Marriages in Bleak House

As Bleak House is a large book (my copy is more than 1000 pages) with lots of characters, let’s see if I can categorise the couples as happy or unhappy. 

Unhappy

1/ Mr and Mrs Jellyby: 

“I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he was Mr. Jellyby…” (Ch.4) 

Mrs Jellyby is, in Dickens’s words, a “telescopic philanthropist”, who spends all her time and energy on the Africa cause, and neglects everything at home. The satire mostly focuses on her, their daughter Caddy mostly blames her, and Esther seems to see the badly managed, out-of-control household as her fault. Mr Jellyby, as Mr Kenge, can only be described as the husband of Mrs Jellyby.

However, it’s also his fault. I mean, what does he do when Esther comes over and tries to tidy up the house for the wedding? 

“Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were opened—bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, umbrellas—that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known how.” (Ch.30) 

Later on, when Caddy is unwell after childbirth and Esther comes to help, he is the same. 

“If he found me bustling about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby…” (Ch.50)

I write about them at length because I’ve come across the foolish comment that the Jellyby family is proof, or indication, of Dickens’s sexism. 

2/ Mr and Mrs Skimpole: 

We see Mr Harold Skimpole quite early on, but don’t see his wife till Mr Jarndyce and Esther visit his house. Mr Skimpole introduces his daughters, as his Beauty daughter (Arethusa), his Sentiment daughter (Laura), and his Comedy daughter (Kitty), mentions that they can sing or play music, and adds that none of them have any idea of time and money.

“Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took every opportunity of throwing in another.” (Ch.43) 

Mr Skimpole mentions trouble with a man over an armchair, and happily leaves the house to go with Mr Jarndyce. 

“It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course.” (ibid.)

Mr Jarndyce believes his friend Mr Skimpole to be nothing but a simple child, but Esther isn’t convinced that it’s entirely artless. She may describe him as charming and delightful, but she does condemn him—sometimes she says he never seems to think about his family, or that he cheerfully washes off his trouble and makes it someone else’s.

For example, look at the moment Esther is looking at the Beauty daughter, who is married and has children: 

“She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in his idlest hours.” (ibid.) 

Above all, note the moment when Esther brings the sick Jo home and Mr Skimpole wants to turn him out before he gets worse:

“The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.” (Ch.31) 

That is the face of evil. She condemns.

Near the end of the novel, when Esther is with Mr Bucket, she learns about what Mr Skimpole did about Jo. 

“I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence.” (Ch.57) 

And the detective tells her “Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it if they can.” (ibid.)

Whoever thinks the portrayal of Mrs Jellyby is indication of Dickens’s sexism (because she’s a woman who doesn’t do her duties at home) doesn’t seem to notice that in the same novel, Dickens gives us the irresponsible, unreliable, selfish Mr Skimpole. 

3/ Mr Turveydrop and the late Mrs Turveydrop: 

As his wife is dead, we don’t see Mr Turveydrop as a husband, only as a father, but it’s not hard to guess. He too neglects his son, and cares about nothing but his own deportment and his own comfort. Whilst his son is overworked, he stands around doing nothing and being a model of Deportment. 

However, we do have this line: 

“He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his position.” (Ch.14) 

4/ Mr and Mrs Snagsby: 

If the three marriages above seem to suggest that all unhappy families are alike, the marriage between Mr and Mrs Snagsby is different. At the beginning, they seem to have some harmony: 

“Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr. Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, is rarely heard.” (Ch.10)

Dickens hints of her jealousy from the start: 

“Rumour, always flying bat-like about Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it.” (ibid.)

The marriage becomes increasingly difficult and torturous, as Mr Snagsby gets mixed up in a mystery he doesn’t understand, and she becomes more jealous, convinced that Jo is Mr Snagsby’s child with someone else, but he cannot explan everything to her. Her jealousy becomes so bad that near the end of the book, Mr Bucket tells her to watch Othello. 

5 and 6/ The brickmakers and their wives Jenny and Liz:  

I group them together because Dickens also does in the novel. The brickmakers are controlling and abusive, and mistreat their wives. These men are also the counterexamples if anyone accuses Dickens of sentimentalising the working class. 

7/ Richard Carstone and Ada Clare: 

Richard and Ada love each other, but Dickens knows that love alone isn’t enough. Ada’s love for Richard is foolish, and the marriage is ill-advised. 

“He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.” (Ch.60) 

All of their money is slowly swallowed up by the lawsuit. Ada has neither the firmness to tell Richard to stop, nor the wisdom to stay out of the trouble herself. 

Unhappy? Happy?

1/ Grandfather Smallweed and his wife: 

I’m not sure how to categorise them—probably something in between. Even though she has turned into a child in her old age and he often throws cushions and insults at her, they don’t seem particularly unhappy. 

Happy: 

1/ Mr and Mrs Bagnet:

Like Mrs Jellyby and Mrs Snagsby, Mrs Bagnet also holds power in the marriage, but the Bagnets are happy. I would say that Mr and Mrs Bagnet are the happiest couple in Bleak House. 

Mrs Bagnet is independent, sensible, no-nonsense and her husband always tells her to talk to people or make decisions, saying “tell them what I think” or “tell them my opinions”. She has the head. To others, Mr Bagnet says “I never own to it before the old girl. Disciplined must be maintained.”, but we all know he adores her and they’re happy together. 

How do some people read Bleak House and see the Bagnets and still think Dickens is sexist? Some people pick up a book with received ideas, and just don’t think. 

Spoiler alert: For the rest of the blog post, I will discuss some plot details that those of you who have not read Bleak House may not want to know. 

2/ Mr and Mrs Bucket: 

Dickens doesn’t write much about them, but they seem to be a happy couple. 

“It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs. Bucket—a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but which has paused at the level of a clever amateur—he holds himself aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for companionship and conversation.” (Ch.53)

The lodger, as we find out later, is Hortense. The detective later tells the story of how he caught Hortense: 

“Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration of his lady's genius.” (Ch.54)

3/ Mr and Mrs Badger: 

This is another B. Mr Badger is the doctor who takes Richard on as an apprentice (before he switches to something else). Mr and Mrs Badger are a happy couple, though strange, because he can’t stop talking about how great her ex-husbands were. 

4/ Mr and Mrs Chadband:  

I’m not sure, as Dickens doesn’t write much about them, but they seem happy enough. Mr Chadband is the minister who is compared to a vessel. 

5/ Prince Turveydrop and Caddy Jellyby:

Both are overworked, and both prioritise the comfort of Mr Turveydrop over their own, but they love and support each other. It helps that both of them have neglectful parents and can understand each other. 

6/ Sir Leicester Dedlock and Lady Dedlock: 

I saved till last the most important and most interesting marriage in Bleak House. 

“His gallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.

Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more.” (Ch.2)

Dickens doesn’t quite say if Lady Dedlock loves her husband, but they seem happy enough, at least.

Look at her, when she finds out about Esther: 

“As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?

No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.

"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!"” (Ch.29)

For her whole life, Lady Dedlock doesn’t know her daughter survived, but when she does know, she has to pretend her daughter didn’t exist, and carries on as before.

The meeting between Lady Dedlock and Esther, no longer as strangers but as mother and daughter, is one of the most moving scenes in literature. 

“Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off again.

"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!"

These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no, no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only natural moments of her life.

[…] If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help. Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.” (Ch.36) 

Lady Dedlock is a character of tragic stature. Before these scenes, she appears to us as she appears to almost everyone else—beautiful, haughty, disdainful—but it’s all a mask.

But Dickens does something even more magical in his depiction of Sir Leicester. For a large part of the novel, Sir Leicester is a caricature, a proud and snobbish baronet, who “supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions”.

However, Dickens makes us all see Sir Leicester differently when he learns the truth about Lady Dedlock.

“Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at something.

Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.

It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired, honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her, almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her cast down from the high place she has graced so well.

And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and compassion rather than reproach.” (Ch.53)

He remains loving, and devoted to her. And when he has a stroke, and discovers that Lady Dedlock has left the house, he’s no longer a caricature—he gains a nobility one didn’t expect to see in him. These chapters have some of the most moving scenes I’ve encountered in literature.  

Many people pick Middlemarch as the greatest novel of 19th century British literature. My pick would be Bleak House.