She harbours a dark secret, which is slowly unravelled by the coldly calculating heartless lawyer Tulkinghorn – one of Dickens’ greatest creations. The story is developed by the introduction of the pompous Sir Leicester Deadlock and his proud wife, Lady Deadlock. Richard and Ada wish to marry but his vacillations in choice of career and his inability to stick with his choices lead him to put all his faith in the resolution of the Jarndyce case in which he has a financial interest. It ruins and taints all who come into contact with it.Įsther Summerson, who narrates much of the story, gives an account of her unhappy childhood and becoming a protégée of the honest and worthy John Jarndyce, who is guardian to Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. It is Dickens’ merciless indictment of the Court of Chancery and its bungling and morally corrupt handling of the Jarndyce case that gives the novel scope and meaning. All the characters in the novel are in some ways touched by this impenetrable lawsuit. The story revolves around an infamous court case, Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, which has been rolling on for years in the court of Chancery with little hope of it ever being resolved. In no other of his novels is the canvas broader, the sweep more inclusive, the linguistic and dramatic texture richer, the gallery of comic grotesques more extraordinary.’ Hillis Miller, author of Charles Dickens, The World of his Novels, observed that in writing Bleak House: ‘Dickens constructed a model in little of English society in his time.
Unlike some of his other works, this novel contains no episodes that do not have a direct relevance to the main plot. It has an integrated plot which develops naturally, encompassing and involving the vast array of characters in a unified tale that Dickens brings forth from his fertile imagination. Keep out of Chancery… it’s like being ground to bits in a slow mill it’s like 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.’ John Jarndyce, Bleak Houseīleak House (1851-53) is one of Dickens’ greatest novels.
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