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Thomas J. Firestone

English 202

Prof. Conroy

March 2, 2003

Death and the Burial Ground in Dickens’ Bleak House

Like many great works of art, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House is concerned with

the ideas of life and death. The plot of Bleak House often returns to a graveyard, a burial

ground that Dickens uses to symbolize death and links the graveyard to the social

framework of his day. He links the graveyard to the past, so that the pasts of the dead

come to weigh upon the heads of the living. Esther’s experience with death and the

graveyard intertwines with Miss Barbury, Jo, Nemo, and Lady Dedlock; Dickens shows

how these characters’ deaths (and what has lead up to their deaths) affect Esther’s life. In

Bleak House, Dickens also uses the graveyard to comment on the legal system, as death

is closely related to the Chancery area and the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce lawsuit. This link

results in the deaths of such characters as Krook, Richard, Gridley, and Tom Jarndyce.

Dickens links the graveyard to the past so that the pasts of the dead come to weigh

upon the heads of the living. He disputes the social mechanisms of his time that laud

tradition, and the past, as good. Most things in Bleak House that have to do with the past

are negative. From the first chapter, the past of the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case is

described and the first death is revealed, by way of Tom Jarndyce’s suicide (Dickens 8).

The narrator says, “There are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old

Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but
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Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless”

(8). So, from the get-go, Dickens starts commenting on the tradition of this court case

leading to death.

Next, as Lady Dedlock is described in Chapter II, Dickens starts his commentary

on how secrets can affect the lives of the characters, ultimately leading them to the

graveyard. The narrator describes Lady Dedlock as having, “an exhausted composure, a

worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction”

(13). Clearly Lady Dedlock is coping with something even in the beginning of the story.

The reader learns later that she dwells on her past with Captain Hawdon, and her

assumption that their child (Esther) is dead. In Lady Dedlock’s mind, her uncertainty

with Captain Hawdon and her sadness with the death of her child give her an air of

coldness, a “freezing mood” almost like a ghost (perhaps this symbolically links Lady

Dedlock to the ghost from “the Ghost’s Walk” that haunts Chesney Wold).

As Lady Dedlock is taken to the graveyard by Jo, she becomes even more haunted

when she realizes that Nemo (Captain Hawdon) has been buried in the graveyard’s

hideous confines. Lady Dedlock is stuck in this quagmire because of her past actions and

the death of her past lover, “buried” (on top of other bodies) in the graveyard, that she

can never reveal (this is why Tulkinghorn has sway over her, he knows this secret and

threatens to expose her). She both alleviates and further compounds her stress and

secrecy when she meets with her daughter Esther for the first time. Lady Dedlock is

happy to know that her daughter is alive but she is also distraught because this means she

can never talk with her daughter again, so as not to reveal her past with the now dead

Captain Hawdon. Perhaps Dickens is suggesting that under such conditions, a human can
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only survive for so long before they join the cemetery themselves. The past beckons

Lady Dedlock to the graveyard where she is found at the gate in the guise of Jenny, “with

one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate, and seeming to embrace it” (713). Lady

Dedlock finally embraces the death that is symbolized by the graveyard.

Being the self-quieting character that she is, Esther says “I will not dwell upon my

sorrow” (714) in reference to the loss of her mother. Esther knows the stress her

mother’s secrets caused her. This is one example of Esther’s connection with death and

the graveyard in Bleak House. Esther has many encounters with death, her first being the

death of Miss Barbury in Chapter III. Coincidentally (as Dickens loves coincidences),

Esther interacts and sympathizes with Jo, the character that first shows Lady Dedlock

(Esther’s mother) the way to the graveyard. Indirectly, Esther contracts small pox from

Jo, so figuratively speaking, had Esther died from the smallpox, Jo would have shown

Esther “the way to the graveyard” just as he had literally shown her mother, Lady

Dedlock the way to the graveyard. However, Esther perseveres over the small pox,

though she is scarred for a while, and this might foreshadow the end of the novel, where

Esther is one of the few main characters that lives through to the end of the Jarndyce

case.

The scene in Bleak House where Esther witnesses the death of Jenny’s baby

eerily echoes the situation of Lady Dedlock’s loss of Esther. Ada proclaims her sorrow

for Jenny and her baby when she says, “O Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering,

quiet, pretty little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I never saw a

sight so pitiful as this before!” (100). This could be seen as an uncanny parallel to the

predicament Esther and Lady Dedlock are in. It’s almost as if Ada is talking about Esther
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being the suffering, quiet, pretty little thing instead of the baby, and that she is sorry for

Esther’s mother and that Esther’s situation is pitiful. Ada’s concern for Jenny and her

baby is perhaps a chance for Dickens’ to symbolically comment on Esther and Lady

Dedlock’s situation. Esther then takes the “light burden” from Jenny’s lap, tries to “make

the baby’s rest the prettier and gentler; laid it on a shelf and covered it with [her] own

handkerchief” (100). Esther shows her willingness to “take the burden” away from the

mother and comfort and console her, which is what she tries to do with her own mother.

Adding to the coincidence, Lady Dedlock is dressed as Jenny when Esther finds her

clutching the gate of the cemetery, dead.

Along with the death of her mother and Jenny’s baby, Esther experiences Richard

Carstone’s death. Richard’s death comes from his involvement in the Jarndyce v.

Jarndyce case. In Chapter LXV the narrative says that Allan Woodcourt found Richard

“sitting in a corner of the court… like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken

away, and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was

stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home” (761).

Dickens uses his characters to show that in his time, involvement with the law was lethal,

and those that came in contact with the stagnant system usually met with their own

demise. It’s almost as if Richard’s soul has been slowly eaten up by the parasitic

Jarndyce case and he just starts coughing blood, the body’s “life essence” that is being

sapped by the case; as the blood leaves his body, so his “life essence” leaves him and he

dies.

Richard’s death stems from his involvement from the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case,

and Dickens connects the case to the graveyard because so many of the people involved
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end up there. Take Mr. Krook and his case of spontaneous combustion for example.

This esoteric form of death intensifies the effect of Krook’s death and compounds the evil

and mystery surrounding the man. It is inside Krook that the combustion comes from,

killing him, but it is also inside Krook where the evil comes from, the inside. H.M.

Daleski says in his “Transformation in a Sick Society” that,

“Though it is true that the novel presents an image of possible social collapse –

presenting it not alone through the death of Krook but through the equally representative

deaths of Richard and Lady Dedlock and through the pervasive disease imagery – the

collapse is neither prescribed nor hoped for. It is presented as a warning of what will

inevitably come to pass if a stiff-necked people refuses to change its ways. But the way

to change, to peaceful recuperation, as it were, is throughout presented as both clear and

accessible” (971).

Daleski’s observation of the symbolic levels of death in Bleak House supports the idea

that the graveyard and death have some parallels with the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case. The

people who died have refused to change their ways, even though peaceful recuperations

are presented as clear and accessible. John Jarndyce refuses to participate in the case and

is one example of someone who has denied the case his life by not being involved in it

anymore.

Gridley is another pawn in the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce lawsuit who dies as a result

of the case. Once an active member of the case, Gridley used to get thrown “in the

[prison for debtors] over and over again, for contempt” (314). Bucket claims to have

gone to the court “for no other purpose than to see [Gridley] pin the Chancellor like a bull

dog” (314). Bucket tries to rouse Gridley as Gridley is on his death bed, but to no avail.

Gridley says he is worn out and very weak from the case. Miss Flite screams a cry of “O

no, Gridley” (315) when he passes. Gridley’s death is another example of the utter
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exhaustion of life the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case, and legal system of the time, has on a

body.

However, unlike Nemo, Krook, and Gridley, Richard has another chance at life.

The end of Chapter LXV seems to have some Buddhist overtones with references to

reincarnation. After John Jarndyce confirms Richard’s question of “It was all a troubled

dream?” with “Nothing more, Rick; nothing more”, Richard sounds like he’s talking

about being born again – “I will begin the world!” he says (763). Richard asks Jarndyce

to be lenient and encouraging to “the dreamer… when he wakes,” (763) talking about his

unborn child (also named Richard). Richard wants his child to be to Ada what he wasn’t.

Through this child, this little Rick, Richard the father will be able to absolve his sins, and

he won’t pass down “the sins of the father” that Dickens has such an emphasis on

throughout the novel. Little Rick won’t have to worry about the Jarndyce v. Jarndyce

case that brought death to his father. Just as Miss Flite liberates her birds from their cage,

Richard and his son’s souls are liberated from the lethal law practices of society at that

time.

The characters in Bleak House seem to die either because of involvement with the

Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case or the secrets that come back to haunt them. Dickens is saying

that in his day, the problems with tradition and law eventually lead to death, and if

something was not done to remedy this situation, then the already overcrowded

graveyards would always have plenty of inhabitants. Dickens has hope however, for he

ends his novel optimistically. The new Richard and Ada are happy together as mother

and son, Esther is happy with her children and with Allan (who gives her the first
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legitimate name she’s ever had), Charley has a family, Caddy is doing well, Peepy is

doing well, etc, etc – but most importantly, the wind is never in the East ever again.
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Works Cited:

-Dickens, Charles. Bleak House A Norton Critical Edition. Ed.