Haunting, Guilt, and Destiny Theme Analysis

The are many examples of hauntings in Bleak House, and the line between the past and the present is blurry and uncertain throughout. Characters are also influenced by their past and by powerful emotions such as guilt and shame, which are associated with these private histories. In the resolution of Bleak House’s many plots, Dickens suggests that a person’s past behavior influences their future and demonstrates that greed and selfishness have their punishments while virtue and goodness earn their rewards.

Many of the novel’s characters are haunted by their pasts. The most prominent example of haunting in Bleak House is the legend of “The Ghost’s Walk” at the Dedlock country house, Chesney Wold. “The Ghost’s Walk” is both a literal terrace attached to the house and a reference to a ghost story attached to the family. The sound of raindrops on the “Ghost’s Walk” represents the footsteps of the ghost—the unhappy wife of a Dedlock ancestor who swore to haunt the mansion until the Dedlock line was destroyed—who is believed to walk up and down on the terrace. The legend also indirectly refers to Lady’s Dedlock’s guilt over her illegitimate child, whom she gave birth to before her marriage to Sir Leicester, and whom she believes died at birth. The impact of the past on Lady Dedlock is clear through her emotional reaction when she discovers that Esther is her daughter. Esther, in turn, is haunted by her childhood and the unkind assertion made by her aunt, Lady Dedlock’s sister who raised Esther in secret without her sister’s knowledge: that it would be better if Esther had never been born. In response to this past rejection, Esther feels a sense of guilt about her existence and spends her whole life hoping that those around her will accept her. The constant presence of secrets from the past in Bleak House suggests that although time moves on, people’s pasts stay with them and impact their behavior in later life.

Past events not only haunt the novel’s characters but foreshadow their futures. Captain Hawdon, Esther’s father, is so haunted by his past mistakes and the failure he has made of himself that he retires entirely from public life and tries to erase his past. He becomes a shadowy presence who haunts Krook’s shop, where he takes up residence. This sense of haunting is intensified because Captain Hawdon’s guilt over his past, and his wish to escape from recognition, leads him to change his name to Nemo, which means “no one.” This change foreshadows his destiny: Captain Hawdon dies in his room at Krook’s from an opium overdose and becomes a ghostly legend associated with the place, and also literally “no one” when he dies. Similarly, the “ghost’s walk” legend both haunts the Dedlock family and foreshadows their future destruction, which is brought about when the existence of Lady Dedlock’s illegitimate child is discovered by Mr. Tulkinghorn, the sinister lawyer who works for Sir Leicester, and Mr. Guppy, a clerk who suspects Lady Dedlock’s past connection to Captain Hawdon. Just as the ghost in the legend curses the Dedlock name and then expires, Lady Dedlock’s past shame causes her to run away, and it is her decision to flee that dooms her. In this sense, Lady Dedlock’s past guilt informs her future decisions, and this in turn shapes her tragic destiny. This suggests that guilt is a powerful and destructive emotion and can bring about one’s own demise if it is never resolved.

Characters create their own destinies through their past behaviors and reap the rewards or suffer the punishments that they deserve. The inevitable destiny of Mr. Tulkinghorn is one of the most prominent examples of this in Bleak House. Mr. Tulkinghorn’s office is decorated with a large, personification of “Allegory” painted on the ceiling. This Allegory points to a specific spot on the floor and comes to represent destiny, or fate, within the novel. Dickens deliberately draws the reader’s attention to this painting early on, during the first description of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s study. When Mr. Tulkinghorn is finally shot by Lady Dedlock’s resentful maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, who wishes to frame Lady Dedlock for the murder, he falls down dead in the spot that Allegory points to. This suggests that this destiny has waited for Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he could never escape from meeting this end.

Mr. Tulkinghorn’s death is inevitable because of his behavior throughout life. He is an unpleasant and mercenary man, and he deliberately learns other people’s secrets in order to have power over them. Therefore, he gets what he deserves when Madamoiselle Hortense uses this power against him and kills him because of what he knows about Lady Dedlock; Madamoiselle Hortense is aware that Mr. Tulkinghorn knows Lady Dedlock’s secret and thinks that the police will suspect Lady Dedlock of the murder because she has motive to silence Mr. Tulkinghorn. This suggests the book’s lesson that negative behavior in life will bring on negative consequences.

In contrast to Mr. Tulkinghorn’s unhappy destiny, the characters who behave virtuously, honestly, and industriously throughout the novel have a hand in creating their own happy endings. Esther, who is always grateful for the love she receives and is very generous with other people, is repaid through the love others feel for her and their willingness to provide for her in turn. Similarly, Mr. Woodcourt is rewarded with a happy ending after his generous and genuine commitment to treating the poor through his medical practice. Although many of the characters meet tragic fates throughout Bleak House, those who are kind and behave well towards others are ultimately rewarded, or at least fondly remembered, whereas those who behave selfishly, or who seek to have power over others, receive what they give out before the novel’s end.