Bleak House is Dickens at his most coherent, along with Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, but probably even more so. Those two novels have one major narrative thrust each, whereas Bleak House has a web of plot threads that all intertwine in the second half. At the beginning, it feels like Dickens is throwing out characters with abandon -- Lord and Lady Dedlock, for example, are introduced in chapter 2 but don't reappear until much later. But soon everyone is enmeshed in the story, from the Dedlocks on high to little Jo down below.
One thing I haven't seen remarked on is how the title prefigures one the themes of the book -- deception. This is a novel of deceptive appearances -- Lady Dedlock's, of course, but we see that the Chancery system seems to offer fairness, the lawyers appear to work on their clients' behalf, and so on. The eponymous Bleak House is, despite its name, the happiest place in the novel -- the name presents a false front to the world, just like everything else in the novel (except John Jarndyce, whose nephew tragically assumes that Jarndyce is in fact a hypocrite)
No comments:
Post a Comment