BLEAK HOUSE”, Chapters 6-11

The aim of the lesson is to teach you to regard the author’s way of plot-building as part of his conception, to anticipate the development of the plot and to evaluate the importance of separate episodes.

1. Reproduce the following requirements to a plot and say in a few words whether the plot of the book satisfies these requirements, judging by the chapters you have read (or is it too early to judge?).

A plot is a narrative of events arranged in time sequence, each event being caused by some others. The element of surprise or mystery is of great importance to a plot. To appreciate the surprise, or mystery, part of the reader’s mind should be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on. The plot-maker expects us to remember what’s happened, and we expect him to leave no loose ends.

2. As you know, he episodes of a narrative are roughly (and very approximately) classified into the so-called “ plot incidents ” and “ character incidents ”. The former make the story move forward, while the latter contribute to the study of human nature. Some episodes may have both functions.

Does the classification satisfy you? Characterise the episodes with:

a) Mrs. Pardiggle;

b) Mr. Guppy’s proposal;

c) any other episode.

3. Dickens is a great master of sensual detail, which enables the reader to be an immediate observer (“ Her voice impressed my fancy as if it had a kind of spectacles on it too. ” – p.110). But sometimes the illuminating phrase does not present an immediate sensual image, but an abstract metaphor, summarising the author’s attitude to a person, institution, etc. (“ There are many good and true people in it. But the evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool… ” – p.14).

Supply examples of both kinds of images, with more emphasis on the first type, because they occur much more frequently and because it is sensual details that make a character alive.

4. Outside the context of the whole narrative the chapters under discussion present a series of seemingly discontented episodes, not yet cemented, in the reader’s eye, by the author’s general conception. Thus, in the first episode (Chapter 6), Mr. Jarndyce gives a warm welcome to his young wards. In the second, Mr.Skimpole, “a mere child in practical matters”, gets arrested for debt and “kindly” gives Esther and Richard a chance to exercise their generosity.

Name, in the like manner, the other episodes presented in Chapters 6-11 (sum up each of them in a terse phrase, so as to reflect the author’s attitude to the events and the people).

5. It has been said that Dickens’ world is terribly lop-sided and incomplete. Even if we ignore what it leaves out there is much to be said against the things that are included in it.

a) Does Dickens introduce any episodes that as far as you can judge are not vital to the development of the plot? What might have been his reasons for introducing them? Do they add to the merit of the novel or to its drawbacks? Explain.

b) “His deliberate pathos, when we catch him bringing out his handkerchief for the flood of tears that will shortly follow, may be sickening” (J.B.Priestley). Are there any passages in these chapters that are revoltingly sentimental or melodramatic? Or are the sentiment and melodrama so strictly under control that they can’t be considered weaknesses? Explain.

6. “The autobiographical form of David Copperfield was in some respects continued in Bleak House by means of extracts from the personal relation of its heroine. But the distinction between the narrative of David and the diary of Esther, like that between Micawber and Skimpole, marks the superiority of the first to its successor. To represent a storyteller as giving the most surprising vividness to manners, motives, and characters of which we are to believe her, all the time, as artlessly unconscious, as she is also entirely ignorant of the good qualities in herself she is naïvely revealing in the story, was a difficult enterprise, full of hazard in any case, not worth success, and certainly not successful. Ingenuity is more apparent than freshness, the invention is neither easy nor unstrained, and though the old marvellous power over the real is again abundantly manifest, there is some alloy of the artificial.” (John Forster. The Life of Charles Dickens )

Do you share Forster’s ideas about Esther’s narrative? Is it a complete failure?

7. By the time one has read over a hundred pages one is certain to anticipate some facts or events that will be presented in the chapters to come. What events can you anticipate? What makes you think so? Is it a merit or a shortcoming of Dickens’ plotting that he gives the reader ample opportunity to predict what is to happen or to be discovered next?

8. Can the success of Dickens’ novels be attributed to his plotting?

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