Bleak House ch. 14-15

Dear J-

When I sit down to read it on the computer, it makes sense, and paragraphs hang together well, sentences seem manageable.  On the Treo, though, despite crunching the text size down, I feel almost as though it’s like painting the outside world by peeking through a keyhole.  Odd.

14. Deportment
15. Bell Yard

Progress:  26%

There’s a repeated theme here, of charity gone awry, of people so caught up in doing perceived good deeds that they needed to trumpet their own praises.  Of course, it happens upon the occasion of going to visit the Jellybys again.  Just to hammer the lesson home, Dickens dredges up Skimpole again to show the refreshing contrast of having no ulterior motives — well, of having no love for self-congratulation, I suppose.

Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told us.

Gridley exposes a little more of Tulkinghorn’s demeanor; “by being so cool and satisfied” while the suits drag on and he loses time and money both, he starts to remind me of people I’ve known.  You know — those who suffer the pain of working alongside you for that terrible boss, or using that terrible tool, or having a terrible time, but no no no — can’t change things, that would make it too simple, I suppose.  Delighting in misery — whether your own or someone else’s — just seems too petty.

I’m reminded of the dangers to leaping to judgement prematurely; where you might have dismissed Coavins as a rough-hewn man, we find his last moments and legacy strangely affecting.  God knows that having a child of my own has turned me into a big softy, but I found it hard — even years removed and in the realm of fiction — to get through the cheerful pluck exhibited by the orphans who’d been dealt a crap sandwich and yet make the best of it.  Speaking of which, Lady Dedlock’s up next; oh, the joy.

Mike

Tags: bleak house, dickens, nanoremo