Bleak House Literary Analysis

In Nineteenth century England society’s ladder was full of more steps than it is now. Not only were there high class, middle class, low class, poor and rich but there were grades in each category. People’s identity mattered because it helped rank them on this ladder and so they were becoming very aware of their social standing because the people who previously held high standing due to family lineage were becoming wealthy business owners, having a hand in controlling the economy as well as the country’s politics. Most Victorians were expected to know their place and stay there but some strived for better. This links to Dickens’ novel Bleak House. In Bleak House there is an inheritance case which is referred to as ‘Jarndyce and Jarndyce’. During the course of the novel, the case is closed due to the inheritance all being spent on the generations long case. However the entire situation links back to the character's’ identity. Those searching for their legal identity and arguing over the inheritance have been born into the dispute and each of them want to win the estate in the hope of making themselves rich. In …show more content…
With so many characters digging into each others private lives, trying to get information, one must wonder why this is. Critic Peter Thoms suggests that perhaps the characters are searching for sensitive information on each other because ‘Dickens's characters fear self-exposure-and their own guilt-and turn instead to probing the inner lives of others’ (Thoms, 1995, pg 149). The fact that so many of the characters fear detection in the novel shows how guilty society is as a whole, amplified by the fact that Tulkinghorn is not murdered until over halfway through the novel, and yet the characters are suspicious of each other from the start. Suspicion is ‘so ingrained that an actual crime is not necessary to call it forth’ (Thoms, 1995, pg