In many ways Bleak House by Charles Dickens is very much like any other Dickens book. There are orphans, abject poverty, very wealthy people, stingy people, people with hearts of gold, light satire, mild humor, passages of purple prose and great verbosity, and unforgettable characters.

In other ways this is not a typical Dickens book. There are two different narrators, there is quite a bit of death and one of those deaths is from spontaneous combustion, there is also a murder which accounts for another of the numerous deaths, it is very tightly plotted and everything introduced into the story is accounted for by the end, and while there are cheerful scenes it is not a cheerful book. In addition, there were times when Dickens seemed like he was foreshadowing Kafka’s The Trial.

Bleak House was published in serial form between March 1852 and September 1853. Before Dickens landed on the title he tried out several others: Tom-All-Alone’s (an area of London with abandoned and falling down buildings in which the poor and homeless squatted); The Ruined House; Bleak House Academy; The East Wind (When things are not good Mr. Jarndyce always declares the wind to be in the east. This also references the east wind in London coming out of the poor quarters spreading stench and disease across the rest of the city).

We have Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Dickens on our bookshelves. It is a big fat thing and has a nice 20 pages or so on the period when Dickens was writing Bleak House. I was prompted to learn more about the book because of the murder mystery, a part of the plot that doesn’t happen until the last third or so of the book. I was surprised by the murder but the subsequent investigation by Inspector Bucket had me wanting to know what sort of influence Wilkie Collins may have had because it seemed to me lifted from one of Collins’ books. Ackroyd doesn’t say anything about Collins helping Dickens with the book or giving him advice, however, he was a frequent visitor at that time and even stayed with Dickens who was ill and living abroad when he wrote the final three or four installments of the book. Perhaps Collins had an indirect influence simply because of his presence and because the two were friends.

I did learn some other things about the book though. The character of Skimpole is based on Dickens’ friend Leigh Hunt. Skimpole is not the most likable of characters even though he is well liked in the book. He is a freeloader, always getting into debt and relying on his friends to get him out. He claims he doesn’t understand money, that he is an innocent child and one is never sure if he is telling the truth or if it is a convenient fiction Skimpole uses to get out of being responsible for anything.

When Leigh Hunt read the book he did not recognize himself in Skimpole but Hunt’s close friends did and were not pleased. When Hunt came around and finally realized what Dickens had done, he protested. The friendship cooled for awhile but it was never ruined.

Bleak House was popular with readers but not so much with critics. They declared it “dull and wearisome” and lacking in the “freedom” and “freshness” of Dickens’ previous eight novels. The book was also attacked for its “unreality,” but far from upsetting Dickens, the critique served to increase his belief that what he wrote was true and important.

The main plot of the book circles around the Chancery court and the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The suit is over a will and has gone on for so long that the original litigants are no longer alive. There is so much paperwork that an army of clerks is needed to carry it all in and out of court whenever the case comes up. It seems the lawyers are purposefully dragging it on forever. The case has become a joke both inside and outside the court. But it is not a joke because it has ruined and continues to ruin the lives of those involved. But it isn’t just Jarndyce and Jarndyce, having a suit end up in Chancery is the kiss of death. No one wins but the lawyers who line their pockets with fees until the litigants have no more money or the wealth of the estate is completely gone. It is the absurdity of it and the gradual loss of sanity in those whose cases are stuck in the court that made me think of Kafka.

I can understand the accusation of unreality because it does seem unreal, but Dickens was writing from experience. He himself had a case in Chancery once. He sued for copyright infringement. Even though Dickens won the suit, by the time it was decided, the person he sued was out of business and out of money and Dickens ended up having to pay the fees himself in the rather large sum of £700.

One of the big ideas in the book that the critics missed was that of “the system.” The idea of “the system” was something that was just beginning to come into the consciousness of the times. Bleak House is very much a book about the system. But more on that tomorrow.