Bleak House, a novel by Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, has a number of elements: comedy, tragedy, melodrama, romance, and biting social satire. The work also includes at least ten major characters and dozens of minor characters. The complexity and length of the novel lends itself quite easily to a number of critical interpretations, including feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytic theories. In the following article this argument will focus on a deconstruction of certain aspects of the novel, particularly the character names given by Dickens, and on a new historical approach to literary criticism of the satirical attacks on the justice system from Chancery to the time of Dickens. Dickens's awareness of the richness and variability of language, as well as his desire to question the social institutions and customs of his time, lead the reader to consider these theoretical approaches. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Dickens employs a multitude of musical, comedic, revealing, and confusing names for his characters. A representative list includes Tulkinghorn, Clare, Summerson, Dedlock, Snagsby, Nemo, Krook, Flite, Tangle, Barbary, Rouncewell, Jarndyce, Skimpole, Vholes, Woodcourt, Smallweed, Turveydrop, Guppy, Boythorn, Jellyby, Badger, Bucket and even the minimal name Jo. The names tell a changing, information-rich story about the characters' personalities, occupations, appearance, mannerisms, and what may lie beneath the exterior they present to the world. Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstructive philosophy, believed that "language is not the reliable communication tool we believe it to be, but rather a fluid and ambiguous domain of complex experiences in which ideologies program us without our realizing it." let us be aware” (Tyson 249). So what might these names, and other aspects of Dickens's text, tell us about the novel, perhaps in ways that are not obvious but are nonetheless recognized and internalized by the drive ? If the sign is the name of the character in a novel, and the "signifier" is the "letters written or pronounced as a unit" of that word, then the "signified" is the idea that the reader has in mind of the character (251). Every reader will have a different idea of ​​the character in a novel, even if they read the exact same words. Take, for example, the first description in Caddy Jellyby's novel: But what struck us most was a jaded and unhealthy-looking, though far from ordinary, young girl sitting at the writing table , biting the quill of his pen, and looking at us. I guess no one has ever been in such an inky state. And, from her disheveled hair to her pretty feet, disfigured by frayed and broken satin slippers trampled at the heels, she really seemed to have not a single article of clothing on her, from a pin on top, that was in her proper state or in its state. good place. (Dickens 85) This description would undoubtedly create an image of Caddy Jellyby in the reader's mind. The “signified” would be this image, but, according to Derrida, it is in reality “chains of signifiers” (Tyson 252). The description might create an image of a young white English girl for a reader who knows that the vast majority of people in 1850s England were Anglo-Saxon. However, a reader of another race or ethnicity, even with the same historical knowledge, might immediately think of a teenage girl of their own ethnicity, particularly one of their acquaintances who shared characteristics with CaddyJellyby, like an underdog or disheveled appearance. Additionally, simple expressions such as "not at all an ordinary girl" are value judgments that can inspire very different ideas in readers' heads. A reader's idea of ​​"nothing means simple" could mean, depending on that person's taste, beautiful; it could also mean, to another reader, an average-looking person from an image created by that reader's experience. Obviously, these tastes and experience created images of personal appearance vary. And even down to descriptions as mundane as “hair falling out,” mental images can also vary widely. Tumbled how? Is it falling out of pins, or is it just disheveled? What color, texture, thickness and length is it? The permutations of Caddy Jellyby's mental image are almost limitless. The idea in readers' minds is informed not only by the words on the page and the concept those words create (the "signifiers"), but also by their own knowledge and experiences. Furthermore, these “signified” images can change during the reading of the text, depending on the reader's feeling and perception of the story and the characters, and of the “chain of signifiers”. This is also possible thanks to the evocative images created by proper nouns. Krook, for example, rag store owner and proprietor of Miss Flite and Mr. Nemo, is described as a repulsive, dirty, elderly, drunken illiterate: ...an old man with glasses and a furry cap who he carried in the store. ... He was small, cadaverous and withered; with his head buried sideways between his shoulders, and the breath coming out of his mouth in visible smoke, as if he were on fire inside. His throat and chin and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs, so knotted with veins and wrinkled skin, that he looked from his chest upwards, like an old root in a falling snow. (Dickens 99-100) His name, directly insulting to him, implies that he is dishonest in his dealings, and perhaps also "twisted" in his personal morality. But Dickens chose a word so richly descriptive and gave it such an enigmatic character that it is possible to have many mental images from simply contemplating the name. “Krook” could be read with the meaning of “cross your finger,” which might conjure up the idea of ​​a teary-eyed old man beckoning at someone in a threatening manner. This could perpetuate the negative imagery begun by Dickens. Or “trickster” might have the natural connotation of “trickster of a tree,” like what “an old root in a snowfall” implies. It implies age, solidity, permanence and immobility – all things amply demonstrated by the character Krook in the novel. Other readings might include "twisted", meaning crippled or distorted in some way. Since his "head is buried sideways between his shoulders", this could mean that he suffered from some sort of physical deficiency. This can create sympathy for the character where none existed before. It must be remembered, however, that this would probably have been different from the reaction of contemporary readers of Bleak House, as attitudes towards physical disability had changed dramatically. In Dickens's time, crippled individuals were often ridiculed and feared, or used as a subject of mockery, as is the semi-comic figure of Phil Squod in the same novel. Once again, the “chain of signifiers” is not only continuous but changeable, depending on time and place. Other readings abound in this single word for this relatively minor, albeit central, character. A shepherd and a bishop both weara crook, a stick with a curved end intended to defend oneself and to gather the flock, literally in the first case and symbolically in the second. It usually implies a gentle or kind person, a reference cemented among English-speaking Christians (which was the case for most of Dickens's readers) with the 23rd Psalm "The LORD is my shepherd...your staff and your staff comfort me" (Bible Gateway, emphasis mine). Krook is hardly a shepherd or kindness figure, so this belies the reality of the characterization. But the “mental trace left by the play of signifiers” (Tyson 253) can only suggest this reading, if only unconsciously, in the reader's mind. It is not because the meaning does not correspond exactly to the nature of the character that the image of a shepherd's crook (or any other meaning of the word) is not suggested, even fleetingly. Perhaps we could also see it as a sort of ironic surname, since this illiterate loner was hardly the guide of a group of people or animals. Yet it could also be a commentary on what Krook could have been if someone had "guided" him more carefully. Perhaps he would not have become the lonely, slightly insane owner of a rag store, dying of spontaneous human combustion while hoarding an extremely important document, without ever knowing what it meant. The irony of this possession is that Krook, who hoarded and hid the will for so long, caused the destruction of human lives. It could be argued that if someone had paid a little more attention to him, had "guided" him towards a more social existence, the will would have been discovered years ago. There is also another reading of "crook", the "device found on some wind musical instruments for changing the pitch, consisting of a piece of tubing inserted into the main tube" (Dictionary.com). A musician familiar with this tool could use it every day and immediately think of it when first playing Krook. The fact that this small object can drastically change the pitch of an instrument could suggest to the reader that this character, although seemingly unimportant, could affect all of the characters in the novel. This reading would be particularly insightful in terms of plot resolution. After all, Krook held the key (or "the trickster") to changing the status of most of the novel's major characters (Ada, Richard, Mr. Jarndyce, Esther, and even Lady Dedlock). This reading, if the deconstruction of the name took place from the beginning of the novel, would substantially change the tone of the reading throughout. The reader might immediately pay more attention to Krook's idiosyncrasies and guess his secret long before it is revealed at the end of the novel. Likewise, reading his name as "road rogue" could mean that Krook was the means by which the plot changes, and if this 'rogue' had been captured earlier, rather than after Krook's death, then the Jarndyce lawsuit would have also been resolved sooner. This brings us to another reading of “Krook.” There is of course the metal hook called a crook. This is an obvious reference to Krook's deformity and subhuman nature. Although he lives in the bustling metropolis of London, he lives a life apart. He is separated: unloved, neglected, friendless. He is even unable to read the words around him, even though he lives among documents piled up like waste paper throughout his shop. The crook, or hook, could have been a reference to his mental disability (such as his illiteracy), but also to the threatening nature of his appearance. Yet the idea that he was dishonest, a "con artist" in the slang term, is never suggested in Bleak House. Krookwas simply strange, perhaps repulsive, but certainly not criminal. It is simply outside the usual ideas of what is socially acceptable. Thus, the name Krook, immediately evocative of several different and sometimes contradictory meanings, can lead to several “plays of ephemeral and continually changing signifiers” (Tyson 252). . This range of meanings is only the beginning of what might be suggested by the simple deconstruction of a character's name. Individual experience, the “sliding accumulation of signifieds” (Tyson 252), which could create another set of entirely different meanings, comes into play each time the name is read. If the text is “really an indefinite, undecidable, plural and conflicting set of possible meanings” (259), then all of these readings are valid and useful. A new historical approach to a satirical novel like Bleak House offers the critic two fertile areas of investigation. First, there is the nature of the institutions, people, and events of the Dickensian era. It is also an opportunity to analyze what Dickens thought about these social institutions and customs. Our approach is not only an attempt to uncover hidden, formerly forgotten, repressed or underrepresented versions of reality, but also the opinions of a leading satirist of the time can be examined to show what he thought about this that was happening in his time, including his own ideologies, prejudices, prejudices, errors, distortions, hopes and desires. We will now focus briefly on what Dickens thought was wrong with the Court of Chancery and how it affected the society in which he lived. Considering that Bleak House is a “continuum with other historical and cultural texts of the same period” (Tyson 299), we can assume several things: the Court of Chancery was almost as corrupt and ineffective as Dickens's grotesque portrait; there was an audience for this kind of satire, and so people of his day knew something of the ineffectiveness of the Court and did not like it; that there were court victims, like Mr. Gridley, Miss Flite, and Richard Carstone, who, perhaps not as openly as Dickens painted them, nevertheless wasted their lives "at Chancery"; and there was no hope, at least not directly, of changing the system quickly. Dickens creates a subversive mood in the novel, continually recording the excesses of the Chancery but constantly ridiculing them. This is the Court of Chancery; which has its dilapidated houses and desolate lands in every county; which has its exhausted madmen in every madhouse, and its dead in every cemetery; who has her suitor ruined, with his neglected heels and his threadbare dress, borrowing and begging among all the acquaintances of all men; which gives monetary power the means to tire the law abundantly; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; thus overturns the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give - who does not often give - the warning: "Suffer whatever harm can be done to you, rather than come hither!" (Dickens 51) Looking at this passage, one must ask to what extent was Dickens actually speaking with a subversive voice? Did the oppressed, the “ruined pretenders” agree with him? Did he really attack an institution that caused widespread grief and poverty (“ruined houses and destroyed land”), or was it simply the work of a wealthy few? It would seem that, in a society where financial mobility was not as easy as in contemporary America, inheritance customsregarding property and money would be very important. It was a very money-conscious society, and people's lives and fortunes were often decided by their birth. Therefore, the dysfunction of a body such as the Court of Chancery, which decides (among other things) difficult cases of what Americans call probate, would cause consternation among people who had property to pass on. Perhaps Dickens is exaggerating the 'wastelands', for many probate cases must certainly have been handled properly, within or outside the Chancery. Also, the Chancellery would only concern the middle and upper classes. The consumption of assets in legal costs would not concern a homeless orphan like Jo for example. Yet Dickens argues that it did indeed affect him, as it provided that of Tom-all-alone, whom Jo used as a refuge and where he contracted the disease that killed him and scarred Esther. Thus, Dickens describes the Chancery as something important for the whole country. He may have exaggerated his arguments for comic and satirical effect, but it also shows his own bias as a middle-class man concerned with passing on his own money to his heirs. Women, the homeless, the working poor, the illiterate, farmers, servants, and anyone else without property would probably not be as concerned about the workings of the Court of Chancery as Charles Dickens was, the middle-class landlord author. Rather, it was an example of Dickens's own prejudices. Through Jo, Jenny, and other working-class characters, he argues as best he can that the poor functioning of the Court of Chancery is bad for the whole of England, not just the whole of England. a few possessors. The very title of the novel, Bleak House, is intended to be a metaphor for the chancellorship. Although this is the name of not only one but two houses (Jarndyce's house and the new house built for Esther and Dr. Woodcourt), the houses so named are not gloomy. These are happy family homes. The Bleak House could be Tom-all-Alone (a "decaying house" left by John Jarndyce's deceased relative, Tom Jarndyce, in which London's homeless wretches congregate), or it could be the Court of Chancery. Of course, this metaphor could be extended to the whole of England, for Dickens has many more satirical targets in this novel than just the Court. Even so, it is clear that these dark houses are not those of Jarndyce or Esther. Thus, Dickens once again displays his own bias. He is prepared to think that the experience of the literate, middle and upper classes of a country is an experience shared by everyone else in that country. The individual identities of some of the residents of Bleak House are also entirely tied to what the social customs of their time dictated. “Personal identity—like historical events, texts, and artifacts—is shaped by and shapes the culture in which it emerges” (Tyson 290). Miss Flite, for example, is entirely controlled by her (never resolved) pursuit of the chancellorship. She mortgaged her entire life, her youth, her possible family, her future, on the bet of the Court of Chancery. She says, perfectly aware of her fate: "I was a ward myself. I was not crazy at the time... I had youth and hope. I believe, beauty. That matters very little now None of the three served, nor saved me” (Dickens 81), who considers it “an honor” to attend court regularly., 2006.