Day Twenty-Five

4/25

The Book: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

ISBN: 978-1-59308-311-3

Suggested By: Rebecca Mitchell

Where: Home

When: 9:00-9:50P

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 476 - 531 (55)

The Lead In: In this section there is a meeting between Esther and her mother, Lady Dedlock. Dedlock basically confesses to the fact, but then goes on to say that she will change nothing. How sad. But further, Esther agrees to this and promises to tell no one that she knows. WHat? The nobility of Esther is a little difficult for me to swallow. This woman desereted you at birth, why do you feel the need to protect her reputation?

The 411 on the 55: Esther recovers from her illness, but her face is scarred now. She is embaressed but bears it with her typical grace. She meets her mother, referenced earlier and decides to ignore the whole matter as the rest of the world is concerned. With this in mind, she travels to London to meet with Mr. Guppy to tell him to back off. He has been working hard to discover the secret of who her mother is, to win her affection, but agrees he will leave the matter alone now.

Richard returns to England, but is in serious debt and tells Esther that he cannot be responsible. Beyond this, he is friended up to Skimpole, who is milking him. Esther tries to get them seperated but  Richard can only think about the suit ending and the money he will get. He has even turned against his cousin, Mr. Jarndyce, so focused on the matter of law. After this meeting, Richard site down with his lawyer, Mr. Vohles, and is told that things are going to be protracted. He’s sad, expecting it to be over soon.

Line of the Day: “Whereas, now, I do declare to ou that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; that evert new delay, and every new disappoinment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce’s hand.” pg 523

 

The Fact on the Fiction: Throughout the course I make clear that, when my students become practitioners, they will have to cope with the lawyer-hatred that has pervaded Western culture since Jesus of Nazareth declared, “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade [*314] men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers….  Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered” (Luke 11: 46, 52 [King James Version]).  Lawyer-hatred is as constant a force in American culture, indeed in the culture of most Western nations, as what the eminent legal historian John Phillip Reid calls law-mindedness.  In that light, Arthur R. Miller remains as right now as he was in that classroom in 1978--BLEAK HOUSE is the one indispensable book.  It is the ultimate indictment of law, lawyers, and the legal system in the English language. From R. B. Bernstein’s intro to Bleak House