Class Discourse and Popular Agency inBleak House

Abstract

Tr he recurrent satire on Boodle, Buffy, and parliamentary politics in Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853) suggests that the novel's title alludes not only to the Crystal Palace, but also to the House of Commons.1 Chapter 40, National and Domestic, likewise refers to the commonplace figure of the house as nation and nation as house, evoked, for example, in the January 1852 Punch cartoon Mrs. England Setting Her House in Order, which depicts Queen Victoria as a housekeeper instructing the prime minister, Lord John Russell, to pay a bill (fig. 1). Boodle and Buffy are actors on the national stage because they are leaders of their respective political parties; as members of Parliament they can propose, and vote for, legislative acts that shape social relationships. However, the Boodleites and Buffyites act only to serve their own interests, not the nation as a whole, a situation that makes Parliament, like Chancery, a deadlocked institution.

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