes or heroines, leads a tortured existence.

EXPOSING THE COURT OF CHANCERY

As one can see from Dickens retaliatory preface, his distrust of lawyers and knowledge of their abuses led him to tackle his boldest social issue yet- the law The book is not just an attack on one court, but a startling satire of the entire of the entire legal system.

LITERARY ELEMENTS

Characters

Lord Chancellor a high legal figure in the Court of Chancery (of course)

Lady Dedlock a tainted woman who lives a life of lies; her husband is a baronet

Sir Leicester Dedlock the baronet, 20 years older

Mr. Tulkinghorn their lawyer

Esther Summerson (one of the narrators); a ward of the court raised by an abusive godmother and sent to Bleak House

Miss Barbary raises Esther for most of her childhood and then dies

Mr Guppy legal clerk

Ada Clare ward of the court

Richard Carstone ward of the court

Mrs. Jellyby's friend of Mr Jarndyce who spends her days ignoring her grimy household and taking escape in causes (such as the tribes in Africa)

Plot

If foggy London there wallows in the courts a case that has been dragged out for decades- Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The case is so old that no one that began with it is alive, and the current litigants are clueless. One is Esther Summerson, a young girl who was told by her abusive "godmother" that she should not have been born. When the godmother dies she is taken as a ward of the court. She knows nothing of the chronically bored Lady Dedlock and her noble husband, or the other two wards of the court whom she meets before she is taken to Bleak House after the godmother dies; they are Ada Clare and Richard Carstone.

THIS SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!!

(Pleas e-mail me if you need information on Bleak House)

All information herein is copyrighted 2002. Please use proper citation.

MLA

Tracy, Trinity. "Notes on Bleak House." Dickens Made Simple (italicized). 2002. http://www.dickensmadesimple.com (date of access).