The Significance of Jo in "Bleak House".

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Charles Dickens' book "Bleak House" , focusing particularly on the significance of the character Jo and the way in which he met his death.

From the Paper:

"In Bleak House, Dickens paints a portrait of England with the broad strokes of fiction dwelling, as he himself admits, "upon the romantic side of familiar things"(6). As the title of the novel suggests, Dickens shows his audience a bleak portrayal of their homeland that is shrouded in imagery of fog, mire, and darkness. These images of physical obscurity represent the less tangible obscurity present in English institutions, such as in government, organized religion, and the legal system, in particular the Court of Chancery. The original purpose of these institutions, which was to serve the people who had created them, has been so obscured by a distortion of human values that these institutions have lapsed into a state of inertia, serving no one but themselves. It is of this inert society that Bleak House is a model. The novel also illustrates, through the theme of convergence, the interdependent structure of society, as characters of all social levels are seen to interconnect. Of all these characters whose existences infringe upon each other's, perhaps the darkest is the homeless little cross-sweeper Jo. In his appalling mental and physical darkness, Jo represents all of those who live and grow in the neglect produced by the inertia of his country's institutions."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bigelow, Gordon. Fiction, Famine, and the Rise of Economics in Victorian Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
• Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Ed. Stephen Gill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Marshall, Gail. Victorian Fiction: Contexts. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.
• Miller, J. Hillis. "The Interpretive Dance in Bleak House." Charles Dickens's Bleak House. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 13-36.
• Pederson, Winnifred J. "Jo in Bleak House." Dickensian 60 (1964): 162-167.

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