Day Twenty-Nine

4/29

The Book: Bleak House by Charles Dickens

ISBN: 978-1-59308-311-3

Suggested By: Rebecca Mitchell

Where: Home

When: 2-2:35P

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 702-757 (55)

The Lead In: Bleak House is much better the further in I am. The story line is still predictable I guess, but, every once in a while, Dickens surprises me. I am one day away if I stretch my reading tomorrow.

The 411 on the 55: The gig is up everyone knows what Lady Dedlock has done and she flips out and runs away from the house leaving a suicide note. Lord Dedlock has an apparent stroke just after and hires Bucket, after resurfacing from the stroke, to go after her. There is a touching scene where he declares her love for her, claiming that no matter what has happened he will not punish her in any way.

Bucket grabs Esther to help him find Dedlock. Almost 30 pages of driving around, a little draggy if you ask me. Eventually they find her at the grave of the old Captian/scribe Nemo, her lover and Esther’s father, and she’s, OF COURSE, dead. Of what? Who knows? Only in Victorian novels does one spontaneously combust or die of shame. Didn’t like that. Face your shame, kill yourself if you can’t live, but you don’t die of sadness.

Line of the Day: “My Dear,” he returned, “when a young lady is as mild as she’s game, and as game as she’s mild, that’s all I ask, and more than I expect. She then becomes a Queen, and that’s about what you are yourself.” pg 747 (Bucket to Esther)

The Fact on the Fiction: Ok, I know this is too awesome to believe, but apparently there is a Dickens Tribute band! “Tulkinghorn was this lawyer who, tried to destroy her, He was shot by a disgruntled maid.” Actual lyric!  On Myspace Wards in Jarndyce If you happen to go, give em a shout out from 55pages!