Bleak House
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First published 1853.
Bleak House begins with fog: “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.” And at the center of the fog, but murkier still, is the High Court. Legal corruption permeates this novel like a disease, issuing in particular from the Byzantine lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, with which all the book’s characters have a connection. This suit, the narrator tells us, has become so complicated and of such longevity “that no man alive knows what it means.” People live and die as plaintiffs in the case. Structured around Chancery’s machinations, Dickens’s narrative is less picaresque than other of his works but nevertheless provides his customary, witty dissection of the layers of Victorian society. Whether in the sunny aristocratic milieu of the Dedlocks in Lincolnshire or the slums of Tom-All-Alone’s in London, there is always someone with a stake in the Jarndyce case.
Really, it is the public sphere in general that Bleak House satirizes. Everything resembles Chancery: Parliament, the provincial aristocracy, and even Christian philanthropy is caricatured as moribund and self-serving. At some subterranean level, all public life is tainted with complicity between class, power, money, and law. Private and inner life is affected too. The narrative, which is split between the third person and the novel’s heroine, Esther Summerson, concerns moral disposition as much as social criticism. Characters — from the wearyingly earnest to the brilliantly shallow, from the foolish and foppish to the vampiristic and dangerous — are all illuminated in the darkness of Dickens’s outraged, urbane opus. — Doug Haynes in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Bleak House begins with fog: “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.” And at the center of the fog, but murkier still, is the High Court. Legal corruption permeates this novel like a disease, issuing in particular from the Byzantine lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, with which all the book’s characters have a connection. This suit, the narrator tells us, has become so complicated and of such longevity “that no man alive knows what it means.” People live and die as plaintiffs in the case. Structured around Chancery’s machinations, Dickens’s narrative is less picaresque than other of his works but nevertheless provides his customary, witty dissection of the layers of Victorian society. Whether in the sunny aristocratic milieu of the Dedlocks in Lincolnshire or the slums of Tom-All-Alone’s in London, there is always someone with a stake in the Jarndyce case.
Really, it is the public sphere in general that Bleak House satirizes. Everything resembles Chancery: Parliament, the provincial aristocracy, and even Christian philanthropy is caricatured as moribund and self-serving. At some subterranean level, all public life is tainted with complicity between class, power, money, and law. Private and inner life is affected too. The narrative, which is split between the third person and the novel’s heroine, Esther Summerson, concerns moral disposition as much as social criticism. Characters — from the wearyingly earnest to the brilliantly shallow, from the foolish and foppish to the vampiristic and dangerous — are all illuminated in the darkness of Dickens’s outraged, urbane opus. — Doug Haynes in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Thanks so much for your donation Vasha!
This book is now part of the 1001-library. If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the 1001-library bookshelf.
This book is now part of the 1001-library. If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the 1001-library bookshelf.
I read this book once a long time ago, and knew I wouldn't want to read it again... but then I had to look something up in it, and found myself sucked into the whole thing. It is SO over the top, but entertaining (mostly). Melodrama, more melodrama, convenient coincidences by the dozen, sentiment, characters defined by one physical or verbal tic repeated over and over and over so that we always know who we're dealing with... I skimmed some of the sappiest or most repetitive parts, while trying not to miss crucial plot developments; the flaws are all counteracted by passages of marvelous irony and clever writing, and the depiction of the nefariousness of Chancery never tired me, and the digs at the expense of the "fashionable world" seldom did.
This book is now back on the 1001 library bookshelf and can be borrowed by PMing Vasha:)
If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.
If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the library bookshelf.
