The Big Boring Book Blog

The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel’s heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This legal case is used by Dickens to satirize the English judicial system, and he makes use of his earlier experiences as a law clerk, and as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books.  Though the legal profession criticised Dickens’s satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

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In my opinion, this book was extremely difficult to read. Although, I really enjoyed the way Charles Dickens satirizes the English judicial system using the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case in the novel.  He also makes use of his earlier experiences as a law clerk, and as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books to provide his opinin throughout the novel.

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Common Theme

In Bleak House, mothers and motherhod are common motifs. Numerous characters including Esther, yearn for their mother. This relates to a theme that exists in all the other books read this year as characters yearn for something else.

 

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Quotes

“And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.”

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“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”

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“Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.”