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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Law - Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on, and on

From, of course, the first chapter of Dickens' Bleak House:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.
Sunday evening, reports Reuters, the newest adaption begins on Masterpiece Theater "where its eight hours will be shown over six successive Sunday evenings."

Today's Washington Post has a rave review, headlined "Miniseries Does Supreme Justice to Dickens's 'Bleak House'".

The NY Times has a review that begins: "Bleak House is too good to be homework." More from the review:

The story starts at a spine-tingling pace: a young woman cloaked in gray is swept up in a swirl of rain, fog and mud and sped to London by horse-drawn carriage. It is a romantic journey to the most unromantic of places, the chancery courts. The orphan heroine, Esther Summerson, has been summoned by a stranger, John Jarndyce, to serve at Bleak House as a companion to Ada Clare, who, along with her cousin Richard Carstone, is a ward of the court pending a resolution of the infamous lawsuit Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

Almost all the bad deeds and ill fortune in "Bleak House" trace back to an inheritance bogged down for generations in never-ending details and dispute. ("There are several wills and fragments of wills," one lawyer says. "All of them different and all of them conflicting.") The novel is perhaps most famous as a denunciation of the British courts - Dickens worked briefly as a law office clerk and court reporter, the blacking factory of his legal experience. But "Bleak House" contains almost every other imaginable Dickensian theme and convoluted plot twist, as well as some of the author's more delicious secondary characters.

Finally, here is the PBS Masterpiece Theater Bleak House website. It includes important features such as the cast of characters.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 21, 2006 08:21 PM
Posted to General Law Related