So what the dickens is all this bleakness about? If not about the weather, atmospheric and dreary - and playing its part from the opening pages, then it must be about the prolonged court case, played out through the book, of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. Perhaps it is the story of the two central female characters Esther and Lady Dedlock. Or maybe it is the timeless themes that run through all Dickens novels; the corruptive nature of power, redemption for the wicked, sacrifice of the good, and the undeniable force of class differences and wealth.

Well dear reader the bleakness comes from all of it. The emotions and drama that runs through all the individual plots and themes just spills out into the pages. The atmosphere and ever present sense of tragedy and sadness that cloaks a lot of the characters, most of whom hold a dark secret or they want to expose it. Whilst the book creates a sense of hopefulness, as a Dickens novel, you know lady ‘fate’ will have her way and it’s tragedy for someone.

Jarndyce v Jarndyce is a probate case, involving the Jarndyce family who challenge each other in court clocking up legal fees that might one day outweigh the value of the estate. Nevertheless, it is greed and fortune that can turn the eye blind to the inevitable.

Alongside this legal thread, are the stories of Esther, orphaned and cared for by her Godmother, and Lady Dedlock who possesses a melancholic air and who must at all costs hide her past transgressions to save her reputation and that of her husband Sir Leicester Dedlock. However, both lives become entwined as Esther finds herself a ward of Jarndyce and letters reveal some of the details of Lady Dedlocks secrets which fall into the hands of the notorious Tulkinghorn.

The story is long yet full of intrigue as we read our way through the deceptions, greed, revelations, loves and losses.

Review and Comments

What I loved about this book was the characterisation. Dickens is one of the best at developing his characters to the point the reader can identify with each one, their traits, their flaws and purpose. The Plot and the exposés were probably easy to work out part way through once the enquiries started into Esther, but what you could not foresee is how we arrive at the ending.

Whilst the writing in some of these great novels may not flow easily for the reader, I find the writing, descriptions, choice of words, and story telling superb. If you sit back and reflect on what you have just read, you can appreciate the sheer brilliance of Dickens. Because “A word in earnest is as good as a speech”

In some cases, Dickens conveys the emotions in other cases he hints at them. In some instances, he will reveal the plot and motive in other cases, he will leave it up to the reader to uncover the message, the connection, and the intention. Dickens is the master of suggestion - with perfectly timed comments, and subtle statements that come back later in the book and prove to be significant to the story.

I found the disreputable and dishonest characters more fascinating than Esther, a central character, who felt too good, too safe, and more like the poor but angelic little girl. I felt she lacked grit and real substance and felt too good to be true. I enjoy a bit more spice. Although intriguing the story was not sufficiently complex to warrant a book of this length. So it will feel a bit long, unless you just want to savour Dickens writing.

Excellent and although not my favourite Dickens novel, it is a timeless classic written by the master of character development who captures the immutable truth about human nature - perfectly. An author who writes beautifully, and can mix tragedy with love, honesty with deception but most of all an author who creates the drama and will leave you wanting to read more of his books.

Dickens is so good at penetrating your thoughts, that you find yourself reflecting on his stories, the plot, themes and messages a while after reading. Very memorable, often bleak but timeless.

WOW! What a GREAT read. Don't let the length intimidate you, if that is anyone's reluctance to pick this classic up. There are unforgettable characters, intrigue, romance, satire, murder, comedy, tragedy and a quite a number of plot twists and interesting connections. Dickens at his best!! He unfolds in dense descriptive language the world in which he lives, the good, bad & perhaps even evil. Able to dig the institutions he deplores, highlight the social injustices he advocates for yet it is wrapped up in a story that pulls you in deeper & deeper with each page with characters you adore, hate or laugh at. Names are important as they often give a clue to the inner "soul" of the character.

The core of the story that affects so many of the main characters is a court case that has dragged on for generations with a promise of great wealth but has been the ruin of many who hang their hopes & lives on it. One of those involved in the suit but who has little interest in it is John Jarndyce, an middle-aged affluent man who takes on 3 wards Ada, Richard & Esther. How their lives unfold & the connections they make, and the secrets held & revealed move the story forward. It has a dual narration; an anonymous narrator who speaks in the present & Esther who narrates from a retrospective viewpoint.

This is such a wonderfully rich & complicated story, I am probably not doing justice to it in this review. If you like Dickens or Victorian life, just pick it up and enjoy the ride whether at an amble or a gallop!

I hardly know what to say about Bleak House. Having just completed a three month slow read with the Dickensian group, I’m left with a feeling that I have encountered so many wonderful characters, along with a few scoundrels, experienced more of Dickens evocative prose, and wonder what will I do next. I know that I will read some short Dickens stories over the summer, but I miss the daily anticipation of a chapter from the all-knowing narrator or Esther Summerson bringing me the latest details from London or Lincolnshire, from Chancery or the titled Bleak House.

There is nothing major that I can add to the volumes written on this book but I will say that Dickens has moved to what seems a more mature style here with so many layered characters; some who were not redeemable while others may or may not have sought redemption. There are mystery, young adults of unknown parentage, a decades old court case involving an inheritance, views of an emerging industrial England, portraits of slums that make your senses reel.

If you have enjoyed Dickens before, read Bleak House! It has all you have known as well as new touches. Among them, possibly the first detective in English fiction.

I think Dickens has become my new favorite habit! I look forward to the 3 months I get to spend with the magnanimous group Dickensians!, reading a chapter a day. It is an accomplishment, in my opinion, to complete such a lengthy (1,017 pages! and 67 chapters!) and complex novel as Bleak House. But with Bionic Jean at the helm of our discussions, I knew that I would gain more knowledge and have more fun than if I’d read Dickens on my own. There’s a reason she is called the Dickens Duchess!

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall…Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and more too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

Thus, begins the complicated and complex tale with fog gripping the city and everything and everyone within it and most especially surrounding and encompassing the Court of Chancery. The case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce penetrates the minds and actions of those who are waiting, waiting, waiting (decades for many) for an inheritance to come with a court decision in their favor while inadvertently being devoured slowly by legal costs. Almost every person has or will have a connection to the case that has gone on for longer than some life times.

Dickens is always brilliant in his characterizations and the way he presents the issues that affected the Victorians. He brings these issues to the forefront: poverty, hypocrisy, parenting (good and bad), philanthropic societies, orphans, impoverished lifestyles (and this is not a complete list) through his plots and storylines. Specifically, Dickens has gone to task against the inefficiency of the legal system and the sad reality of the misuse of justice by the lawyers who seem to be the true profiteers of the system. Dicken’s voice is loud and clear throughout.

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.

There is one character who stands apart from the case by his own wise choosing and that is Mr. John Jarndyce who lives at Bleak House. He takes in two young orphans and distant cousins, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, who are caught up in the interests of the Chancery Court case. Esther Summerson is a ward to her benefactor Mr. Jarndyce and chosen to be a companion for young Ada and eventual housekeeper of Bleak House. Esther narrates a large portion of the story from her own perspective and you can’t help but fall in love with her generosity and kindness yet self-effacing attitude. This is a quality that she has convinced herself of and has learned after being raised by a stern, unloving aunt who constantly degraded her existence. The subject of Esther’s origins is explored, her parentage a mystery and the way in which Dickens drops clues from the beginning is masterful.

There is a plethora of colorful characters to love and hate but, in my opinion, no villain with a name other than the Court of Chancery and its persistent continuations and never ending status. Here are a few that stand out to me:
-Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock represent the old ways that are getting swept away with the Industrial Revolution.
-Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet, a military family where the industrious Mrs. makes most of the decisions and can find her way home from anywhere. (She was one of my favorite characters.)
-A couple of dysfunctional families are the Jellybys and Pardiggles who are obsessed with their philanthropic causes to the neglect of their families.
-Jo, a street crossing sweeper who “knows nothink”, is continuously instructed to “move along” and is the most poignant of Dickens’ characters to demonstrate the plight of the poor and those who have never been given a chance.
-The detestable Harold Skimpole who takes no responsibility for anything and is a parasite on his friends. (He got a lot of eye rolls from this reader whenever his character was in the scene.)
-Miss Flite is a mad old woman who is waiting for her judgment day to come in the court case and keeps quite a number of birds in cages.
-Inspector Bucket who is considered the first detective in English literature is skillful and intelligent in his observational methods of doing his job.

I could never fully do justice to reviewing such a work as this Dicken’s masterpiece. With each novel I read, I become even more in awe of the talent of this man who made such a mark on the people of his time with his creations. If he could only know the impact that his novels are still having today nearly 200 years later!

I find it hard to believe that it's only been a month since I first entered Bleak House. The Goodreads group read had been going on for some time and I was so far behind that I pretty much listened/read it on my own. I had trouble finding a good audio version (don't bother with Librivox and if you buy it at iTunes, be forewarned that the Apple geniuses won't let you bookmark easily; thankfully there's an app that will). Anyway it took me awhile to work out the details and immerse myself in what was to become for me an all-consuming parallel world. If you're bothering to read this you probably have a general idea of why this has stood for nearly two centuries as Charles Dickens' masterpiece. People who smarter and more eloquent than me have already offered their brilliant analyses of it (see Goodreads group read).

I am a big fan of sprawling tomes from the Nineteenth Century but this one escaped me. Actually I've avoided Dickens since 9th grade when I was forced to read Great Expectations. He and I became reacquainted when I became obsessed with Broadway's Betty Buckley and I listened to the original cast recording of  The Mystery of Edwin Drood . I was excited to read this and totally unprepared for its impact. Dickens pretty much defines the Victorian novel with his masterful storytelling sprinkled liberally with doses of outrage against the cruelty and disregard that the privileged class showed for those less fortunate. Some might suggest that his complex plot with its enormous cast-of-characters, was a cynical way of padding his pay, but his writing is so skillful that it all seems essential to the narrative.
n  n
Bleak House is concerned with many things but at its core are two women of vastly different stations in life. Esther Summerson, the sometimes narrator, an orphan, personifies the Victorian ideal of womanhood. Like Fanny Price and Jane Eyre, she has learned to make herself useful and she accepts the vicissitudes of life with grace and goodwill. She hopes that virtue will be rewarded and Dickens makes us believe that it should be as well. At the other end of the spectrum is Lady Dedlock, the mistress of Chesney Wold, and the toast of Londontown. They couldn't be more different from each other and each of them reminded me of popular characters from American TV.

The grand lady has reached the pinnacle of society but in so doing she has committed a grievous sin; her privileged life is based on a lie. Like Mad Men's Don Draper, she starts to unravel when her mysterious past catches up with her. She will inevitably fall from grace. Esther reminds me of Hannah from  HBO's Girls with one important distinction. Esther has no control over her situation. If she hadn't come under the protection of her guardian, Mr Jarndyce, she probably would have perished on the street like less fortunate castaways. In this century, young women have the freedom-and responsibility-to make their own way. When Hannah stumbles, she can ask for help from her willfully clueless father, her arguably insane boyfriend, or she can come to her senses, and get on with her life. Dickens couldn't have imagined a world of choices for women, but he called for a kinder and less hypocritical society for the benefit of all. I have no doubt that people will be reading and discussing this for eternity.

I REALLY tried, but could not bring myself to enjoy Bleak House. I have several friends that say this is their favorite Dickens novel, so again, I really tried!! I made it to about page 165, or 20%, before giving up.

Dickens is at his Dickensiest in this novel, which primarily means that he's being paid by the word and he's got a family to feed. At one point, he describes the Dedlocks' house in Lincolnshire in winter, and then spends two pages--TWO PAGES--going through how several animals, all the way through a turkey, likely remember the better summer weather. The cast of characters is enormous and seems to exist only so that Dickens can come up with names like Krook, Pardiggle, Jellyby, Tulkinghorn, Skimpole, and Guppy (author of a very pathetic and very amusing proposal). I did not enjoy the extremely boring narrator, orphan Esther Summerson, the long and protracted descriptions of London fog, or any of the scenes set in the Chancery. I suppose the best that can be said is that this book has Atmosphere, with a capital A. This version of London seems as dreary as Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

There are a couple of character descriptions that made me laugh. On Sir Leicester:

n  "When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage, and generally reviews his importance to society."n

Anyway, I genuinely did not enjoy this and found it extremely difficult to get through. I will never know who wins the case. I can barely muster the interest to read the plot summary.

Charles, tenemos que hablar.

Fue un poco por presión social que me acerque a ti, deslumbrado por tu fama de gran escritor. Al principio todo parecía ir bien, eras ameno, ingenioso, tenías tu pizquita de sarcasmo... pero yo necesito algo más, Charles.

No eres tú, soy yo. No quiero lo mismo que tú y terminaremos haciéndonos daño. Mejor nos damos unos años, o lustros o decenios, lo que haga falta, para pensar lo nuestro, sin prisas, sin ataduras, leyendo a otros autores, escribiendo para otros lectores, y quizás llegue ese día en que recordemos con cariño todos estos momentos que hemos pasado juntos.

Lo intenté, Charles, bien lo sabes, empecé la relación con Grandes esperanzas y hasta me dejé llevar hasta esta tu Casa desolada. 900 páginas de casa, Charles. Pero me puede tu moralismo, tu maniqueísmo simplista, la gran desconfianza que como lector siempre me has tenido: te pasas de explícito, Charles, subrayas todo tres veces y, de verdad, no hace falta, eres lo suficientemente claro la primera vez que dices las cosas.

Tú no me necesitas, siempre has sido muy tuyo, muy transparente, quizás demasiado. En estas relaciones nunca viene mal un poco de misterio y a ti se te ve a la legua, Charles, a ti y a todos tus amigotes, tan de una pieza la mayoría de ellos. Y no es que no me haya divertido esa visión infantil del talludito simplicísimus Skimpole (con lo que siempre hay de transgresor en esas criaturas cándidas), o la mirada siempre presta a turbarse con la menor corriente de aire, sobre todo si es de levante, del depresivo Jarndyce, con la perspectiva aristocrática del rentista-no-he-dado-un-palo-al-agua-en-mi-vida Dedlock que aguanta con resignación y paternalismo a esos seres de especies claramente inferiores nacidos para servirle, o la moralísima y controladora pata Pardiggle y sus horrorosos patitos… En fin, para qué seguir, no es solo diversión lo que busco, Charles.

Te mereces a alguien mejor que yo, alguien que desee dar el siguiente paso hacia otro de tus libros, yo me veo incapaz. Estoy seguro de que te irá bien, tú te lo mereces todo. Adiós, Charles.

I discovered the masterful Dickensian novels with this reading. I don't seem to have seen an adaptation for television or cinema of this vast soap opera (in a good sense). Its original publication spanned a year and a half, in monthly deliveries, from March 1852 to September 1853. Suppose many of its characters today can put off a little, even a well-meaning reader. In that case, we must not forget that in 1852, one eagerly awaited the next month's bundle and (probably) reread those already published. The novel's construction is original: chapters told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, ironic towards legal and political powers, alternate with those of the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson. Because this is a novel about an interminable trial in Chancellery, which has lasted for decades, Esther is concerned by this trial, which bears her guardian's name, Jarndyce. Still, she will not discover the full extent of her involvement, which is linked to her origins, until the novel's end. I enjoyed losing myself in the maze of these interwoven stories, accompanied by characters so striking (sometimes annoying) as Dickens knew how to characterize them.

One of the fascinating things about Dickens is that his characters, no matter how old we're told they are, are essentially children. As a rule, only those who represent institutions are convincing as adults and the adult world is a hostile world of institutions and clockwork industry. Dickens characters don't really grow up in the course of his novels; rather, they find other children to play with. You might say this is both the attraction and the flaw of his novels. It's most apparent as a flaw in his favourite character - the angelic child woman. It's interesting that his most successful (though probably not his most entertaining) novel in my opinion, Great Expectations, has a cast of pretty unlikeable women. What it does have is a character who develops, who becomes an adult, a rarity in Dickens whose characters tend to begin good or bad and end the same. Esther in Bleak House suffers a life-changing experience but it doesn't change her in the slightest. His characters tend to repeat themselves like programmed automatons as if they wake up to the same day every morning.

It was also interesting to start Tolstoy after finishing Bleak House (for the third time: one reading too many!) It immediately became clear to me that Tolstoy is the better novelist. And yet Dickens had all the gifts to rival Tolstoy. Both nurtured distorting ideas about women. Tolstoy's of a puritanical and misogynist nature. What he does in his novels though is oppose and so transcend these ideas. Dickens most irritating trait is his sentimentality towards girls. He doesn't oppose this in his novels. It's possible his decision to serialise his novels was responsible. As if he felt he had to keep reminding the reader of his primary character's qualities. Both Anna and Levin are much more complete human beings than any character Dickens created. That said, it's always a joy to be swept up into the high winds of vitality, comedy and memorable characters Dickens so brilliantly provides.

I thought I would love this novel, considered by many to be Dicken's masterpiece, but I felt smothered by its bulk. I would have happily cut away a couple hundred pages.

The novel is split into a third person narrative and Esther's narrative, which is the half that engaged me the most. Esther is more of the embodiment of goodness than a full-blooded character but I enjoyed her perspective. I was, however always very suspicious of her guardian and found him creepy right until the very end. I did appreciate Dicken's humor and critique of social conditions. BUT so glad I am finally done.

Reading Bleak House has had a redeeming effect for me. Before this marvel took place Dickens evoked for me either depressing black and white films in a small and boxy TV watched during oppressive times, or reading what seemed endless pages in a still largely incomprehensible language. Dickens meant then a pain on both counts.

In this GR group read I have enjoyed Bleak House tremendously.

In the group discussion many issues have been brought up by the members. First and foremost the critique on the social aspects has been put on the tray, but also the treatment of women and/or children, the critique of the Empire and of the Legal profession and institutions, the interplay between the two narrators, he humour, the richness in literary and historical references, the musings on ethics, etc. All this makes for a very rich analysis.

For me this book is certainly a reread. And apart from all the aspects above, what have struck me most, because it has surprised me, were the very rich plot and the way it was constructed. That is why, if I read Bleak House again, I will do so while drawing a diagram that, similarly to those charting engineering processes, would plot the plot.

Using an Excel sheet as my basis, the graph I have in mind would be a two dimensional chart, with the X or horizontal axis extending up to the 67 chapters of the book, while on the vertical or Y axis I would mark out three different bands. These bands would correspond to what I see as the main threads of the story. I am thinking of:

1. The Chancery, with all the Legal aspects. In this story line belong the Court itself, and the legal offices such as Kenge and Carboy and Mr. Tulkinghorn’s. The characters related to these legal aspects would belong to this band.

2. Esther, with her upbringing and Godmother. And here belong major characters such as John Jarndyce and the two Wards, Ada and Richard.

3. Chesney Wold, with the Dedlocks, Mrs Rouncewell and Rosa, etc.

Each chapter would be plotted according to its number and to the story band to which it belongs, and so it would be drawn as a square. To each chapter-square I would give one of two colors, depending on who is narrating it. When Esther is telling the story I would color the square pink, and when it is the Narrator, it would be blue. For the early chapters, Band #2 would be mostly pink, while the other two would be mostly blue; but as the novel advanced, I think the pink would begin to invade other band stories and vice-versa.

In each chapter-square I would include little cells, each one corresponding to one character as they first appear in the story. As the chapters advanced and the characters reappeared, I would draw connecting lines for those reappearing cells which would trace clearly how those character-cells started to move from story-band to story-band.

I wish I could draw the graph I have in mind in HTML format for this GR box. But to give you an idea, I think it would look like a combination of the following graphs:




and this:




Then I would also mark when some episodes or stories within the stories, were presented. To these I would give the shape of a sort of elongated bubble or ellipse and they would be superposed on the chapter boxes, since they would not quite belong, nor not-belong, to the three story lines above. In this ellipse category I place the episodes involving the Jellybys, the Badgers, the Turveydrops, etc.

Some of the characters, even if they first appear in the context of one of the bands, eventually move from one story to another a great deal. In the end they do not really belong to any one of them in particular. These characters I conceive as major connectors in the plot. I would then mark them with bold big dots linked by lines and would eventually look like a connecting grid. I call these the Connexions, and Jo, Mr. Guppy, Mr. Smallweed, amongst others, belong to this category. Mr. Guppy, one of my favourite characters, has a major “connexion” function although he is succeeded in his ability to precipitate the plot by the most determinant of the connecters, Mr. Bucket. As The Detective, his role is precisely that of connecting everything and thereby reach or propitiate the conclusion.

There is another group of characters who have a lighter connexion function, because they do not really advance the plot, but help in pulling it together and make it more cohesive. To this class I place Miss Flint and may be Charlotte (Charley) Neckett. As we draw further to the right of the X-axis, the connecting lines linking the pivotal characters become increasingly busy and tangled as they extend over more and more boxes. The connecting nodes would become something like:






By the end, as we approach the final chapters, all the story bands would have conflated into Esther, and the graph would become something like this one in which the central heart stands for the All-Loving-Esther.






And Charles Dickens planned all this without a Computer.

I don't think I've read a book with so many characters before! There must have been 30 of them, all tangled together with complicated family lines, secret off spring and court cases.

Did I get confused while reading? Totally! A lot of the time I wasn't sure if I was remembering the characters properly and there's so many sub plots going in its a really difficult and taxing read.

I can't say I enjoyed this one.

If I was ever going to reread this I'd approach is very differently and I'd make sure I have a character list handy!