The mood of the novel is variable, as so much drama occurs and its plotlines are so interconnected and complicated. Because Bleak House was serialized, Dickens had an obligation to keep his readership engaged; as a result, the mood has lots of peaks and valleys of tragedy, excitement, and romance.
Early on, the mood of the novel is investigative, mysterious, and ominous when the first-person narrator is recounting events, because of the inefficient operations of Chancery and their frustrating effects. The reader feels engaged and curious as various suggestions and foreshadowings crop up and disappear into the fog. They feel sympathy and horror at the shocking conditions Jo lives in and of London's tenements and slums, and an accompanying distaste for the middle- and upper-class characters like Mr. Skimpole who do little to make things better. This, of course, is all accompanied by the humor and levity of Dickens' clever, satirical narrative voice in the third-person sections. Even the most wrenchingly painful aspects of London life are satirized in this book, bringing the reader closer to the victims and further from the perpetrators.
The reader is invited to feel frustrated with Chancery as the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on, and an increasing sense of curiosity and wonder as the mysteries of parentage, legal ownership, and love unfold. In the middle of the novel the reader is being pulled in many different emotional directions, as Dickens asks them to engage deeply with Esther's first-person life story, Jo's struggles against inequality, and the many, many more subplots (like the marriage of Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop, for example) that make up this capacious story. By the end of the book the mood is relieved, satisfied, and content, as plots are tied up and (most) legal disputes resolved.
