bleak house notes,black swan theory, cathay pacific junket debacle

7/27/2019 Bleak House Notes,Black swan theory, Cathay Pacific junket debacle

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junket

Ajunketis a pleasure trip, often funded by someone else. You've probably

heard of a politician taking ajunketto a fancy resort, all paid for using taxpayer money.

A junket can be used as a gift to try to get something from the person going

on the trip.

----If you're a travel reporter and resort owners pay for your junket to checkout their new property in Hawaii, you might feel like you owe them a goodreview.

----A junket isn't always devious: the word can simply mean a journey takenfor pleasure, like when you take your boat out and sail down the coast for acouple days.

Cathay Pacific junket debacle is shamelessness at a whole

new level

Poor Cheng Yiu-tong! I don't mean this rhetorically. It turns out the ExecutiveCouncillor really is poor. When asked whether he would cough up themoney after being exposed for taking a luxury, all-expenses-paid trip toFrance by Cathay Pacific along with a group of lawmakers, he flatly refused.

He said he did nothing wrong as he had already declared the trip, adding: "Iwon't give it back, and I have no budget to give it back."
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That ought to be the political quote of the year.

The long-time head of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, now itshonorary president, Cheng apparently doesn't make enough money to

cover the business class tickets for himself and a family member. Or, morelikely, the pro-Beijing unionist is unrepentant because he thinks such

junkets are perks of the job. The media and other politicians, he said, havefor many years accepted junkets. Yes, that's true, though no one ever paid alavish overseas trip for myself and my wife. No corporation would botherwith small fry like me who have no power to scrutinise a licensing

application that might create a rival airline to Cathay or approve the budget

for building a third airport runway.

No doubt fellow traveller Ip Kwok-him felt the same way as Cheng. TheDemocratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong membersaid the trip was just for socialising.

Both men take shamelessness to a new level. All but one of the otherlawmakers on the trip have promised to pay back a part or most of the costs.

Democrat Albert Ho Chun-yan has been hiding his role as a board member ofthe Airport Authority and so is most exposed to charges of conflict of interest.But at least he promises to pay back HK$50,000, as does fellow DemocratJames To Kun-sun. Elizabeth Quat, another DAB member, would donate partof the cost of the free ticket to a charity. Chan Kin-por, of the insurancesector, would give HK$80,000 to the Hong Kong Red Cross. The Liberal Party'sFelix Chung Kwok-pan said he would make a charity donation but didn't sayhow much. Pro-democracy lawmaker Kenneth Leung, of the accounting

sector, has said he would donate HK$100,000.

But independent lawmaker Ma Fung-kwok has said nothing so far.


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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly

Improbable

By NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

Published: April 22, 2007

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the old world were convincedthat allswans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completelyconfirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan mighthave been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and othersextremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the

significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learningfrom observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. Onesingle observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millenniaof confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is onesingle (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.

Related

'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

Possibly Maybe(April 22, 2007)

I push one step beyond this philosophical-logical question into an empiricalreality, and one that has obsessed me since childhood. What we call here aBlack Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations,because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second,

it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, humannature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence afterthe fact,making it explainable and predictable.

I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective(though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans
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explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas andreligions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our ownpersonal lives. Ever since we left the Pleistocene, some ten millennia ago, theeffect of these Black Swans has been increasing. It started accelerating

during the industrial revolution, as the world started getting morecomplicated, while ordinary events, the ones we study and discuss and try topredict from reading the newspapers, have become increasinglyinconsequential.

Just imagine how little your understanding of the world on the eve of theevents of 1914 would have helped you guess what was to happen next.(Don't cheat by using the explanations drilled into your cranium by your dull

high school teacher). How about the rise of Hitler and the subsequent war?How about the precipitous demise of the Soviet bloc? How about the rise ofIslamic fundamentalism? How about the spread of the Internet? How aboutthe market crash of 1987 (and the more unexpected recovery)? Fads,epidemics, fashion, ideas, the emergence of art genres and schools. All followthese Black Swan dynamics. Literally, just about everything of significancearound you might qualify.

This combination of low predictability and large impact makes the BlackSwan a great puzzle; but that is not yet the core concern of this book. Add tothis phenomenon the fact that we tend to act as if it does not exist! I don'tmean just you, your cousin Joey, and me, but almost all "social scientists"who, for over a century, have operated under the false belief that their toolscould measure uncertainty. For the applications of the sciences ofuncertainty to real-world problems has had ridiculous effects; I have beenprivileged to see it in finance and economics. Go ask your portfolio manager

for his definition of "risk," and odds are that he will supply you with ameasure that excludes the possibility of the Black Swan-hence one that hasno better predictive value for assessing the total risks than astrology (we willsee how they dress up the intellectual fraud with mathematics). This problemis endemic in social matters.


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The central idea of this book concerns our blindness with respect torandomness, particularly the large deviations: Why do we, scientists ornonscientists, hotshots or regular Joes, tend to see the pennies instead of thedollars? Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible

significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their hugeinfluence? And, if you follow my argument, why does reading the newspaperactually decrease your knowledge of the world?

It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significantshocks. It is not so hard to identify the role of Black Swans, from yourarmchair (or bar stool). Go through the following exercise. Look into yourown existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and

the inventions that have taken place in our environment since you were bornand compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many ofthem came on a schedule? Look into your own personal life, to your choiceof profession, say, or meeting your mate, your exile from your country oforigin, the betrayals you faced, your sudden enrichment or impoverishment.How often did these things occur according to plan?

What You Do Not Know

Black Swan logic makes what you don't knowfar more relevant than whatyou do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused andexacerbated by their being unexpected.

Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk beenreasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. Ifsuch a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would

have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had lockedbulletproof doors, and the attack would not have taken place, period.Something else might have taken place. What? I don't know. Isn't it strangeto see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen?What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know(that New York is an easy terrorist target, for instance) may become


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inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it. It may be odd torealize that, in such a strategic game, what you know can be trulyinconsequential.

This extends to all businesses. Think about the "secret recipe" to making akilling in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious then someonenext door would have already come up with the idea and it would havebecome generic. The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be anidea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restaurateurs.It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected thesuccess of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and themore successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea. The same

applies to the shoe and the book businesses-or any kind of entrepreneurship.The same applies to scientific theories-nobody has interest in listening totrivialities. The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inverselyproportional to what it is expected to be.

Consider the Pacific tsunami of December 2004. Had it been expected, itwould not have caused the damage it did-the areas affected would havebeen less populated, an early warning system would have been put in place.

What you know cannot really hurt you.

Experts and "Empty Suits"

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of

history, given the share of these events in the dynamics of events.

But we act as though we are able to predict historical events, or, even wore,as if we are able to change the course of history. We produce thirty yearprojections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that wecannot even predict these for next summer-our cumulative prediction errorsfor political and economic events are so monstrous that every time I look atthe empirical record I have to pinch myself to verify that I am not dreaming.What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our


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absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engagein deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do notknow it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the casual chains between policyand actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive

ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit.

Our inability to predict in environments subjected to the Black Swan, coupledwith a general lack of the awareness of this state of affairs, means thatcertain professionals, while believing they are experts, are in fact not basedon their empirical record, they do not know more about their subject matterthan the general population, but they are much better at narrating-or, worse,at smoking you with complicated mathematical models. They are also more

likely to wear a tie.

Black Swans being unpredictable, we need to adjust to their existence (ratherthan navely try to predict them). There are so many things we can do if wefocus on anti knowledge, or what we do not know. Among many otherbenefits, you can set yourself up to collect serendipitous Black Swans bymaximizing your exposure to them.

Learning to Learn

Another related human impediment comes from excessive focus on what wedo know: we tend to learn the precise, not the general.

What did people learn from the 9/11 episode? Did they learn that someevents, owing to their dynamics, stand largely outside the realm of thepredictable? No. Did they learn the built-in defect of conventional wisdom?No. What did they figure out? They learned precise rules for avoiding Islamicprototerrorists and tall buildings. Many keep reminding me that it isimportant for us to be practical and take tangible steps rather than to"theorize" about knowledge. The story of the Maginot Line shows how weare conditioned to be specific. The French, after the Great War, built a wallalong the previous German invasion route to prevent reinvasion-Hitler just


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(almost) effortlessly went around it. The French had been excellent studentsof history; they just learned with too much precision. They were too practicaland exceedingly focused for their own safety.

We do not spontaneously learn that we don't learn that we don't learn. Theproblem lies in the structure of our minds: we don't learn rules, just facts,and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to notlearn rules) we don't seem to be good at getting. We scorn the abstract; wescorn it with passion.

Why? It is necessary here, as it is my agenda in the rest of this book, both tostand conventional wisdom on its head and to show how inapplicable it is to

our modern, complex, and increasingly recursive environment.

But there is a deeper question: What are our minds made for? It looks as ifwe have the wrong user's manual. Our minds do not seem made to think andintrospect; if they were, things would be easier for us today, but then wewould not be here today and I would not have been here to talk about it-mycounterfactual, introspective, and hard-thinking ancestor would have beeneaten by a tiger while his nonthinking, but faster-reacting cousin would have

run for cover. Consider that thinking is time-consuming and generally a greatwaste of energy, that our predecessors spent more than a hundred millionyears as nonthinking mammals and that in the blip in our history duringwhich we have used our brain we have used it on subjects too peripheral tomatter. Evidence shows that we do much less thinking than we believe wedo-except, of course, when we think about it.

A NEW KIND OF INGRATITUDE

It is quite saddening to think of those people who have been mistreated byhistory. There were thepotes maudits, like Edgar Allan Poe or ArthurRimbaud, scorned by society and later worshipped and force-fed toschoolchildren. (There are even schools named after high school dropouts).Alas, this recognition came a little too late for the poet to get a serotonin kick


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out of it, or to prop up his romantic life on earth. But there are even moremistreated heroes-the very sad category of those who we do not know wereheroes, who saved our lives, who helped us avoid disasters. They left notraces and did not even know that they were making a contribution. We

remember the martyrs who died for a cause that we knew about, neverthose no less effective in their contribution but whose cause we were neveraware-precisely because they were successful. Our ingratitude towards the

potes maudits fades completely in front of this other type of thanklessness.This is a far more vicious kind of ingratitude: the feeling of uselessness on thepart of the silent hero. I will illustrate with the following thought experiment.

Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision, and

perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect andemployment on September 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously lockedbulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high costs to the struggling airlines)-justin case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center inNew York City. I know this is lunacy, but it is just a thought experiment (I amaware that there may be no such thing as a legislator with intellect, courage,vision, and perseverance; this is the point of the thought experiment). Thelegislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel, as itcomplicates their lives. But it would certainly have prevented 9/11.

The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors gets no statues in publicsquares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary."Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9/11, died of complications ofliver disease." Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how itsquandered resources, the public, with great help from airline pilots, mightwell boot him out of office. Vox clamantis in deserto. He will retire depressed,

with a great sense of failure. He will die with the impression of having donenothing useful. I wish I could go attend his funeral, but, reader, I can't findhim. And yet, recognition can be quite a pump. Believe me, even those whogenuinely claim that they do not believe in recognition, and that theyseparate labor from the fruits of labor, actually get a serotonin kick from it.


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See how the silent hero is rewarded: even his own hormonal system willconspire to offer no reward.

Now consider again the events of 9/11. In their aftermath, who got the

recognition? Those you saw in the media, on television performing heroicacts, and those whom you saw trying to give you the impression that theywere performing heroic acts. The latter category includes someone like theNew York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, who "saved the stockexchange" and received a huge bonus for his contribution (the equivalent ofseveral thousandaverage salaries). All he had to do was be there to ring theopening bell on television-the television that, we will see, is the carrier ofunfairness and a major cause of Black Swan blindness.

Who gets rewarded, the central banker who avoids a recession or the onewho comes to "correct" his predecessors' faults and happens to be thereduring some economic recovery? Who is more valuable, the politician whoavoids a war or the one who starts a new one (and is lucky enough to win)?

It is the same logic reversal we saw earlier with the value of what we don'tknow; everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment, but

few reward acts of prevention. We glorify those who left their names inhistory books at the expense of those contributors about whom our booksare silent. We humans are not just a superficial race (this may be curable tosome extent); we are a very unfair one.

LIFE IS VERY UNUSUAL

This is a book about uncertainty; to this author, the rare event equalsuncertainty. This may seem like a strong statement-that we need toprincipally study the rare and extreme events in order to figure out commonones-but I will make myself clear as follows. There are two possible ways toapproach phenomena. The first is to rule out the extraordinary and focus onthe "normal." The examiner leaves aside "outliers" and studies ordinary cases.The second approach is to consider that in order to understand a


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phenomenon, one needs to first consider the extremes-particularly if, likethe Black Swan, they carry an extraordinary cumulative effect.

I don't particularly care about the usual. If you want to get an idea of a

friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look athim under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glowof daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining onlywhat he does on an ordinaryday? Can we understand health withoutconsidering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is oftenirrelevant. Almost everything in social life is produced by rare butconsequential shocks and jumps; all the while almost everything studiedabout social life focuses on the "normal," particularly with "bell curve"

methods of inference that tell you close to nothing. Why? Because the bellcurve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confidentthat we have tamed uncertainty. Its nickname in this book is GIF, GreatIntellectual Fraud. . . .

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthlyinstalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be oneof Dickens' finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and

engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. Thestory is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly bya mostly omniscient narrator.Memorable characters include the menacinglawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly but depressive John Jarndyce, and the

childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the likeable but

imprudent Richard Carstone.

At the novel's core is long-running litigation in England's Court of Chancery,

Jarndyce v Jarndyce, which has far-reaching consequences for all involved.T

------his case revolves around a testatorwho apparently made several wills.
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---- The litigation, which already has consumed years and between 60,000and 70,000 in court costs, is emblematic of the failure of Chancery.

----Dickens' assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system is based in

part on his own experiences as a law clerk, and in part on his experiences asa Chancery litigant seeking to enforce his copyright on his earlier books.

---- His harsh characterisation of the slow, arcane Chancery law process gavememorable form to pre-existing widespread frustration with the system.

----Though Chancery lawyers and judges criticized Dickens's portrait ofChancery as exaggerated and unmerited, his novel helped to spur an

ongoing movement that culminated in enactment of the legal reform in the1870s.

----- In fact, Dickens was writing just as Chancery was reforming itself, withthe Six Clerks and Masters mentioned in Chapter One abolished in 1842 and

1852 respectively:

the need for further reform was being widely debated.[1]These factsraise an issue as to when Bleak House is actually set.

Technically it must be before 1842, and at least some of his readers atthe time would have been aware of this.

However, there is some question as to whether this timeframe isconsistent with some of the themes of the novel. The great English legalhistorian Sir William Holdsworth (see below) set the action in 1827.

Synopsis

Sir Leicester Dedlock and Honoria, Lady Dedlock (his junior by more than 20years) live at his estate of Chesney Wold. Unknown to Sir Leicester, LadyDedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, before she married Sir Leicesterand had a child by him, Esther Summerson. Lady Dedlock, believing her
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daughter is dead, has chosen to live out her days 'bored to death' as afashionable lady of the world.

Esther is raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's spartan sister, who instills a

sense of worthlessness in her that Esther will battle throughout the novel.Esther doesn't know that Miss Barbary is her aunt, thinking of her only as hergodmother. When Miss Barbary dies, the Chancery lawyer ConversationKenge takes charge of Esther's future on the instruction of his client, JohnJarndyce. Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian, and after attending school inReading for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House, along withhis wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Esther is to be Ada's companion.

Bleak House

Esther soon befriends both Ada and Richard, who are cousins. They arebeneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; theirguardian is a beneficiary under another will, and in some undefined way

the two wills conflict. Richard and Ada soon fall in love, but though Mr.Jarndyce doesn't oppose the match, he stipulates that Richard (who isinconstant) must first choose a profession. Richard first tries the medicalprofession, and Esther first meets the newly-qualified Dr. Allan Woodcourt atthe house of Richard's prospective tutor, Mr. Baynham Badger. When
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Richard mentions the prospect of gaining from the resolution of Jarndyce andJarndyce, John Jarndyce beseeches him never to put faith in what he calls"the family curse".

Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is also a beneficiary under one of the wills inJarndyce and Jarndyce. Early in the book, while listening to her solicitor, theclose-mouthed but shrewd Mr. Tulkinghorn, read an affidavit aloud, sherecognizes the handwriting on the copy. The sight affects her so much thatshe almost faints, which Tulkinghorn notes and thinks should be

investigated. He traces the copyist who turns out to be a pauper known onlyas "Nemo" who has recently died. The only person to identify him is a street-sweeper, a poor homeless boy named Jo.

Consecrated ground

Lady Dedlock also investigates the matter disguised as her French maid,

Mademoiselle Hortense. She pays Jo to take her to Nemo's grave.Meanwhile, Tulkinghorn is convinced that Lady Dedlock's secret might

threaten the interests of his client, Sir Leicester Dedlock, and watches herconstantly, even enlisting the maid, who detests her.

Esther meets her mother at church and talks with her later at Chesney

Wold - though, at first, neither woman recognizes the tie that binds them.

Later, Lady Dedlock realizes that her abandoned child is not dead and is, in
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fact, Esther. She waits to confront Esther with this knowledge until Esthersurvives an unidentified disease (possibly smallpox, as it permanentlydisfigures her), which she got from the homeless boy Jo after Esther and hermaid Charley attempted to nurse him back to health. Though they are happy

to be reunited, Lady Dedlock tells Esther that they must never acknowledgetheir connection again.

Esther recovers, but her beauty is supposedly ruined. She finds that Richard,having failed at several professions, has ignored his guardian and is wastinghis resources in pushing Jarndyce and Jarndyce to conclusion (in his andAda's favour). Further, he has broken with his guardian, under the influenceof his lawyer, the odious and crafty Mr. Vholes. In the process of becoming

an active litigant, Richard has lost all his money and is breaking his health. Infurther defiance of John Jarndyce, he and Ada have secretly married, and Adais carrying Richard's child. Esther experiences her own romance when Dr.Woodcourt returns to England, having survived a shipwreck, and continuesto seek her company despite her disfigurement.

Unfortunately, Esther has already agreed to marry her guardian, JohnJarndyce.

Hortense and Tulkinghorn discover Lady Dedlock's past. After a quiet but

desperate confrontation with the lawyer, Lady Dedlock flees her home,

leaving a note apologizing for her conduct.

---Tulkinghorn dismisses Hortense, no longer any use to him. Feelingabandoned and betrayed by Lady Dedlock and Tulkinghorn, Hortense killsTulkinghorn and seeks to frame Lady Dedlock for his murder.

----Sir Leicester discovers his lawyer's death and his wife's flight, and he has acatastrophic stroke but manages to communicate that he forgives his wife

and wants her to return to him.


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Attorney and Client

----Inspector Bucket, who up to now has investigated several matters on theperiphery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, accepts the commission of the strickenSir Leicester to find Lady Dedlock.

----He suspects Lady Dedlock, even after he arrests George Rouncewell (theonly other person known to be with Tulkinghorn on the night of the murderand to have quarrelled with him repeatedly).

----Bucket asks Esther to help search for Lady Dedlock. By this point, Bucket

has cleared Lady Dedlock by discovering Hortense's guilt, but Lady Dedlockhas no way to know this and wanders the country in cold weather before

dying at the cemetery of her former lover Captain Hawdon (Nemo). Estherand Bucket find her there.

Developments in Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem to take a turn for the better -------when a later will is found which revokes all previous wills and leaves thebulk of the estate to Richard and Ada.

-----Meanwhile, John Jarndyce cancels his engagement with Esther, whobecomes engaged to Dr. Woodcourt.

----They go to Chancery to find Richard and to discover what news theremight be of the lawsuit's resolution.
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----- To their horror, they learn that the new will has no chance to resolveJarndyce and Jarndyce, for the costs of litigation have consumed the estate.

-----Richard collapses, and Dr Woodcourt determines that he is in the last

stages oftuberculosis.

-----Richard apologizes to John Jarndyce and dies, leaving Ada alone withtheir child, a boy she names Richard.

----Jarndyce takes in Ada and the child. Esther and Woodcourt marry andlive in a Yorkshire house which Jarndyce gives to them. In time, they have

twodaughters.

Many of this intricate novel's subplots deal with the minor characters and

their diverse ties to the main plot.

One of these subplots is the hard life and happy though difficultmarriage ofCaddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop.

Another focuses on George Rouncewell's rediscovery of his family atChesney Wold and his reunion with his mother and brother.

Characters in Bleak House

As usual, Dickens drew upon many real people and places but imaginatively

transformed them in his novel.

------Hortense is based on the Swiss maid and murderess Maria Manning.

------The "telescopic philanthropist" Mrs Jellyby, who pursues distant

projects at the expense of her duty to her own family, is a criticism ofwomen activists like Caroline Chisholm.

-----The "childlike" but ultimately amoral character Harold Skimpole iscommonly regarded as a portrait ofLeigh Hunt.
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-----"Dickens wrote in a letter of 25 September 1853, 'I suppose he is themost exact portrait that was ever painted in words! . . . It is an absolutereproduction of a real man'; and a contemporary critic commented, 'Irecognized Skimpole instantaneously; . . . and so did every person whom I

talked with about it who had ever had Leigh Hunt's acquaintance.'"[2]

----G. K. Chesterton suggested that Dickens "may never once have had theunfriendly thought, 'Suppose Hunt behaved like a rascal!'; he may have onlyhad the fanciful thought, 'Suppose a rascal behaved like Hunt!'".

------ Mr Jarndyce's friend Mr Boythorn is based on the writer Walter SavageLandor.

---- The novel also includes one of the first detectives in English fiction,Inspector Bucket. This character is probably based on Inspector CharlesFrederick Field of the then recently formed Detective Department atScotland Yard.[3]

----- Dickens wrote several journalistic pieces about the Inspector and thework of the detectives inHousehold Words, his weekly periodical in which

he also published articles attacking the Chancery system.------- The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case itself has reminded many readers ofthe thirty-year Chancery case over Charlotte Smith's father-in-law's will.

[4]

Major characters

Esther Summerson the heroine of the story, and one of its twonarrators (Dickens' only female narrator), raised as an orphan because

the identity of her parents is unknown. At first, it seems probable thather guardian, John Jarndyce, is her father because he provides for her.This, however, he disavows shortly after she comes to live under his

roof. The discovery of her true identity provides much of the drama inthe book: it is discovered that she is the illegitimate daughter of LadyDedlock and Nemo (Captain Hawdon).
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Richard Carstone a ward of Chancery in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Astraightforward and likeable but irresponsible and inconstant characterwho falls under the spell of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. At the end of thebook, just after Jarndyce and Jarndyce is finally settled, he dies,tormented by his imprudence in putting faith in the outcome of a

Chancery suit.

The little old lady

Ada Clare another ward of Chancery in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She

falls in love with Richard Carstone, who is a distant cousin. She doesnot share his fervent hopes for a quick settlement in the Jarndyce case.They later marry in secret.

John Jarndyce an unwilling party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce,guardian of Richard, Ada, and Esther, and owner of Bleak House.Vladimir Nabokov called him "one of the best and kindest human

beings ever described in a novel".[5]A wealthy man, he helps most of

the other characters out of a mix of disinterested goodness and guilt

at the mischief and human misery caused by Jarndyce and Jarndyce,which he calls "the family curse". He falls in love with Esther andwishes to marry her, but gives her up because she is in love with Dr.Woodcourt.

Harold Skimpole a friend of Jarndyce "in the habit of sponging hisfriends" (Nuttall); supposedly based on Leigh Hunt (but see above). He
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is irresponsible, selfish, amoral, and without remorse. He often refersto himself as "a child" and claims not to understand the complexities

of human relationships, circumstances, and society but

understands them all too well. As when, early in the book, he attempts

to have Richard and Ada raise money on their expectations in Jarndyceand Jarndyce to pay off the bailiff who has arrested him on a writ ofdebt.

Lawrence Boythorn an old friend of John Jarndyce's; a formersoldier, who always speaks in superlatives; very loud and harsh, butgoodhearted. A neighbour of Sir Leicester Dedlock's, with whom he isengaged in an epic tangle of lawsuits over a right-of-way across

Boythorn's property that Sir Leicester asserts the legal right to close;based on Walter Savage Landor.

Sir Leicester Dedlock a crusty baronet, very much older than his

wife. Dedlock is an unthinking conservative who regards the Jarndyceand Jarndyce lawsuit in which his wife is entangled as a mark ofdistinction worthy of a man of his family lineage.

Honoria, Lady Dedlock the haughty mistress of Chesney Wold. Herpast drives much of the plot as it turns out that, before her marriage,she had an affair with another man and had his child. She discovers thechild's identity (Esther Summerson) and, because she has made thisdiscovery and revealed that she had a secret predating her marriage,she has attracted the noxious curiosity of Mr. Tulkinghorn, who feelshimself bound by his ties to his client, Sir Leicester, to pry out her secretand use it to control her. At the end, she dies, disgraced in her ownmind and convinced that her aristocratic husband can never forgive her

moral failings, even though he has already done so. Mr. Tulkinghorn Sir Leicester's lawyer. Scheming and manipulative,

he seems to defer to his clients but relishes the power his control oftheir secrets gives him over them. He learns of Lady Dedlock's past andtries to control her conduct, to preserve the reputation and good nameof Sir Leicester. He is murdered, and his murder gives Dickens the
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chance to weave a detective's investigation of the murder into the

plot of the closing chapters of the book.

Mr. Snagsby the timid proprietor of a law-stationery business who

gets involved with Tulkinghorn's and Bucket's secrets. He is Jo's onlyfriend. He tends to give half-crowns to those whom he feels sorry for.He is married to Mrs. Snagsby, who has a 'vinegary' personality andsuspects Mr. Snagsby of many secrets, such as Jo's (incorrectly) beinghis son.

Miss Flite an elderly eccentric obsessed with Chancery. Her familyhas been destroyed by a long-running Chancery case similar to

Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and her obsessive fascination with Chancery

veers between comedy and tragedy. She owns a large number of littlebirds which she says will be released "on the day of judgement".

Mr. William Guppy a law clerk at the Chancery firm of Kenge and

Carboy's. He becomes smitten with Esther and plays a role in

unearthing her true past. He at first proposes marriage to Esther,withdraws the offer after discovering her much-altered appearance due

to her illness. Esther politely refused his proposal in the first place, priorto his withdrawal. Inspector Bucket a detective who undertakes several investigations

in the course of the novel, most notably the investigation of Mr.Tulkinghorn's murder, which he brings to a successful conclusion.

Mr. George a former soldier, serving under Nemo, who owns aLondon shooting-gallery. He is a trainer in sword and pistol use, brieflytraining Richard Carstone. The prime suspect in the death of Mr.

Tulkinghorn, he is exonerated and his true identity is revealed, againsthis wishes. He is found to be George Rouncewell, son of the Dedlocks'housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, who welcomes him back to ChesneyWold. He ends the book as the body-servant to the stricken SirLeicester Dedlock.


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Caddy Jellyby a friend of Esther's, secretary to her mother, the"telescopic philanthropist" Mrs. Jellyby. Caddy feels ashamed of her"lack of manners", but Esther's friendship revives her, and she falls inlove with young Prince Turveydrop, marries him, and has a baby.

Krook a rag and bottle merchant and collector of papers. He is the

landlord of the house where Nemo and Miss Flite live and whereNemo dies. Krook dies from a case ofspontaneous human combustion,something that Dickens believed could happen, but which some critics

of the novel such as the English essayistGeorge Henry Lewes

denounced as outlandish and implausible. Ironically, amongst thestacks of papers obsessively hoarded by the illiterate Krook is the keyto resolving the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Jo a young and homeless boy who lives on the streets and tries

without much luck to make a living as acrossing sweeper. He dies froma disease (pneumonia, a complication from an earlier bout withsmallpox which Esther also catches and almost dies of).

Allan Woodcourt a surgeon. A kind, caring man who cares deeply forEsther. She in turn cares for him but feels unable to respond to hisovertures because of her prior commitment to John Jarndyce.

Grandfather Smallweed a moneylender. A mean, bad-tempered

man who has little mercy for people who owe him money and enjoysinflicting emotional pain on others. He lays claim to the deceasedKrook's possessions (Smallweed's wife was Krook's sister and only living

relative), and also drives Mr George into bankruptcy by calling in debts.Mr Tulkinghorn is his attorney in both these cases. It has beensuggested that his description (together with his grandchildren) fit thatof a person withprogeria.[6]
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Mr. Vholes a Chancery lawyer who takes on Richard Carstone as aclient, squeezes out of him all the litigation fees he can manage to pay,and then abandons him when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes to an end.

Conversation Kenge

a Chancery lawyer who represents John

Jarndyce. His chief foible is his love of grand, portentous, and emptyrhetoric.

Minor characters

Mr. Gridley an involuntary party to a suit in Chancery (based on areal case, according to Dickens' preface), who repeatedly seeks to gain

the attention of the Lord Chancellor but in vain. He threatens Mr.Tulkinghorn and then is put under arrest by Inspector Bucket, but dies,his health broken by his Chancery ordeal.

Nemo (Latin for "nobody") is the alias of Captain James Hawdon, aformer officer in the British Army under whom Mr. George once

served. Nemo copies legal documents for Snagsby and lodges atKrook's rag and bottle shop, eventually dying of an opium overdose.He is later found to be the former lover of Lady Dedlock and the fatherof Esther Summerson.

Mrs. SnagsbyMr. Snagsby's highly suspicious and curious wife, whosuspects her husband of being Jo's father.

Guster the Snagsbys' maidservant; she is prone to fits. Neckett a debt collector called "Coavinses" by debtor Harold

Skimpole because he works for that business firm Charley Coavinses' daughter; hired by John Jarndyce to be a maid

to Esther Tom Coavinses' young son Emma Coavinses' baby daughter Mrs. Jellyby Caddy's mother, a "telescopic philanthropist" obsessed

with an obscure African tribe but having little regard to the notion of

charity beginning at home


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Mr. JellybyMrs. Jellyby's long-suffering husband Peepy Jellyby the Jellybys' young son Prince Turveydrop a dancing master and proprietor of a dancing

studio

Old Mr. Turveydrop

a master of Deportment who lives off his son'sindustry

Jenny a brickmaker's wife. She's mistreated by her husband and herbaby died. She helps her friend look after her own child.

Rosa a favourite lady's maid of Lady Dedlock whom Watt Rouncewellwishes to marry. The proposal ends in nothing when Mr. Rouncewell'sfather asks that Rosa be sent to school to be instructed to be a ladyworthy of his son's station and Lady Dedlock questions the girl closelyregarding her wish to leave and promises to look after her instead. Insome way, Rosa is a stand in for Esther in Lady Dedlock's life.

Hortense lady's maid to Lady Dedlock (based on murderessMariaManning)[7]

Mrs. Rouncewell housekeeper to the Dedlocks at Chesney Wold Mr. Robert Rouncewell son of Mrs. Rouncewell and a prosperous

ironmaster

Watt Rouncewell

his son Volumnia a Dedlock cousin Miss Barbary Esther's godmother and severe guardian in childhood Mrs. Rachel Chadband a former servant of Miss Barbary's Mr. Chadband an oleaginous preacher, husband of Mrs. Chadban

oleaginous ----unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating inmanner or speech

Mrs. Smallweed wife of Mr. Smallweed senior and sister to Krook.She is in her second childhood.

Young Mr. (Bartholemew) Smallweed grandson of the seniorSmallweeds and friend of Mr. Guppy

Judy Smallweed granddaughter of the senior Smallweeds Tony Jobling aka Mr. Weevle a friend of Mr. Guppy's Mrs. GuppyMr. Guppy's aged mother
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Phil SquodMr. George's assistant Matthew Bagnetmilitary friend of Mr. George's and dealer in

musical instruments Mrs. Bagnet wife of Matthew Bagnet's Woolwich

the Bagnets' son

Quebec the Bagnets' daughter Malta the Bagnets' daughter Mrs. Woodcourt Allan Woodcourt's widowed mother Mrs. Pardigglea woman who does "good works" for the poor, but

cannot see that her efforts are rude and arrogant and do nothing at all

to help. She inflicts her activities on her five small sons, who are

clearly rebellious.

Arethusa SkimpoleMr. Skimpole's "Beauty" daughter Laura SkimpoleMr. Skimpole's "Sentiment" daughter Kitty SkimpoleMr. Skimpole's "Comedy" daughter Mrs. SkimpoleMr. Skimpole's ailing wife who is weary of her

husband and lifestyle

Analysis and criticism

Much criticism about Bleak House focuses on its unique narrative structure:

-----it is told both by an unidentified, third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson.

-----The third-person narrator speaks in the present tense, ranging widelyacross geographic and social space (from the aristocratic Dedlock estate tothe desperately poor Tom-All-Alone's in London), and gives full rein to

Dickens' desire to satirize the English chancery system

though thisnarrator's perceptiveness has limits, stopping at the outside to describecharacters' appearances and behaviour without any pretence of grasping orrevealing their inner lives.


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-----Esther Summerson tells her own story in the past tense (like David inDavid Copperfieldor Pip inGreat Expectations), and her narrative voice ischaracterised by modesty, consciousness of her own limits, and willingness

to disclose to us her own thoughts and feelings.

-----These two narrative strands never quite intersect, though they do runin parallel. Nabokov, after describing the ways Esther's voice changes as thenovel progresses, concluded that letting Esther tell part of the story wasDicken's "main mistake" in planning the novel[8]Alex Zwerdling, a scholarfrom Berkeley, after observing that "critics have not been kind to Esther,"however, thought Dickens' use of Esther's narrative "one of the triumphs ofhis art.

[9]

Tom All Alones

Esther's portion of the narrative is an interesting case study of the Victorian

ideal of feminine modesty.

------She introduces herself thus: "I have a great deal of difficulty in beginningto write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever" (chap. 3).
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-----This claim is almost immediately belied by the astute moral judgementand satiric observation that characterise her pages, and it remains unclearhow much knowledge she withholds from her narration, or why someonewho has chosen to relate the story of her life should be so coy about herown central place in it.

---- In the same introductory chapter, she writes: "It seems so curious to meto be obliged to write all this about myself! As if this narrative were thenarrative of MY life! But my little body will soon fall into the backgroundnow" (chap. 3). This does not turn out to be true.

For most readers and scholars, the central concern ofBleak House is its

riveting and insistent indictment of the English Chancery court system.

-----Chancery or equity courts were one half of the English civil justicesystem, existing side-by-side with law courts.

----Unlike law courts, which heard actions for legal injuries compensable bymonetary damages, Chancery courts heard actions having to do with wills

and estates, or with the uses of private property.

-----By the mid-nineteenth century, English law reformers had long criticisedand mocked the delays of Chancery litigation, and Dickens found thesubject a tempting target. (He already had taken a shot at law-courts andthat side of the legal profession in his 1837 novel The Posthumous Papers ofthe Pickwick Club orThe Pickwick Papers).

----The fame and critical success ofBleak House have led many readers andscholars to apply its indictment of Chancery to the entire legal system, and

indeed it is the greatest indictment of law, lawyers, and the legal system inthe English language.[citation needed]

-----Scholars such as the English legal historian SirWilliam SearleHoldsworth, in his 1928 series of lectures Charles Dickens as a Legal

Historian published by Yale University Press, have made a plausible case for
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treating Dickens's novels, and Bleak House in particular, as primary sources

illuminating the history of English law.

-----Dickens claimed in the preface to the volume edition ofBleak House (it

was initially released in parts) that he had "purposely dwelt upon theromantic side of familiar things". And some remarkable things do happen:

One character, Krook, smells of brimstone and eventually dies ofspontaneous human combustion, attributed to his evil nature.

Using spontaneous human combustion to dispose of Krook in the story

was controversial. The nineteenth century saw the increasing triumph of the scientific

world-view and of technology rooted in scientific advances. Scientificand technological research and discovery were regarded as among thehighest forms of human endeavour.

Scientifically inclined writers, as well as medical doctors and scientists,rejected spontaneous human combustion as legend or superstition.

When the instalment ofBleak House containing Krook's demiseappeared, the literary criticGeorge Henry Lewescriticized Dickens,

accusing him of "giving currency to a vulgar error".[10] Dickens vigorously defended the reality of spontaneous human

combustion and cited many documented cases, such as those of Mme.Millet of Rheims and of the Countess di Bandi, as well as his ownmemories of coroners' inquests that he had attended when he hadbeen a reporter.

In the preface of the book edition ofBleak House, Dickens wrote: "Ishall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable

Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which humanoccurrences are usually received."

George GissingandG. K. Chestertonare among those literary critics and

writers who consider Bleak House to be the best novel that Charles Dickens
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wrote. As Chesterton put it: "Bleak House is not certainly Dickens' best book;but perhaps it is his best novel".

----Harold Bloomin his book The Western Canon, considers Bleak House to

be Dickens's greatest novel. Daniel Burt, in his book The Novel 100: ARanking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, ranks Bleak House number 12.

Bleak House has been cited as "the first novel in which a detective plays a

significant role".[11]

Bleak House, Kent

Bleak House inBroadstairs, Kent, where Dickens wroteDavid Copperfield

and other novels.

Bleak House inBroadstairs, on the far northeast tip ofKentadjoining

Margate, is where Dickens stayed with his family for a minimum of one

month every summer, from 1839 until 1851, when he was becomingestablished as a successful writer. Fort House, located on top of the cliff onFort Road, was renamed Bleak House after his death, in his honour.[12]

oleaginous

If your arch enemy remarks on youroleaginous skin, she's not giving you acompliment. She's calling you oily-faced.

You can impress your friends by commenting on how disgustingly oleaginous

your pizza is, or despair over the oleaginous state of an ocean bay after an oil

spill. Either way, you're using a fancy word for greasy or oily. And if you run

into a particularly slick car salesman, you can describe him as oleaginous too.The adjective oleaginous comes from the Latin root oleaginus, "of the olive."
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bleak house notes,black swan theory, cathay pacific junket debacle

Documents