Bleak House by Charles Dickens (best ebook reader for laptop .txt) 📕
Description
Bleak House, completed by Dickens in 1853, tells several interlocking story-lines and features a host of colorful characters. Though very difficult to summarise, the novel centers around the decades-long legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, involving the fair distribution of assets of a valuable estate. The case is mired in the legal quagmire of the Court of Chancery, whose byzantine and sluggish workings Dickens spares no effort to expose and condemn. Dickens also exposes the miserable condition of the poor, living in squalid, pestilential circumstances.
The novel’s heroine is Esther Summerson, whose parentage is unclear and who has been brought up by a cold and strict godmother, who tells her only: “Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.” On the death of her godmother, she is given an education through the unexpected intervention of a Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, whom she has never met. When she comes of age, she is appointed as a companion to Ada, one of two young people who are “wards of Chancery,” whose fates depend on the outcome of the legal struggle and who are taken into guardianship by Mr. Jarndyce. The other ward Richard, despite Mr. Jarndyce’s frequent warnings, eventually goes astray by pinning all his hopes on a successful outcome of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
We are also introduced to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, and to their cunning and suspicious lawyer, Mr. Tulkinghorn. He uncovers evidence that Lady Dedlock is not all she seems and determines to remorselessly pursue every lead to expose her secrets.
The novel has a curious construction in that the first-person narrative of Esther, written in the past tense, is interleaved with many chapters written from the omniscient viewpoint and in the present tense.
Several prominent critics such as G. K. Chesterton consider Bleak House to be Dickens’ finest novel, and it is often ranked among the best English-language novels of all time.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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“My darling Esther!” murmured Ada. “I have a great secret to tell you!”
A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
“What is it, Ada?”
“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”
“Shall I try to guess?” said I.
“Oh, no! Don’t! Pray don’t!” cried Ada, very much startled by the idea of my doing so.
“Now, I wonder who it can be about?” said I, pretending to consider.
“It’s about—” said Ada in a whisper. “It’s about—my cousin Richard!”
“Well, my own!” said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I could see. “And what about him?”
“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”
It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet.
“He says—I know it’s very foolish, we are both so young—but he says,” with a burst of tears, “that he loves me dearly, Esther.”
“Does he indeed?” said I. “I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!”
To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!
“Why, my darling,” said I, “what a goose you must take me for! Your cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don’t know how long!”
“And yet you never said a word about it!” cried Ada, kissing me.
“No, my love,” said I. “I waited to be told.”
“But now I have told you, you don’t think it wrong of me, do you?” returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no very freely.
“And now,” said I, “I know the worst of it.”
“Oh, that’s not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!” cried Ada, holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.
“No?” said I. “Not even that?”
“No, not even that!” said Ada, shaking her head.
“Why, you never mean to say—” I was beginning in joke.
But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, “Yes, I do! You know, you know I do!” And then sobbed out, “With all my heart I do! With all my whole heart, Esther!”
I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.
“Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?” she asked.
“Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet,” said I, “I should think my cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know.”
“We want to speak to him before Richard goes,” said Ada timidly, “and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind Richard’s coming in, Dame Durden?”
“Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?” said I.
“I am not quite certain,” returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, “but I think he’s waiting at the door.”
There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a little while—I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself—and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and perseverance, each always for the other’s sake. Well! Richard said that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John tomorrow.
So, when tomorrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him that I had it in trust to tell him something.
“Well, little woman,” said he, shutting up his book, “if you have accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.”
“I hope not, guardian,” said I. “I can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.”
“Aye? And what is it, Esther?”
“Guardian,” said I, “you remember the happy night when first we came down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?”
I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then. Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
“Because—” said I with a little hesitation.
“Yes, my dear!” said he. “Don’t hurry.”
“Because,” said I, “Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have told each other so.”
“Already!” cried my guardian, quite astonished.
“Yes!” said I. “And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather expected it.”
“The deuce you did!” said he.
He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way
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