Mary Russell’s Bleak House
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the grave of Captain Hawdon (or Nemo) believing that the world thinks her a
murderer and her husband has cast her off as a whore because of her secret
liaison. Of course, Bucket and Esther are in pursuit aiming to clear her name and
bring her the news that Sir Leicester forgives all. They fail to reach her in time
to save her life, but her downfall is also what ensnares Margery Childe. Childe’s
secret marriage to Claude (who like Hawdon has as many names as identities) is
the ruin of her church and good works. He is behind a plot to kill the wealthy
members of her parish, forging wills to benefit the church with plans to
ultimately kill Childe and inherit it all.
The prominence of wills in both novels is interesting. As in Regiment,
“forgery, drugs, murder, and blackmail run rampant [in Bleak House] . . . ”
(Roseman). Wills are the fuel for the greed that sparks much of this crime in
both novels. Lady Dedlock is involved in the Chancery plot of Jamdyce and
Jamdyce because of one of the many wills floating around the confused court
proceedings. In addition to the forged wills in Regiment, there’s the key will that
leaves Russell in the rare position of being an independently wealthy young
woman, with all the freedom to become a detective out of curiosity rather than
necessity like Peter Wimsey (Dorothy Sayers’s gentleman detective and minor
character in the Russell series).
At the base of these secret love plots is the revelation that both Childe and
Dedlock are innocent of the murders the investigators previously thought them
guilty. Of course, both women are guilty of concealing reputation-damaging
secret liaisons, but by most standards innocent on the whole. Lady Dedlock’s
name Honoria suggests this innocence all along, as does Childe’s. The fact that
Lady Dedlock dies for her self-perceived sin is one of many Victorian traditions
the Mary Russell series’ existence combats.
Here we find the modernization of the detective plot as the answer to a key
concept of modem detecting in fiction, as well as class and feminist concerns.
The revelation of truth in Bleak House unravels homes, lives, and family,
leaving only misery in its wake. As Bradbury confirms, “. .. the novel carefully
unfolds the damage done in pursuing this history, and contrasts it with the
greater good of free pardon” (xv). Life eventually goes on for Esther despite the
loss of her mother and friends, but the Dedlocks are, well, dead, as is
Tulkinghom, Hawdon/Nemo, Richard, Jo, and so on. Like the Chancery law
suits, little good seems to come out of Bucket and Esther’s investigation. Lady
Dedlock doesn’t live long enough to hear that her name has been cleared and her
position with her husband reinstated. Tulkinghom dies trying to uncover a truth
about Lady Dedlock that no one seems to care about save Dedlock herself and
her daughter Esther. Dedlock’s maid is sent to prison for murdering a man who
might’ve become her benefactor in another capacity had the investigation never
been launched. The only thing left to motivate disclosure of the truth from even
the minor character Guppy is Bucket’s sense of duty to his job, which is hardly
an inspiration for all the hardship and trouble suffered by the characters
(including Bucket and Mrs. Bucket, but especially Esther).