I am fond of the books of Charles Dickens but for some reason never got around to reading this particular one that was published in 1853. It is argued by some critics to be one of his best works. I was stimulated to read it because I came across a 2005 BBC adaptation into a seres that looked like it might be good but I thought I should read the book first.

I am not an authority on Dickens so will leave it to others to judge whether this may or may not be one his finest works but it is undoubtedly very good and one of the most Dickensian in its flourishes and plotting. Coincidences, a Dickens staple, abound and people who seemed to be unconnected suddenly discover that they are in fact related, even very closely.

Dickens also has a penchant for creating eccentric characters with strange names and here we find them in abundance. In this book alone are Jarndyce, Guppy, Turveydrop, Jellyby, Snagsby, Smallweed, Chadband, Pardiggle, Squod, Tulkinghorn, Clamb, and Grubble. You rarely find a Smith or a Jones or a Brown in a Dickens novel. Interestingly, Dickens’s own name was considered strange at that time, as one critic wrote, “Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations.” This shows that names that we now consider as ordinary became so by virtue of familiarity. If Dickens had not become so famous, his name might still have been considered ‘queer’.

Dickens rarely misses an opportunity to specify whatever meals his characters might be eating and he will fill in details at great length, even when it does not really advance the story. Take for example this passage about a breakfast: “dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast.” Jane Austen, in contrast, will mention that someone had prepared a sumptuous breakfast but not bother to describe it.

Dickens had a difficult childhood. His father spent some time in debtor’s prison and he was sent to work 10-hour strenuous days pasting labels on pots of boot blacking in harsh conditions. Growing up in poverty and hunger makes his fascination with food understandable.

It is also typical of Dickens to give even incidental characters names and descriptions. Hence one encounters so many characters that it is difficult to keep track of them and one never knows which ones are going to be central to the story later and which ones are to appear in passing and never get mentioned again and can thus can be ignored. Take this passage that occurs in the middle of the book.

Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirtsleeves at the door of his very clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I don’t know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own fireside without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat except at church.

This is the only appearance of Grubble in the entire book. He is utterly unnecessary to the story and could have been omitted entirely. He is decidedly an incidental character and yet it is typical of Dickens to go into detail about his appearance and his home, in a way that most other authors would do only for someone who is a recurring character. In this respect, it is helpful to read digital versions of his books (easily available now that they are all out of copyright) because then one can quickly search through the text when someone appears to see when they were first introduced and why.

Dickens was a crusader, using his novels to provide scathing indictments of the conditions in the England of his time. The appalling conditions in which many children lived was a repeated target, especially in Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. In this book too, Dickens attacks the way children are left to fend for themselves in the dirt and grime of London. But he also takes particular aim at the law. Much of the plot deals with how the British legal system (at least at the time of the book’s publication in 1852) would drag out proceedings until the parties to any civil suit (both plaintiffs and defendants) exhaust their resources, while the lawyers make money at their expense. This was particularly true of the Court of Chancery that had to deal with contested wills and estates.

This book tells the story of three orphans Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone, all roughly around 18 years of age who, because of the lack of parents, are made wards of the court and thus their lives are determined by judges. The judge places them in the custody of John Jarndyce, a kindly, wealthy man who lives in the large house that has the name of the book but the house itself is far from bleak and is indeed quite pleasant and luxurious.

Esther’s family is unknown but Ada and Richard are both heirs to a reputedly large fortune left by a distant ancestor of Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard. Unfortunately due to a proliferation of differing documents and wills, the estate has been embroiled in legal battles that have spanned generations. Lured with trying to get at the fortune resulted in many of the claimants becoming obsessed with the case and their lives being ruined as a result. John Jarndyce is aware of the danger and refuses to get involved and warns his cousins Ada and Richard to steer clear of it but Richard gets sucked into it.

As Dickens says:

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. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

Indeed much of the book’s plot deals with the lengthy legal battle Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, eating into the originally large estate and ruining all those descendants that were parties to it, except the lawyers. Indeed so harsh was his criticism that it is said that “His 1853 novel Bleak House, a satire on the judicial system, helped support a reformist movement that culminated in the 1870s legal reform in England.”

Because his novels, including this one, were often serialized in weekly magazines, Dickens would often end each installment with a cliffhanger to ensure readers would come back, a device that is now routinely used. Apparently he would also use the feedback he got from each installment to shape future content.

In this novel, Dickens also includes a novelty for that time, a murder mystery in which a main character is killed and there are three suspects. The case is solved by a police detective named Bucket and it has been suggested that this was the first time in an English novel that this kind of plot was used.

One feature of this book that caused some controversy was when one of his characters died of spontaneous combustion. Even at that time, critics said that it was impossible and ridiculed it. But Dickens was a believer and when the book was published, he added a preface defending it and cited cases that had been reported in the media as having occurred.

Dickens is always fun to read even if sometimes one had to wade through lengthy descriptions of places and fog and weather.

I did watch the TV series and enjoyed it. They removed many of the auxiliary characters and changed the story accordingly thus removing some subplots but in general I thought it was faithful to the book and very good.

Here’s the trailer.