skygiants | (no subject)

So you know how sometimes in life, you just get an urge to reread a thousand-page brick by Dickens about how lawsuits are terrible?

. . . . maybe this is not exactly a universal impulse. Um.

Anyway: Bleak House. I don't know why I love Bleak House. It is the Dickens that most encapsulates EVERYTHING that people make fun of Dickens for. It's way too long, it's often super-preachy, it's really mean to lawyers and to activist women, it's got a a cast of so many people that every time that another character is introduced you just sort of moan "Dickens noooooooooooo!" and wave your hands faintly in the air in an excess of exhaustion.

And yet I do love Bleak House. Sometimes, life is just a mystery!

Maybe it's because Bleak House is basically a fantasy novel. It's all about how the Court of Chancery -- which dealt with, among other things, court cases involving equity and wills and trusts and guardianships and so on -- is a MALEVOLENT EVIL FORCE that sucks otherwise reasonable people into a black hole of DOOM and DESPAIR by its supernatural powers of . . . having lots of paperwork to go through. The whole book basically doesn't work unless you accept the premise that being named as a suitor in a Chancery court case is the Dickensian equivalent of having ever held the One Ring. Once you're involved, you can't ever get away! IT'S YOUR OWN. YOUR PRECIOUSSSSS.

Also there is a character who dies of spontaneous combustion, which is extra hilarious to me because Dickens was so defensive about it. SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION IS REAL, GUYS. THERE ARE NUMEROUS SCIENTIFIC CASES HE COULD NAME shut uuuuuuuuup.

Anyway, there are like a million people who are involved in the court case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in some way or another, which has been going on for two or three decades and caused at least one suicide and two other cases of ambiguous orphan-ing before the book even begins, and the book is about how it makes a lot of other people miserable before it ends. There are two narrative voices. One of them is anonymous, distant, scathingly sarcastic, and very depressed, and is prone to talking about how the fog creeps through London like doomed souls etc. etc.

The other one is first-person narrator Esther Summerson, illegitimate child of mystery and ward of one of the Jarndyce suitors, who provides a hilarious contrast because she is the picture of sweet and self-sacrificing Victorian womanhood who is determined to believe that everything works out for the best!

Everyone in the book falls in love with Esther, because she is the Perfect Victorian Woman, but I like her anyway, for a few reasons: a.) I do find her convincing as an emotionally abused kid who really really wants to make people like her and is amazed whenever they do; b.) there is a part where a lawyer dude is basically stalking her and Charles Dickens gets across very well how uncomfortable and unhappy this is for a lady so kudos, Dickens, for that; and c.) she is a hilariously unreliable narrator. My favorite part is every time her love interest, Allan Woodcourt, ~Victorian Dreamboat~ shows up in a scene, because EVERY TIME her comment is a hastily added "oh yes I forgot to mention that guy Allan Woodcourt was there too I guess whatever."

In a way this is a shame, though, because I totally want to hear more about Allan Woodcourt, ~Victorian Dreamboat~! He is the best Dickens love interest ever. He is a doctor who is descended from Welsh Royalty and spends all his time wandering around being randomly helpful and heroic offscreen.

MISS FLITE: Hey, Esther, did you hear about our friend Allan Woodcourt? I hear he got shipwrecked!
ESTHER: WHAT.
MISS FLITE: No, it's fine, he single-handedly saved like thirty lives with his mad doctoring skills and I hear they're giving him a medal or something.
BECCA: . . . why are we not seeing that story?

ALLAN WOODCOURT: Hello, incidental character! I have never met you before, but I can dedice from your clothes and your general air that you are a married to a bricklayer and you have a tragic dead baby in your past, and also a concussion.
BECCA: . . . . Allan Woodcourt, are you secretly Sherlock Holmes?
ALLAN WOODCOURT: Now I'm going to make sure you get proper medical care and have enough money to get home. Are you going to be okay?
BECCA: . . . a version of Sherlock Holmes who is magically not a jerk?

ALLAN WOODCOURT: Esther! I see you are out in the cold in distress on mysterious and potentially sinister business!
ESTHER: Yes, that does seem to be the case.
ALLAN WOODCOURT: I would like to accompany you and help you if you want, but if it would be inconvenient or unhelpful to have me go along, just say the word and I will go about my way.
BECCA: . . . wow, Mr. Woodcourt, you are a legitimate Victorian dreamboat!

The other best character in the book who gets no screentime is Mrs. Bucket. Mrs. Bucket is married to the book's one actual detective, Mr. Bucket, who pops up mostly in the last two hundred pages or so to deduce things and fight crime. It turns out that in the end the crime-fighting was only possible because his partner-in-crime, budding lady detective MRS. BUCKET, sneakily worked her way into the criminal's confidence and gathered all the evidence and then stopped the criminal from running away! And yet, in a book with literally hundreds of characters with screentime, we NEVER MEET MRS. BUCKET. I call that injustice.

Anyway, I could talk about Bleak House for probably another ten entries, because it's a thousand pages long and a million things happen in it, but I'm going to stop myself here. Instead, I'm going to rec a Yuletide story from a few years back, and now good morrow to our waking souls, which is fic about one of the other characters I didn't even get to talk about in this review, ICE-COLD AWESOME LADY DEDLOCK, who has a ~secret scandal~ in her past. The fic is about the backstory of the ~secret scandal~ and is really good even if you've never read Bleak House, although if you have read Bleak House it instantly becomes ten times as depressing.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/281675.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bookblather

I love Dickens. I see no shame in this. And yet somehow I have never read Bleak House.

Clearly this situation cannot be allowed to persist.

From:

skygiants

IT CLEARLY CANNOT. It is like the Ur-Dickens! To the Bleak House! AWAY!

From:

saphyria

I read this book about five years ago. I did not like it. The best part was the spontaneous combustion. ^_^

From:

skygiants

I think we can all agree that whatever one's feelings about the book itself, the spontaneous combustion is AWESOME.

From:

surexit

Allan Woodcourt does indeed sound like a dreamboat. :O

From:

skygiants

He goes the whole book and is polite and respectful and NEVER A JERK! I didn't think that was allowed in Victorian love interests!

From:

qian

You're the second person to post in my reading list about Bleak House in the past few days! The first was -- ooh,

dorothean, here. (And I see someone even says the same thing you do about its being a fantasy novel!)

I feel like rereading it now. I really like Dickens and I remember being super into Bleak House, so into it that I read it during class and it got confiscated. :( Perhaps I would like it even more now that I am a lawyer!

From:

skygiants

Oooh, thank you for linking me to that post, I have been craving other people's commentary! (And hah! HELLO RUSH if you see this, great minds, etc.)

Hee, you might well! I don't think we are actually supposed to like any of the lawyers but I actually do sneakily think Vaguely Villainous Mr. Tulkinghorn is kind of awesome. All his deadpan and his secrets!

From:

elle_white

This reminds that I've been wanting to buy tickets to a stage play called Dickens' Women. Miriam Margolyes will preform 23 of Charles Dickens' characters. It starts next month. I want to see it, since I'm a fan of Dickens' eccentric and fun characters and Miriam Margolyes!

And I occasionally roll my eyes at Dickens' reasons you mentioned at the beginning, I still want to read Bleak House!

Edited Date: 2012-02-15 11:37 pm (UTC)

From:

skygiants

Oh man, that sounds AMAZING! You have to post about it if you go so I can be jealous and also know what characters she did!

From:

elle_white

I will! None of my local friends are interested in seeing it, sadly.

From:

pedanther

Your friends are fools. Fools! Dickens' Women is brilliant.

From:

gramarye1971

Once I finish tackling the major Trollope books, I'm planning to read some more Dickens. Perhaps I will put Bleak House at the top of the list. ^_^

From:

skygiants

And in exchange I should probably actually read more Trollope! I've read one, but it was ages ago and I don't remember anything about it except that I thought I should read more Trollope . . .

From:

gramarye1971

I suggest starting with The Way We Live Now, which is one of his stand-alone novels with a plot that's surprisingly topical more than a hundred years later. I'm two books into his Barsetshire Chronicles and have found them reasonably interesting, and my goal is to get through them by the end of the year before I tackle the Palliser novels. I think the Oxford University Press editions come with a handy notes list in the back, which is useful for cross-referencing all of the political and cultural notes that Trollope inserts into his stories.

From:

mc776

sucks otherwise reasonable people into a black hole of DOOM and DESPAIR by its supernatural powers of . . . having lots of paperwork to go through

being named as a suitor in a... court case is the Dickensian equivalent of having ever held the One Ring. Once you're involved, you can't ever get away! IT'S YOUR OWN. YOUR PRECIOUSSSSS.

...from my limited experience that's not too far from the truth with more than a few litigants.

(Hi, found you on my network)

From:

skygiants

Hee! Well, never having been a litigant, I will admit that maybe it's more true than I generally imagine . . .

(Hello! :D)

From:

ex_lionpyh573

omfg, I love Bleak House WITHOUT SHAME. The last full-time job I had was as a technical illustrator and while I worked I listened to a recording of the entire thing which was 44 hours I think. I learned several years ago that Dickens makes for the best audiobooks, which is why I forgive him everything except Tattycoram. I especially recommend Frank Muller's A Tale of Two Cities (he really goes the extra mile in making Sydney Carton sound, like, too anguishedly beautiful and dissipated for this world) and Mil Nicholson's reading of Our Mutual Friend (this is free!).

oh gosh oh gosh the super-serious 'there is too such a thing as spontaneous human combustion' foreword. I laughed so hard that I had to replay it. I TOOK PAINS TO INVESTIGATE THE SUBJECT! OK, dude.

There are actually cases like Jarndyce and Jarndyce in the real world, which I know because, uh, my mother was an heiress in one. She did not die of heartbroken consumption when it used itself up though so it only made my childhood like 8% more bizarre and picturesque, as opposed to the 100% Flite Standard.

I actually love the number of characters, and how they are all so near each other but DON'T KNOW, it is maybe my favorite literary device in the world. Have you read Sarah Waters' Night Watch? It does this also, more tightly and mysteriously.

I also love Bleak House because Dickens does a completely uncharacteristic and excellent thing in subverting the 'your husband should be like your father'/'you should be like a little wife to your actual father' thing that he is so fond of in Little Dorrit, where the father in question quietly comes to his senses and releases the young girl to marry a young man.

Also, I would read ten books of the adventures of Mrs. Bagnold and Mrs. Bucket, crime-fighting partners and best friends. Washing greens, wearing disguises, whacking people with the indomitable umbrella!

From:

ex_lionpyh573

oh man I should have reread that before posting (I was OVERCOME, what can I say). My sentence structure appears to recommend Little Dorrit, which its author really does not, largely because it is devoted to the Angel-in-the-House trope in question and has a scene about the beauty of self-erasure through Duty that led me to roll my eyes and pitch the book across the room.

From:

ex_lionpyh573

also Mrs. Bagnet. MY KINGDOM FOR AN EDIT BUTTON

From:

skygiants

THERE SHOULD BE NO SHAME. IT'S AWESOME. But oh my gosh, I can't imagine listening to an audiobook of it, it's hard enough keeping all the characters straight when I can flip back and see who's who! Trying to keep Mr. Bagnet and Mr. Boythorn and Mr. Bucket straight would KILL ME in audiobook form.

I LOVE DICKENS' DETERMINATION TO DEFEND SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. It is like the most endearing thing ever. He belieeeeeeeeves!

- oh, wow! Uh, I'm glad to hear that your mom did not revert to keeping Hope, Youth, Joy, Spinach and Gammon caged up in your bedroom out of lawsuit-frustrations . . . 8% more bizarre and picturesque is probably about the right amount, when it comes to surreal law cases.

I have not read Night Watch, but I need to! The only Sarah Waters I've actually read is Fingersmith, and I loved it so much I've been scared to read any others in case they disappoint me.

AND YES I LOVE THAT TOO. I love how it sort of teeters on the precipice for a while, and you (and Ada and everybody else) are watching in horrified fascination, and then THE LAST-MINUTE SAVE.

I ALSO WOULD READ TEN BOOKS OF THESE ADVENTURES and I am personally disappointed in Dickens for not writing them. :( It so could happen though! Mr. Bucket has already made pains to make friends with the Bagnets, from there it's just ONE SMALL STEP.

From:

pseudo_tsuga

I decided not to read more Dickens after David Copperfield since I didn't see what else I could read from him that would be much different. CLEARLY I WAS MISINFORMED.