Bleak House

Dickens' huge novel, 'Bleak House' was the author's condemnation of Chancery, that source of legal loopholes and confusion that so affected the lives of almost everyone who had the misfortune to come in contact with its workings. If procrastination is the thief of time, then prevarication is the thief of hope; it certainly was in poor Richard Cartsones' case, despite his eternal but misguided optimism to the contrary.

Dickens was a master at showing the follies of the human condition. He showed us Wilkins Micawber in Copperfield, and he gave us a panoply of fools in Bleak House.

It has been said, for instance, that the character of Lawrence Boythorn was a parody of Dickens' contemporary, Walter Savage Landor. Still, anyone with the wisdom and skill to write 'Imaginary Conversations' cannot have been entirely foolish.

We know from Oliver Twist that, 'the law is a ass, a idiot', and the same conclusions are unavoidable in Bleak House.

Robert L. Fielding