Taken as if the events in the novel happened on or about 1827 (acknowledged as being the very worst period of the Court of Chancery), the novel is a window into a faulty and corrupt system and the lives destroyed by it. This is not to say that Bleak House is any less instructive for lack of timing. In 1852, an Act of Parliament altered the methods of taking evidence, substituted salaries for fees, and abolished a great many other useless expenses and offices. The same year he serialized Bleak House, the Court of Chancery was embarking upon a period of radical change. His timing in rendering such criticism was less than perfect. “Ground to bits in a slow mill…roasted at a slow fire…stung to death by single bees…(and) being drowned by drops.” He compared taking a case to Chancery with being: In showing the lives destroyed by a case which amounted to nothing more than a dispute over a will, Dickens revealed the slow grinding procedures of the Chancery Court and the myriad attorneys whose livelihood depended on the Court’s inefficient function. 'Bleak House,' 1852 (Serialized Edition).Īll that was left now were the costs, he explained, and “all the rest, by some extraordinary means has melted away.” All, that is, except for the lives affected by the case having lingered so long in Chancery. “…the lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth.” The character of John Jarndyce explains that his case is nothing more than an issue “about a will, and the trusts under a will,” but that: Even this many years later, when one hears of the Court of Chancery, it is difficult not to think of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that black hole of a case at the center of Bleak House the greatest of Chancery suits and “a monument of Chancery practice.”

The bleak house