A legacy of letters: Inheritance and feminine identity in Charles Dickens's 'Bleak House'

This master's thesis seeks to expand an understanding of the inheritance theme in Charles Dickens's Bleak House by interpreting the Barbary-Hawdon letters as property in an estate to be the probated by "Chancellor" Krook's "court" which mirrors the actual chancery court handling the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. While Krook's rag and bottle shop has long been recognized as a double for the actual chancery court depicted in the novel, this paper suggests that Bleak House also offers a double for the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case itself. This paper posits the Barbary-Hawdon letters as the missing "mirror estate" and argues that the Krook court's unjust disposition of the letters is central to Dickens's critique of a patriarchal inheritance system that prevented women from inheriting and thus denied them full personhood. To support this interpretation of Bleak House, this paper compares the novel with Frances Burney's Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World and finds similarities with this earlier novel that likewise features a female protagonist -- an heiress -- who struggles to find her inheritance and her identity in a society set against her. Finally, this paper examines contemporary ownership theories of private letters, such as those in the Barbary-Hawdon estate, to help support the argument that Bleak House takes a feminist position on inheritance that aligns with the feminist sexual politics long recognized in Evelina.