day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich Limping Lucy in
‘Save England before it blows up, like the springing of a mine’ (Hillis-Miller 1998, 31) is the warning embedded in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, though it seems far from the time in which the novel was born. The 1850’s saw the staging of the Great Exhibition, an event through which England could boast, according to the Times, ‘of that day when all ages and climes shall be gathered round the throne of the maker’ (Schlicke, p48). Dickens was most certainly not to be found amongst this inertia of idol worship. For the novelist, the year was not one that should inspire celebration or self-approval. ... However it is debatable how far Dickens can actually be considered as this advocate of working class identity and point of view. ... Social unrest lies latent in Bleak House and there are moments when it certainly appears viable the ‘day is not far off’ when the lower orders will take their revenge for this harsh and stifling oppression. ... Whereas the Chartist is described by Carlyle as one to who ‘the four-and-twenty letters of the Alphabet are still Roman enigmas to him…’, Bleak House notes how it must be strange for a figure like Jo ‘to see people read…and not to have the least idea of all that language –to be every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb’. ... However that Tom is fast asleep means that both appear far from human. ... (BH 368) Her passion is dangerous and serves as a warning that such foreign zest could easily penetrate the back streets of England, particularly if the condition of England is not addressed immediately. Carlyle persistent caution was not unheeded by Dickens. ... (BH 717) It is no small wonder that the lower classes do not actively resist this pressure, especially when characters such as Jo are made to feel guilty for what they rarely understand. When Mrs Paradiggle invades the brickmaker’s house she acts as ‘if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a station house’. (BH 132) One should remember that they are not criminals. ... One may ask whether the political superiors should not be thankful that such lowly characters have not developed their point of view to the extent that they can recognised their ill treatment and their entitlement to basic human rights. ... It is not that he is ungrateful for the help that is offered him, but his trust begins to falter as a result of living in constant fear. ... (BH 714) Help comes few and far between, and often it can lead to the lower orders being implicated in situations they neither understand of wish to be a part of. ... What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and to God’. ... At times in the novel this caution not to approach them appears wise, particularly at other times they are capable of biting. ... They are the two sides of one personality, and as the narrator warns, ‘turn that dog’s descendents wild, like Jo, and in a a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark – but not their bite’ (BH 259) This bite it seems is considered to have its origins from ‘the north of England [from which Chesney Wold’s parasite – Volumnia fears there is a general conspiracy] to obtain her rouge pot and pearl necklace’. ... The portrayal of Mr Rouncewell’s success, embodied in the great power that lies behind the steam of his early toy engines, offers the largest threat against the rich. ... Dickens possibly would not have considered portraying the lower orders in any other way. The English poor are more like children than rebels, and anything harm they do cause is unconscious and unintentional. ... (Storey, 14) Alternatively to the pitiful ousted and hunted victim, the lower classes become in many ways mere comical and pathetic characters who would never intentionally disrupt what is essentially a corrupt system in need of reform but not destruction. ... For example Jo’s goodness ultimately comes from his innocence, that he ‘never was in other trouble at all…- sept not knowin’ nothink and starwation’ (BH 725). ... Although George reassures Jo that he should not ‘be alarmed if you hear shots; they be aimed at the target ant not at you’ (BH 725) one still feels that Jo and his order could easily be the target if they everso much as stepped out of line.