Bleak House: Imagery 7 key examples

In the Bible, after Noah and his ark full of animals run aground on Mount Ararat, the waters that cover the earth recede. It would have been easy for Dickens's  Victorian audience to place this reference and to imagine the grand scale of the muddy wasteland left behind. It also makes the idea of the dinosaur somewhat incongruous, as there are no dinosaurs in the Bible. This tension between modern science  and Christian tradition is echoed a lot in the book, where old and new worlds collide in industrial, modernizing London and traditional, historical London (although Charles Darwin wouldn't publish his definitive work on evolution until 1859, seven years after Bleak House came out.)

The grand scale of the dinosaur echoes the grand scale of London—Dickens gives an image of a street on Holborn Hill wide enough to accommodate a dinosaur "forty feet long or so." This is probably not accurate, but it helps to give the reader a sense of the metropolis's sprawling size. The placement of Lincoln's Inn in this passage—admittedly an old institution, but not older than the Flood—and the muddy wasteland world that surrounds it also point to the great age and the decrepitude of Chancery. Holborn is imaginatively envisioned as being older than Noah's Ark, and the courts of Chancery as being around when the dinosaurs walked.

Everything is "raw," "dense," and "muddy" in London,  but it's all much rawer, denser, and muddier near the "leaden-headed" old corporation of the High Court. These dense visual images of obscurity suggest that the mystifying "fog" emanates from the Inns of Court; Dickens later makes it clear that in Bleak House, this is symbolically if not literally true.

The visual image Dickens provides here of the Lord Chancellor is like a spider in the middle of a misty web. He is right in the middle of the "leaden-headed old corporation," as if he is himself  the highest concentration somehow of this "obscurity." Dickens repeats the phrase "at the very heart of the fog" later in the same chapter, as he describes the Chancellor's seat within the Courtroom itself as "right in the midst of the mud, and at the very heart of the fog." Dickens's repetition of the visual imagery of obscurity cements the idea that Chancery is grim, gloomy, and incomprehensible. The Inns of Court are so present in the lives of all the characters of Bleak House, but their inner workings and their true purpose are deliberately hazy.

The tale of Dick Whittington (the "namesake" Richard refers to) is a semi-fictional story of Richard Whittington, a merchant who became the Mayor of London in the 1300s. It's a charming story about a self-made man and his cat beating the odds. It's also a sharp left turn away from the tone of Bleak House, in which poverty seems like an inescapable condition for most people.

The London that leads into the suburbs and then into the country is very different from the sooty, still London of Chancery. Juxtaposed with the "immense metropolis," the bucolic and charming images of "beautiful horses" and countryside filled with "farmer's wagons" and "scents of old hay" seem like a fairy-tale dream. The sensory language of "clear-sounding" bells also evokes the Whittington story and its "cheerful" influences for Richard and the reader. Unlike the folktale, though, these bells seem to be telling the group they're in the right place outside of London, where they're suddenly so happy they could "all three have sung" along. In the folk-tale, the bells urge the main character to "turn back" to London and claim his destiny: here, they seem to suggest that the young people should stay out.

The image of teeming maggots on a rain-soaked and "ruined" human body the author describes here is visceral and disgusting. Life in these slums reduces people to their most basic animal needs for survival. Their very existence is made "foul" by their environment. The wet, chilly sensory language of "drips" getting in as the "crowd of foul existence" shifts and warps, "fetching and carrying fever," contributes to the general sense of damp, decay, and revulsion. It is unclear here whether Dickens is referring to actual vermin or to the urban poor themselves when he describes the "swarm of misery" that inhabits these tenements. As he immediately references the disengaged and unpleasant Lords Coodle, Doodle, and Foodle, the author implies that these gentlemen would see little difference between vermin and people. 

Even comparatively wealthier parts of Holborn are described as unpleasantly dim and unclean by the narrator, though this might have more to do with their purpose than with the presence of real dirt and filth. Rich and poor areas are also very close to each other, as Dickens regularly mentions.  In Chancery Lane, the office of Mr. Vholes in Symond's Inn is described as a:

 little, pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn of old building materials, which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond’s memory with congenial shabbiness.

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Rather than being clean and efficient, Vholes's office "takes kindly" to decay and neglect. Slow-acting mold and "dry rot" sets in, making not just the office but the entire "small inn" seem "dismal" and shabby. The atmosphere isn't evil, it's just complacently unappealing, "congenial" in its "shabbiness." It's even quite pitiful and sympathetic in some ways, as Dickens uses gentler language to describe it than the other Inns. It's "little," "pale" and "woe-begone," a neglected child compared to the huge, austere bulk  of Lincoln's and Gray's Inns. Compared to the rotten grandeur of Lincoln's Inn, Symond's has a different kind of mildewing unpleasantness. It's not actively malicious, it's just badly kept up and cheaply made, implying that it cannot produce things of quality even if it means well. Finally, then, there's no completely good law court and no completely good neighbourhood of Holborn in Bleak House, no matter how "congenial." 

The visual imagery of this horrifying realization is full of delicate, shivering diction. The simile of the tremor passing over Lady Dedlock like a "ripple over water" makes the reader feel the shudder that engulfs her after hearing this portentous news. To Guppy she seems—in this moment—"dead," but the death isn't permanent. Instead, the  "death" washes over her like a "ripple of water" before she can compose herself.  Like a ripple in a pond, it dissipates quickly, but not before it gives the reader a powerful impression of the (usually cold and stoic) Lady Dedlock's fragility. She teeters on the edge of a breakdown in this passage, seeming to pass out of the world before her consciousness can "return."

Lady Dedlock is usually totally composed, but in this scene Dickens uses visual language to imply that her character has become incredibly brittle, like a corpse decayed to powder and paper in a tomb. To Guppy, the action of cracking her emotional shell seems like it might literally disintegrate her body. When she hears the news, she reminds Guppy of a corpse "struck by the air like lightning," suddenly  so fragile she might crumble away. Of course, Lady Dedlock isn't dead or rotted to powder, because she doesn't "vanish in a breath," but this scene underscores just how startling Guppy's revelation is. 

Dickens combines the image of the "clogged lamps" of Equity (the law practiced in Chancery) with the "fathomless pockets" of Argus's hundred eyes. Argus, whose job in Greek legends was to watch carefully over a precious treasure, had the special skill of being able to see everywhere at once. Through Dickens's simile, the court of Lincoln's Inn is also symbolically able to do this, as the law "watches" all aspects of British life. The sensory language of this complex passage is all visual, as it all relates to Dickens's allusion to Argus watching his surroundings. 

Despite their many "eyes,"  Dickens describes the Inns' view of life in Britain  as "clogged." Although like Argus it is "hundred-eyed," its vision is "bleared" and it can't see anything clearly. Nothing is simple or easily discernible in the view of the law in Bleak House.

The things that can be "seen" in this passage don't paint a brighter picture of life in London, either. The only "clear" images are those of "draughtsmen" and "conveyancers" working through the night. The windows of the Holborn neighborhood are warmly lit, but the light isn't restful. Instead, each pinpoint of light indicates someone working into the small hours on a mundane task. Rather than enjoying the world, these people are stuck at their desks  inside the labyrinth of the law courts, working hard on the "entanglement" of things. As Dickens has related the lights of Chancery to the eyes of Argus, each lit lamp symbolically becomes an "eye" on the worker who uses it. The lights of Lincoln's Inn imprison and guard its workers like Argus, another many-eyed monster. 

The image of teeming maggots on a rain-soaked and "ruined" human body the author describes here is visceral and disgusting. Life in these slums reduces people to their most basic animal needs for survival. Their very existence is made "foul" by their environment. The wet, chilly sensory language of "drips" getting in as the "crowd of foul existence" shifts and warps, "fetching and carrying fever," contributes to the general sense of damp, decay, and revulsion. It is unclear here whether Dickens is referring to actual vermin or to the urban poor themselves when he describes the "swarm of misery" that inhabits these tenements. As he immediately references the disengaged and unpleasant Lords Coodle, Doodle, and Foodle, the author implies that these gentlemen would see little difference between vermin and people. 

Even comparatively wealthier parts of Holborn are described as unpleasantly dim and unclean by the narrator, though this might have more to do with their purpose than with the presence of real dirt and filth. Rich and poor areas are also very close to each other, as Dickens regularly mentions.  In Chancery Lane, the office of Mr. Vholes in Symond's Inn is described as a:

 little, pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn of old building materials, which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond’s memory with congenial shabbiness.

Cite this Quote

Rather than being clean and efficient, Vholes's office "takes kindly" to decay and neglect. Slow-acting mold and "dry rot" sets in, making not just the office but the entire "small inn" seem "dismal" and shabby. The atmosphere isn't evil, it's just complacently unappealing, "congenial" in its "shabbiness." It's even quite pitiful and sympathetic in some ways, as Dickens uses gentler language to describe it than the other Inns. It's "little," "pale" and "woe-begone," a neglected child compared to the huge, austere bulk  of Lincoln's and Gray's Inns. Compared to the rotten grandeur of Lincoln's Inn, Symond's has a different kind of mildewing unpleasantness. It's not actively malicious, it's just badly kept up and cheaply made, implying that it cannot produce things of quality even if it means well. Finally, then, there's no completely good law court and no completely good neighbourhood of Holborn in Bleak House, no matter how "congenial." 

Although other portraits mentioned previously in this passage are illuminated beautifully by the sun, with one that even "seems to bathe in glowing water, and it ripples as it glows," Lady Dedlock's portrait is cast into gloom. The visual language of shadow and the retreat of the sun from the painting of Lady Dedlock is quite frightening here, especially as Dickens directly says it has the effect of "age and death" on the portrait. Sunlight is contrasted with darkness here, as the author aligns the visual imagery of the day with liveliness, and the evening with death. 

The language is deliberately vague in this segment when Dickens says "the Dedlocks" are being brought "down into age and death." He might mean the portraits are being covered by the "veil or hood" of night, but could also mean that the house of Dedlock itself is failing. He emphasizes this ghostly idea with his visual descriptions of the "weird" shadow of the tree. The effects of shadow in the room make the painting of Lady Dedlock "turn pale" and "flutter" like a phantom in the mind's eye of the reader. Rather than being unmoving as paintings usually are, it's wavering with an impossible, spectral presence.

What's happening here to the portraits foreshadows what happens to Lady Dedlock later in Bleak House. Lady Dedlock's portrait becomes "veiled" and secretive in this passage, as she herself does when seeking Esther. Events beyond her control conspire more and more to destabilize her life as the book goes on, just as her painting is cast into deeper and deeper gloom by the shadows outside Chesney Wold rising "higher and darker." 

The Dedlock family portraits almost seem as if they're being dropped into a hole, in this passage, as the sensory language of dusk surrounds and covers them. This small section, as the reader sees by Chapter 55, is all also grim foreshadowing for Lady Dedlock's approaching suicide. Just like the portraits covered by "shadow" and hidden, when Lady Dedlock kills herself she does so by climbing into someone else's grave. She is literally "brought down" into the darkness through this choice.