This is not because Dickens did not share the belief in progress. On the contrary, his affirmation of his “faith … in the progress of mankind” had recently and prominently appeared in the editorial manifesto for Household Words,the weekly journal he launched in 1850.There, where he spoke of the writer’s duty to spread “sympathy” throughout society by “cherish[ing] that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast,” he also expressed gratitude for “the privilege of living in the sunny dawn of time” (“A Preliminary Word”). In Bleak House,however, “the fire of the sun is dying” (p. 534); “darkness … dilat[es] and dilat[es]” (p. 590);the “light of Fancy” glints rather than shines.
Shadows in Dickens’s personal life certainly contributed to the darkening of his imaginative vision. His father’s death in March of 1851 was followed a month later by that of an infant daughter. In 1852, several close friends died as well. While his wife suffered from a prolonged illness, Dickens, who confessed to feeling “as if I could have given up” (April 5, 1851),did not. The press of the necessity to work was always upon him, regardless of the degree of financial security he attained, and, alongside the discharge of his own daunting agenda of self-appointed duties—which included the painstaking conduct of Household Words,the conscientious management of a “Home for Homeless Women,” a taxing tour of amateur theatricals on which he embarked, and much else besides—there was the obligation to fulfill the ever-increasing demands made upon him by virtue of his stature as a public figure. Having attained an unprecedented measure of success in Victorian letters and prominence in public life, Dickens was coming to be oppressed by his own achievements. However strong such a feeling may have been, though, it extends far beyond Dickens or any individual in Bleak House.“Fog everywhere,” the novelist asserts on the first page of the book. There, Dickens’s severely critical, fiercely satirical vision of society also had something to do with the atmosphere of complacency that had been thickening in mid-Victorian Britain and was consolidated in London in the Great Exhibition of 1851.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was a colossal endeavor, as its full title announces. Among its many aims, the representation and the promotion of progress through a display of industrial manufactures and technological ingenuity were foremost. If the vast miscellany of goods assembled from many nations (not quite “all”) served this agenda rather unevenly—the hordes of visitors to the exhibition tended to be overwhelmed by the sight—the revolutionary plate-glass and iron edifice that was built to house the display did so spectacularly well. Dubbed the “Crystal Palace,” the monumental structure covered nineteen acres of Hyde Park, where it stood as an impressive testament to Britain’s achievements and a potent symbol of its dynamic modernity. Indeed, although the Great Exhibition was initially conceived as an international project, its result was to focus global attention on the triumphs of Britain, which were widely—and wildly—praised. In the rhetoric of the moment, Britain was said to have attained the pinnacle of civilization and to be ushering a time when “Utopia … will take the form and substance of a possible fact” (Illustrated London News,May 3, 1851).In effect, the condition-of-England question—much investigated, widely debated before and after Thomas Carlyle’s coinage of the famous phrase in 1839—seemed to have found a conclusive answer in the summer of 1851.
Inasmuch as the Great Exhibition may have suggested that this condition was exemplary, if not better, the vision it projected, however compelling, was partial. It excluded the condition of the working classes and the impoverished population of the country.