Installment five of Bleak House, published in July of 1852, spans chapters fourteen through sixteen of the Charles Dickens novel. After Richard leaves to begin studying medicine under Mr. Badger, readers are introduced to Caddy Jellyby’s secret fiancé Prince Turveydrop. Discussion of Prince’s father, old Mr. Turveydrop, dominates this portion of chapter fourteen and the man’s defining attribute – his Deportment – gives the chapter its name. Ada, Esther, and Mr. Jarndyce’s visit to Miss Flite’s house follows, during which Miss Flite explains that Mr. Kenge has been sending her money every week, a sum which she believes the Lord Chancellor is forwarding. In this same visit, Mr. Woodcourt is more fully introduced after namelessly appearing in previous chapters and Krook reveals that he is attempting to teach himself to read and write. Chapter fifteen, “Bell Yard,” centers on Skimpole’s dead debt collector (called either “Neckett” or “Coavinses”) and the Neckett family. After Skimpole laughingly tells Ada, Esther, and Jarndyce of the man’s death, the four of them go to his home and find that his thirteen-year-old daughter Charley has been working alone to take care of her two younger siblings. Mr. Gridley, the family’s downstairs neighbor, then talks at length about his frustrations with the court. “Tom-all-Alone’s,” the installment’s final chapter, briefly discusses Sir Leicester’s contraction of gout (which has historically plagued the Dedlocks) and focuses mainly on Lady Dedlock’s (who is unidentified at this point) inquiries into Nemo’s death and the disposal of his remains, assisted by Jo.
This installment, like the novel as a whole, is heavily concerned with class and how characters navigate that system. The travels of Ada, Esther, and Jarndyce throughout chapters fourteen and fifteen say very little directly about them as characters but instead use them as observers of the world’s inhabitants, whose varying demeanors and places of residence mark them with corresponding class distinctions. As old Mr. Turveydrop’s Deportment stands in contrast to Mr. Gridley’s self-described impoliteness in the installment’s first two chapters, so does Chesney Wold stand as a staple of the affluent Dedlock estate in contrast to the dilapidated conditions of Tom-all-Alone’s, which Lady Dedlock ventures into in the installment’s final chapter. However, although the people and places which the novel’s main characters encounter take center stage in this installment, other characters (including the novel’s main characters) are still being explored via their relationships to those seen here. Issues of labor and space are central in examining characters in this context.
When Skimpole, after seeing the home and family of Coavinses, exclaims “I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little comforts were my work” (254, “work” emphasis mine, “my” original), it should alert readers to the strangeness of Skimpole’s understanding of labor. Having heard Skimpole happily declare his aversion to genuine work in previous chapters, we see him here taking credit for “enabling” Neckett to raise his children. This is, of course, ridiculous. Yet, even in cases that are seemingly more normal, Dickens is regularly writing in Bleak House about characters who are rarely in danger of facing material hardship should they not labor. Mr. Gridley, speaking to Mr. Jarndyce about their differing court cases (Jarndyce’s involving thousands of pounds, Gridley’s involving hundreds), asks “Is mine less hard to bear, or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it, and has been thus shamefully sucked away?” (251). Do we ever see the main characters face similar stakes? Richard’s career indecision – among the most important plot issues in the installments surrounding this one – provides an illustrative example.
Richard contemplates pursuing medicine, law-work, and spends a brief period in the army before eventually becoming engrossed in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. There does seem to be some concern about finances for him, especially when others address the foolishness of Richard’s faith that the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit will make Ada and him rich, however, the more urgent concern during this section of the book seems to be what his lack of passion for any career says about Richard’s character, as Mr. Jarndyce worries. The performance of labor is not important to Richard because his circumstances demand him to work but because duty is framed as socially favorable and personally enriching. Similarly, it is significant that Richard finally devotes himself to Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a case that has failed to produce anything for years, but one that has also kept many working. The issue of this work producing nothing and having little direct benefit for others muddles the validity and righteousness of any supposed duties and instead marks the work as more self-serving. Like the mental gymnastics that Mr. Skimpole performs to assert his role in raising Neckett’s children, the manufacture of labor and its appearance seems just as important as any work completed or not completed.
This is certainly the case with Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle, both of whom spending most of their time doing work that is superficially humanitarian. When Mr. Kenge explains that Mrs. Jellyby is “devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry – and the natives – and the happy settlement… of our superabundant home population” (49, emphasis original), it is impossible not to notice that she’s involved in the British colonialist project that had crafted narratives such as “the white man’s burden,” which donned the appearance of duty but belied the project’s main goals of imperialist expansion. Likewise, Mrs. Pardiggle declares her fondness of work when she visits the brickmaker’s house in chapter eight, but the brickmaker petitions her, “I wants a end of these liberties took with my place” (132), highlighting the falseness of her supposedly altruistic work.
The importance of appearance makes these characters comparable to those who carry the patina of old money. Old Mr. Turveydrop’s Deportment is specifically oriented around his inaction; he “did nothing whatever, but stand before the fire, a model of Deportment” (226). Equally inactive are Chesney Wold and the Dedlock family shelters, as the Dedlocks’ “greatness seems to consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves, for seven hundred years” (110). Notably, both the Dedlocks and Turveydrop are threatened by a “levelling.” The Dedlock family gout confronts them with “the levelling process of dying” (255) and Turveydrop says that “a levelling age is not favourable to Deportment” (228).
However the affluence of these characters is manifested, readers are repeatedly confronted with the separation between them and the novel’s poor. Beyond some of the examples already discussed within the novel’s events, this separation is also created in their narration. The book’s omniscient narrator ponders how “It must be a strange state to be like Jo” (257). Where the Esther and those around her seem like class tourists of sorts, the omniscient narrator is the same in the virtual travels of their watching eye. The role that space plays in establishing class in Bleak House is undeniable. Esther’s experiences at both the brickmaker’s house and at Neckett’s support this. While at the brickmaker’s, Esther describes an imaginary “iron barrier” (133) between herself and the family. Meanwhile, though much of what Mr. Gridley says in his monologue during the Bell Yard visit could speak to this issue, his explanation of how he has “lost the habit of treading upon velvet” and that this marks him as an outsider to the Court of Chancery are illustrative of how the places people exist in further ingrain class distinctions. For a character like Mr. Skimpole, who has no money of his own but is always around people who can pay his debts, we can see just how much a character’s surroundings can determine their social standing.
Although the novel may paint such a vivid picture of the operations of class within its world, it is nevertheless difficult to parse out how sympathetic Dickens and his writing actually are to the poor characters in the novel. When Esther says that “what the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and GOD” (135), is this simply bringing attention to Esther’s subjectivity or is it Dickens conceding a gap in the scope of his otherwise sprawling novel? Even if it is the latter, does the rest of the book forgive this gap?
There are definitely portions of the book that would make this forgiveness difficult to grant. For example, if we take Mrs. Jellyby to be a satire of British colonialism, then a late note about the “King of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody… for rum” (987) seems like a cheap joke that tries to play both sides. And what of the helpless attitude of pity that the book’s narrators adopt when examining the most awful of circumstances, such as when the omniscient narrator laments the way the deteriorated of Tom-all-Alone’s molds those living there and yet fatalistically compares Jo’s prospects to those of animals (259)? In his monologue about his frustrations with the court, Mr. Gridley positions himself as the victim of either individuals or the system, venting about this confusing dialectic (251). Perhaps Dickens locates his answer to these issues in individuals, mocking many throughout the novel, and eventually ending it with the romantic pairing of Esther and Woodcourt, both of whom we see care for the weak and helpless. Yet Bleak House is also about systems, the specificity of this assemblage of individuals. Muddled in Dickens’ conclusions is the system and, in turn, also those stuck within it.