The death scenes.
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Dickens readopts a Carlylean tone when writing about Hawdon's funeral and Jo's response. Dickens stylistically piles up repetitions and comparisons about the mean futility of Hawdon's resting place and the impersonality of death…a situation which cries out for empathy…then drops the sarcastic tone within the posturing when he addresses Jo, who has been mocked for his lack of educational intellect, as the one person paying Hawdon sincere respect. Similarly, Carlyle's loquaciousness would become sincere when he hit upon something righteous: the "everlasting Yea" of Sartor Resartus is the best example.
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Allan Woodcourt and Mr. Jarndyce both minister to Jo during his last, fatal illness as he rests with George Rouncewell, "both thinking much, how strangely Fate [with the genial help of Charles Dickens] has entangled this rough outcast in the web of their very different lives." Dickens's habit of arranging his characters' lives to intersect is very conspicuous here. Realistically, a street urchin with a much-weakened body would never have been found again, and if so not by people who have already been in close contact with him. But Jo's death, and its being witnessed as such, is doubly necessary. It puts his sad part of the story in sharp opposition to that of his still-living betrayer Skimpole, a comparison which would not be lost on a man as intelligent as Mr. Jarndyce, and Allan's tireless but futile efforts with him are one of the few concrete medical actions we see him perform, and crucially the last, and in the presence of Mr. Jarndyce…if any more proof were needed that this man will be a good husband for Esther, Allan's ministration would be it.
In Jo's dying moments, the first time he addresses Allan, he calls him "Mr. Woodcot," and Nabokov points out that a "little cottage of wood" is the same as "a little coffin." Dickens had a way with words and evocative phrases, but most of those lay in repetitive, emphatic dialogue. For him to use almost punning symbolism at first reads like Nabokov, whose own work was full of such cleverness, reading too much into the scenario, but there is also no reason that Dickens would not carry on a tradition older than Shakespeare.
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Allan urges Jo to pray, and he uses the word "Father" for the first time. This choice of words carries a double meaning. First, Jo has been failed by people and society, so his closing address to God ("Yes, that's wery good, sir.") signifies a trust that the next world will bring him comfort and joy. Second, if we link this to the earlier equivalency of Woodcourt and death from the scene's beginning, Jo using the word "Father" at Woodcourt's urging identifies the doctor not with death but as a caring figure of salvation, a man holding the boy's hand when he most needs a hand to hold. It is psychological reversal.
Dickens describes the moment of Jo's death as an angry Carlylean apostrophe to the world, but with no "participative emotion." This is an angry moment for the writer. His earlier scenes with Jo have piled on the sentimentality. The reader has felt for him as they felt for Oliver and Smike and Little Nell, and he has just written a highly wrought death scene. Dickens recognizes that further gushing is not necessary—we get the point—and chooses instead to lash out at the institutions who let him and others die despite being born with compassion in their hearts. Personal rage cutting in with communal grief allows the emotions to be neutralized just enough for us to move on, to be reasoned…for Jo dies in Chapter 47, the start of that particular installment of the serial, and chapter 48 depicts Mr. Tulkinghorn's murder. Dickens needed to kill Jo off at this point to make that ready…and it also allows the juxtaposition of death for the oppressor and the oppressed. Stylistically, his condemnation of Mr. Tulkinghorn's class paves the way for Mr. Tulkinghorn's own demise.
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Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicions are first aroused when Lady Dedlock faints while asking about Hawdon's handwriting. The murder-mystery plot of Bleak House turns around two men of superb intellect—Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr. Bucket—and their fateful intertwining with a woman who is pure emotion—Hortense. Mr. Tulkinghorn is the driest, coolest observer of the law and its details there could be. His perception is superb, and thus his inquiries following such an uncharacteristic outburst from the usually haughty and reserved Lady Dedlock is not an exaggeration. As a man whose duty is to protect his client, any anomaly he finds deserves his attention. Mr. Tulkinghorn may be the most intelligent character in the novel, so his demise at the hands of a passionate maid is rich in poetic irony.
Krook takes the incriminating letters from Hawdon's room before showing the premises to Mr. Tulkinghorn. Krook is again like the Lord Chancellor in this scene, a man who confounds human effort and increases trial as much as Chancery does.
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The spontaneous combustion makes Mr. Guppy miss his chance to get the letters, and they wind up in the hands of Mr. Smallweed, who tries to use them to blackmail Sir Leicester AFTER he sells them to Mr. Tulkinghorn. The Smallweeds are villains of comic intensity, though young Bartholomew seems to be only on the periphery of their diabolical activities and more functions as a linking figure and contrast to Mr. Guppy. Dickens describes them as unpleasant, severe, nearly senile, but extraordinarily focused in the acquisition and hoarding of money. This is selfish greed in direct opposition to social empathy. In keeping with their character, they attempt to squeeze maximum profit from the letters, overplaying their hand by running up against Mr. Bucket, a man as incorruptible as he is smart.
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Lady Dedlock, in threadbare clothes so she will not be noticed, walks a hundred miles through a storm and dies clutching the iron gate at Hawdon's grave. Nabokov's concluding comment: "As one can see from this bare summary, the plot of the mystery theme does not quite live up to the poetry of the book." Two issues here. First, Mr. Bucket and Esther's breakneck pursuit through England—a Victorian equivalent of a car chase—and Lady Dedlock's pathetic finish do match the poetry, especially the way Nabokov describes the latter scene. Second, has Nabokov ever read murder mysteries? They are not meant to be poetic on the level of other literature, but are firmly rooted in reason and intellect. Their poetry is in the arrangement of facts and revealing of the same in a way which excites and delights the mind…a similar aesthetic thrill but operating on a completely different level. I believe Dickens was trying to show with this theme that the brains of the social structure could be used for benevolent purposes, as well as to increase his readers' thrills. For Nabokov to dismiss it is a crime in itself.
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