Dickens, Bleak House

Lecture on Dickens, Bleak House (1852-53) by Corinna Russell, 20 Feb. 2021

Blog by Lisa Hutchins

Bleak House, Charles Dickens' great mature novel, was written amid social and political uncertainty. Published in instalments from March 1852 to September 1853, it reflects a society that had seen a partial widening of the franchise through two Reform Acts in response to revolutionary upheaval in France (a theme Dickens would visit subsequently in A Tale of Two Cities, 1859).

Dr Corinna Russell, Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Emmanuel College, discussed in this session the extent and limits of the franchise, how it enabled the democratic representation of some in society and the exclusion of others, and how this is portrayed in the novel. She pointed out that Dickens occupied an uncertain social position himself. A self-made man, from humble origins, he wrote in an accessible serial format for a popular audience. Despite enjoying material wealth and society connections he faced accusations that he was not a gentleman (who did not, for example, know what took place at a weekend country house party). Corinna told us how Dickens worked to ensure his writing was available to poorer members of society through producing cheap editions, giving public readings and supporting organisations like the Birmingham & Midland Institute, founded in 1854 for the ‘Diffusion and Advancement of Science, Literature and Art amongst all Classes of Persons’. Corinna raised the unresolved question of how he was affected by the Second Reform Act (1869) which widened the franchise among property owners. Did he gain the vote as a result? This theme of representation in its different senses was central to Corinna's analysis of the novel. 

She referred to Henry Mayhew, an influential journalist whose work was collected and published in 1851 as London Labour and the London Poor. Mayhew attempted to capture the voice and idiom of street people who lived outside society and he influenced many writers. His reportage will seem immediately familiar to modern readers of Dickens. Here he speaks to a young crossing-sweeper who helps procure clients for prostitutes:

After the Opera we go into the Haymarket, where all the women are who walk the streets all night. They don’t give us no money, but they tell the gentlemen to. Sometimes, when they are talking to the gentlemen, they say, ‘Go away, you young rascal!’ and if they are saucy, then we say to them, ‘We’re not talking to you, my doxy, we’re talking to the gentleman,’—but that’s only if they’re rude, for if they speak civil we always goes. They knows what ‘doxy’ means. What is it? Why that they are no better than us! If we are on the crossing, and we says to them as they go by, ‘Good luck to you!’ they always give us somethink either that night or the next… Sometimes a gentleman will tell us to go and get them a young lady, and then we goes, and they general gives us sixpence for that. If the gents is dressed finely we gets them a handsome girl; if they’re dressed middling, then we gets them a middling-dressed one; but we usual prefers giving a turn to girls that have been kind to us, and they are sure to give us somethink the next night.

(Vol. 2: The Boy Crossing-Sweepers)

Corinna characterised this as representative of a documentary age. The lives of those who are not democratically represented could nevertheless be represented in print through the multitude of voices that the (middle-class) writer is able to muster and wrangle onto the page. Dickens himself, of course, had a substantial career as a journalist and reported on areas of London life including workhouses, policing and prisons. He also supported an effort to help 'fallen women' leave the streets and reform their lives.   

In Bleak House we meet crossing-sweeper Jo, a homeless orphan who has only his own wits to rely on for survival. He lacks the wherewithal to care for himself, leading to blame and ostracism, and he eventually dies after contracting smallpox. Corinna mapped the journey in the following passage from third-person speculation by an unnamed narrator about what it must be like to be Jo to actual first-person representation of his thoughts:

It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language—to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the creature that I am!

(ch. 16: Tom-All-Alone's)

Corinna suggested the power in this passage is in the reader's gradual awareness of how written representations sort society into the literate and non-literate – and how we, as novel readers, are implicated in this. We take this form of communication, offering insight into the hearts and minds of others, completely for granted, and as reducing the gulf between people and reinforces the connections that build society.  

But it is only available to some. This key theme of the novel offers a powerful development of Dickens' earlier representations of the voiceless in his factual writing.

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For those interested in the history of the franchise in the United Kingdom, Corinna recommends this In Our Time episode on the Great Reform Act (1832) from BBC Radio Four.

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The next Literature Cambridge event is Orlando (1928): Writing Vita, Writing Life with Karina Jakubowicz, live repeat session, Saturday 27 February.

Corinna Russell will return to lecture on George Eliot, Middlemarch on 30 October 2021 and on Dickens, Our Mutual Friend on 26 Feb. 2022.