Jarndyce and Jarndyce is a “ ‘dark-looking case’ ” (p. 522), says Richard, who enters Chancery “from the outermost circle of … evil” (p. 21), plunges into “ ’the mysteries’ ” (p. 650) of the impenetrable documents pertaining to the suit, and then himself becomes a “ ‘dark-looking case,’ ” presenting visible evidence of the “ ‘law-hand’ ” (p. 29) that leaves fatal “traces” (p. 651) on his face. In the “ ’Inkwich’ ” (p. 225) of Bleak House,Dickens represents writing as having the capacity to blemish, blight, and even bewilder unto death.
Such a “ ‘dark-looking case’ ” is not the only one Dickens presents, however. There is the testament of the novel as a whole. It is as though because language is a “union of mind and matter,” to adapt the novel’s own terms for “the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby” (p. 54), Dickens has become newly sensible of the physical qualities of words and of the possibilities incorporated, as it were, in writing, giving us, for example, “Chizzle” and “Mizzle … vaguely promising themselves that they will … see what can be done for Drizzle,” pursuing the “shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties” that go on in Chancery, and making their way into “the midst of the mud and … the heart of the fog” (p. 21), where the Lord Chancellor is addressed by Mr. Tangle: “ ’Mlud’ ” (p. 22). The Babel of the novel is audible as babble. This, again, is not a new characteristic of Dickens’s style. Such perfervid verbosity has ample precedents. One need only think of Jingle in The Pickwick Papers—of the verbal bricolage he emits; of the slogans, catchphrases patched into his telegraphic idiom; of the jangling, rattling sound of his disjointed utterances: “ ‘Ah! Regular mangle—Baker’s patent—not a crease in my coat, after all this squeezing—might have ”got up my linen“ as I came along—ha! Not a bad idea that—queer thing to have it mangled when it’s upon one, though—trying process—very’ ” (chapter 15). In fact, one might say that Dickens amplifies the Jingle principle in Bleak House,which is, among other things, a “mangling” of genres, ranging from the dateline to the gothic, from the nursery rhyme to apocalypse, and a mingling of voices and tongues, ranging from the oracular to the vernacular and including high literary language alongside middle-brow, muddled, and illiterate speech. Dickens’s strength lies as much in a “slangular direction” (p. 155) as any other. He can do many things with words.
But in the volubility of Bleak House,we see and hear a difference, a withholding of words. In this novel, the very dash that is the means for connecting Jingle’s incongruous utterances becomes a mark for the final disconnection that occurs when Jo dies while reciting the Lord’s Prayer: “ ‘Hallowed be—thy—‘ ” (p. 609). This hiatus marks a dead end for language. Dickens can indicate it, or he can write around it. “This world of ours … has its limits,” the third-person narrator observes, “ (as your Highness shall find when you have made the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the void beyond)” (p. 23). Bringing us as far as the “closing” of “the reverberating door” (p. 534), the narrator’s circuit stops at another “blank.” In the verbal tour de force of Bleak House,Dickens’s language repeatedly calls attention to itself coming up short.
This emphasis on boundaries is quite emphatic in Bleak House,where Dickens demonstrated himself to be at another peak of creative power, yet did not indulge in the novelist’s consummate powers of captivation and mystification. Bewilderment is ample in the book and world, but even as Dickens disclosed some of its sources, he did not promise to dispel the fog once and for all. Pointing to the horrors “around us every day,” he acknowledged the very real need for distraction from them: after all, we have the sheer pleasure of Bleak House.For all of Dickens’s capacity to do with words, he also offered a moderated vision of imaginative writing. Turning from the “sunny dawn of time” to the “time [of] shadow” of Bleak House,“when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes” (p. 535), Dickens acknowledged the power of the imagination, even as he restrained his “Fancy” and rested in the realm of likeness and un-likeness, the realm of “as if.” “Purposely dwell[ing] upon the romantic side of familiar things” (p.