Bleak House

Bleak House, novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a monthly serial from March 1852 to September 1853 in Dickens’s own periodical, Household Words. A withering social satire on the state of English law, it may also be considered to be one of the earliest detective stories.

Dickens’s early experiences as a court reporter had given him a hatred of the law in general, and of protracted chancery suits in particular: “The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself” he claimed. The novel opens with a magnificent description of the London fog that serves as an allegory of the impenetrable obfuscation of the legal system. The use of two narrative voices, those of the narrator and of the novel’s heroine, Esther Summerson, further contributes to the air of mystery and confusion in the novel.

Young Esther, believed to be an orphan, goes to live in Bleak House, the home of John Jarndyce, guardian of a young orphan named Ada Clare, whose cousin Richard Carstone died from exhaustion while pursuing an inheritance, not knowing that the legal costs of the case have drained the bequest. Lady Dedlock, wife of Sir Leicester, had a child by a former lover, Captain Hawdon, and believes both to be dead. However, she sees Hawdon’s handwriting on a document and her shock arouses the suspicions of Leicester’s lawyer, Tulkinghorn, who threatens to expose her. Hawdon dies of an overdose of opium before she can trace him, and Tulkinghorn is murdered. Lady Dedlock is cleared of suspicion, but Leicester learns of her secret and she dies from despair, despite the efforts of Esther, revealed to be her daughter, to save her. Esther loves Doctor Woodcourt but turns down his marriage proposal in favour of Jarndyce. Jarndyce, however, desiring Esther’s happiness, frees her to marry Woodcourt.