Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, is primarily a novel about the consequences of abandonment. Dickens uses a mixture of anonymous third-person narrative and Esther Summerson's personal account, thus balancing social criticism with a measure of personal experiences. Esther is just one of many orphans in the novel. In different ways, Jo, Esther, Charley, Richard, and Ada are all abandoned children. Mrs. Jellyby, Mrs. Pardiggle, Harold Skimpole and even Mr. Turveydrop also abandon their children by forcing them to suffer emotional neglect. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayMrs. Jellyby, for example, claims to be a noble philanthropist, but ignores her own family's poor quality of life to focus on the injustices occurring in distant Africa. His “public duties [are his] favorite child.” Here Dickens highlights the irresponsibility and arbitrariness of choosing to exhaust one's resources (which are most likely being used inefficiently) on an abstract problem rather than a nearby literal problem. Dickens argued that people who devote themselves to distant (“telescopic”) philanthropy very often tend to neglect the needs of those around them. In this example, Dickens satirizes Mrs. Jellyby by calling her a misguided “do-gooder.” The portrayal of the Jellyby children (especially the pathetic Peepy) is another variation on one of Dickens' recurring themes: the vulnerability and suffering of children in a world mismanaged by adults. Using the story of Mrs Pardiggle, a charity worker whose zeal unfortunately makes her own sons "fierce with discontent", Dickens once again contrasts the pretentiousness and emotional superficiality of professional social activists by situating their character alongside 'real and deep emotional pain, like that which occurs after the death of one's child. as the Chancery is the focus of the third-person narrative, the central problem of Esther's story is that of an absent or lost parent. Chaos, disorder and disease in society are reflected in the domestic sphere by broken families, neglectful parents and the loss of love, comfort and security. Esther emphasizes the theme of abandonment of parental responsibility, which is analogous to that of the third-person narrative – the institutional abandonment of social responsibility. In Dickens' Victorian England, people frequently fall through the cracks, as evidenced by the characters Jo and Nemo. Dickens uses his characters to illustrate that neglect of necessary social responsibility is a poison to society and a symptom of moral decadence. He writes of the all-consuming monster that is a trial: “Countless children have been born to the cause; countless young people have married there; countless elderly people have died from it. Dozens of people found themselves deliriously partying in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; Entire families have inherited legendary hatreds with this trial. Dickens encourages readers to view the trial itself, and therefore the entire Chancery legal system, as an entity responsible for the misguided lives and unrealized prospects of many people. Richard and Ada are wards of the court, and in a sense Jo is too, as he grew up in nursing homes for the poor. It can therefore be said that the judiciary and the chancellery have also been negligent guardians. The comparison between the legal system and the family suggests that the.