Bleak House

I read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House while traveling for six weeks in Peru. I probably should have spent that time reading some South American master, like Borges or Marquez, or most importantly Llosa, since he is Peru’s most celebrated writer, but instead I chose Dickens. I think it was because I liked the idea of reading something completely distinct from where my travels lead me, to sit in Chesney Wold while sitting on the cold, desert Peruvian shore, to walk through grimy, smoky 19th Century London while walking in the clear pampas of the Andes, to roam the dark, labyrinthine rooms of Chancery while roaming the dark, labyrinthine, yet living, jungles of the Amazon Basin. In the chance of encountering a squirrel monkey not unlike Jo, a tapir for Tulkinghorn, a spectacled bear for George, lay a certain mystifying joy, a kind of realization of the wideness of the world.

I also wanted a large, hefty book that would last most of the trip, something epic in scope to alleviate all the children’s literature I had read recently. And having worked at the bookstore during the Bleak House miniseries on the BBC, I listened to many Bleak House-centered conversations. One patron exclaimed that Charles Dickens was the world’s greatest writer—only, of course, after Shakespeare—and Bleak House his masterpiece. Such effusive exclamations certainly made the decision to make Bleak House my Peru book easier.

Enough on decision-making (although that is one of the great pleasures of reading!) and onto Bleak House. During the first three weeks of my trip and the first half of the book, I found myself disappointed. Or perhaps a better word is confused. I kept wondering where was this novel going? How would Dickens tie all these disparate characters together? Really, what was the point of all this? Sure, the writing was wonderful, the characterizations excellent, and many of the scenes were very funny, but I felt as though I struggled through the pages looking for a through-line, grasped in the dark for a string to get me through this seeming labyrinth of a book (if you haven’t guessed it already that is the word of this entry: labyrinth). Perhaps, I was too distracted by the stressors of the trip to catch on to the groundwork Dickens was laying. Perhaps, I was too accustomed to children’s literature where the first chapter always contains significant movement on plot and theme. I found myself almost bored.

I have read Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Hard Times, so it’s not like I came into this unaware that much of Dickens work is stuffing—and that is also one of the great joys of Dickens and many other 19th Century artists; they throw everything into their artistry, every bit of fluff, scrap, and rags they can manage. How different, and more perfect, a scarecrow looks when he is filled out, when he looms in a cornfield like a fat man after a satisfying meal than when he is nothing but an empty shirt, empty pants, and brainless bag for a head, which is how I often view contemporary literature: all plot, no stuffing; all action, no nuance; all bold strokes, no details. So why wasn’t Bleak House speaking to me? Perhaps, too much stuffing, so that it’s spilling out of the book, like a scarecrow split open by crows’ beaks? Or maybe I was simply too dim-witted.

Whichever way it falls, the light bulb between my head and the work eventually did go on. It was almost five hundred pages though before it fired. A few chapters before Esther becomes sick, the light began to come in fits and spurts, shedding a little illumination into the shadows. And then once she fell ill, it came on full, and for the rest of the book I was engrossed, I was devouring, I was in awe at Dickens’ ability to take all these disparate elements and make, dare I say it, a masterpiece. I remember, mid-day in the Amazon, laying on my mosquito-netted bed, and tearing through the revelation of Esther’s parentage. In fact, this is one of my favorite memories of the trip!

Now, looking back, the first half of the book makes complete sense. It is the set-up, the introduction of all these elements, characters, and plot points that really began to interconnect and play themselves out through the second half in such surprising and ultimately satisfying ways. It is a dark book, but beautifully so. I found myself surprised as to where Dickens would take so many of his characters (death, ruination, corruption, despair, murder, spontaneous combustion).

It is a book really about the society’s impact on the young, on the innocent, on those just coming into the world. In the micro version of this, you have the effect of parents (or guardians) on their children, Esther and her Aunt, as well as Esther and her birth parents, Mrs. Jellyby’s effect on Caddy (and on all her offspring), Mr. Jarndyce influence over Ada, Esther, and Richard (though he ultimately rejects it), and subsequently Mr. Skimpole and Mr. Vholes parentage over Richard, and finally George and Mrs. Rouncewell. Presiding over both Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife are those illustrious aristocratic ancestors. As they move along the Ghost’s Walk, they remind us of the pressures on these two characters left to them by parental figures long dead. Sir Leicester Dedlock’s sporadic gout is another indication of his deeply ingrained inheritance. It is so delightful then when at the end of the novel he throws off much of his parentage and strikes a new, though still constrained, path. Finally you have those characters entirely without guardians, such as Jo and Nemo. Very little good can come to them.

At the macro level all the characters in the Bleak House have one patriarch, a stern, unyielding, and absurd father called Chancery Court. This is societies answer to bad-parenting: create a far worse, almost omnipotent monster. Ridiculous though the court may seem, it is ruthless, destructive, devouring. It eats not only money, but hope, youth, innocence, and entire lives. Only the few characters that are able to cut themselves truly off from Chancery Court, and subsequently Jarndyce and Jarndyce, come off well. The rest meet dim, pathetic ends. To tie one’s self to this Cronus means to meet repetitive humiliation, and eventually ruination.
Dickens seems to be making a comment, or many comments, on parenting. Children must break free of bad parents and strike out on their own. If the parent is good however, a certain degree of closeness is not only all right, but necessary (witness George and Miss. Rouncewell, as well as Richard’s demise after rejecting a ‘good parent’). This may seem quite a simple lesson, but it is not. It is a condemnation of every aspect of 19th Century British society, which in Dicken’s view had created a terrible, many-headed parent. The only comfort were the few individuals, like Mr. Jarndyce and Esther, who were able to offset some of society’s, and parent’s, wrongs through acts of selflessness.

Bleak House remains topical. Chancery Court could be the American Health Care system, or the trappings and ridiculousness of our Senate, Congress, and President. We too live in a time of bad, bad parenting. Obscurity remains: absurdity is taken for rationality, rule of law is merely rule of the indifferent, and a sense of hopelessness—of an inability to escape our dissembling parents—descends on us all. To quote the justly famous opening chapter of Bleak House: “Fog everywhere”.

Book purchased from Amazon.

Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Penguin, 2003

Paperback, pages 1037

ISBN: 0141439726