Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Test Nr. 4 - 6.5.96

1) Fogs hides Crimes. Fogs allows people to act invisibly. Fog is a symbol of injustice. Fog leaves everything unseen.

In the passage from C. Dickens’ novel ‘Bleak House’ fog seems to be ubiquitous in London. It is not only near the river, where it would occur naturally, but its ‘very heart’ is at the High Court of Chancery. This clearly indicates that the fog in Dickens’ novel is not the normal fog the inhabitants of London even nowadays suffer from but a symbol of crime and injustice which I defined in the beginning.

According to Dickens, neither the pier nor the dark streets of London are the most dangerous areas: The court, where justice should reign, is worse. Law is not the same for everybody, it is rather a strange procedure of ‘bills, cross-bills, ...’ with rules that remain vague in the eyes of ordinary people.

Due to the high costs this court deals out ‘justice’ to the wealthy, a situation which Dickens considers a terrible social deficit.

The laws of Dickens’ time seem to have been really unsatisfactory and one has to agree with Dickens’ last sentence: ‘Suffer any wrong that can be done to you, rather than come here!’’

2) During his time as a clerk at a solicitor’s office, Dickens learned a lot about law and saw the necessity of a law reform. This seems to be the impulse to write ‘Bleak House’, one of his first novels. In ‘Hard Times’ he reduced the general criticism found in ‘Bleak House’ to a special case in order to show that the unfair divorce laws of that time had to be changed.

He uses the likeable Stephen Blackpool to drive his conclusions home and to influence the reader’s emotions. On page 66, Dickens takes a stand against the law that punishes rather than helps people. No matter what you do ‘of course there is’ a law to punish you. Stephen looks for a law to help him and Mr. Bounderby states that there is such a law but it costs loads of money to get a divorce.

The main criticism that can be found in both novels lies exactly in this difference inbetween the rights of the rich people and the rights of the ‘Hands’. As I already pointed out in part 1, justice is based on money which leaves the rights to the rich and the duties to the poor.

Furthermore there is no solution to this problem in sight because the parliament only consists of Gradgrinds and Bounderbys who already have a lot of privileges and are therefore not interested in any changes.

Dickens’ social criticism is not only aimed at the courts and at the so-called justice. Another very important point in ‘Hard Times’ is formed by the problems in connection with laisser-faire capitalism.

In order to increase their production output and their sales, the factory owners do not care about nature and workers. Because of the high level of pollution Coketown’s rivers run purple, the former red bricks of the buildings are almost black and the sky is covered with ‘serpents’ of smoke.

Even more depressing are the descriptions of the workers. The manufacturers do not feel responsible when they chop ‘people up with their machinery’. In the age of industrialisation workers are replaceable like machines.

On the other hand, Dickens raises objections against the trade unions. Trade unions can of course be remedies to the workers’ problems but Dickens sees the danger of socialist agitators using the workers in order to drive home their own political goals instead of helping the workers as they promise.

Another important issue is education. The author heavily objects to the mechanical way of teaching in Gradgrind’s utilitarian school. As early as in the second chapter the reader notices that the facts taught in this kind of school have no use at all in normal life. Sissy, with her natural understanding of a horse contradicts the cold definition of a horse by Bitzer: ‘Quadruped ....’

Dickens uses many descriptions that create a dense atmosphere in his novels. Every word seems to be picked carefully, every image suits the current situation perfectly. The elaborate way of writing makes it difficult to read but after all it is worth reading.

3) Society has improved greatly since the 19th century. At least in the European countries there is no difference between rich and poor people in court anymore. Everyone is guaranteed a fair trial and a solicitor.

Trade Unions which succeeded in bloody fights against the factory owners and workers are now protected from abuse by law. Education is more liberal than in Dickens’ times. Pupils are fortunately only taught basic facts, the rest can be looked up in books.

It is more important to learn how to think because modern society is really difficult to understand. Only if one sees the whole problem, one can find a solution to the threatening dangers of our time. But all these right that we have gained over centuries will be useless if we destroy mother earth and with her our own destiny.