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4 - Moments of decision in Bleak House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
J. Hillis Miller
Edited by
John O. Jordan
John O. Jordan
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Summary

“The Lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a Will, and the trusts under a Will - or it was, once. It’s about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about Costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.”

(BH 8)

I renewed my resolutions, and prayed to be strengthened in them …

(BH 36)

This essay attempts to understand the purport of these two citations in their contexts. In an essay published in 1971 as the introduction to the Penguin edition of Bleak House and reprinted a number of times since then, I argued that Bleak House is a document about the interpretation of documents. Now I have been asked to turn back to this novel to see what I make of it today. This essay is in response to that demand. I rejoice in the chance to do that. Bleak House is a wonderful novel, almost inexhaustibly rich, perhaps even unfathomably so.

Nor have other scholars and critics failed to respond to the demand this splendid novel makes for the generation of more words about its words. Since my essay of 1971 was published, a large number of further essays and books have been written on Bleak House. These essays have added greatly to my understanding of Bleak House and to our collective understanding.

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Information
The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens , pp. 49 - 63
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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