Book Review: Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853) Conclusion

Poor Richard!  He spent all his time worrying over that dreaded court case.  When it finally went wrong, he just wasted away and died within hours.  Really?  I mean, is it that easy to die in Victorian Britain?  Well, if you’re not in the “working class”, the answer is yes.  Those leisured classes were dropping like flies, swooning away for this and that at the drop of a hat.  When the court ended, Richard couldn’t even yell at the judge because he had blood in his mouth.  What?  Did he bite his tongue?  They kept alluding to him wasting away for months before this under the care of the good and wise Woodcourt.  Wasting away?  From worry?  Are they going to stamp that on the official certificate of death, signed by the coroner?  Cause of death – worry.

Book Review: Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853) Wacky Characters Part II

Esther and her mother.  Okay, not so wacky, but wacked out, maybe.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not here to throw mud on these people.  But let's be honest, the idea that Esther spends her whole life longing to do things for other people just to be loved is a bit hard to take.  At some point she's got to realize she is not the person her evil aunt told her she was.

Book Review: Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853) More About Those Wacky Characters

There's a particular character I want to discuss, because she is one of Dickens' finest drawn characters.  Mrs. Jellyby is just horrible.  So terrible you will just love her.  When we switch back to one of her scenes, you cringe to read it, but read it you must.

Book Review: Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853) Continued...

This is not the first time I've waded through this book.  I remember feeling bogged down like a wanderer in a misty wood, wondering who these characters are and how I should feel about them.  This time was better, although it helps to write names down.

Dickens was a master of pulling in a variety of characters who hover on the fringe of a storyline, each adding their part at the right time.  That's even more interesting considering how Dickens wrote.  You probably know his books were serialized.  Each month another chapter would be published in a magazine.  But wait, here's the catch.  He wrote them as he went along.  When he published chapter 12, chapter 13 wasn't written.  Pretty cool, right?  But I'll talk more about that in a post about Dickens.

Book Review: Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853) First Look

I'll have a few posts about this book.  I wanted to throw out some initial thoughts on it.

The first two chapters are boring.  I'm not going to lie to you.  But you have to get through them to understand what the heck is going on.  Or I can just tell you.  Chancery court is where they haggled over disputed wills, divorces, alimony and that sort of thing.  Big deal, right?  Well, Victorian Britain had huge problems with their Chancery court, with cases lasting for years and years.  Sometimes decades.  The lawyers got rich, much like here in America.  In the end, the actual individuals - plaintiffs or defendants - ended up with junk.  They got smack, zip, nada.  Dickens was using this for his social commentary.