Bleak House: Hyperbole 5 key examples

Jarndyce and Jarndyce is so entangled and moribund that discussion by lawyers only worsens matters. The more lawyers who participate, the worse it gets. Rather than solving problems, involving lawyers seems to have only increased the confusion, as Dickens tells the reader that "the parties to it understand it least." Because it's so confusing, and because British property law is so complex, when lawyers get involved in discussing the case it merely multiplies the problem. The fact that this lack of progress  is taken as normal throughout the novel forms a substantial part of the satirical commentary of Bleak House. Within the book, it seems, no one expects lawyers to speed things up by practicing the law.

Dickens's hyperbolic language is very exaggerated here: "five minutes" is all it takes to confuse even the most qualified lawyers in London, but the case itself is never-ending. "Innumerable" people have apparently lived and died as the case has proceeded. The arguments the lawyers have made surrounding it are so preposterously all-encompassing that it seems almost anyone could be sucked into it, "without knowing how or why." The case is so confusing it actually maddens people, who "deliriously" find themselves stuck in it, never to get out.

Skimpole here makes a racist and stereotypical allusion to a "Sultan" commanding his "slave," describing how he would have liked to have had Neckett's head brought to him before seeing his sweet children. This is obviously—even to Esther, who "cannot help but smile" at his "light way of touching these fantastic strings"—excessively insensitive and self-centered. It also demonstrates how much Skimpole overestimates how seriously everyone takes him.

Shortly after this, Skimpole implies that Neckett was a useless figure before his death, but that because seeing his children makes Skimpole feel happy and charitable, Neckett's life did indeed have a purpose:

But what turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses; that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these social virtues!

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Neckett's death is not tragic to Mr. Skimpole. Regardless of the fact that Neckett has left behind three orphans, it's a good thing, because it allows Skimpole to see he has been "developing" the "social virtues" of Neckett's children. Dickens's use of hyperbole here only makes Skimpole's speech seem even more pompous and self-important than these statements otherwise would.

The hyperbole in this part of the novel almost seems too much, as Dickens makes Mr. Skimpole out to be pretty absurd even before this second passage. Although he has money, he's not a character to whom one would usually compare the splendor of a Sultan, for example. Similarly, it's laughable that he decides Neckett's life was worthwhile because it gave him a moment of self-satisfaction. Skimpole doesn't see his self-congratulation as a "benefactor" to the "charming children" as improbable or his speech as hyperbolic at all, however, which only makes it seem sillier. 

In this section, the author is employing hyperbole to lampoon the apparent uselessness of aristocratic rule. Dickens establishes that the country is badly run with this description—in fact, it's so poorly run that a petty dispute between two important people can grind Britain completely to a halt.

The Lords Coodle and Doodle are apparently the only people running the country. In fact, in their opinion, they are actually the only people in the country, as without them there is "nobody to speak of." If  they can't do their jobs, Dickens satirically suggests, then there's "nobody" left "to speak of" to rule Britain, and "there has been no Government." The fact that there are literally millions of other people in England doesn't factor into the actions of the Lords. To aristocrats, Dickens implies, the people being governed aren't the point. Coodle and Doodle are so divorced from reality that they actually forget other people exist.

This language is obviously hyperbolic and exaggerated, as the narrator satirizes the aristocracy's skewed view of British society in the "voice" of the Lords Coodle and Doodle. As these characters don't do anything important throughout Bleak House, it's unclear how their dispute would ruin the operations of the country. Through hyperbole the author implies that he doesn't believe the nobility do much, and that the government doesn't care about the citizens it "governs."

Dickens really makes a meal out of how terrible these chickens are. They are so tough and stringy that one could play guitar on their "tendon and ligament," and their wings and legs are grimly fused to their bodies with muscles like "tree-roots." The hyperbolic language makes the chickens sound like suspension bridges or train engines instead of food. They probably aren't actually like "tree-roots," but exaggerated description like this is funnier than just noting that they're tough.

The indestructible chickens and Mrs. Bagnet have something in common, as they're both wildly misinterpreted by Mr. Bagnet. He thinks the chickens are fantastic and that his wife is delighted with his kindness. He's wrong: she's just too nice to tell him that she's miserable. The way Dickens describes the effect of the chickens on Mrs. Bagnet is the most obviously humorous part of this chapter. The idea of the birds being so inedible as to be "injurious" to her if she ate them more than once a year is exaggeratedly silly. The author leans into this idea, though, describing the indigestibility of the meal in order to make the situation seem even more ridiculous and comical. 

For example, Mrs. Bagnet is obliged to eat "a most severe quantity" of the chicken when it actually comes time for dinner later in the chapter. This is another small instance of hyperbole which makes the reader feel the narrator is in on the joke. Dickens also links the "severe amount" of chicken Mrs. Bagnet is confronted with to the diction of Chancery; the law is everywhere in Bleak House. Everything from the suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce to potential injury by rigid meat is couched in legal language. In this passage, Dickens says too much chicken would be "injurious" to Mrs. Dedlock. Aside from meaning "harmful," "injurious" also means "employing bad judgement" and is connected to the "jury" and the "judge" in court.

Even though her husband tells her she's beautiful, both reader and narrator know Esther has been scarred by smallpox. This had previously been a huge source of pain for her, especially as it was the reason Mr. Guppy so cruelly rejected her. Nonetheless, she tells the reader in this passage that her own appearance now doesn't matter, as things are so good that everyone who loves her "can do without much beauty in her anyway." There is so much beauty around her by the end of the book that her own looks are of very little importance, "even supposing" Mr. Woodcourt is just being kind.

Esther's listing of things makes the hyperbole more evident here; not only is everything "pretty" and "beautiful" and "handsome" and the "brightest," but these things all come in a flood of words. This diction gives a childlike tone to the passage, making her seem too content to be coherent. The narrator is so happy she literally cannot finish her thought.

This incoherence is a reference back to when the reader first meets Esther as a narrator in Chapter 3, when she "has a great deal of difficulty" beginning her "writing." In this first "narrative," Esther says she doesn't know how to begin her story. In the passage above, the last in the book, she also doesn't finish, as the novel ends with this incomplete phrase surrounded by dashes, "—even supposing—." The novel is cut off mid-sentence, as though Esther doesn't know how to "end," either. With this unfinished ending, Esther's "narratives" in Bleak House come full circle. 

Dickens's choice to make Esther's ending entirely happy somewhat balances the grim and unpleasant mood of the majority of the book. Audiences of serial fiction responded far better to a happy (even if hyperbolic and fantastical) ending than to tragedy and uncertainty.