Search results
A short summary of Charles Dickens's Bleak House. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of Bleak House.
Bleak House Summary. Lady Dedlock, the wife of aristocratic nobleman Sir Leicester Dedlock, is extremely bored in her fashionable London townhouse. She is considered a cold, haughty woman, but there is a rumor that she is not of noble birth and that Sir Leicester married her despite this.
People also ask
Who wrote Bleak House?
What is Bleak House about?
Is Bleak House a good book?
Is Bleak House based on a true story?
Bleak House was the ninth novel published by Charles Dickens, appearing in serialized form in twenty instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. Critics generally agree that this is one of the Dickens' most remarkable novels and his most complete.
- Overview
- Summary
- Legacy
Bleak House, novel by British author Charles Dickens, published serially in 1852–53 and in book form in 1853 and considered to be among the author’s best work. Bleak House is the story of the Jarndyce family, who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of the extremely long-running lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. T...
The story begins in the High Court of Chancery, where the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has gone on for generations and has “become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means.” The current issue concerns two young wards of the court, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, who are seeking permission to take up residence with a distant cousin, Mr. John Jarndyce. Later, the lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn stops by the London home of Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife, Lady Dedlock. She is also connected with the suit, and, as the lawyer goes over affidavits with her, she takes a sudden interest in the handwriting on one of the documents.
Britannica Quiz
The Literary World (Famous Novels)
Esther Summerson is then introduced into the story. She was raised by her unfeeling godmother, who died when Esther was almost 14 years old. She then learned that her godmother was actually her aunt and that Mr. Jarndyce was now her guardian. He paid for her education in a boarding school and then engaged her to be a companion to Ada. The three young people arrive at Jarndyce’s home, Bleak House, to a warm welcome. As the novel goes on, Richard tries and discards several vocational options in the belief that he will inherit a substantial sum when the lawsuit is settled, and he and Ada fall in love.
Tulkinghorn learns that the handwriting Lady Dedlock asked about belongs to a copyist named Nemo and that he has died of an opium overdose. The lawyer also meets Jo, a street urchin who declares that Nemo was kind to him. Tulkinghorn subsequently relays this information to Lady Dedlock, and, after disguising herself as her maid, Hortense, she seeks out Jo and asks him to show her every place connected with Nemo. Later Tulkinghorn has a police detective, Inspector Bucket, seek Jo’s help in identifying the woman who was interested in Nemo. Jo recognizes Hortense’s clothing but not Hortense, who has been fired by Lady Dedlock. However, Tulkinghorn has promised to help Hortense find employment in return for her cooperation. Tulkinghorn begins searching for a sample of handwriting from a Captain Hawdon.
A lawyer’s clerk, Mr. William Guppy, tells Lady Dedlock that he has learned that Esther’s name is actually Esther Hawdon and that Nemo’s last name was Hawdon. Lady Dedlock realizes that Esther is her daughter from an affair with Captain Hawdon and that her sister, who had told her that the baby died, had taken Esther and secretly raised her. One day Lady Dedlock encounters Esther and reveals to her that she is her mother. During this time Tulkinghorn succeeds in acquiring a sample of Hawdon’s handwriting.
Legal corruption permeates this novel like a disease, issuing in particular from the Byzantine lawsuit with which all the book’s characters have a connection. Dickens provides his customary witty dissection of the layers of Victorian society. Characters—from the wearyingly earnest to the brilliantly shallow, from the foolish and foppish to the vampiristic and dangerous—are all illuminated in the darkness of Dickens’s outraged urbane opus. In reality, it is the public sphere as a whole that is satirized in Bleak House. Everything resembles Chancery: Parliament, the provincial aristocracy, and even Christian philanthropy is caricatured as moribund and self-serving. The narrative, which is split between the third person and Esther, concerns moral disposition as much as social criticism. The novel has also been hailed as a progenitor of the genre of detective fiction, with the methodical and dogged Inspector Bucket as the first police detective hero in English literature.
The most successful adaptations of Bleak House were television miniseries, including an 8-episode version in 1985, starring Diana Rigg as Lady Dedlock and Denholm Elliott as John Jarndyce, and a 15-episode version in 2005.
Literature Notes. Bleak House. Book Summary. Sir Leicester Dedlock, an idle, fashionable aristocrat, maintains his ancestral home in rural Lincolnshire and also a place in London. Lady Dedlock, his wife, "has beauty still" at or near fifty but is proud and vain. She keeps a secret unknown even to Sir Leicester.
The best study guide to Bleak House on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need.
Summary of "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens. Endless bureaucracy and corruption inflict havoc on society. Written by Bookey. About the book. In Charles Dickens' Bleak House, the very essence of Victorian society is laid bare, revealing a world enveloped in hypocrisy, injustice, and the dire consequences of moral decay.
