COMMENTS ON CHARLES DICKENS "BLEAK HOUSE"

By Roberto Mendoza Ayala

                                                "...an interminable Chancery suit. It is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing."

                                                                                                                                                                                 (Bleak House, p.28)*

THEME AND CHARACTERS

Bleak House by Charles Dickens does not only makes a criticism of the british legal system, but the author is also satirical about the english society; on this last purpose, as he was making the story along twenty months, he incorporated important or current news and social issues to the plot (even the Spontaneous Combustion!). Dickens proposes an analogy between some nature elements, such as the fog and the mud, with the human condition:

"Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery." (p.21)

"...diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what, and collects about us nobody knows whence or how; we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it, we find it necessary to shovel it away." (p.142)

On lawsuit:

"it's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains." (p.66)

The characters in this novel are mostly exaggerations representative of excess and weakness of the people: the fashionable intelligence of Lady Dedlock, the deportment of Turveydrop, the obsessed philanthropy of Mrs. Jellyby, the great expectations that became deception and delusion in Richard Carstone. Dickens manages all of these issues with a great sense of social humor:

"He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man," (p.25)

"...the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby  (is) the union of mind and matter." (p.54)

"She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes; a genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim." (p.100, Oscar Wilde later made his own reference to this in his own ghost's story).

VOICES

Along the book there are two main voices, one of them omniscient, with a rich and complicated language, poetic many times, and very descriptive. This omniscient voice plays word games and makes strange imagery, it is poetical and satirical, it is the witness of dialogues between characters, and also makes criticism of the social and justice system; the other one is Esther Summerson (There are even some chapters titled "Esther's narrative"), she represents the voice of the orphans as in other Dickens works, and I would say she is a feminine alter ego of him because this character has many things in common with some biographical facts of the author: he had a difficult childhood with the presence of benefactors, had sudden changes of fate, etc.

Esther's language is simpler, but through her narrative and the situations she describes, her suggestions, intuitions, clues and secret thoughts, she gives coherence and structure to the story.

There are some other incidental voices, as Jo the Crossing-Sweeper, who talks by himself in some occasions, when the omniscient voice suddenly gives him a chance:

"...and to think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hostled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have no business, here, or there, or anywhere;" (etc. p.222, 223)

LITERARY REFERENCES AND LANGUAGE

Along this novel, Dickens uses profuse literary references, coming not only from the classical english authors, as William Shakespeare or Jonathan Swift, but from books and authors of many other countries and cultures, not to mention his biblical knowledge. He also demonstrates erudition in legal themes and their respective contemporary authors.

"...the stately fleet of the majestic Lilliput." (p.27, Jonathan Swift)

"...and the sixth or Great Seal still prevails," (p.68)

"I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying." (p.69, Matthew 7:15)

The author likes to play with the language in many ways, sometimes it follows or imitates the nature sounds, as in:

"...and the heavy drops fall, drip, drip, drip, upon the broad flagged pavement," (p.24)

He also mints fictitious but very meaningful names in alphabetical order for a narrative and satirical purpose as in:

Coodle, Doodle, Foodle, Goodle, Hoodle, Joodle, Koodle, Loodle, Moodle, Noodle... and Cuffy, Duffy, Fuffy, Guffy, Huffy,Juffy, Kuffy, etc.    (p.165)

And he even plays with a complete, long paragraph "...in parentheses and without punctuation," (p.153)

POETRY

Though the plot sometimes becomes difficult to follow due to the narrative digressions of Dickens, the book has the virtue of an extensive use of poetry in the descriptions made by the omniscient voice. He uses lavishly poetical imagery and syllabic rythm, as in this paragraph that could be cut and read in verses:

"Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon, or stay too long, by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to every passer-by, 'Look here!'" (p.157)

*Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Barnes & Noble Classics, New York, U.S.A. 2005