149
although the haughty coldness of
Lady Dedlock hides a dark secret.
Miss Flite, who befriends the young
wards, is a half-crazed old woman,
driven insane by the Jarndyce and
Jarndyce case. Carrying a bag of
documents, she haunts Chancery,
expecting a day of judgement when
she will release the birds she keeps
in cages, whose names chillingly
include Ashes, Waste, Ruin, and
Despair. Krook, a scrap merchant
fond of rum and obsessed by the
court case, plays a critical role until
one day, in a startling end to the
tenth installment, he spontaneously
combusts. And Tulkinghorn,
Dedlock’s lawyer, haunts the pages,
stalking the mystery that links the
Dedlocks and Esther Summerson.Neglect vs. kindness
Selfishness, greed, hypocrisy,
and neglect are common themes of
the book: Mrs. Jellyby neglects her
own children for her philanthropic
interests; self-centred “model of
Deportment” Mr. Turveydrop shows
little interest in his hardworking,
impoverished son; the grotesque
Smallwood family are obsessed by
“compound interest”; and all of
society neglects Jo, a poor young
crossing sweeper, who is constantly
told to “move on.” Hypocrisy is
caricatured in the persons of
Chadband, a oily Evangelical
churchman, and Harold Skimpole,
who presents himself as untouched
by the monetary realities around
him, yet cadges money from all his
friends. By contrast, kindness is
shown to all by Esther, Ada, and
their benefactor John Jarndyce.Serial success
Bleak House is also arguably one
of the earliest detective novels in
English literature. The detective
is Mr. Bucket, a genial, terrier-like
man, who, after a ghastly murder,tracks down the culprit. Dickens
creates false clues in this subplot;
these appeared tantalizingly as
cliff-hangers at the end of two
installments, keeping readers in
suspense and eager to read more.
Some early reviews were critical
of Bleak House, feeling that it was
too gloomy and lacking in humor.
Dickens’ friend and biographer John
Forster described it as “too real,” but
readers clearly disagreed: sales were
between 34,000 and 43,000 copies
a month. Following the success of
Dickens, other writers also gained
readers via serialization. WilkieROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Collins’ detective novel The
Moonstone first appeared in
installments, and episodes of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
Holmes tales were published in The
Strand Magazine. Outside Britain,
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was
published serially, as was Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers
Karamazov. Radio and television
eventually took over from magazine
serials, but in 1984 American writer
Tom Wolfe returned to serialization
with The Bonfire of the Vanities,
which was first published in Rolling
Stone magazine. ■Dickens treats the locations in Bleak House almost as
characters in their own right. Vividly portrayed, they serve
as a shorthand for class and provide a credible backdrop for
people of very different social status to meet and interact.Lincoln’s Inn
Much of the action—especially the legal
machinations of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—
occurs in and around Lincoln’s Inn, one
of four Inns of Court in London. This was
the home of Tulkinghorn and also of
Dickens’ lawyer in real life.St. Albans
Dickens locates John Jarndyce’s middle-
class home, Bleak House, in St. Albans,
Hertfordshire, but it is believed to have
been modeled on the house in Broadstairs,
Kent, where he stayed with his family
every summer for several years.Tom-All-Alone’s
The poverty and ruinous living and working
conditions in Dickensian London are
encapsulated in the tumbling slum called
Tom-All-Alone’s. Although this area is
fictional, it may have been based on an area
called Devil’s Acre in London’s Westminster.Lincolnshire Wolds
Dickens placed Chesney Wold—the grand
home of Sir Leicester and Lady Honoria
Dedlock—in Lincolnshire. Its description
is based on Rockingham Castle in
Leicestershire, which was owned by his
friends Richard and Lavinia Watson.US_146-149_BleakHouse.indd 149 08/10/2015 13:06