COSMONAUTiCAL•net Symbolic Germ Theory
Bleak House begins with a description of Chancery, in London, in the mid-1800s. The scene is, unsurprisingly given the title of the novel, bleak; there is a “general infection of ill temper” in the air, caused by the “nidus of morbific effluvia” that is Chancery (Dickens, 13; Chadwick, 170). Chancery was “governed by Equity, shaped by legal precedents,” instead of Common Law, which was written and codified (Dickens, 990). The idea behind the Courts of Equity was that it would make men equal before the law. However, the system was “inherently backward-looking” and ended up creating more problems on top of the old ones and never solving any of them (Dickens, 990). Sir Joseph Lister observed in 1867, fourteen years after Bleak House was first published in novel form, that “filtration rapidly gives rise simultaneously to the development of organisms and the putrefactive changes” (188) and gives suggestions on how to prevent and cure infection. Filtration is the process of removing impurities from liquid or gases; it can operate, as in Chancery, on a metaphorical level as well as a literal one. Chancery, in trying to filter out the impurity of injustice only creates a metaphorical “air dust,” the byproduct of filtration (Lister, 188). The reader sees both Mr. Gridley and Richard Carstone fall ill and die of the contamination that Chancery creates into the air by attempting to clear up the diseases of inequality and dispute. However, some characters, like Mr. Jarndyce, are able to cleanse themselves of the infection of Chancery by discharging the desires and negative emotions associated with it. Chancery ultimately creates contamination, infecting the wounds caused by the involvement in a court case, and Lister’s suggestions for treating infected flesh wounds can be applied to the treatment of emotional wounds as well.
Those who catch the illness caused by Chancery suffer from common symptoms. First are the mental symptoms; obsession, frustration, and a fool’s hope. Ms. Flite, Mr. Gridley and Richard suffer from these symptoms. When the reader is introduced to Ms. Flite and Mr. Gridley, they are already sick with it. The reader, like Esther and Mr. John Jarndyce, fears that Richard will fall ill with the same disease. In addition to obsession, frustration and a fool’s hope, Richard suffers an early symptom of indecision. While suits are in Chancery, the disputed property is inaccessible to any party (Dickens, 990). Richard cannot settle down to any profession because he suffers from the fool’s hope that Jarndyce and Jarndyce will be solved in his favor and he won’t have to have a career at all. As the story progresses, so does Richard’s illness. He loses his merry personality, becoming increasingly withdrawn, agitated and anxious. Eventually, the fool’s hope gives way to disappointment and this ultimately is what kills those who suffer from Chancery. The somatic symptoms vary, but the cause and outcome of the final stage of the illness are the same: disappointment and, ultimately, death. Mr. Gridley and Richard die of the same illness with different physical manifestations caused by different bacteria in the same genus, Chancery.
The Courts of Equity, established as more just means of filtering injustice out of English law and society, creates what Lister describes in germ theory as “air dust” (Lister, 188). Lister also notes that “the septic energy of the air is directly proportioned to the abundance of the minute organisms in it.” The septic nature of Chancery, likewise, is directly proportioned to the number of cases and people involved in it. The more Chancery tries to filter out injustice, whether that be with new cases, or new additions to old cases, the more contamination it creates, breeding the “general infection of ill temper” that surrounds the area (Dickens, 13). All of this disease and decay is brought on by the Courts of Equity. Gridley has but one bond on earth that Chancery has not broken, his friendship with Ms. Flite, who suffers illness from the same infection (Dickens, 404).
In a way, those infected with Chancery close themselves off in a type of voluntary quarantine. Richard, once infected, breaks his relation to Mr. Jarndyce, who has somehow managed to avoid or delay the onset of the illness. Richard, like Ms. Flite and Mr. Gridley, moves into an apartment near Chancery. Chancery is a “nidus of morbific effluvia,” in the words of Sir Edwin Chadwick (170). Chadwick observed that “near proximity to even a small amount” of contaminates is enough to make people ill (Chadwick, 170). Richard tells himself that this apartment is not his home, but a temporary shelter until his suit is solved. He does not intend to linger in the apartment after Jarndyce and Jarndyce is solved, and he doesn’t; he dies in his apartment shortly after the suit is ended. Ms. Flite, Mr. Gridley and Richard, once infected, move in closer to the source of their disease and break ties with those not involved in Chancery.
Mr. Jarndyce is an exception; despite being legally involved in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, he remains personally uninvolved and uninfected by Chancery. Knowing the dangers of Chancery, he stays well away when he can and also does what he can in an attempt protect Ada and Richard from the infection. In medical cases, where “no septic particles are present … it is needless to apply antiseptic directly to the part affected. All that is required is to guard securely against the possibility of penetration of living germs from without” (Lister, 188-189). Cases like these are the “simplest conditions” (Lister, 188). Jarndyce tries to protect Ada and Richard by making Bleak House a sterile environment, free from the infection of Chancery. However, the pollution of Chancery is already in Bleak House, brought there by all of them. The house itself is infected, and even Jarndyce himself is infected, though the infection has not given rise to an illness yet, he is still contagious at times. In these times, he retreats not to Chancery for quarantine, but into the Growlry, where he passes the contagious period alone or with Esther. Esther is safe to see him in these times because she has no legal connection to the case and is therefore gifted with an immunity to it. Richard and Ada likewise are already infected because of their ill luck to be named in a will somehow associated with the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
There is another crucial element to even these “simplest conditions” (Lister, 188). In addition to keeping new contagions out, “free escape [must be] afforded for the discharge from within” (Lister, 189). The infection has no way to escape Richard, who has no Growlry. In the Growlry, Mr. Jarndyce can pass through the contagious period without infecting anyone with the “discharge” of his bad feelings about the case. All of his symptoms of obsession, frustration and a fool’s hope are safely allowed to pass from him without the risk of this effluvia of infecting anyone else.
Richard, however, has no outlet. Lister writes about treating wounds where pus and discharge are present. For Mr. Jarndyce in the Growlry, “free escape is afforded for the discharge from within” (Lister, 189). For Richard, who has nowhere to express his symptoms because his trusted companions Esther and Mr. Jarndyce tell him not to think or speak of it, the infectious material is trapped inside of him and so spreads internally, sickening his mind and body. Unlike Mr. Jarndyce, Richard also has no personal experience with the suffering that Chancery can cause, thereby making him more susceptible to the first stage of the disease, the fool’s hope. He doesn’t see the disease of Chancery until it’s too late and he has already been infected.
In cases like Richard’s as his illness progressed, where the infection has already taken hold, “mere guarding … however effectually, is not sufficient” (Lister, 189). Instead, “antiseptic must be in the first instance applied freely and energetically to the injured parts themselves” (Lister, 189). What would an antiseptic for Chancery look like, to be applied “where septic organisms may have already insinuated themselves” (Lister, 189)? Only an end to the suit that the sufferer is involved in. However, sometimes the shock of losing a suit, or of there being no reward after so much involvement with the case, is enough to kill the person. The cure can kill. Richard dies shortly after Jarndyce and Jarndyce is ended, but not solved. When Allen hears that the suit has been ended without a resolution he says that “this will break Richard’s heart” (Dickens, 975), and he’s right. Characters like Esther and Ada can ease the symptoms of Chancery, but they can’t cure it. Only a complete overhaul of the system could completely eradicate the disease.
At the time Bleak House was being written and published, there is no cure for Chancery, only for specific suits. If Jardyce and Jarndyce is a species, then Chancery is a genus, in a family of courts that tried to cleanse and purify the legal systems, the order they were part of. However Lister’s germ theory says that filtering only creates more impurities. In 1852, the year before Bleak House was published in novel form, the Court of Chancery Act was passed. It was an attempt to clear the “air dust” caused by filtration and to prevent further infection among the people of England. However, it only added more legal details and formalities to the already convoluted system. Just as Victorians did had not perfected the prevention and treatment of infection, they had not completely worked out an equitable system of justice. The infection of Chancery is far reaching, from London to Shropshire, from lowly Jo who finds himself involved in a suit by virtue of acquaintance with a man who copied documents for the case to the Lady Dedlock who has some unspecified legal involvement in the case. There is a vaccine for Chancery; those not involved in suits at the court are not infected with it, even when they come into contact with those infected or even with the court itself. Bleak House suggests that the best way for Victorian England to stop the spread of Chancery among its citizens is to remove the cause of the illness, the unjust Courts of Equity.
Works Cited
Chadwick, Edwin. “An Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population of Great Britian.” Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century:
An Anthology. Ed. Laura Otis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Penguin Books: London, 2003.
Lister, Joseph. “Illustrations of the Antiseptic System.” Literature and Science
in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Ed. Laura Otis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002.