It has not been easy to read this past week. A young woman in my neighbourhood left this world far too early, leaving behind a six-year-old daughter and newborn twins. There was probably not a dry female eye in the hundred surrounding households, and the men, though drier, were just as glum. After two sleepless nights, I turned to Jane Austen, as I often do to take my mind off trouble. “Emma” kept me engaged for some hours, but about halfway through, I found the gloom still hung heavy.
I then attacked from another front and decided to try catharsis (Greek for wallow in misery). I pulled out “Bleak House”, Charles Dickens' finest, which I read almost once a year. “Bleak House” is thickly populated with those unhappy families that, according to Tolstoy, are more interesting than happy families. First are the high and mighty Dedlocks, who will be laid very low by the end of the tale, and none of us will rejoice at it. They are childless, but Lady Dedlock once had a child out of wedlock, and that is the pivot of the story. The Dedlocks' housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, broods over her elder son, an industrialist who despises the feudal values she lives by, and her younger son, who has run off to join the army. And that's just the beginning.
Even the unbroken families are miserable. Dickens (sent by his parents to work in a shoe-polish factory) knew well a child didn't have to be an orphan to be motherless. The unloving parent can cause quite as much misery. Mrs. Jellyby, devoted to her missions in Africa and other distant places, has no place in her heart for her own children. The young ones go cold and hungry and fall downstairs, and the eldest is her mother's drudge. Mr. Turveydrop, who owns a dancing school, works his son to the bone, while he himself lives in comfort off that son's earnings. Harold Skimpole, the most contemptible parent in the novel, pursues his own pleasures, keeping his family on the brink of bankruptcy.
Many of the orphans in this novel find surrogate parents. Charley, at thirteen, having lost both parents, plays mother to her siblings, and she in turn is nurtured and taught by her guardians. The central orphan of the story, Esther Summerson, ends as well as any of Dickens' heroes, with a home, a husband, and a loving family. And the virtual orphans too find surrogate mothering.
For catharsis we must look to Jo. The most desolate of all the sad populace of this novel, oblivious of his beginnings, Jo sweeps a muddy street crossing and begs a few coins when we first see him. He gets some help from passers-by, and much harassment from others, but as he lies on his deathbed there is after all a compassionate voice to say a prayer with him. “Our Father.” “Our Father!—yes, that's wery good, sir.” A scene to get the tears rolling, every single time.
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