Bleak House: England's Social Institutions and Political Infrastructure

When Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, was published in 1853, it did not go unnoticed by critics. The reviews of the period where anything but tepid in tone or opinion in regard to Dickens’ newest novel. Most notably, the critics were concerned with the structure of the novel, characterization, and, in particular, Esther as a plausible character. By singling out reviewers from different publications of the time, it is possible to see what the public in 1853 was reading about Bleak House in regard to these issues.

In many novels, the society created by the author is surrounded by wealth and corruption. Numerous amount of times these settings are produced based on the life in which the author lives. Charles Dickens is no different. In the midst of most of his novels, Dickens exposes the deception of Victorian England and the strict society that holds everything together. In Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, a satire is created where the basis of the novel is the mockery against money and morals. Throughout this novel, multiple symbols and depictions of the characters display the corruption of the mind that surrounds social classes in Victorian England.

During the 1800s, Charles Dickens was one of the most acclaimed writers of his time. He did not just write books but he was a journalist, and play write. Many of his experiences and people in his life influenced his books. Because of this he was known as not just a writer but a writer for “the people”. He wrote about the workhouse, poverty, disabilities, social class, and so much more that effected his era.

In Charles Dickens books you can often find the rich and powerful to be portrayed as cruel and greedy. In his books described the rich to be heartless. He had a great compassion for the poor. His compassion came from when he was a kid, and his family went into debt. (Charles) He was sent to a workhouse to pay off his family’s debts. (Charles) He wrote thirty-three books in his life time. Charles Dickens died before he could finish his last book The Mystery of Edwin Drood. (Dickens) The world of Charles Dickens is best understood through his own life, industrialized London, and scriptures concerning the poor.

“It is extraordinary to me, said he that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children” (111). A normal person is caring, able to feel emotions, and actually would be mortified after killing a baby on the streets. Again, Monsieur the Marquis only cares about how the horses are, not the baby, “The horses there; are they right?” (112). For the third time, Dickens shows yet again the Marquis’s apathy towards the human race, “I would run over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth” (112).

The novel’s opening words (Book 1, Chapter 1) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. . .” Provided, Dickens conveys the relationship between poverty and aristocracy through the use of parallelism, paradox, and other poetic techniques. In addition to, Dickens's technique functions not only to draw opposites, but to reveal hidden parallels.

Western literature is historically and inherently rooted in a masculine bias largely as a part of the past millennium of patriarchal order. Amongst the abundance of works of which can be attributed to reflect this bias, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is most suiting. Written in the Victorian Age, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities seems historical, as to the plot revolves around the French Revolution, with its bloody guillotine blade, the poor, starving bourgeoisie, and the indifferent aristocrats of whom inevitably fall. Yet, from a critical perspective, Dickens’ seems to be critiquing society. Throughout the work, he encompasses the idea that as long as violence and inequality exist, human suffering will notoriously subsidize as a contemporary

Dickens argues that a person should be defined by their own self, character, personality, actions, and other traits which are specifically not their clothing, which is their wealth, which is their social class. He includes several descriptions of the higher social classes, both as opposites to and comparisons with the dress of the poor, but also as examples of how such arbitrary, socially constructed class can hurt even the wealthy – that this is a universal issue that must be resolved, not just a ‘poor person’ problem.

Chapter XII addresses this from the opposite side with the discussion of the working class. The “fruits of my brow” and “...but is it a sin for a labouring man that moistens every crust of bread he earns”. This chapter, along with Chapter XI and the Podsnaps and Chapter XIII and Lizzie and her father, is a main showcase of the great chapter organization and structure that Dickens provides to show opposing sides of the story. The chapters in the book thus far seem to reverse often from the wealthy to the working class or from one contract to another wherein Dickens’ audience is given the different insights into each faction of this English

Dickens’ view of society having evil morals and ethics is conveyed with the use of hunger and an unjust law system. The bad morals of the wealthy aristocrats and the unfair treatment in prisons help portray why society would be angry. The people use these problems in society to fuel their revenge against the aristocracy so they can be treated equally. The people, starting an uprising against the aristocracy, will finally have the revenge they

Dickens develops inhumanity as something innately present in human beings, but that is only truly revealed when there is lack of consequence for revealing it. Society then shifts to accept man’s inhumanity and becomes a destructive force, brutally hurting everything in its path and breeding the inhumanity of revenge in the people it wrongs. This inhumanity developed by other inhumanities is why Madame Defarge so mercilessly hunts the Evrémonde family. It is why the peasants of the French Revolution are equally as inhumane to the aristocrats as the aristocrats had previously been to them. The brutally honest theme of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man is part of what makes A Tale of Two Cities such a memorable book, as it serves as not only an entertaining piece of literature, but also a warning to generations to come.

Can social justice be achieved in a society full of offenders ranging from wretched pilferers to murders and engulfed with injustices of treatment of unequal offenses? These concerns reflect Charles Dickens unending desire for social justice in a society which he terms dangerous but not lethal in his novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The story is set in two lands, Paris and London, both ruled by monarchs and bound to be faced by similar situations, the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Dickens uses these two situations to show the dangers, horrors and suffering that revolution is set to bring and the differences of the two countries criminal and social situations. To illustrate his themes on the importance of revolution, sacrifice

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud equates the unconscious sense of guilt with the unconscious need for punishment when it is evaded. The discontent in society arises through the ability to defend against guilt, but when guilt can be confronted and borne then civilization will truly be happy. In most cases, “the sense of guilt makes itself noisily heard in consciousness,” (Carveth, 2001) and the only way to alleviate this fault is through punishment, by helping others. In Great Expectations, characters face moral dilemmas and shame and must determine how to deal with it. Through the use of situations and characters, Dickens conveys that the only justice system is the human conscience.

Dickens believes that people are mostly the hardships they experience in life, rather than the choices they make and lessons they are taught as children. Madame Defarge’s hardships develop a need for her to exact revenge on her brother and sister’s killers. Her need for revenge turns into bloodthirsty and intensely focused anger, which then leads to her choice, that is to plan to denounce Lucie, Lucie’s daughter, and Dr. Manette the evening after Darnay’s execution. Charles Darnay’s hardship in coming to grips with his heritage leads to his courageous, yet life risking decisions. These choices come from the lessons he is taught as a child by his mother, who’s dying wish is that the family ought to right some of the wrongs they caused.

Through satire and exaggeration, Dickens exposes his view against the way justice is conceived as an unfair problem of society that relates both society and politics.