Mirror of Bleak House

Abstract

This chapter highlights the satirical realism of Bleak House (1852–3) and traces the novel’s profound engagement with the Parliamentary Papers. After just seven numbers of Bleak House had appeared, the retired Lord Chief Justice Denman attacked Dickens for a belated show of reform, comparing his work unfavorably to the bestselling Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This chapter argues that Dickens attacked the Court of Chancery too late precisely to draw attention to the long period of time it had taken Parliament to reform Chancery. It reads Dickens’s critique of Chancery (and indirectly of the House of Lords) in light of the burning and rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. It buttresses this case by reading Dickens’s “A Haunted House,” a sketch of the 1852 election. It argues that Bleak House holds out an unflattering mirror of Parliament, exposing its possibly constitutional failure, and finds the novel infused with traces of slavery and the slave trade as marks of British national shame.