Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens is 990 pages long so you can imagine it isn’t easy to summarize. And I won’t.
The best part about it is the people. Angelic and evil ones. Smart and dumb. Straightforward soldiers and preachers who can’t say anything without giving a trance-inducing sermon. Pathetic shopkeepers and noble retirees. Lawyers, judges, soldiers, shopkeepers, boys who sweep the streets, doctors, preachers, iron mongers, farmers, inn keepers, brick makers, sailors, children of all ages and social standing. All of these populate the novel. You put the book down just happy for all of the people you got to know. There are names like Guppy, Smallweed, Flite, Nemo, Tulkinghorn, Badger, and Skimpole.
There is the woman who waits for her law case to be resolved. She goes to the court everyday and is certain the chief judge would miss her if she did not come. She keeps many birds in her apartment. Their names are Hope, Youth, Health, Sanity, Comfort, Beauty, etc. When she loses the case, she releases the birds, saying goodbye to each by name. “Goodbye Hope. Goodbye Sanity….”
There is the family of a former soldier which refers to its children by the places where they were born: Quebec, Malta, etc. The father of this family instructs his wife to respond when anyone asks for his opinion on an issue. “Tell him wife what my opinion is on that.” And then she will answer for him.
One woman ignores her children and family because she is too busy sending Londoners to some place in Africa to grow coffee beans. The food in her house is half cooked, the kids half dressed, and the house a mess. It turns out the king in those African regions tries to sell the transplants as slaves.
Another woman who has four boys is trying to reform the poor. She invades their houses and gives them inspiring tracts. In one house she enters without knocking, the father is lying on the floor and begs her to leave. “Oh, please go somewhere else and reform another poor soul. You are bothering us. We are happy the way we are,” he says. “I have been drunk for the last three days and would be for four if I had the money. And don’t bother leaving those little booklets because we can’t read.” All four boys resent that they have to give up their allowances to help the poor.
A poor boy sweeps a street crossing for people hoping for a tip. He knows nothing about his parents, background, or how old he is. The world of well to do people is a mystery to him. If someone asks him a question that he is afraid to answer, he replies: “I don’t know nothink.”
One young fellow is pinning all of his hopes on an inheritance case that will set him up for life—he thinks. So, in the meantime, he dabbles in medicine, law and the military, hoping and hoping that the case will be decided and his ship will come in. In all of these career moves, he fails miserably. He starts getting paranoid, interpreting kind hearted offerings of help as somehow designed to hurt him in the inheritance. He ends up sitting in the Chancery court every day.
All of the lawyers in the novel are either evil, self serving, long-winded, ineffectual or useless.
You should read the book. It is teeming with humanity.
The best part about it is the people. Angelic and evil ones. Smart and dumb. Straightforward soldiers and preachers who can’t say anything without giving a trance-inducing sermon. Pathetic shopkeepers and noble retirees. Lawyers, judges, soldiers, shopkeepers, boys who sweep the streets, doctors, preachers, iron mongers, farmers, inn keepers, brick makers, sailors, children of all ages and social standing. All of these populate the novel. You put the book down just happy for all of the people you got to know. There are names like Guppy, Smallweed, Flite, Nemo, Tulkinghorn, Badger, and Skimpole.
There is the woman who waits for her law case to be resolved. She goes to the court everyday and is certain the chief judge would miss her if she did not come. She keeps many birds in her apartment. Their names are Hope, Youth, Health, Sanity, Comfort, Beauty, etc. When she loses the case, she releases the birds, saying goodbye to each by name. “Goodbye Hope. Goodbye Sanity….”
There is the family of a former soldier which refers to its children by the places where they were born: Quebec, Malta, etc. The father of this family instructs his wife to respond when anyone asks for his opinion on an issue. “Tell him wife what my opinion is on that.” And then she will answer for him.
One woman ignores her children and family because she is too busy sending Londoners to some place in Africa to grow coffee beans. The food in her house is half cooked, the kids half dressed, and the house a mess. It turns out the king in those African regions tries to sell the transplants as slaves.
Another woman who has four boys is trying to reform the poor. She invades their houses and gives them inspiring tracts. In one house she enters without knocking, the father is lying on the floor and begs her to leave. “Oh, please go somewhere else and reform another poor soul. You are bothering us. We are happy the way we are,” he says. “I have been drunk for the last three days and would be for four if I had the money. And don’t bother leaving those little booklets because we can’t read.” All four boys resent that they have to give up their allowances to help the poor.
A poor boy sweeps a street crossing for people hoping for a tip. He knows nothing about his parents, background, or how old he is. The world of well to do people is a mystery to him. If someone asks him a question that he is afraid to answer, he replies: “I don’t know nothink.”
One young fellow is pinning all of his hopes on an inheritance case that will set him up for life—he thinks. So, in the meantime, he dabbles in medicine, law and the military, hoping and hoping that the case will be decided and his ship will come in. In all of these career moves, he fails miserably. He starts getting paranoid, interpreting kind hearted offerings of help as somehow designed to hurt him in the inheritance. He ends up sitting in the Chancery court every day.
All of the lawyers in the novel are either evil, self serving, long-winded, ineffectual or useless.
You should read the book. It is teeming with humanity.
posted by Jack Cuff | 10:34 AM
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