Bleak House: The Good, the Bad, and the…Necessary

Tuco would have been a heck of a Dickens character.

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"…as artistic achievements the Dedlocks, I am sorry to say, are as dead as doornails or door locks (the Dead locks are dead)." I had to quote this beautiful Nabokovian flight of fancy, but he makes me consider the case of Sir Leicester and Lady Honoria a little more. In the context of Dickens's themes, Sir Leicester to me represents his general view of aristocratic England in the modern age. Large, fat, imposing (his personality and influence seem to extend as long and wide as the place he is named for), meddling in politics he really knows little about, caring for a cavalcade of employees and poor relations, and putting position above all. And yet, just as Dickens is a sentimental optimist, so Sir Leicester has a good heart in the final scheme of things, as all his actions following Lady Dedlock's flight prove. Honoria is as well-named as her husband. Her entire character is based around a personal code of honor she tries to stick to for the duration, a code based on the way people care about each other rather than the cool logic the world increasingly turns on. Out of regard for her husband and position she banishes all traces of Hawdon from her life, thus occasioning her initially cool treatment of Esther, but her code makes her confess the truth of their relationship to Esther before too long…indeed, much earlier than I had expected in a pleasant surprise. (I figured out Esther and Lady Dedlock's relationship early on but felt Dickens was saving it for the final climax.) She also speaks up for the marriage of Watt and Rosa because it is not in her character to deny anyone happiness, just as she will try to bring the husband she does love happiness by fleeing to keep him from being shamed. Lady Dedlock thus makes a grand foil for Mr. Tulkinghorn, the most dry and impersonal creature in the story.

So the Dedlocks have character, and are important to the story, but then again in a Dickens plot, turning on coincidence and connection, all the characters are important to the story. Some are more well-written than others, though, and the vividness of Skimpole, George Rouncewell, and the Smallweeds (to name just three) and the intellectual intricacy of Esther are more artistic than two stock figures from the sort of play the Bertrams and company would have loved. Dickens fulfills his goal of presenting the cross-section. He never claimed every aspect would be done well, or that he would put more effort into the more interesting figures.

"It is in his imagery that he is great." Nabokov felt that Dickens's skills with Structure and Style, his talent to describe and imagine most of all, were what made him an enduring writer, as opposed to the "sentimental trash" and "theatrical nonsense." Dickens may have been able to describe characters, settings, and objects with skills beyond the reach of many, many novelists. His imagery stays rooted in reality, but he has the gift of choosing words which make a reader appreciate the commonplace a little bit more or perfectly sum up the grotesque or out-of-the-ordinary. Both Nabokov and I would refer readers to the first few pages about the fog rolling through London as a prime example.

Most of Bleak House is about the joys, struggles, and miseries of children, including orphans, parents without children (both cases of a parent-child relationship where one is lost), and children attending on other children. Nabokov identified three major themes in Bleak House…

1. The Court of Chancery
   


2. Miserable children and their relationships with those they help and their parents, many of whom are frauds or freaks
   


3. The murder mystery
   

All of these themes will be discussed in greater detail, but for the present, when Nabokov first introduces the child theme (a theme I think was highly important to him…for a man who wrote books like Lolita, he never a lost a childish wonder for the things which mattered most to him…Lisa and I came across a children's picture alphabet at the Getty Center based around a passage in Speak, Memory where he gave colors to all the letters), I immediately thought about the parent-child relationships in the novel. Six leap out in my mind. Esther becomes a mother figure to everyone she meets, though none more than the beautiful but painfully immature Ada Clare and strong-hearted but frail Charley Neckett, who will end up needing her the most. (I must find a book about Dickens's genius in naming characters...and I think I might name a daughter Charlotte so I, like Dickens, could call her Charley.) The Jellybys are wretched and/or undisciplined children, for not only does Mrs. Jellyby show no inclinations toward motherhood, but her dominance has turned Mr. Jellyby into his namesake. The Skimpoles have little sense, a product of their raising, but manage to subsist because they have to with a father like that. Lady Dedlock hides her motherly spirit, having been forced by convention to abandon her daughter. On the other hand, the Bagnets are the closest-tied family there could be, indeed a mirror image of the Jellybys, for while the spirited Mrs. Bagnet always has her way with Matthew, their aims are for the perseverance of their station and devotion to each other and their children. (Those names!) And Mrs. Rouncewell is one of those ideal mothers who gives her sons a firm but loving upbringing, is strong enough to let them take her lessons and go their own way to make their mark in the world…but will always be there in times when they need her, when they are threatened. The maternal instinct, even when misused by Mrs. Jellyby, is one of the beacons of light in Bleak House.

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"Every character has his attribute, a kind of colored shadow that appears whenever the person appears." This should have gone without saying. From Pickwick onward Dickens could reduce his characters to single defining characteristics with masterful touches. It saved him excess characterization he could spend on plot and theme, but he never skimped on selecting just the right touches to ensure vivid characterization. More than any other novelist who died before the cinematic age, he would have been a superb screenwriter, an art where economy is prized but details must not be overlooked.

(Small break to indulge in, according to Guccione and Allen, the two great pleasures in life.)

"Things participate—pictures, houses, carriages, etc." And do they ever participate. Dickens breathes life into the immaterial by making all of it key components of the action or outgrowths of the characters, not mere settings. Bleak House itself, for instance, is bleak at the beginning as Mr. Jarndyce occupies it by his lonesome, but the house is transformed, then duplicated in its transformed state, by Esther's presence. The labyrinthine estate of the Dedlocks and the smaller quarters of Mr. Tulkinghorn are lined by portraits, silent figures keeping eternal vigilance in the later style of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. In a world full of schemers and the duplicitous, the honest and direct George Rouncewell has an appropriate abode in the shooting gallery he owns—as Mr. Tulkinghorn learns to his peril, you can't get much more direct than firing a gun at someone or something. The final chapters increasingly turn on how fast and in the right direction Esther and Mr. Bucket can propel their carriage. And in the encyclopedia of Dickensian locales, few are more full of drama and symbolism than the Ghost Walk.

"The sociological side…is neither interesting nor important." And yet Nabokov praises Edmund Wilson for his examination of this side of Bleak House. I would say the sociological side is important to Dickens in particular, as he was dealing with particulars of his era, and is interesting ONLY in how he is able to weave it into the considerable action already going on in the story. This is why Dickens is a novelist of genius, for his commentary is no mere polemic or tacked-on lecture like Tolstoy's history in War and Peace, but is fully integrated into the Structure.

Bleak House as a dualistic text. This is a novel of good and evil, and Nabokov, following Dickens's melodramatic bent, divides everything as mostly such, with good being focused in Bleak House, best represented by Esther and Mr. Jarndyce, and evil being focused in Chancery, best represented by Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr. Vholes…and Krook. In the middle are the "tempted" who are sufficiently redeemed, as the Dedlocks, he by love, she by suffering. (Nabokov points out that the latter would be a recurring theme in Dostoyevsky, the one great Russian he disliked…perhaps this may play a part in his dismissal of the Dedlocks?) Richard is also redeemed by his love for the good winning out at his very end, although it comes only after the final absurd machination of Chancery to render the entire suit impotent.

(A brief word about the final outcome of the Jarndyce suit. In movies, it annoys me when the main line of action resolves itself in a pointless manner, as it does with satire in Burn After Reading or with dull earnestness in Advise and Consent. Chancery's ultimate nullification of any effect for Jarndyce v. Jarndyce did not annoy me, because it actually allows for the happy ending. Any triumph would have been a victory according to a battlefield and rules determined by the forces of evil. When the suit disappears, with it disappears any ties the characters possess to Chancery. Goodness is free to run its course.)

Chancery is evil not because of its purpose, which was designed for good, but because it becomes overinstitutionalized and thus falls victim to all people who love law and rule…they always use it to exploit themselves and their selfishness. Thus the philanthropists like Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle are also grouped with the evil because instead of practicing charity and goodness as Esther does, they engage in corporate, showy work which does nothing for anyone concerned…to the detriment of the children who truly need them.

One distinction Nabokov makes which I take issue with is calling Mr. Bucket an in-the-middle character with a possibility for redemption. He groups the detective with Coavinses, "doing their duty without unnecessary cruelty." Mr. Bucket is far much more than that. He may sometimes be in the employ of the devils, but all of his work is dedicated to a good ideal: the bringing about and preservation of justice. He is a good-humored man with a happy marriage, and though childless has a genuine affection for children. He feels terrible when the pursuit of justice necessitates him doing things contrary to his wishes, as when he must arrest George when the first clues to Mr. Tulkinghorn's murder point his friend's way, but he also tells the truth to everyone about everyone, bringing some much needed castigation to characters like the Smallweeds and Mrs. Snagsby. Moreover, Mr. Bucket may be the most intelligent character in the novel, the one who is able to see everyone the way they are…he even, I believe, deduces Esther and Lady Dedlock's bond. I find it a great sign of Structure and Style that Mr. Bucket is the catalyst for the one bridging of the narrative gap, as his investigation leads him to call on Esther Summerson in one of "Charles Dickens's" chapters, and Esther immediately takes over the narration. He would have made a fine stand-in for Dickens as well…he is the most honestly perceptive person in the story, and for possessing so many values Dickens prized, I feel compelled to place him on the side of the angels.