Reading Dickens’s Bleak House

Literature Insight on one of the supreme achievements of Victorian fiction, stressing the experimentalism of the dual narrative and its liberal feminist implications.



This work begins with a general introduction to Dickens in the context of his times, stressing the public themes of the novel and the experimental aspects of its technique. It looks at such characters as Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlcok, Harold Skimpole, Inspector Bucket, Chadband, Mrs Jellyby, Miss Flite, Tulkinghorn, Krook, the Smallweed family, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare (the Wards in Jarndyce) and aspects of Dickens's characterisation. It discusses the pleasures of serial reading; gives a detailed analysis of several key passages; explores Dickens's craft and the status of this novel as an experimental fiction; considers how Dickens related to 'the woman question', and the importance of Esther Summerson in this connection, and concludes with a survey of critical reception of what may be Dickens's greatest novel.