The aim of this book is to take a fresh and critical look at two of Dickens’s most studied novels, developing our insights from the close analysis of extracts from the text. Bleak House and Hard Times were written between 1852 and 1854, and they share some qualities. Both novels open with a powerful critique, announcing that the text will campaign against Chancery (Bleak House) and Utilitarianism (Hard Times) respectively.
When we study these texts, it is important to remember the circumstances in which they were produced, which were different from publishing practice today. Dickens wrote his novels in episodes, for serial publication in magazines. Bleak House came out in 20 monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853, and Hard Times in 20 weekly parts, between 1 April and 12 August 1854. This form of publication influenced the organisation of the story. Dickens frequently provided suspense at the end of an issue to encourage his readers to buy the next instalment, or wrote a descriptive ‘set piece’ at the start of an episode.
Hard Times is the shortest novel Dickens wrote, and Bleak House the longest. Hard Times is written in a less expansive style, with less elaboration of setting, plot and characters. We start with passages from Hard Times, then move on to the more complex, elaborate Bleak House because this enables us to meet features of the Dickensian narrative in a comparatively plain context before coming across them again in the longer and more complex text.
One last point before we turn to the analysis of our first extracts. We are about to plunge into the analysis of two Dickens texts. One of them (Hard Times) is told by the author, while the other (Bleak House) has two narrators: Esther Summerson, and the third-person omniscient narrator who accounts for about half of the novel. In both of these texts we must be prepared for the unremitting theatricality of Dickens’s own voice and the many other distinct and lively voices that constantly keep us company as we read. This aspect of the writing makes for vivid dialogue. However, Dickens’s voice has an additional quality. As one critic puts it, the ‘first impression, and a continuing one, in Dickens’s prose is of a voice manipulating language with pleasure and pride in its own skill’.1 We might say that Dickens manipulates us as well as the language. When reading Dickens, we are in the constant companionship of the author, have the sense that he is with us, moment by moment, and most of all, that he expects us to share his emotions and agree with his opinions. Dickens may cajole us, and he may browbeat us, but we will have to become used to his company and its pressures, for he is always there, telling us how we should think and feel.
1 Robert, Garis, The Dickens Theatre, Oxford: (Clarendon Press, 1965).