Charles Dickens Bleak House
The 19th-century novel usually applies to the portrayal of the failings
of society through the failings of families. The aim of this essay is to analyse
the relevance of this statement in regard to Charles Dickens's novel Bleak
House. Victorian society was greatly depended on the established norms
and principles that shaped people's styles of life and behaviour; however,
these rules often resulted in the destruction of a personality and the failure
of the family. As the members of such families belonged to the existing society,
their individual failure contributed to the failure of society in whole.
In Bleak House Charles Dickens depicts how the destructive British
legal system negatively influences people and their families, further ruining
other members of society. In this novel society is represented through three
principal social groups: the Chancery, the upper-class and the poor. The Chancery
is the major legal organ that controls all aspects of people's lives, especially
familial, and as Dickens puts it, "The one great principle of the English
law, is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly,
certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings"1.
According to Graham Storey, the Chancery "is presented as corrupt and life-destroying,
a ghastly parody of a Court founded to administer justice and equity"2. The
Chancery is closely connected with the world of the upper-class and the poor,
and this connection is especially obvious under the consideration of the suit
of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The writer stresses on the fact that everyone who
collides with this legal system is destroyed by it. As Daleski claims, this
Court "is simply a socially condoned form of parasitism, as is graphically
confirmed by the eventual lot of the Jarndyce estate, which is eaten up in
costs"3. Destroying families during the courts, the Chancery lawyers pursue
their own interests; however, they fail to understand that such actions will
finally ruin them and other members of British society. On the example of
the Jarndyces, Dickens uncovers the destruction of some generations of this
family due to their inability to get money, according to the inheritance.
The Chancery doesn't take into account the family's needs and the impact of
the lawsuit on people; instead it maintains the established laws. Mr. Tulkinghorn,
"a dark, cold object"4, solves the family affairs of aristocrats, destroying
not only the lives of other people, but also his own soul. Such individual
decay is spread on other members of society, for instance, the Smallweeds
who pursue only Compound Interest, thus generating the overall decay. Parliament
aggravates this social decay; its members pass those laws that result in the
failure of families. They reject any family reforms, considering that they
"would encourage some person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere"5.
Their own families are also exposed to destruction, like the Dedlocks who
live without children and usually suffer from boredom. Applying to all these
characters and events, Charles Dickens wants to show that the failure of society
is a direct consequence of the failing of the family, although the characters
of the novel don't want to understand this truth. Every human being belongs
to a large family - society, in which he/she lives, thus all members are closely
connected with each other. However, in Bleak House each person considers his
life isolated from the lives and affairs of other people. Dyson considers
that the only thing that unites these individuals is the power of money and
social position, depriving them of all human traits; this is clearly revealed
by the narrator Esther6. Dickens reveals that in the industrial world preoccupied
with corruption and bureaucracy people receive more independence, but simultaneously
they are really separated from each other, trying to adhere to the existing
social and political system. This isolation contributes much to the family
decay; the writer demonstrates that everything in this world is interrelated.
If a person's soul is destroyed, this influences those people who are close
to him/her, and finally results in the failure of society. Although it is
the corrupted system that leads to people's destruction, the writer, "working
out closely and thoroughly the skilfully designed tale of a household"7, proves
that it is evil inside each character that contributes to his/her decay. As
Smith puts it, people in Bleak House "participate willingly in their own human
impairment"8.
Perhaps, that's why the majority of cases that the Chancery solves, according
to Scott, "have originated in family quarrels - the Jarndyces', Miss Flite's,
Gridley's"9. At the end of the novel the case of the Jarndyces is solved by
taking the estate to cover the costs of the court, reducing all hopes of the
Jarndyces to nothing and destroying many of them. According to Leavis, the
Jarndyce case reflects the essence of Victorian society that ignored people
for the sake of the system10. This lawsuit reveals the power of some members
of society over other people and, as Dunlop puts it, the way, to which these
powerful people applies, in order to enrich themselves, despite the fact that
their actions ruin people's lives11. As Dickens states, "Scores of persons
have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without
knowing how and why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with
the suit"12. But the family destruction occurs not only in the court, the
family of Dedlocks is destroyed when their lawyer discovers their secret and
makes an attempt to utilize this secret for his own benefit. As a result,
the maid of Lady Dedlock kills Tulkinghorn, while Lady Dedlock runs away and
soon dies.
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