Bleak House (1853)

Charles Dickens. Bleak House. Pub. 1853. Ed. Nicola Bradbury. New York: Penguin, 2003.

General Notes

• 14-15: the ways the fog fuddles positivist sensory knowledge: we are in a space where scientific epistemology is rendered vague
• "No one knows for certain, because no one cares" (Miss Flite)
• 16 document/paper based economy of knowledge, unstable signifiers like Flite's "documents"

   * 26: which lady D enters through knowing Nemo's handwriting

• Ch 3 beginning of Esther's narrative "my portion of these pages" -- the paper object is epistemologically or even ontologically unstable here

   * 40 Esther's narrative is a legal document itself

• Track writing (and how forms of knowing otherwise are undepenable but even writing is unsteady)

   * 27
   * 31
   * 32
   * 38 periods
   * 40
   * 43 *
   * 47
   * 53 caddy
   * 60
   * 66-79: Krook's
   * 73: cutting prints and pasting to wall
   * 76 krook copies but can't read
   * 117 the Growlery
   * 119
   * 123 rags tracts and the charitable paper economy
   * 149-50 Guppy’s proposal in legal discourse
   * 154 Snagsby — law stationer
       * Ghosts and paper? Peffer, plus 156
   * 158 Rolls’ Yard
   * 159-164 Tulkinghorn -> Nemo
   * 170
   * 195
   * 230
   * 235
   * 236 krook teaching himself 
   * 257-60 Jo's illiteracy and how Tom all Alone's isn't represented in writing
       * Inadequacy of written representation of the social scales up to the novel itself (following Levine 2009)
   * 276
   * 284 business like
   * 300
   * 316
   * 317
   * 325
   * 328 krook is rags like omf
   * 344
   * 352
   * 358-9 xian sign
   * 371
   * 385
   * 388
   * 396
   * 403
   * 408
   * 415
   * 429-30 hawdon nemo
   * 434
   * 447
   * 459
   * 462-3
   * 467
   * 477
   * 486 Charley learning to write 
   * 508
   * 511-2
   * 515
   * 520
   * 532
   * 534 lady d's letters
   * 552
   * 556
   * 559
   * 563
   * 569
   * 575
   * 580
   * 595-6
   * 609
   * 612
   * 614 self conscious about prosing...in BH
   * 615
   * 622
   * 629
   * 632-3 clearing krook's
   * 652
   * 654
   * 675
   * 684
   * 688
   * 700
   * 711
   * 721-2
   * 728
   * 731 Jo's epitaph
   * 744
   * 768
   * 772
   * 776
   * 780
   * 784 dusty papers/Richard's mind
   * 805-6
   * 808
   * 820 Bucket tells sir l in the library
   * 824
   * 835
   * 842
   * 848-851
   * 853
   * 854
   * 858
   * 863
   * 866
   * 867 another likeness of lady d circulating, following her into the dark
   * 880
   * 887
   * 895
   * 900
   * 906
   * 909
   * 919
   * 920
   * 921
   * 932
   * 935
   * 944-5 the other will 
   * 948
   * 950
   * 953
   * 957
   * 960
   * 964
   * 972
   * 974
   * 983
   * 985
   * 987

• 37 pie wrapped in paper
• 44 Esther as a blank text for ada to confide in
• 93 a little clutch of Shakespeare
• 105 genre positioning at Chesney Wold (fairy tale/fancy vs Gothic)
• 115 Esther narrativizing space/landscape outside BH
• 118 starting to explain chancery case
• 121 Wiglomeration
• 122 Narrative imperatives of different genres and characters, Tom J and the case vs Esther's own biography (self-effacement)

   * The way not knowing, narrative indeterminacy, is associated with happiness

• 127 the Pardiggles even more entertaining than the Jellybys
• 135 strange that he demurs to narrate the perspective of the poor (rem of Forster's remark)
• 177 Jo’s intro
• 183 Lady D “sees everything"
• 197 Richard's character shaped by chancery
• 214 who is the dark young surgeon? Woodcourt 237 why the deferral?
• 225 -- Turveydrop pairs with Sir Leicester (?), Skimpole and Boythorn

   * Actually he pairs with Mrs Jellyby but all are useless in their own way

• 228 levelling age/deportment
• 251 Gridley the system vs individuals
• 282 Richard behaves like someone in poverty by buying things -- better to invest capital in property than in something abstract to that pov
• 292 lady d's face as a broken glass to Esther
• 310 what does engage for Jo's moving on mean?
• 312 What is mrs Chadband's connection to Esther? Was mrs Rachael 398
• 333 smallweeds and compound interest
• 347 hawdon
• 371 Richard
• 385 Charley shuttled from the smallweeds to bleak house -- how labor is the vector of the network so often
• 406 mrs snagsby perceiving the network of all people, jealousy and suspicion as vector
• 451 conflict between ideological time schemes
• 458 sir leicester perusing the backs of his books
• 464 guppy connecting lady d and Esther
• 474 mr jellyby gets out of bankruptcy by "going through the gazette"?
• 507 Weevle and Snagsby tasting Krook on the air...
• 523 snagsby keeps mentioning fate but it's not adequate to the narrative
• 566 ms flite
• 575 Esther's negative subjectivity or affect, the absence of affective response being narrated that's so revealing
• 583 sentimentally exculpating lady d
• 621 English law making business for itself
• 643-5 class and politics with Leicester
• 672-3 how morally culpable should we hold John J for his apologizing for Skimpole and Richard's subsequent fall under the influence he and of Vholes?
• 732 metafictive -- fate as engine of plot, of networking

   * Bucket's book of fate 806

• 735 indeterminate Shakespeare reference
• 795-6 the negative position of bucket in the narrative rel to george -- detective a bit more ambivalent heee and in Moonstone vs later detective fiction
• Ch 58 886ff. he's quite powerful in his elegiac mode (though still funny)
• 902 Esther a pattern
• 908 othello and mrs snagsby
• 932-3: could we take Skimpole's anti-capitalism seriously? Could Leigh hunt be a guide?

Bibliographical Notes

• Per Sandra Kroupa (ask her for dealer name): "Talked to my dealer expert at the Book Fair in CA—the book never came out as a 3 vol. novel in England. If there is one, it is a unique rebinding of the parts." Caroline Levine makes this error, as do others.