Bleak House Satire

Taking place in the early 1800’s and published in the early 1850’s, Charles Dickens’ serial novel, Bleak House, captures the blights of Victorian England. Issues like disease, poverty, and government incompetence were prevalent in this society, and such issues were accompanied by a lack of social mobility and judgment towards the poor. The problems of Victorian society provided the perfect backdrop for the satire found in Dickens’ novel. Throughout Bleak House, Dickens critiques the Chancery, the government, or lack thereof, philanthropists, the class system, and more. Among his scathing critiques is that of religious officials. Dickens conveys his attitude toward societal ills through his seemingly exaggerated characters and their trials.

The ills of Victorian society are reflected in a host of primary sources, most of which came from the newspapers, journals, and magazines of the time period. Three years before Bleak House, The Lancet, a medical journal, published an article titled “How Cholera is spread.” The article explains exactly what its title suggests, yet also provides information about the spread of Cholera that suggests that poor people were responsible for their own infections. Two years before Dickens started to publish Bleak House serially, he wrote for Household Words, a magazine that published installations of stories as well as essays about various aspects of society. His writing within the magazine gave a nonfiction approach to the same issues he tackles in his novel. His description of living conditions in “A December Vision,” an article which was published in said magazine, provides an account of the horrid conditions in England at the time, and demonstrates how religion served as a lens of viewing

In the Victorian era the clergy were on the high end of the middle class. In preaching to Jo, who is the lowest of the lower class, Chadband is taking a position of moral superiority. He is pointing out Jo’s flaws, which he suggests are holding him back from “cooling himself in that stream,” while failing to note his own shortcomings. Jo’s flaws, it should be noted, are the result of his class. He’s in “darkness” both literally and figuratively. His place of residence is known for being a “black, dilapidated street”, and is physically dark (Dickens, 239). However, he is figuratively in the dark in the sense that he is uneducated; Jo can neither read nor write. While Jo’s shortcomings are out of his control, Chadband’s come from his sense of superiority. The most notable of Chadband’s shortcomings is his failure to act. Although he critiques Jo’s state of darkness, obscurity, and darkness he does nothing to help him out of these states. This is best demonstrated when Jo leaves the Snagsby residence. As he leaves “Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny” and “Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table” (280). Mr. Chadband, however, does nothing. Chadband’s hypocrisy provides a satirical commentary on the church in the Victorian era. In drawing attention to Chadband’s inaction towards Jo, Dickens draws attention to both the upper class and the