The Story of a City with Bleak Houses: The Study of the Social Distress in Dickens’s Bleak House

Abstract

Bleak House is an especially interesting case among Dickens's novels, in which fact and fiction are integrated proficiently within the context of the novel. The plot is basically made upon imaginative events, while the author's perspective in describing the Victorian London is essentially realistic. This article aims at reading Bleak House as a realistic portrait of the Victorian London, by demonstrating that the moral corruption of the ruling administration, particularly the legal system, is at the root of the general misery and bleakness that prevailed the lives of people. The study indicates how Dickens has tried to express the belief that certain aspects of the real world would become remote to our sensibilities through time, and that it is art's mission to keep them alive.