In the first paragraph of the novel, Dickens alludes to the biblical story of the Flood which drowned the world in the Bible's Book of Genesis, using imagery from that story to describe the sloshy density of the mud covering London:
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
In the Bible, after Noah and his ark full of animals run aground on Mount Ararat, the waters that cover the earth recede. It would have been easy for Dickens's Victorian audience to place this reference and to imagine the grand scale of the muddy wasteland left behind. It also makes the idea of the dinosaur somewhat incongruous, as there are no dinosaurs in the Bible. This tension between modern science and Christian tradition is echoed a lot in the book, where old and new worlds collide in industrial, modernizing London and traditional, historical London (although Charles Darwin wouldn't publish his definitive work on evolution until 1859, seven years after Bleak House came out.)
The grand scale of the dinosaur echoes the grand scale of London—Dickens gives an image of a street on Holborn Hill wide enough to accommodate a dinosaur "forty feet long or so." This is probably not accurate, but it helps to give the reader a sense of the metropolis's sprawling size. The placement of Lincoln's Inn in this passage—admittedly an old institution, but not older than the Flood—and the muddy wasteland world that surrounds it also point to the great age and the decrepitude of Chancery. Holborn is imaginatively envisioned as being older than Noah's Ark, and the courts of Chancery as being around when the dinosaurs walked.
When Dickens describes London, a great deal of his language at the beginning of the novel emphasizes its endless, repetitive streets and impenetrable, gloomy weather. It's worst, it seems, where the London legal system makes its home, as Dickens tells the reader in Chapter 1:
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time [...]
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Everything is "raw," "dense," and "muddy" in London, but it's all much rawer, denser, and muddier near the "leaden-headed" old corporation of the High Court. These dense visual images of obscurity suggest that the mystifying "fog" emanates from the Inns of Court; Dickens later makes it clear that in Bleak House, this is symbolically if not literally true.
The visual image Dickens provides here of the Lord Chancellor is like a spider in the middle of a misty web. He is right in the middle of the "leaden-headed old corporation," as if he is himself the highest concentration somehow of this "obscurity." Dickens repeats the phrase "at the very heart of the fog" later in the same chapter, as he describes the Chancellor's seat within the Courtroom itself as "right in the midst of the mud, and at the very heart of the fog." Dickens's repetition of the visual imagery of obscurity cements the idea that Chancery is grim, gloomy, and incomprehensible. The Inns of Court are so present in the lives of all the characters of Bleak House, but their inner workings and their true purpose are deliberately hazy.
Dickens alludes to an English folk tale at the beginning of Chapter 5. In doing so, he invokes the history of England and emphasizes the difference between the smoky streets of London and the fresh air of the "real country road," as Esther recounts:
At last we got into a real country road again, with windmills, rickyards, milestones, farmers’ wagons, scents of old hay, swinging signs and horse troughs: trees, fields, and hedgerows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before us, and the immense metropolis behind; and when a wagon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around. ‘The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,’ said Richard [...]
The tale of Dick Whittington (the "namesake" Richard refers to) is a semi-fictional story of Richard Whittington, a merchant who became the Mayor of London in the 1300s. It's a charming story about a self-made man and his cat beating the odds. It's also a sharp left turn away from the tone of Bleak House, in which poverty seems like an inescapable condition for most people.
The London that leads into the suburbs and then into the country is very different from the sooty, still London of Chancery. Juxtaposed with the "immense metropolis," the bucolic and charming images of "beautiful horses" and countryside filled with "farmer's wagons" and "scents of old hay" seem like a fairy-tale dream. The sensory language of "clear-sounding" bells also evokes the Whittington story and its "cheerful" influences for Richard and the reader. Unlike the folktale, though, these bells seem to be telling the group they're in the right place outside of London, where they're suddenly so happy they could "all three have sung" along. In the folk-tale, the bells urge the main character to "turn back" to London and claim his destiny: here, they seem to suggest that the young people should stay out.
In comparison to the wealthy, clean, and safe locations in the book, a great deal of the district of Holborn is described using the sensory language of dirt and neglect. Readers feel the grimy, unclean, and unsafe nature of the houses of Tom-All-Alone's, the dingy streets of Chancery, and the foggy, terrifying alleys more intensely through these images. For instance, when he first describes the slum in which Jo lives, Dickens writes:
Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint [...]
The image of teeming maggots on a rain-soaked and "ruined" human body the author describes here is visceral and disgusting. Life in these slums reduces people to their most basic animal needs for survival. Their very existence is made "foul" by their environment. The wet, chilly sensory language of "drips" getting in as the "crowd of foul existence" shifts and warps, "fetching and carrying fever," contributes to the general sense of damp, decay, and revulsion. It is unclear here whether Dickens is referring to actual vermin or to the urban poor themselves when he describes the "swarm of misery" that inhabits these tenements. As he immediately references the disengaged and unpleasant Lords Coodle, Doodle, and Foodle, the author implies that these gentlemen would see little difference between vermin and people.
Even comparatively wealthier parts of Holborn are described as unpleasantly dim and unclean by the narrator, though this might have more to do with their purpose than with the presence of real dirt and filth. Rich and poor areas are also very close to each other, as Dickens regularly mentions. In Chancery Lane, the office of Mr. Vholes in Symond's Inn is described as a:
little, pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn of old building materials, which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond’s memory with congenial shabbiness.
Rather than being clean and efficient, Vholes's office "takes kindly" to decay and neglect. Slow-acting mold and "dry rot" sets in, making not just the office but the entire "small inn" seem "dismal" and shabby. The atmosphere isn't evil, it's just complacently unappealing, "congenial" in its "shabbiness." It's even quite pitiful and sympathetic in some ways, as Dickens uses gentler language to describe it than the other Inns. It's "little," "pale" and "woe-begone," a neglected child compared to the huge, austere bulk of Lincoln's and Gray's Inns. Compared to the rotten grandeur of Lincoln's Inn, Symond's has a different kind of mildewing unpleasantness. It's not actively malicious, it's just badly kept up and cheaply made, implying that it cannot produce things of quality even if it means well. Finally, then, there's no completely good law court and no completely good neighbourhood of Holborn in Bleak House, no matter how "congenial."
When Lady Dedlock learns from Mr. Guppy that Esther's real last name is "Hawdon," she undergoes a ghoulish and visible transformation that paradoxically makes her seem both alive and dead. Dickens uses a simile to describe this state of extreme shock and torpor. After receiving this news, Lady Dedlock appears to Guppy to be
for the moment, dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence, and of what he has said [...] her dead condition seem to have passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
The visual imagery of this horrifying realization is full of delicate, shivering diction. The simile of the tremor passing over Lady Dedlock like a "ripple over water" makes the reader feel the shudder that engulfs her after hearing this portentous news. To Guppy she seems—in this moment—"dead," but the death isn't permanent. Instead, the "death" washes over her like a "ripple of water" before she can compose herself. Like a ripple in a pond, it dissipates quickly, but not before it gives the reader a powerful impression of the (usually cold and stoic) Lady Dedlock's fragility. She teeters on the edge of a breakdown in this passage, seeming to pass out of the world before her consciousness can "return."
Lady Dedlock is usually totally composed, but in this scene Dickens uses visual language to imply that her character has become incredibly brittle, like a corpse decayed to powder and paper in a tomb. To Guppy, the action of cracking her emotional shell seems like it might literally disintegrate her body. When she hears the news, she reminds Guppy of a corpse "struck by the air like lightning," suddenly so fragile she might crumble away. Of course, Lady Dedlock isn't dead or rotted to powder, because she doesn't "vanish in a breath," but this scene underscores just how startling Guppy's revelation is.
Dickens alludes to classical mythology within a simile in Chapter 32, referencing the Greek myth of Argus Panoptes. Describing the visual imagery of the "clogged lamps" of Chancery as being like the endlessly watching eyes of Argus, the narrator says:
From tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candle-light reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheepskin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land.
Dickens combines the image of the "clogged lamps" of Equity (the law practiced in Chancery) with the "fathomless pockets" of Argus's hundred eyes. Argus, whose job in Greek legends was to watch carefully over a precious treasure, had the special skill of being able to see everywhere at once. Through Dickens's simile, the court of Lincoln's Inn is also symbolically able to do this, as the law "watches" all aspects of British life. The sensory language of this complex passage is all visual, as it all relates to Dickens's allusion to Argus watching his surroundings.
Despite their many "eyes," Dickens describes the Inns' view of life in Britain as "clogged." Although like Argus it is "hundred-eyed," its vision is "bleared" and it can't see anything clearly. Nothing is simple or easily discernible in the view of the law in Bleak House.
The things that can be "seen" in this passage don't paint a brighter picture of life in London, either. The only "clear" images are those of "draughtsmen" and "conveyancers" working through the night. The windows of the Holborn neighborhood are warmly lit, but the light isn't restful. Instead, each pinpoint of light indicates someone working into the small hours on a mundane task. Rather than enjoying the world, these people are stuck at their desks inside the labyrinth of the law courts, working hard on the "entanglement" of things. As Dickens has related the lights of Chancery to the eyes of Argus, each lit lamp symbolically becomes an "eye" on the worker who uses it. The lights of Lincoln's Inn imprison and guard its workers like Argus, another many-eyed monster.
In comparison to the wealthy, clean, and safe locations in the book, a great deal of the district of Holborn is described using the sensory language of dirt and neglect. Readers feel the grimy, unclean, and unsafe nature of the houses of Tom-All-Alone's, the dingy streets of Chancery, and the foggy, terrifying alleys more intensely through these images. For instance, when he first describes the slum in which Jo lives, Dickens writes:
Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint [...]
The image of teeming maggots on a rain-soaked and "ruined" human body the author describes here is visceral and disgusting. Life in these slums reduces people to their most basic animal needs for survival. Their very existence is made "foul" by their environment. The wet, chilly sensory language of "drips" getting in as the "crowd of foul existence" shifts and warps, "fetching and carrying fever," contributes to the general sense of damp, decay, and revulsion. It is unclear here whether Dickens is referring to actual vermin or to the urban poor themselves when he describes the "swarm of misery" that inhabits these tenements. As he immediately references the disengaged and unpleasant Lords Coodle, Doodle, and Foodle, the author implies that these gentlemen would see little difference between vermin and people.
Even comparatively wealthier parts of Holborn are described as unpleasantly dim and unclean by the narrator, though this might have more to do with their purpose than with the presence of real dirt and filth. Rich and poor areas are also very close to each other, as Dickens regularly mentions. In Chancery Lane, the office of Mr. Vholes in Symond's Inn is described as a:
little, pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn of old building materials, which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond’s memory with congenial shabbiness.
Rather than being clean and efficient, Vholes's office "takes kindly" to decay and neglect. Slow-acting mold and "dry rot" sets in, making not just the office but the entire "small inn" seem "dismal" and shabby. The atmosphere isn't evil, it's just complacently unappealing, "congenial" in its "shabbiness." It's even quite pitiful and sympathetic in some ways, as Dickens uses gentler language to describe it than the other Inns. It's "little," "pale" and "woe-begone," a neglected child compared to the huge, austere bulk of Lincoln's and Gray's Inns. Compared to the rotten grandeur of Lincoln's Inn, Symond's has a different kind of mildewing unpleasantness. It's not actively malicious, it's just badly kept up and cheaply made, implying that it cannot produce things of quality even if it means well. Finally, then, there's no completely good law court and no completely good neighbourhood of Holborn in Bleak House, no matter how "congenial."
Dickens foreshadows the death of Lady Dedlock in Chapter 40 through a series of visual images involving the Dedlock family portraits. These images spell out not only her impending death, but the downfall of the noble family as a whole:
But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age and death. And now, upon my lady’s picture over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker rises shadow on the wall [...]
Although other portraits mentioned previously in this passage are illuminated beautifully by the sun, with one that even "seems to bathe in glowing water, and it ripples as it glows," Lady Dedlock's portrait is cast into gloom. The visual language of shadow and the retreat of the sun from the painting of Lady Dedlock is quite frightening here, especially as Dickens directly says it has the effect of "age and death" on the portrait. Sunlight is contrasted with darkness here, as the author aligns the visual imagery of the day with liveliness, and the evening with death.
The language is deliberately vague in this segment when Dickens says "the Dedlocks" are being brought "down into age and death." He might mean the portraits are being covered by the "veil or hood" of night, but could also mean that the house of Dedlock itself is failing. He emphasizes this ghostly idea with his visual descriptions of the "weird" shadow of the tree. The effects of shadow in the room make the painting of Lady Dedlock "turn pale" and "flutter" like a phantom in the mind's eye of the reader. Rather than being unmoving as paintings usually are, it's wavering with an impossible, spectral presence.
What's happening here to the portraits foreshadows what happens to Lady Dedlock later in Bleak House. Lady Dedlock's portrait becomes "veiled" and secretive in this passage, as she herself does when seeking Esther. Events beyond her control conspire more and more to destabilize her life as the book goes on, just as her painting is cast into deeper and deeper gloom by the shadows outside Chesney Wold rising "higher and darker."
The Dedlock family portraits almost seem as if they're being dropped into a hole, in this passage, as the sensory language of dusk surrounds and covers them. This small section, as the reader sees by Chapter 55, is all also grim foreshadowing for Lady Dedlock's approaching suicide. Just like the portraits covered by "shadow" and hidden, when Lady Dedlock kills herself she does so by climbing into someone else's grave. She is literally "brought down" into the darkness through this choice.
