Bleak House & Charles Dickens Info
Hi Fellow Book Lovers!
As a reminder, at our meeting/party on Friday, we decided to pick the 3rd Friday of each month as our regular book club meeting. We will next meet Friday, June 18, so put that on your calendar.
I know that our next read, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, is a massive read and I get that some of you (Lorraine 😉) are not that excited about it. I have to admit that I am. It's been quite a while since we have read something really meaty and I'm ready for a challenge! I know that without this book club I would not have read even half of the novels on our list. I feel pretty proud of all of us for any effort we've made over the past 10 years to read any or all of these classics. I'm pretty certain most of us will not have finished Bleak House by then, but hopefully, we will all have made a start so we can watch the first couple of episodes of the mini-series. It's 8 episodes, each about an hour long, so perhaps we should meet for a movie watch party before the 18th? Suggestions? Ideas? I'm always up for another evening of food and fun!
As I mentioned on Friday, if you have an Audible account this is a free download. If you don't subscribe to Audible you can download a podcast app (Apple podcast if you have an iPhone). There are a bunch on the App Store and they are all free. After you download an app, search for "Bleak House" and you'll find several free podcasts of narration of the entire book. I even found one podcast titled "The Great Books of Literature" and Episode 1 is an hour-long discussion of Bleak House and why it is considered one of the great books of Western Civilization. I'm looking forward to listening to it. If I learn something interesting (I'm sure I will), I'll be sure and share it!
I thought that perhaps, to help us along and give a little encouragement to us all I'd post some regular updates about the book, its themes, and ideas. Here's a photo of the original book and a brief intro:
Dickens’s ninth novel, published in monthly parts in 1852–53, with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne, issued in one volume in 1853. Often characterized as the first of the late novels, Bleak House describes England as a bleak house, devastated by an irresponsible and self-serving legal system, symbolically represented by the Lord Chancellor ensconced in foggy glory in the Court of Chancery. Dickens uses two narrators, a third-person narrator who reports on the public life in the worlds of law and fashion and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, a young woman who tells her personal history. By this double narration, he is able to connect and contrast Esther’s domestic story with broad public concerns. Esther’s narrative traces her discovery of her identity as the illegitimate child of Lady Dedlock. Abandoned in infancy and raised by an abusive aunt, Esther is a self-denying, unassertive young woman, grateful for any recognition she receives from the patriarchal society around her. Her situation encapsulates that of the larger society, in which traditions of aristocratic privilege deny human needs and desires and patriarchal institutions like the courts make orphans of society’s children, enable slums and disease to flourish, and suppress individual autonomy by a “philanthropy” that makes dependents of its recipients.
Happy Reading1
Kris
