Bleak House, Part II

I've now read about half of Dickens's Bleak House. And I'm enjoying it, but I'm also remembering why it is that I tend to avoid Dickens. First, it seems to me that Dickens is truly masterful in the way that he writes his characters. Some are flat; many are round; but they tend to be interesting, engaging kinds of characters. The problem I'm having, at the moment, is keeping them all straight. He'll introduce a character, develop her a bit, and then let her fall away. And this is fine; this happens with minor characters. Sometimes, they are there to advance the plot or the theme in some way, and when they've served their purpose, they leave the scene. But Dickens will pull them back in, like 150 pages later. In the intervening 150 pages he may have introduced like 15 more characters, and it's becoming really difficult for me to remember who's who and why he's important and that kind of thing. Am I really this inept as a reader? Dickens makes me doubt myself; I mean, I'm supposed to be qualified to professionally decipher texts, right? But with this novel, I keep losing track. The other thing about Bleak House is this: there's lots of characters who seem to be there to provide some sort of satire or social commentary. For example, early on we are introduced to Mrs. Jellyby, whose family is falling apart as she devotes all her time and energy to some sort of missionary project in Africa. She ruins her family financially; she totally neglects her children in just about every way possible; and her home is really dirty. She, of course, thinks she's really doing something wonderful, however, by devoting all her energy and resources to this project. OK, so I get the point that she's a hypocrite; I get that "charity begins in the home." But it's like we can't just have the example and move on; Dickens brings her (and even a whole cast of similar characters) up over and over and over. And it seems so very heavy handed after a while.

But the point is, as far as I'm concerned, I'm reading Dickens. I'm reading Bleak House. And really, in spite of the afore mentioned criticisms, I'm enjoying it immensely. So maybe this is like a new leaf for me as a reader--maybe I can enjoy the 19th century, triple decker novel. Or maybe this is just a fluke.