Renowned writer and academic Sheila Kohler returns to our blog with another post exploring how elements of mystery fiction appear in the work of a famous literary author. Here she lays out the ways that Dickens’s Bleak House was actually a mystery!
Bleak House by Dickens could almost be called ” The Mystery of the Missing Letters.” The complicated plot turns around the identity of both the writer of the letters and the receiver and their whereabouts. It takes the first English private detective, Mr Bucket ( and his wife Mrs Bucket—wives in this book are either very helpful like Mrs Bagnet or not helpful at all like Mrs Jellyby) to eventually solve the mystery and the murder with the help of a plethora of major and minor characters whom Dickens uses with remarkable skill both in his plot and as believable people.
This all takes place in England in the 1840’s. These are the days before the railroads have covered the country. The book is a real page-turner with a tense plot and at the same time an emotionally believable though terrible picture of English society with all its injustice, its complete contrasts between high society and the poor, and the absurdity of the law courts where endless cases like those of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce impoverish the claimants over several generations in order to make money for the lawyers who feed on their illusory hopes.
Dickens’s brilliance in this book like so many of his others is with the minor characters, the way they talk, walk, move, what they wear (Vholes’ dead glove!), the objects around them: (Mrs Bagnet’s umbrella used as a cupboard and to poke and indicate! Not to protect from the rain), and even their smell; and above all his precision with language in the descriptions of the weather, the fog which obscures all from the start and places like Chesney Wold or Tom-all-alone’s which mirror the inner worlds of his people and the workings of his plot. He makes these characters all remarkably distinct, wonderfully unique, and utterly unforgettable. We love and hate and fear for them. Their names often tell us who they are and at the same time hide their identity: Summerson, Dedlock, and Turveydrop; Krook and Jellydrop, the dreadful Mr Vholes, Tulkinghorn, and Nemo. No one is what he or she professes to be.
We will begin with our heroine whom we first know with the name of Esther Summerson which reflects her sunny disposition, though of course this name turns out to be false. She is John Jarndyce’s ward though not directly connected to him or the case, which he refers to as “the family curse.” She is both the heroine, impossibly good and loving , devoted to others, but at the same time no fool, and an astute observer of others we discover from her narration. She narrates half of this long book (the other half is in the third person) and her chapters are always interesting, personal, perceptive, yet forgiving and understanding of the foibles of others. How does Dickens do this engaging female voice, write of her illness and suffering at losing her looks, and hold our attention through so many pages? He uses mystery and a series of small vivid moments to reveal who Esther is.
From the start her identity is mysterious to her and to us and it is through writing, a law brief and love letters that we gradually discover who she is both literally and figuratively. She is brought up by her “god mother” and is told on her birthday that she was her mother’s disgrace just as her mother was hers.
Lady Dedlock, wife of Sir Leicester, ordinarily imperturbable, in a rare moment fails to suppress a burst of spontaneous emotion, as she recognizes the handwriting of her lover in the legal brief she is reading. Tulkinghorn, the family lawyer for his part, takes instant notice.
Tulkinghorn, who always wears black and whose only foible is his taste for old, valuable port, never expresses any emotion. He haunts the high halls of the great houses of England, and particularly Sir Leicester Dedlock’s mansion at Chesney Wold, appearing suddenly and mysteriously out of the shadows of vast libraries and studies. He immediately realizes there must be some mysterious connection between the writer who has copied a legal brief, and Lady Dedlock. Here Dickens uses writing, a text, letters to convey something essential.
Tulkinghorn who uses all the secrets he can ferret out of the aristocratic families where he works to obtain power, goes in search of the mysterious man whose writing has stirred such a strong emotion in Lady Dedlock . He finds him, thanks to Mr. Snagsby, the law stationer who has given the copying work to a man called Nemo (no one) who lives in the house of someone appropriately called Krook, otherwise known as the Chancellor of the Rag and bone shop. But when Tulkinghorn arrives at his house looking for the man who copied the legal brief, all he finds is Krook and the bright eyed Lady Jane, his cat on the staircase. The mysterious Nemo is dead of opium poisoning and for the moment his identity is unknown.
Thanks to the upright and kind Mr George (another character whose true identity is not revealed immediately) a former cavalry officer who wishes at all costs to protect his friend Matthew Bagnet who has vouched for a considerable amount of money for George, he allows himself to be blackmailed by Tulkinghorn and gives up a letter with a list of instructions he has had from Nemo which is signed with his real name: Captain Hawdon.
It is the law clerk William Guppy, who notices the remarkable likeness between the portrait of Lady Dedlock, the apparently proud and disdainful aristocrat and Esther Summerson. Guppy is another minor but very amusing character who believes for a while that he has lost his “art” meaning his heart to our heroine, Esther Summerson, whom we believe to be an orphan brought up by her unfeeling “godmother.” Guppy discovers from Mrs Rachael Chadbank who took care of Esther as a child, that her real name is not Summerson but Hawdon and her Godmother Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock’s sister.
It becomes apparent who Esther’s real mother and father are, though this is poor Lady Dedlock’s terrible secret. Indeed, she is not aware that her illegitimate child fathered by Captain Hawdon, has lived and been hidden by her sister Miss Barbary, though by the time Lady Dedlock finds her, Esther has suffered yet another disguise: she has contracted the small pox and remains disfigured, unidentifiable.
Now the hunt is on for the letters which Lady Dedlock has written to Captain Hawdon signed with her first name Honoria, letters which Tulkinghorn can use to expose Lady Dedlock to her loving husband Sir Leicester and to the rest of the aristocratic world if he so wishes .
Krook who cannot read calls upon Guppy to help him decipher the letters but by the time Guppy arrives Krook has drunk so much alcohol he self combusts and the letters are lost to Guppy.
When Krook self combusts it turns out that Mrs. Smallweed ( a senile grandmother and abused wife of the dreadful Mr. Smallweed) is Krook’s sister and so her husband conveniently becomes the proprietor of the house and all its belongings and thus the letters which have not burned but were hidden in of all places the cat, Lady Jane’s bed! .
Mr Bucket, the private detective is brought in at this point both to obtain the letters and find Tulkinghorn’s murderer. Bucket, like a surrogate author now unravels the complicated plot with remarkable astuteness . Initially poor Lady Dedlock, who has all our sympathy at this point is suspected of the murder of her enemy Tulkinghorn. She is considered the person who shoots Mr Tulkinghorn, as the French maid Hortense leaves notes indicating her has murderess: “LADY DEDLOCK MURDERESS.” It is the French maid, Hortense who attempts to implicate Lady Dedlock, whom she hates , in the murder. Bucket initially imprisons poor Mr George who turns out to be the second son of Mrs Rouncewell the dignified housekeeper at Chesney Wold .
In the end Bucket names Hortense as the murderer but poor Lady Dedlock’s secret is now known to all and she flees to escape her shame. After a frantic hunt by her loving daughter, Esther and Mr Bucket, Lady Dedlock is found dead on the steps leading to the iron barred gate to the terrible pauper’s burial ground where her lover Captain Hawdon lies. She is disguised once more, and dead and locked out from her lover, like her name.
Dickens who published this book in serial form finally brings the many pages of his plot which we have turned with so much pleasure to a satisfying end. George is reunited with his loving mother, Mrs. Rouncewell, the housekeeper at Cheney Wold and Esther despite her lost exterior beauty with her true love, the good doctor Woodcourt.
