Victorian literature
Victorian literature is classified as English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). It's considered by some the Golden Age of English literature, especially for British novels. During this ear, the novel specifically became the leading literary genre in English. The number of new novels published each year increased from 100 at the start of the period to 1000 by the end.
Famous novelists from this period include Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, the three Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling. And you could toss in a couple of others, like Wilkie Collins
Writing during this period, including essays and poetry, reflects the major transformations occurring in British life--from scientific, economic, and technological advances to changes in class and social structures, as well as religion.
Victorian literature
While the Romantic period was a time of abstract expression and inward focus, essayists, poets, and novelists during the Victorian era began to direct their attention toward the social issues.
Writers such as Thomas Carlyle (essayist, author) called attention to the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution, what he called the "Mechanical Age." Attention to this subject matter inspired other authors, like poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and novelists Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Barrett's works on child labor cemented her success in a male-dominated world where women writers often had to use masculine pseudonyms.
Dickens employed humor and an approachable tone while addressing social problems such as wealth disparity.
Hardy used his novels to question religion and social structures: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, Far From the Madding Crowd.
Victorian literature
Poetry and theatre were also present during the Victorian era. Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson were Victorian England's most famous poets. It was not until the later decades, however, that significant works were produced for the theater: Notable playwrights of the time include Gilbert and Sullivan, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde.
Women played an important role in the development of the novel during the Victorian period as both writers and readers. The monthly serialization of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity, coupled with the spread of literacy. Many used novels to comment on the ills of rapid industrialization, and the social, political, and economic issues associated with it. Novels were a way to indirectly comment on the abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity.
Significant early examples of this genre include Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1849).
Victorian novel
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) emerged in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of English literature. Dickens fiercely satirized various aspects of society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, and the failures of the legal system in Bleak House.[138]
An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847).
The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë's most famous work, was the first of the sisters' novels to achieve success. Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights was, according to Juliet Gardiner, "vivid sexual passion and power" whose "language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers." As a result, d the Victorian public and many early reviewers thought it had been written by a man. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë is now considered one of the first feminist novels.
Victorian novel
Elizabeth Gaskell was another successful writer; her North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England, such as his Chronicles of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, as well as other topical matters.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially Middlemarch (1871–72), are important examples of literary realism, admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.
George Meredith is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), and The Egoist (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century but then seriously declined.
Victorian novel
An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), including The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and Far From the Madding Crowd. Hardy is a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, and like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society.
Another significant late-19th-century novelist is George Gissing who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street.
Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868) is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language.
Victorian novel
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was an important Scottish writer at the end of the nineteenth century, author of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and the historical novel Kidnapped (1886).
H.G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians. Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905).
Biography
I've compiled information and commentary from my sources for this biography of Dickens. They include the following:
Charles Dickens online: https://www.dickens-online.info/
Literature Network: https://www.online-literature.com/dickens/
Biography
As a prolific 19th Century author of short stories, plays, novellas, novels, fiction and non fiction, Dickens became known during his lifetime, worldwide, for his remarkable characters, his mastery of prose in the telling of their lives, and his depictions of the social classes, mores and values of his times.
Some considered him the spokesman for the poor, because his novels made readers aware of the plight of the downtrodden and the have-nots.
Biography
Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens) was born in Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (1789–1863). ) John was a congenial man, hospitable and generous to a fault which caused him financial difficulties throughout his life. He inspired the character Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield.
The Dickens family moved to London in 1814 and two years later to Chatham, Kent, where Charles spent his early childhood. When Dickens’ father was transferred to Chatham, the family settled into the genteel surroundings of a larger home with two live-in servants. Dickens was a voracious reader of such authors as Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe, and Oliver Goldsmith. When he was not attending the school of William Giles where he was an apt pupil, he and his siblings played games of make-believe, gave recitations of poetry, sang songs, and created theatrical productions that would spark in Dickens a lifelong love of the theatre.
Biography
Because of financial difficulties, the family moved back to London in 1822, where they settled in Camden Town, a poor neighborhood of London. And in 1824, John Dickens was imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison. Charles was 12.
Because of this, Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work in a "blacking" factory (shoe polish) to help support the family. He lived in a boarding house in Camden Town, walked to work every day, and visited his father on Sundays.
It was one of the pivotal points in Dickens’s education—the school of hard knocks--that would stay with him forever. The idyllic days of his childhood were over and he was rudely introduced to the world of the working poor, where child labor was rampant and few if any adults spared a kind word for many abandoned or orphaned children.
Biography
Many of his future characters like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Philip Pirrip would be based on his own experiences. The appalling working conditions, long hours and poor pay typical of the time were harsh, but the worst part of the experience was that when his father was released his mother insisted he continue to work there.
While he felt betrayed by and resented her for many years to come, his father arranged for him to attend the Wellington House Academy in London as a day pupil from 1824-1827, perhaps saving him from a life of factory work and setting him on the road to becoming a writer. In 1827 the Dickens family were evicted from their home in Somers Town for unpaid rent and Charles had to leave school.
He obtained a job as a clerk in the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore where he soon learned shorthand and became a court reporter for the Doctors Commons. He spent much of his spare time reading in the British Museum’s library and studying acting.
In 1830 he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, though her father sent her to finishing school in Paris a few years later.
Biography
In 1833, his first story of many, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” was published in the Monthly Magazine. He also had some sketches published in the Morning Chronicle which in 1834 he began reporting for and adopted the pseudonym "Boz." At this time Dickens moved out on his own to live as a bachelor at Furnival’s Inn, Holborn. His father was arrested again for debts and Charles bailed him out, and for many years later both his parents and some of his siblings turned to him for financial assistance.
Dickens's first book, a collection of stories titled Sketches by Boz, was published in 1836.
In the same year he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle. Together they had 10 children before they separated in 1858.
Biography--Catherine
Also in the same year, 1836, Dickens became editor for Bentley’s Miscellany of which Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) was first serialized.
Thus began a prolific and commercially successful period of Dickens’s life as a writer. After the success of Pickwick, Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate.
Most of his novels were first serialized in monthly magazines as was a common practice of the time. Oliver Twist between 1837 and 1839 was followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and Barnaby Rudge (1841).
Dickens’s series of five Christmas Books were soon to follow; A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848). Dickens had found a readership who eagerly anticipated his next installments.
Biography
After the death of Catherine’s sister Mary in 1837 the couple holidayed in various parts of England. Dickens resigned from Bentley’s in 1839 and they moved to Regent’s Park.
Further travels to the United States and Canada in 1842 led to his controversial American Notes (1842), also the basis of some episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit.
Martin Chuzzlewit was first serialized in 1843. The next year the Dickens traveled through Italy and settled in Genoa for a year during which his Pictures From Italy (1846) was written.
Dombey and Son (1846) was his next publication, followed by David Copperfield (1849).
In 1850 he started his own weekly journal Household Words which would be in circulation for the next nine years.
Biography
From 1851 to 1860 the Dickens family lived at Tavistock House where Charles became heavily involved in amateur theatre.
He wrote, directed, and acted in many productions at home with his children and friends, often donating the money raised from ticket sales to those in need.
He collaborated with Wilkie Collins on the drama No Thoroughfare (1867).
Novels to follow were Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1855-1857). All these novels were published as serials before being published as books.
Biography
In 1856 Dickens purchased Gad’s Hill Place, an estate he had admired since childhood, and his last place of residence near Rochester in Kent County.
He continued in the theatre as well, acting in Wilkie Collins’s The Frozen Deep in 1857 with actress Ellen Ternan playing opposite him. The two fell in love and Dickens would leave Catherine a year later.
NOTE: she was 18 and Dickens 45 at the time. The exact nature of their relationship is unknown, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life.
Biography
By now Dickens was widely read in Europe and in 1858 he set off on a tour of public readings, which became instantly popular. In all, Dickens performed more than 400 times.
A year later he founded his second weekly journal All the Year Round, the same year A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was first serialized.
Great Expectations (1860-1861) was followed by Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865).
In 1865, traveling back from Paris with Ellen and her mother, they were involved in the disastrous Staplehurst train crash, of which Dickens sustained minor injuries, but never fully recovered from the traumatic shock of it.
Two years later he traveled to America for a reading tour.
Biography
His "farewell readings" took place in London’s St. James Hall. In 1869, during his readings, he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. He retreated to Gad's Hill and began to work on Edwin Drood, which he never completed.
Charles Dickens died at home on June 9, 1870. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads:
"He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world."
Although Dickens's main profession was as a novelist, he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life, editing The Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers gave him the opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at the beginning of his career.
The American controversies (Duke Univ. Library)
The United States was home to Dickens’s largest and most enthusiastic audience outside of Great Britain. However, his relationship with America was strained by his first tour of the country in 1842. He was appalled by the sight of slavery in operation and found fault with some common American habits of the time, such as tobacco chewing (and spitting.)
Dickens frequently announced his support for an international copyright law during his American readings, complaining about the “robbers” in American publishing who were pirating his works. His vocal advocacy led to loud protests by the American press.
Dickens’s disillusionment with the American democratic project was apparent in American Notes for General Circulation (1842) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44). Illustrations from the latter are shown here. Responding to slow sales of the first few parts of Chuzzlewit, Dickens sent his title character to America, where he is conned into settling in a swampy frontier town ironically named Eden.
Videos
Serialized Novels
Dickens's serialized novels (Duke Univ. Library)
Most of Dickens’s novels were first published a few chapters at a time in inexpensive monthly installments, a format known as the “book in parts.”
Much Victorian fiction was published serially in periodicals, but Dickens was unusual in that he did not complete his works before publishing began, allowing him to alter his plans based on current events and audience reaction to earlier parts.
The format, and Dickens’s popularity, encouraged the inclusion of advertisements in the parts, an innovation in the development of mass-market advertising. This practice began with Dickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) and became a standard feature of all of his books in parts thereafter.
In some parts the pages of advertisements outnumber the pages of text. Shown here are advertisements from the original parts of David Copperfield (1849-50) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-65).
Ads in serialized novels (Duke Univ. Library)
Bleak House serials (Queens College)
Bleak House was Charles Dickens’s ninth novel, and, according to Dickens scholar Paul Schlicke, “technically his most ambitious novel and widely held to be his masterpiece.” The novel had four important editions while Dickens was alive—as monthly serials from 1852 to 1853 (in twenty parts that came out in nineteen pamphlets because the nineteenth and twentieth parts were combined), the Cheap Edition of 1858, the Library Edition of 1868, and the Charles Dickens Edition of 1869.
The first edition of the novel, the monthly serialization in nineteen pamphlets, is one of the most exciting items in the Special Collections and Archives collection of rare books.
Bleak House had mixed reviews when it first came out. While the structure of the novel was praised, its forceful indictment of oppressive social institutions and its straightforward didacticism were criticized by some. But each serial part sold well and allowed Dickens to accumulate enough wealth for a contemporary to call him a “literary Croesus.”
Bleak House serials (Queens College)
While many of us are probably aware that Dickens’s novels were serialized when they first came out, it is still extraordinary to see these original pamphlets—their pale blue covers, thin sheets, and Victorian advertisements are highly evocative of the era.
Bleak House serials (Queens College)
The advertisements, in particular—the specific items, and their descriptions and illustrations—are remarkable. The advertisements were for Dickens’s books as well as other authors’ and from other publications, but also for a variety of merchandise that included, among others, the following:
waterproof garments (“No umbrella required”!);
a variety of hair products, including an actual head of hair;
skin ointment (“These medicines excel all others in the cure of scrofula or king’s evil, glandular and other unnatural swellings, scurvy, leprosy, and all diseases of the skin.”);
frocks, coats, and pelisses; cloaks, hoods, hats, and bonnets;
Parr’s Life Pills (“They mildly and speedily remove all Skin Eruptions, Sallowness of Complexion, Nervous Irritability, Sick Head-Ache, Depression of Spirits, Irregularity, or general derangement of the system.”);
chrystal spectacles and cough jujube lozenges;
Bleak House serials (Queens College)
The advertisements, in particular—the specific items, and their descriptions and illustrations—are remarkable. The advertisements were for Dickens’s books as well as other authors’ and from other publications, but also for a variety of merchandise that included, among others, the following:
life insurance policies and loans;
Rimmel’s toilet vinegar;
a chest expander;
pulmonic wafers that will give “perfect freedom from coughs in ten minutes”;
shawls and needles and “papier mache elegancies”;
mourning outfits;
a self-acting pipe tube which is a “novelty in smoking”;
wools and parasols.
Bleak House serials (Queens College)
An article published in 1970 argues that reading Bleak House as a novel, “all at once from cover to cover,” is a misreading, that serialization was essential to Dickens’s art, that “the slow, deliberate pace of publication, and the suspense which the monthly interruption of the narrative naturally aroused,” is vital to understanding its artistry and implications.
A slow and deliberate pace. The suspense of monthly interruptions. Living as we do in a world in which we can binge-watch one whole season of a show on a single afternoon, it is, for most of us, an effort to read Bleak House as a novel “all at once from cover to cover” and it is difficult to imagine reading it as a serial in the course of a year and a half.
These first edition pamphlets are powerful aids for us to envision a different way of reading and entertainment, a different way of engaging with our imagination, perhaps even a different way of relating to time.
Serial novels
A serial novel is a work of fiction published in sequential pieces called installments. These installments can be published at nearly any interval for nearly any period of time, though weekly and monthly installments are most typical. Serialized novels have traditionally been published by literary magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.
Some serial novels—like The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins—were written specifically for that format, while others—like parts of Middlemarch by George Eliot—were originally intended to be a longer work but were later broken up for serialization. (Eliot actually did not want to serialize Middlemarch, but her work was simply too long for a standard three-volume publication.)
In the 1800s and early to mid-1900s, serialization was an immensely popular form of publishing. It provided for authors a much wider readership since even poorer readers could afford short volumes. For publishers it provided, of course, greater profits.
After first publishing in serial format, many authors would revise the work before publishing it to be sold as a complete novel.
Serial novels
Even though serial publishing had existed long before, Charles Dickens is often credited with beginning the serial publishing craze with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (more frequently called The Pickwick Papers), published over 19 issues from March 1836 to October 1837.
Many of these authors (especially the early ones) wrote most, if not all, of their works in serial format:
Count of Monte Christo—Alexander Dumas
Uncle Tom's Cabin—Harriet Beecher Stow
Madame Bovary—Gustave Flaubert
Vanity Fair—William Makepeace Thackery
Woman in White—Wilkie Collins
Serial novels
Many of these authors (especially the early ones) wrote most, if not all, of their works in serial format:
Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoevsky
Middlemarch—George Eliot
Portrait of a Lady—Henry James
Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy
Treasure Island—Robert Louis Stevenson
Tess of the D'Urbervilles—Thomas Hardy
Hound of the Baskervilles—Arthur Conan Doyle
Ulysses—James Joyce
Serial novels
Despite the benefits of serialized publishing, the format came with a handful of disadvantages as well. Many criticisms of serial authors like Charles Dickens may actually be criticisms of the form itself, including:
Excessively long texts
Overly grand dramatizations
Too much repetition
Too many exaggerated or flat characters
Plot lines that don’t make sense when viewed as a whole
Cast of characters—John Jarndyce
John Jarndyce: cheerful, benevolent, generous philanthropist, perhaps too trusting, who knows the world, and in particular the Court of Chancery that is hearing the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and has yet to determine a verdict.
In its wake, he becomes guardian of Ada Clare and her cousin Richard Carstone, both of whom are potential heirs in the case. When life's unpleasantries threaten to intrude on the world he has created at Bleak House, the wind blows from the east. He also befriends Esther Summerson, making her his housekeeper, and companion to Ada and Richard.
He inherited the case of Jarndyce and Janyce from his uncle Tom who went mad and shot himself because he couldn’t stand the suspense of the suit, which promised a large inheritance but instead bankrupted him in legal fees before its resolution.
Mr. Jarndyce learned from his uncle’s mistakes and understands that lawsuits like Jarndyce and Jarndyce encourage people to develop false hopes. He tries to dissuade his young cousin Richard from becoming involved in the case and instead tries to persuade him to pursue a profession.
Cast of characters—John Jarndyce
He sympathizes with the poor and supports charitable causes, although some are misguided—like Skimpole and Mrs. Jellyby.
He cannot bear to be thanked, however, and hurries away rather than meet with any gratitude for his many acts of kindness. He always considers the needs of those he helps and makes sure that, when he offers his help, it is practical and really benefits the person it is designed to help.
He falls in love with Esther Summerson but allows her to break off their engagement and actively arranges her marriage to Mr. Woodcourt, whom he knows she loves more and will be happier with.
Cast of characters—Esther Summerson
The novel’s protagonist and 1st person narrator, she thinks she's an orphan but is actually Lady Dedlock's daughter; she gave birth to Esther before marrying Sir Leicester Dedlock. Esther’s father is Captain Hawdon (Nemo), whom Lady Dedlock had a brief affair with. Lady Dedlock thinks Esther died at birth but was really raised in secret by her sister, Miss Barbary.
Esther is a naturally loving child who seeks acceptance and friendship. Miss Barbary is cruel to her, however, and Esther’s childhood is lonely until her aunt’s death. Miss Barbary blames Esther for her mother’s “sin”—an illegitimate child—and for the fact that Miss Barbary broke off an engagement (with Mr. Boythorn) to raise Esther.
This sense of shame and guilt for her own existence makes Esther insecure, and as an adult, she is always shocked and grateful when people care for her as much as she cares for them. Esther is the ward of Mr. Jarndyce and the companion of Ada and Richard. Throughout the novel, she is noble and selfless, putting the needs of others before her own. She is also modest and does not expect praise or reward for her acts of kindness.
Cast of characters—Esther Summerson
She is a homemaker, good with children, and some say represents the ideal feminine figure throughout the novel, in contrast to poor homemakers such as Mrs. Jellyby.
Although virtuous and understanding, she is not naïve, and sees through selfish characters like Mr. Skimpole, who pretend to be charitable but who are, in fact, only out for themselves.
Esther is rewarded when Mr. Woodcourt proposes to her. Her name, Summerson, is associated with youth, beauty, and warmth.
Cast of characters—Ada Clare
Ada Clare is a ward of the court in the lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and close friend of Esther Summerson. She is an orphan, taken in by Mr. Jarndyce, like her cousin Richard, as well as Esther. Ada is young and optimistic, beautiful, and quickly finds an attraction with Richard; they become engaged and later marry.
She is a loyal friend to Esther, and the two women become extremely close. As her relationship with Richard progresses, Ada helplessly watches him descend into a mad obsession with Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She tries to help, but cannot talk Richard out of his involvement with the court. She is loyal, however, and marries him despite his impoverished condition when court fees drain his meager income.
She has faith that Richard will find a profession, even when it becomes clear that he's not serious about that pursuit. Richard eventually dies in Ada’s arms and, several months later, she gives birth to his son. Although Ada grieves for her young husband, she does not allow his death to make her bitter and, instead, pours her love into their child.
Cast of characters—Richard Carstone
Richard, like Ada, is a ward of the court in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, as well as Ada's cousin and eventually husband. He is under the guardianship of John Jarndyce, who tries to set him up in a profession.
An orphan, Richard is also a relative of Tom Jarndyce, plaintiff in Jarndyce and Jarndyce who shot himself after the drawn out trial drove him mad. Throughout the novel, Richard, too, is driven mad by his role in the Chancery suit.
A friendly, lively, passionate young man, Richard is also a dreamer; he's not particularly ambitious and has no strong interest in a profession, trusting that he will inherit. He is easily swayed and goes along with whatever Mr. Jarndyce suggests. Although well liked by his employers, they all remark that he lacks discipline.
This trait, coupled with his carelessness with money, leads Richard to give up all three professions he takes on, and eventually drives him towards Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Richard is naïve and idealistic and believes that the case will make his fortune once it is solved.
Cast of characters—Richard Carstone
As Richard degenerates into madness, stubbornly ignoring the warnings of others, his hopes turn into bitter delusions. He begins to believe that Mr. Jarndyce is his enemy and against him in the lawsuit. He falls victim to a predatory lawyer, Mr. Vholes, who encourages his false hopes.
Richard is also associated with Miss Flite, an old woman driven mad by Chancery, who names one of her caged birds after him.
Cast of characters—Lady Dedlock
Lady Dedlock, wife of aristocratic nobleman Sir Leicester Dedlock, is extremely bored in her fashionable London townhouse. She is considered a cold, haughty woman, and rumor has it that she is not of noble birth and that Sir Leicester married her despite this.
Although the height of the fashionable world, she seems impervious to society, her social status, and even life. She also appears permanently bored. Sir Leicester Dedlock is much older but wealthy, and worships her, but she has kept a secret from him, and the world, for nearly twenty years.
Hortense is Lady Dedlock’s French maid--secretive, vindictive, and ruthless. When Lady Dedlock takes a new attendant, Hortense is enraged and jealous; she later disguises herself as Lady Dedlock in an attempt to frame her for the murder of Tulkinghorn.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is wealthy, quiet, and dull. He has all the unspoken arrogance of privilege. His devotion to Lady Dedlock is almost as much as his devotion to his position. After her death, Sir Leicester suffers a stroke and retires to his country home.
Cast of characters—Captain Hawdon (Nemo)
Captain Hawdon is Lady Dedlock’s ex-lover and the father of Esther Summerson, whom Lady Dedlock gave birth to illegitimately and in secret.
Captain Hawdon was once an officer in the army, attended by George, who now runs a shooting gallery near the court and who becomes involved in the Dedlock mystery when Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock’s lawyer, blackmails him into providing a sample of Captain Hawdon’s handwriting in an effort to discover her secret.
It is not clear what happened to Captain Hawdon since his days in the army, but George implies that he went into debt and ruined himself and was often suicidal over the failure he considered himself to have become. Although George believes that Captain Hawdon is dead, he has, in fact, changed his name to Nemo and taken work as a law writer for Mr. Snagsby, who runs a stationer’s shop near the Chancery court.
Cast of characters—Captain Hawdon (Nemo)
Under the guise of Nemo, Captain Hawdon lives in Krook’s shop. Although he is poor and addicted to opium, he's also clearly a kind man, once noble and optimistic.
He often gives money to Jo, the homeless urchin who sweeps the streets outside of Chancery.
Nemo is known in the area as a mysterious man, who works all hours and is rumored to have sold his soul to the devil. He eventually dies of an opium overdose before he can learn that Lady Dedlock had a child or that Esther Summerson, his daughter, is alive.
He is buried in a pauper’s grave in a slum called Tom-all-Alone’s, and Lady Dedlock returns to visit his grave in secret, where she dies of exposure.
Cast of characters—Miss Barbary
Miss Barbary is Lady Dedlock’s sister and Esther Summerson’s aunt. She is a hard, judgmental woman, who despises her sister because she gave birth to an illegitimate child. Esther claims that her aunt (whom she originally believes to be her godmother) is a “good woman” but so good that she cannot stand sin in others. Miss Barbary also resents Esther because she breaks off an engagement to Mr. Jarndyce's friend, Mr. Boythorn, in order to raise Esther in secret to hide Lady Dedlock’s shame.
Miss Barbary is a hypocrite, however, and arrogant because she believes she is without sin. Actually, she is cruel to Esther as a child and blames her for her mother’s sin, but these traits come back to haunt Miss Barbary and she is struck down by a stroke while Esther reads a passage from the Bible which suggests that no one is without sin. She dies soon after.
Cast of characters—Mrs. Jellyby
A wealthy woman, Mrs. Jellyby, mother of Caddy, Peepy, and the other Jellyby children. is a philanthropist obsessed with a project she has developed to build links to the coffee trade with a remote region in Africa. She is so distracted by this project that she neglects her family and bankrupts her husband gathering money for this cause.
Mrs. Jellyby’s house is in chaos and her children are dirty and uneducated. She represents both the frantic efforts of middle-class Victorians to contribute to social causes (even at the expense of their own homes and regardless of whether these causes really help the poor) and Britain’s colonial efforts abroad, which Dickens felt were a waste of money and squandered resources abroad that could support the poor in Britain.
Her fanatic philanthropy is almost a type of madness and prevents her from seeing the damage she does to her family. She is totally disinterested in her daughter’s wedding and does not listen to anybody else when they talk. Her philanthropic efforts abroad ultimately fail, and Dickens uses Mrs. Jellyby to suggest that charity should begin at home.
Cast of characters—Miss Flite
Miss Flite, a poor, mad old lady, rents a room above Krook’s shop and spends her day awaiting a judgment on her Chancery suit. She immediately takes an interest in Richard and Ada as wards in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and becomes friends with Esther and Mr. Jarndyce. She is also close to Gridley, who also has a case in Chancery and who, like Miss Flite, spends his days in the court.
She has gone mad waiting for her verdict. A kindly and affectionate woman, her friends tolerate her delusions and humor her when she says she expects a judgment soon, but—as with all Chancery cases—it is unlikely hers will ever be satisfactorily resolved.
Her father, brother, and sister all went mad and died while they oversaw the lawsuit. She inherited the case from them, and though she resolved to stay out of it, felt helplessly drawn to court. She believes that Chancery exercises a sinister magic force over its victims.
Her story also foreshadows Richard’s descent into madness as he waits for a verdict. Often quite lucid in her madness, she recognizes that Chancery suits send people mad because they force them to put their lives on hold. She keeps a number of caged birds in her room to represent the hopes, dreams, youth, and beauty of Chancery’s victims who waste away while they wait for their cases to end. She plans to release them on “judgment day,” referring both to the end of the case and to the biblical apocalypse.
Cast of characters—Mr. Tulkinghorn
Mr. Tulkinghorn is Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer and holds a grudge against Sir Leicester’s wife, Lady Dedlock; he suspects she is not truly of noble birth.
Mr. Tulkinghorn specializes in working with wealthy clients, and is consequently privy to the secrets of many rich and powerful people.
A cruel, merciless individual, Mr. Tulkinghorn sadistically delights in having power over others; he loves to collect secrets, as this gives him social currency and power over the upper classes, his superiors and employers. He despises the gentry, but also despises members of the lower classes, such as Lady Dedlock, whom he views as a social climber because she married into wealth.
He is associated with a rat and a crow throughout the novel, which suggests he is an unpleasant and sinister man. He disguises his cruel motives under a veneer of respectability and discretion.
Sir Leicester trusts Mr. Tulkinghorn completely and thus never suspects his cruelty to Lady Dedlock, whom he tries to blackmail when he discovers that she had an illegitimate child (Esther) before her marriage.
Cast of characters—Mr. Tulkinghorn
Mr. Tulkinghorn is a bully and a coward underneath, however, and uses his connections in the legal system to protect himself. He is very afraid of George—a soldier who comes to him about an outstanding debt—and threatens Mademoiselle Hortense with prison before she has committed a crime.
Despite his respectable façade, he is not a noble man and will work with clients who are deeply corrupt, like the debt collector Mr. Smallweed, if this gets Mr. Tulkinghorn his own way.
He is extremely good at manipulating people and often persuades people to act for him so that he can evade responsibility for these actions.
In spite of himself, Mr. Tulkinghorn admires Lady Dedlock because she meets his cool façade with an equally stoic one when he threatens to reveal her secret. At the end of the novel, Mademoiselle Hortense, who wishes to frame Lady Dedlock, murders Mr. Tulkinghorn.
Cast of characters—Mr. Guppy
Mr. Guppy, a young clerk in Mr. Kenge’s office, is an ambitious, self-interested social climber, who cares a great deal about his appearance, his reputation, and advancing his social status. Throughout the novel, he is a figure of ridicule and comic relief.
He meets Esther when she comes to London and suspects her relation to Lady Dedlock after he sees a portrait of Lady Dedlock at her husband’s country house, Chesney Wold. He therefore proposes to her and, when she rejects his offer, makes a dramatic show of being heartbroken. He constantly feigns disappointment to his friends, Mr. Jobling and Bart Smallweed, but only hints at what happened without telling the full story.
When he thinks the bundle of letters he found in Krook's store is evidence that Lady Dedlock is Esther's mother, he tries to blackmail her. Although he pretends he wants to help Lady Dedlock conceal her secret, he really wants leverage for himself, thinks Esther will be grateful he found her mother, marry him, and improve his social connections.
However, seeing Esther after her illness, her face now scarred by smallpox, he is embarrassed and denies his previous attentions to her. However, when the truth comes forth at the end of the novel, he suddenly wants to marry her again.
Cast of characters—Krook
Krook, Mrs. Smallweed’s brother, is an old drunk who keeps a rag and bone shop in back street behind the court of Chancery. Illiterate, he cannot read the heaps of legal documents piled within the shop. He tries to teach himself to read by spelling out individual letters in chalk on the walls of the shop and asking people to read the words back to him. However, he never makes any real progress towards literacy and is constantly drunk on gin.
Krook, a sinister and implicitly threatening old man, keeps a bad-tempered cat who claws on command. He spies on his tenants and closely questions people who visit the shop. It is unclear how much Krook knows about the lawsuits in the documents that populate his shop, but he is clearly a greedy, miserly old man who wishes to keep these secrets to himself, and gather new ones, even if he does not understand what they mean.
His proximity to the courthouse has earned him the nickname the “Lord Chancellor,” and he is a parody of the Chancery court and the confusing jumble of papers which the real Lord Chancellor presides over.
Cast of characters—Krook
Because of the amount of gin he drinks, his breath is ripe with alcohol fumes that steam from his mouth, a description that identifies him as a fairy tale villain, like a dragon or a wolf. He unknowingly guards the treasure which reveals the key to Esther's identity: the letters from her mother, Lady Dedlock, to her father, Captain Hawdon, also Krook’s lodger, Nemo.
Krook is also associated with a dragon in the manner of his death—spontaneous combustion—disputed in Dickens's time. It suggests that Krook is consumed from the inside out by a fire caused by the gin he drinks and perhaps his own smoldering greed. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle discover his ashes.
Cast of characters—Mr. Boythorn
Mr. Boythorn is a close friend of Mr. Jarndyce’s and was once engaged to Miss Barbary, Esther Summerson’s aunt, in his youth. Mr. Boythorn is an extremely boisterous and aggressive man but is very gentle and kindhearted underneath. He lives next door to Sir Leicester Dedlock’s country house, Chesney Wold, and is engaged in a furious dispute with the nobleman about a pathway which he thinks belongs to his property, and Sir Leicester thinks belongs to his.
Despite this feud, Mr. Boythorn is very noble and keeps the dispute between Sir Leicester and himself. He does not criticize Lady Dedlock for his dislike of her husband and is very generous with his friends. He insists that Esther go to stay at his house after her illness so that she has peace in the countryside to recover. Mr. Boythorn enjoys sparring with Mr. Skimpole, with whom he disagrees on everything, and even continues his fight with Sir Leicester, long after his interest has waned and after Sir Leicester has had a stroke, because he does not want Sir Leicester to feel patronized or that Mr. Boythorn thinks he is incapable of participating in this battle.
Cast of characters—Mr. Skimpole
Mr. Skimpole, a friend of Mr. Jarndyce, is a playful, entertaining gentleman of leisure. He is not poor, but is always in debt and constantly borrows money from Mr. Jarndyce and other acquaintances, whether they can afford it or not.
He hates to take things seriously and is totally irresponsible. Although he does not care for anyone but himself, his friends and acquaintances are disarmed by his cheerful, charming manner and do not immediately recognize this.
Mr. Skimpole does not feel it's his job to help or guide anybody, and he claims that he cannot keep track of his debts or finances because he cannot count or understand money. However, he often accepts bribes and avoids his friends as soon as they become poor, usually from furnishing his expenses.
He also plays a part in bankrupting Richard Carstone; he accepts a bribe from Mr. Vholes, the predatory lawyer who preys on Richard’s frail mental state, to introduce him to Richard, and he encourages Richard to keep spending money even when Richard is nearly ruined.
Cast of characters—Mr. Skimpole
Although Esther wants to give Skimpole the benefit of the doubt, believing he is innocent and unaware of the consequences of his careless actions, she is skeptical of his character and loses patience with him after his poor treatment of Richard.
Mr. Skimpole never takes responsibility for his actions and, in fact, angrily attacks Mr. Jarndyce and calls him selfish when Jarndyce finally withdraws his charity.
Cast of characters—Jo, sweeper
Jo the Roadsweeper: a minor character, Jo acts as a catalyst for Esther and her past. He remembers her father ‘him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he wos.’ (Ch.47), and Lady Dedlock discovers from him where Esther’s father is buried. He is also a witness in the murder investigation. However, Dickens’ use of Jo is much broader than this. Jo also represents child poverty, a big problem in Victorian society.
Tulkinghorn: the Dedlocks' lawyer. Tulkinghorn is cold, secretive, and ambitious. He detests Lady Dedlock, and once he discovers she has a secret, he investigates to wield power over her.
Inspector Bucket: indefatigable Inspector Bucket is cordial with everyone, which is also how he gets information out of them. He has a way of wagging his forefinger: By piecing together his information, like a jigsaw puzzle, Bucket is finally able to uncover the murderer.
Cast of characters—Mr. Woodcourt
Mr. Woodcourt is a young surgeon, son of Mrs. Woodcourt, and eventual husband of Esther. A generous and loyal young man, he dedicates his life to his career and spends his time as a doctor caring for the poor rather than the rich.
He has little interest in wealth and takes a low-paying post at a poor hospital in Yorkshire at the novel’s end. He is in love with Esther throughout the novel, although she denies this to herself, and his love for her remains strong when he returns from a voyage overseas and finds that her face has been scarred during a bout of smallpox.
Mr. Woodcourt proves that he does not love her for her looks alone but for her kind and generous spirit. His name suggests that he is a solid man who “courts” Esther loyally and will remain by her side.
He is also a loyal friend to Richard Carstone, whom he befriends at Esther’s request, to try and help Richard during his time of depression. Mr. Woodcourt is an effective surgeon because he makes his patients feel heard and puts them at ease.
Deciphering Dickens