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Bleak House Week 3, Krook Goes to Pieces

SO MUCH HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN THIS BOOK.

Points I would like to make:

- I like Mr Gridley muchly. And am sad about his end.

LET HIM GO BACK TO THREATENING LAWYERS

- I forgot how many people die in this book. There're just corpses strewn everywhere. (Nemo, Jenny's baby, Mr Gridley, Tom Jarndyce, Coavinses, Miss Barbary, Krook, SO FAR)

- Richard drives me up the wall, even though I super-relate to him and his cheerful attitude and bouncing around of interests.

Richard and Esther

- I want Mr George to just settle down and be happy. I will tell all my friends to patronize his shooting gallery.

- Mr and Mrs Bagnet have the only healthy marriage in the book. Discuss.

- Sir Leicester is really wonderful in his own way, and it makes me so happy that while Dickens didn't like the upper classes and barely makes an attempt to write about them beyond caricature, he makes Sir Leicester something of a complex human being. A complex human being who very, very much loves his wife.

-Also:

Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call, when that poor life of yours would not have been worth a minute's purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at this moment.

THIS WAS MY AOL INSTANT MESSENGER STATUS FOR LIKE A YEAR IN COLLEGE. It's basically my favorite Bleak House quote, aside from everything Mr Boythorn says.

Dickens and class, though, is worth talking about. The aristocracy is mouldering away in his book. Frozen in time, while the rest of the world buzzes around it. Dickens couldn't write a lot about the aristocracy because he didn't KNOW a lot about it. Upward mobility and the chance to make something of oneself was so important to him in his life – there's no way this book wasn't going to reflect that in some way when dealing with so many disparate classes. Which is somewhat related to the Bagnets, only why them? Why not the Jellybys or the Pardiggles or the Chadbands or even the late Mrs. Turveydrop and her husband? What about the Bagnets made Dickens drop his constant mockery and decide here would be his shining example of domestic happiness?

Lady Dedlock is Esther's mother. Krook exploded. Guppy's up to something still. Will someone please love Jo. And Gridley:





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