Bleak House

Synopsis

Characters

Major characters

• Esther Summerson is the heroine. She is Dickens's only female narrator. Esther is raised as an orphan by her godmother Miss Barbary, who is in fact her aunt. She does not know her parents' identity. Miss Barbary holds macabre vigils on Esther's birthday each year, telling her that her birth is no cause for celebration, because the girl is her mother's "disgrace". Because of her cruel upbringing she is self-effacing, self-deprecating and grateful for every trifle. The discovery of her true identity provides much of the drama in the book. Finally it is revealed that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Nemo, later learned to be Captain Hawdon.
• Honoria, Lady Dedlock is the haughty and beautiful mistress of Chesney Wold. The revelation of her past drives much of the plot. Before her marriage, Lady Dedlock had an affair with another man and bore his child. Her sister had told her at the time of the birth that the infant was stillborn. Years later, however, Lady Dedlock discovers that the child was born alive and is Esther Summerson. Because Lady Dedlock's reaction to the affidavit suggests that she harbours a secret predating her marriage, she has attracted the curiosity of Mr Tulkinghorn who feels bound by his ties to his client, Sir Leicester, to pry out this secret. At the end of the novel, Lady Dedlock dies, disgraced in her own mind and convinced that her husband could never forgive what she imagines to be her own moral failings.
• John Jarndyce is an unwilling party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, guardian of Richard, Ada, and Esther, and owner of Bleak House. Vladimir Nabokov called him "one of the best and kindest human beings ever described in a novel". A wealthy man, he helps most of the other characters, motivated by a combination of goodness and guilt at the mischief and human misery caused by Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which he calls "the family curse". At first, it seems possible that he is Esther's father, but he makes clear he is her guardian shortly after she comes to live under his roof, explaining the letter he received asking him to take on that role a few years earlier. He falls in love with Esther and wishes to marry her, but he gives her up because she is in love with Mr Woodcourt.
• Richard Carstone is a ward of Chancery in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Straightforward and likeable but irresponsible and inconstant, Richard falls under the spell of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. At the end of the book, just after Jarndyce and Jarndyce ends, he dies, worn out by his imprudence in trusting to the outcome of a Chancery suit.
• Ada Clare is another young ward of Chancery in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She falls in love with Richard Carstone, a distant cousin. They later marry in secret, and she has Richard's child. She is the dear friend of Esther's.
• Harold Skimpole is a friend of Jarndyce's "in the habit of sponging his friends". He is irresponsible, selfish, amoral, and without remorse. He often refers to himself as "a child" and claims not to understand human relationships, circumstances, and society but actually understands them very well, as he demonstrates when he enlists Richard and Esther to pay off the bailiff who has arrested him on a writ of debt. He believes that Richard and Ada will be able to acquire credit based on their expectations in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and declares his intention to start "honouring" them by letting them pay some of his debts. This character is commonly regarded as a portrait of Leigh Hunt. Dickens wrote in a letter of 25 September 1853, 'I suppose he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words!... It is an absolute reproduction of a real man'. A contemporary critic commented, 'I recognised Skimpole instantaneously;... and so did every person whom I talked with about it who had ever had Leigh Hunt's acquaintance.'" G. K. Chesterton suggested that Dickens "may never once have had the unfriendly thought, 'Suppose Hunt behaved like a rascal!'; he may have only had the fanciful thought, 'Suppose a rascal behaved like Hunt!'"
• Lawrence Boythorn is an old friend of John Jarndyce's and a former soldier who speaks in superlatives, very loud and harsh but goodhearted. Boythorn was once engaged to and very much in love with a woman who left him without giving him any reason. She was Miss Barbary, who abandoned her former life and Boythorn when she took Esther from her sister. Boythorn is also a neighbour of Sir Leicester Dedlock's, with whom he is engaged in an epic tangle of lawsuits over a right-of-way across Boythorn's property that Sir Leicester asserts the legal right to close. He is thought to be based on the writer Walter Savage Landor.
• Sir Leicester Dedlock is a crusty baronet, much older than his wife. Dedlock is an unthinking conservative who regards the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit as a mark of distinction worthy of a man of his family lineage. On the other hand, he is shown as a loving and devoted husband towards Lady Dedlock, even after he learns about her secret.
• Mr Tulkinghorn is Sir Leicester's lawyer. He defers to his clients but enjoys and is driven by the power his control of their secrets gives him. He learns of Lady Dedlock's past and tries to control her conduct, in the name of preserving the reputation and good name of Sir Leicester. He is murdered, and his murder gives Dickens the chance to weave a detective plot into the closing chapters of the book.
• Mr Snagsby is the timid and hen-pecked proprietor of a law-stationery business who gave law-writer work to Nemo. Snagsby gets involved with Mr Tulkinghorn and Inspector Bucket's secrets. He is Jo's only friend and tends to give half-crowns to those for whom he feels sorry.
• Miss Flite is an elderly eccentric. Her family has been destroyed by a long-running Chancery case similar to Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and her obsessive fascination with Chancery veers between comedy and tragedy. She owns a large number of little birds, which she says will be released "on the day of judgment".
• Mr Guppy is a law clerk at Kenge and Carboy. He becomes smitten with Esther and makes an offer of marriage, which she refuses. After Esther learns that Lady Dedlock is her mother, she asks Mr Guppy to stop investigating her past. He fears the meeting is to accept his offer of marriage, which he does not want to pursue now that she is disfigured by smallpox. He is relieved when she explains her true purpose and agrees to do everything in his power to protect her privacy in the future. After he gains full status as an attorney, ready to start his own practice, he again proposes to Esther, who turns Guppy down without telling him she was engaged to Woodcourt.
• Inspector Bucket of the Detective is a Metropolitan Police detective who undertakes several investigations throughout the novel, most notably the investigation of the murder of Mr Tulkinghorn. He is notable in being one of the first detectives in English fiction. This character is probably based on Inspector Charles Frederick Field of the then recently formed Detective Branch at Scotland Yard. Dickens wrote several journalistic pieces about the Inspector and the work of the detectives in Household Words. It has also been argued that the character was based on Jack Whicher, one of the 'original' eight detectives set up by Scotland Yard in the middle 19th century.
• Mr George is a former soldier, who once served under Nemo and owns a London shooting-gallery where he trains men in sword and pistol. The first suspect in the murder of Mr Tulkinghorn, he is exonerated and his true identity is revealed, against his wishes, to his mother. He is George Rouncewell, son of the Dedlocks' housekeeper, Mrs Rouncewell, who welcomes him back to Chesney Wold. He ends the book as body-servant to the stricken Sir Leicester Dedlock.
• Caddy Jellyby is a friend of Esther's, secretary to her mother. Caddy feels ashamed of her own "lack of manners", but Esther's friendship heartens her. Caddy falls in love with Prince Turveydrop, marries him, and has a baby.
• Krook is a rag and bottle merchant and collector of papers. He is the landlord of the house where Nemo and Miss Flite live and where Nemo dies. He seems to subsist on a diet of gin. Krook dies from a case of spontaneous combustion, something that Dickens believed could happen, but which some critics denounced as outlandish. Amongst the stacks of papers obsessively hoarded by the illiterate Krook is the key to resolving the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
• Jo is a young boy who lives on the streets and tries to make a living as a crossing sweeper. Jo was the only person with whom Nemo had any real connection. Nemo expressed a paternal sort of interest in Jo, something that no other human had ever done. Nemo would share his meagre money with Jo, and would sometimes remark, "Well, Jo, today I am as poor as you," when he had nothing to share. Jo is called to testify at the inquiry into Nemo's death but knows nothing of value. Despite this, Mr Tulkinghorn pays Inspector Bucket to harry Jo and force him to keep "moving along" because Mr Tulkinghorn fears Jo might have some knowledge of the connection between Nemo and the Dedlocks. Jo ultimately dies from pneumonia, a complication from an earlier bout with smallpox, which Esther also catches and from which she almost dies.
• Allan Woodcourt is a surgeon and a kind, caring man who loves Esther deeply. She in turn loves him but feels unable to respond, not only because of her prior commitment to John Jarndyce but also because she fears her illegitimacy will cause his mother to object to their connection.
• Grandfather Smallweed is a moneylender, a mean, bad-tempered man who shows no mercy to people who owe him money and who enjoys inflicting emotional pain on others. He lays claim to the deceased Krook's possessions because Smallweed's wife is Krook's sister and only living relation. Smallweed also drives Mr George into bankruptcy by abruptly calling in a loan. It has been suggested that his description fits that of a person with progeria, although people with progeria only have a life expectancy of 14 years, while Grandfather Smallweed is very old.
• Mr Vholes is a Chancery lawyer who takes on Richard Carstone as a client, squeezes out of him all the litigation fees he can manage to pay, and then abandons him when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes to an end.
• "Conversation" Kenge is a Chancery lawyer who represents John Jarndyce, and has apprentice attorneys in his office, including Mr Guppy and more briefly, Richard Carstone. His chief foible is his love of grand, pretentious, and empty rhetoric.