The Bleak House by Charles Dickens was said to be directed at the
incompetence and slow process of the Chancery courts. The Chancery courts
existed side-by-side with the law courts, except that it deals with wills and
estate. Deaths, therefore, were the primary engine for the Chancery courts to
operate, which Dickens indicted in his serial that ran between March 1852 and
September 1853. The story involves a tangled mess of wills and estates that
characters are intricately entwined into. The serial thus basically runs as the
characters attempt to remove the knots that have trapped them into this mess.
The deaths, ironically, serve as the crankshafts that move the story along. We
will discuss four major death scenes that occurred in the story.
The first death comes
from chapter one In Chancery, where
it serves as the trigger to the Dicken’s story as the case of Jarndyce and
Jarndyce drones. As it happens, Tom Jarndyce, the former owner of the Bleak
House, killed himself with a gun. The
first chapter does not create a scene about death, rather the consequences of
the slow and incompetent Chancery court that made death come too soon, and the
consequence of death itself. In this depiction, the portrayal of death is both
a matter of relief and further bane. Relief because it gave co-owners of the
will a greater degree of share, and those who died because they can finally
forever, away from the silly droning of the bureaucratic court of Chancery. It
is a bane because it complicates things to those who remain alive and wait in
vain for something that is almost impossible to be resolved. In a large way,
Dickens was portraying life compared to death in itself. Life is abusive, it
always has. We live by hopes and by dreams, which the wills and testaments
signify. “Will these ever come?” is the question all of us ask over our
lifetime. Indeed, this is the theme that runs throughout the Bleak House serial.
In chapter eleven, Our Dead Brother¸ we find out that Nemo,
alias for Captain James Hawdon, Lady Dedlock’s former lover and father of
Esther Summerson, dies of opium overdose. In one scene, the surgeon Allan
Woodcourt, attends to the deceases and fixes it up for burial. An inquest is
held for him and we also see Jo, a homeless and illiterate boy, who narrates
that Nemo (Latin for “no one”), was a kind and considerate person.
Similar to chapter one,
Nemo can be said to have died because of the anxiety brought about by the
complexity and false hopelessness that the Chauncery courts bring about. Yes,
Nemo may have died from opium overdose, but the inquest concluded that this was
just an unfortunate accident. We have to ask ourselves what turned the former
ship Captain to drugs—was it to get away from it all? Was it about regret for
losing his wife and daughter? We can only guess. But the sad fact was this was
another character that died as a consequence of the incompetency of a system
that should have done its duty to protect his person, much more, his dignity.
The result was that both Nemo and Tom Jarndyce never died in peace—with a drug
overdose and a suicide. The difference between Nemo’s death than those of Tom
Jarndyce was that his was concluded with a positive note—he was described as
good man in the end—which should inspire a resolution in some manner, unlike
with Tom who has further complicated the issue with his sudden passing.
In chapter forty-seven, Jo’s Will, Jo, the homeless boy dies of
pneumonia. Jo’s sickness also almost caused Esther to catch the disease, and
later apologizes for it by asking Snagby to confer a letter for him to Esther.
Jo’s death was dicken’s portrayal of innocent children dying. He implies that
England at the time was callous of death by people who are homeless and living
in the streets. In this scene, Dicken’s explores a graver issue. He was
showing, in fact, calling to social consciousness, whether England has really
transformed as this creature that it neglects its responsibilities. Again,
Dickens was criticizing the incompetency of the courts—through the overall
effect of the red tapes and bureaucratic control of the institutions that
should have resolve conflicts. In this case, Dickens examines a larger
perspective of death in contrast to the individual deaths of Tom J. and Nemo.
Jo’s death was more of a social symbolism.
Finally, in chapter
sixty-five, Down in Lincolnshire, the
perennial case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes to an end as the court dismisses
it. It was found that the new will was irrelevant in the first place. Those who
were trying to pin their hopes with it for a long time would be immeasurably
disappointed such as the case of Richard. Richard has been a ward of Chancery
in the case, but is irresponsible and inconstant. Tormented that he gets
nothing, he dies due to the imprudence in putting too much faith in the case.
In the end Richard asks forgiveness of John Jarndyce and Ada Clare, his lover.
Richard’s death was a foreshadowing
orchestrated by Dickens. The Bleak House ran
as a serial and readers would like to know in the end how the Jarndyce and
Jarndyce case would be resolved. Many hoping the courts would do their
resolution. But the readers, like Richard, would be disappointed—as was the
primary intention of the author. The death scene here was the exclamation mark
against the Chauncery courts, indicating how their imprudence negatively
affects society as a whole. Therefore, Bleak
House meant exactly its title. The world at the time was seeing such a bleak
time wherein death is used as a haunting spectre and surrender. Death was used
to instigate fear and admonition to people who pin their hopes to institutions
that are incompetent and is therefore calling for reform. In this regard, the
death scene of Richard is an indirect call for change.
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