Bleak House

The name is deceptive. I held off reading this book for the longest time because I thought it would be...well, bleak. But I have to say, it was one of the liveliest Dickens books I have read. Third only to Pickwick and Christmas Carol, and those two are ahead by virtue of long association and affection.

I loved the character of Esther Summerson. At the beginning, I was afraid she would be just another of Dickens's delicate heroines, gentle, weeping, fainting all the time, but she wasn't. She was robust. And how!

The thing I liked best about her is that she didn't wait around, weeping over the afflicted, but that she did some practical good wherever she went. No wonder she was beloved.

Richard Carstone, well, I didn't like him very much and although Dickens did his best to soften his flaws, telling these through the eyes of affection rather than judgement, I couldn't help but feel he was really spoiled and selfish. If it was his own life to trifle with, then by all means, waste it. But when he took Ada's heart into his keeping and continued on this deathly road, well then, his selfishness, more than anything else, shone through.

It was an interesting twist that the heroine of the piece was no longer beautiful, that her beauty had been ravaged by a pox, and that she still continued beloved by all who knew her. Except for that stupid clerk who firstly, had the audacity to propose to her, secondly, the audacity to pull back his proposal and thirdly, the audacity to get highly offended when he re-offered his hand and it was summarily rejected. I don't even know what to make of his mother.

Some of the characters (like the virtual child who let everyone else pay his pay through life, Harold Skimpole). I couldn't regard him as a "child" but as a selfish, spoiled, evil man. Expecting everyone to take care of him as a matter of course, and then ungrateful when the flow stopped. He should have been left to starve early on in his life. But he wasn't. How is it that people like survive?

Although he did die, five years after John Jarndyce withdrew his support, which I guess, is something.

John Jarndyce was a lovely character. I really liked him. I liked that in this novel at least, Dickens didn't drag on any misery. Although Esther was not miserable at the thought of having to marry Jarndyce as she loved him dearly as her guardian and the man who had saved her.

The woman who brought her up was a little hard to fathom. She was cold, heartless, and what she did to that little girl! But yet, Esther not only survived her treatment and insinuations, but went on to thrive.

The whole Lady Dedlock affair...the way she was chased into a corner, and her husband's reaction to it - how he loved his wife above any scandal, above his name, above everything else. That was heart warming.

And the ne'er do well son, George, who came back to a prodigal's welcome. Actually although this book had a lot of evil characters and drama...(and I think Dickens went out of his way to caricature the evil ones - they were always hideously ugly) it abounded with "the good in men's hearts". Or rather, "the good in women's hearts". I couldn't quite reconcile myself to the fact that he did not bother to save the brick-makers wives from their sorry fate (black eyes, every other day) but other than that, things seem to have been taken care of admirably.

The book held my attention throughout...the only parts I found it dragging was when that stupid clerk, Guppy was speaking. I found it hard to endure his prose...there was something so lifeless and affected about everything he said.

Tulkinghorn was an interesting character. Evil, I think, and even in death, he caused considerable trouble. I am not quite sure how Inspector Bucket went from being a villain to a hero (how he treated that young forlorn boy Jo was unforgivable, in my book) but somehow, there seems to have been a flip at the end.

I wish I had written this straight after reading the book, when I was still so full of it. Now time has softened the impressions and having to churn out so many stories in a short space of time has absorbed my energy and my memory. Maybe someday I'll re-read the book and then I'll come back here and add to my impressions of it.

For now, I'll be moving on to Oliver Twist, just as soon as I can.

I'm aware that I haven't said much about Chancery. Maybe that's because in the distance of time, it was the human drama rather than the lawsuit, this ogre in the background eating up their lives, that stuck with me. Dickens was accused of being unfair to lawyers and to the court system...and he takes issue with that straight off, in his usual funny, mocking way.

I lost the tortoise, Toto. Hopefully when I next update this blog I will be able to bring you cheerier tidings. Like, I found the tortoise. And put him back in his tank.

Ah me.

The Old Curiosity Shop

I finished this book in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when I should have been either sleeping or plugging away at the 10 stories I still owed Anna for the supplement. I couldn't put it down.

But maybe because of the pressure I was under, or because I was aware that I would pay for having read that book when I was supposed to be working, I felt my irritation mount.

Nell was too good. The old man was too much of a dotard. Quilp was too evil....just grotesque figures swirling all around and this pretty little (child?) in the midst. I hated how Dickens kept calling her a child when by the end of the book she was at least 15.

Child?

And when the old man first beggared them with his gambling and then when he stole her money and made all those calls on her purse keeping the child he professed to love on such short commons, when he forced her through his behaviour to take flight from that comfortable job and that comfortable lady, and in doing so, forced her into the journey that ultimately killed her, I was aghast.

How could she love this man?

The famous death scene: I was left unmoved because it depended on you feeling compassion for the old dotard and I felt none. I kept thinking that if Nell hadn't been so careful of his life and let him die or be institutionalised it would have been better for her.

So it was lucky I didn't write this until after I'd had a few days to calm down and think about it.

A few days...

Taking Arnold and Maggot for a walk and thinking about it (Dickens, like Shakespeare, can never leave you unmoved) I realised that the whole point of the novel was that the old man didn't "deserve" her love. He wasn't good, or virtuous, or self sacrificing or anything. His love for her was a thin, grasping, clutching, evil thing.

And I don't even know if Dickens meant us to believe that he gambled for love of her. He gambled because it was a compulsion. He gambled because he had lost all shame or dignity and sunk to the level of a beast.

The point was that Nell loved him though she saw all this. She loved him despite what he was. Instead of for what he was.

And therein lay her magic. Her influence. Her pathos.

She loved him and kept loving him when he demonstrated over and over again that he didn't even deserve the barest affection. I guess it takes a large, large heart, even one in a frail, frail body, to love like that.

Of all the side stories, I loved the Dick Swiveller sub plot the most. It seemed that Dickens introduced him a certain way, all set for a certain course and then changed his mind. And he introduced Nell's brother Fred, and then changed his mind and kept him on the sidelines...even the confrontation with the mysterious old man, the granduncle, was left offstage.

I thawed towards him when he was kind to that little servant girl...when he saw how she was starved (both for food and company) and he bought her food and played with her. And then she saved his life. It was very very sweet, that. I found it more touching than the main story, I guess because Nell's grandfather simply disgusted me...but then, come to think of it, he was punished in the worst way possible. Her death. And her death at his door.

I wish they had resolved the parentage of that little servant girl because I was curious about it and he hinted darkly at her parentage. But never mind, I guess he was entitled to keep at least one of his secrets.

It seemed a little funny how he started the book from this stranger's point of view (and an accurate point of view, at that) and then he suddenly switched that off and never allowed that man back in the story again.

Kind of like Martin Chuzzlewit where he introduced various family members who went on to have nothing to do with the story, except for a few who showed up at the end for a wedding that never took place.

Quilp enraged me beyond belief....and I was glad he was dealt with so summarily...not even the dignity of a spectacular death - just a by the bye that didn't make any difference to anybody. Body fished out. Tortured wife now rich. Married again soon after.

Sometimes I shuddered on reading about him because I recognised in his misantrophic thoughts my own...I hate Quilp, because frankly my dear, I am Quilp. A hideous little dwarf, dancing around, making faces and hating everybody.

Kyrie Eleison

I've finished Our Mutual Friend. Maybe I'm suffering from Dickens-fatigue and need to take a break because whatever the subtleties of this book, they were wasted on me. OK, I have to admit that his presentation of the great mystery was masterfully done. I thought John Rokesmith's identity was the mystery although it was glaringly obvious from the first page who he was. But Dickens kindly informs us in the afterword that it wasn't. There was a greater mystery. And yes, I was surprised when that was revealed. I never suspected and I was thinking...hmmm...too many loose ends to tie up, and yet all were tied up beautifully when the deeper mystery was revealed.

I wonder that Bella didn't resent it more when all was revealed but I guess she was a true penitent and saw herself for what she used to be and didn't shrink from the fact that others may have seen it too.

Bradley Headstone and his hatred and his jealousy and his passion (in the worst possible sense) was an enigma. There was not one softening influence here. He was all bad and so very bad at that. You are not supposed to feel sorry for him. A wretch through and through.

I'm glad Lizzie Hexam was strong enough to resist her brother's selfishness...he lost the most by being so selfish. So careful of his own skin and his own reputation, he lost his sister who was probably the best thing in his life. He was "raising himself up" to respectability. But Wrayburn took his measure from the first. I rather liked Wrayburn.

OK, the Veneerings...I know he meant to make fun of society and reveal the falseness beneath but I think a gentler touch would have been more effective. What with the Veneerings and the Podsnaps and the Buffers....and let's not forget Lady Tippins, he only succeeded in creating the grotesque. And yet, at the end, little Twemlow, a true gentleman, comes out shining.

Away false people, away with the brightness of your teeth and the pomatum in your hair.

Maybe it was a little too whimsical for my taste. And all the faults they could heap on the other books - sentimentality, little Nells, bland heroines...but no. Neither Bella nor Lizzie were bland. Though there was a touch of Dolly Varden in our Bella with her rosy kissable lips and who was loved because she was pretty.....the way Dolly was.

The Lammles were scary. Especially Alfred Lammle. I can't think why his wife didn't leave him when he was so awful. I liked the Doll's Dressmaker. She was a valiant little thing. And in the end, Dickens hinted that Sloppy would be the one to take her little hand.

Amazing.

Betty Highden....I know he was trying to make a point, but here too, a gentler touch would have made it more effective. As it was she was so overdrawn as to appear ridiculous. Sad. But ridiculous.

I can't wait for the book in which there is a spontaneous combustion.

Bleak House.

I wonder when I'll get to that.