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Subdued by the Dyer's Hand: Dickens at Work in Bleak House
- Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 9, Number 2, June 2011
- pp. 285-295
- 10.1353/pan.2011.0028
- Article
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This essay examines the implications of Dickens's statement in the preface to the one-volume edition of Bleak House (September 1853) that in the novel he "purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things." This claim, I argue, goes to the core of Dickens's art as a writer, an art that combines the presentation of disturbing news about the contemporary state of society with a skilful attempt to provide narrative pleasure, pleasure designed to ensure that the narrator retains his hold over readers for 67 chapters. Dickens's achievement, I conclude, constitutes literary art of the highest order, one that instructs readers in social and ethical truths while also delighting them and holding their attention in the course of telling a compelling story.